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Letter to the editor: Misleading speech stokes fire of hate at Constitution Week

Well, it happened again. What appeared to be a great start for this year’s Constitution Week event, came to a screeching halt. The first four speakers were great and indicated a more open tenor this year. Then, on Wednesday evening, we went to the talk entitled, “Is Sharia Law Compatible with the U.S. Constitution?” Everyone knows it is not, but I went in anticipation of hearing a presentation discussing the Constitution vs. Sharia Law. It was not.

The speaker was a woman with an anonymous moniker so as to prevent radical Muslims from doing her harm. Her talk was totally about the horrors of Sharia Law and how a Christian ministry to those suffering from it has had some success. Though her work is laudable, it had nothing to do with the Constitution and, when I asked 10 minutes into the talk, why the talk was erroneously titled, the event committee head, Tom Goodfellow, intervened and told me to be quiet. The reporter in attendance was also singled out as an impediment to more data on the speaker’s subject. Before she spoke on some issues, she asked the reporter to stop recording, which he did not.

So I was lured into the session by a talk title that was false and listened to an impassioned talk on the horrors of Sharia Law by a dedicated person who was proselytizing, not addressing any issues relative to the Constitution. Last year, the keynote speaker called our president an “evil prince of darkness” spewing hatred, and spent no time talking about the Constitution.



When will the U.S. Constitution committee present actual talks on relevant issues rather than stoking the fires of hate on various fronts? This could be a wonderful event if the very conservative Republican committee loosened their grip and quit trying to mobilize the masses to their paranoia and pursued a venue of education and discussion on the actual constitution. Will there be talks next year on “Is the Ku Klux Klan compatible with the Constitution” or “is white supremacy compatible with the Constitution”? What else does this committee hate that they can weasel into a talk ostensibly about the Constitution?

Again, I hope next year will be a year of learning and growth rather than hate promulgation. And again, I offer my help if the committee would like me to participate. And I hope that no more misleading talk titles will be used to hide their real themes.



Kris P. Kriofske, Grand Lake


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