How fortunate we have a thinker such as letter writer Paul Corrao (Feb. 1) to help us make sense of the war in Iraq and the current ethics scandal in Congress. It appears that our problems in these two areas are the direct result of “secular humanism-atheistic materialism.” All we need to do is restore the sacred to national life, and we’re all right.

I, for one, am relieved to be set straight as to the causes of those two debacles. Here I was, thinking that Iraq was the pet project of our born-again president, and that the ethics scandal had something to do with the marriage of big-money K Street lobbyists to religious conservative Republicans such as Tom Delay.

Silly me.

Guess it was the Barney Franks of the world all along, and I just missed it.

Stephen C. Lunt, Auburn