Response to "Charen Should not Throw Stones"

In "A generation without morals" (Monday), Mona Charen runs down other cultures compared with Christianity. She must have failed her history lessons. Is she ignorant about all the awful lessons the Christians taught themselves and other cultures?

Was there a moral lesson when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son and he accepted, and actually thought it the right thing to do. She speaks of a "generation of moral cripples." I think that must include people like herself with blinders on who enjoy passing judgment on others. Her son might learn a valuable lesson that comes out of the Bible - clean up your own house.

And by the way, human sacrifice, polygamy and despotism were easily part of Western and European sensibilities.

Never have I read a letter so in need of response and redirect ("Charen shouldn't throw stones " November 9).

Ms. Charen is spot on when she targets the barbaric practices of the Aztecs. According to some reports, the aboriginal empire would sacrifice human beings, hearts still beating, in order to ensure that the sun would rise the next day. "Unenlightened" hardly describes such moral depravity, and there is nothing wrong with making such a judgment.

The very idea that one could compare en masse pagan sacrifices of the Aztecs with the one-time offering of Abraham simply betrays the moral equivalence that has taken hold of people these days. Contrary to its outer savagery, Abraham heeded the word of God to offer his son Isaac, fully persuaded that if necessary, God would bring his son back from the dead. That account does not demonstrate some innate barbarity in Western Civilization, but the intense passion of faith which leads man not to trust his own opinion as the final arbiter of right and wrong.

Regardless of one's prejudices, Charen's main claim is irrefutable, that the Western tradition is the only self-critical civilization, one that demonstrates a capacity by its adherents to learn and adapt to new information. This is made evident by the fact that Western countries no longer permit -- or at least openly accommodate -- such detestable practices like human sacrifice, polygamy and despotism.