Letters to the editor

Supporting Rayburn

Dear editor:

In regards to the city council, I appreciate Jim Rayburn for having the guts to show up for the town people's meeting.

If it wasn't for the tax payers, how would the town operate?

I think we the people should stand behind Jim and the new council members. I'm sure honesty will prevail.

In the past there has been too much dishonesty in government. Hopefully this is a turn around for the city.

I own property in Nevada.

A former resident,

-- Mary Lou Ijams

Schell City

Responding to Shipp

Dear editor:

I have only respect for David Shipp, but I find his opinions (Sunday Heral-Tribune, April 16) on most matters incomprehensible, emanations straight out of Cloud-Cuckooland.

As he's said before, he reiterates that we need many, many more illegal aliens. He hopes ever more "Hispanics" (a Spaniard isn't a Hipanic in p.c. Newspeak) stampede to our shores, because they have "a beautiful heritage and culture." Fine! Let 'em stew in it back home.

We too have such a culture, David. It's fashionable to run it down, and I assume you find our culture less "beautiful" than those "beautiful" ones of aliens. Most people tend to judge our culture by its so-visible unsavory "pop" attributes. But there's far more to it than that. I just read a book about Magna Carta and its long legacy we unwittingly, unappreciatively enjoy.

To my knowledge, the "beautiful Hispanic" culture produced no Magna Carta, no Declaration of Right, no Constitution (save those they copied from ours, and which are honored more in the breach than in observance).

Your "hope" of a "Hispanic" flood conjures a nightmare picture in my mind: A government that doesn't function, indeed nothing functions without the mordida (bribe), much of the country in the hands of drug gangs and insurgents, the police no longer the citizens' friends but something to be terrified of, military juntas suspending the Constitution, even a socialist nutcase elected president, like Venezuela's Chavez, preparing to trash the economy.

To that tired cliche "nation of immigrants" I say crap! My ancestry is as "mongrel" as yours, but note well, all those nationalities are close cousins, sharing the same values. Wyndham Lewis mocked Americans who call themselves "mongrels," when it's obvious that they're really just "super-Europeans." My Irish ancestors came to America to get away from the miseries of Ireland, not bring it with them; to become Americans.

Our forebearers built the only culture in the world that created great art, music, and science (read The Victory of Reason, by Rodney Stark), which it's our solemn duty to preserve and carry on. "Hispanic" culture to me looks somewhat sterile in these lines. Islam certainly is.

"Multiculturalism" is a fallacy that will ruin us. (Read While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within.) Cultures do not live together in peace; they fight each other. If "Hispanics" come in such numbers as to overwhelm our culture and language, then the word be "Ichabod!" (the glory departed).

-- Patrick Brophy

Nevada

People can't give freedom

Dear editor:

As I read and listen to the politicians' opinions on the war in Iraq, it is evident that our leaders are under the impression that they can impose or legislate freedom and liberty on the Iraqi people.

Freedom and liberty are not gifts that we can give other nations. Our founding fathers knew this. in fact, Benjamin Franklin said: "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."

Thomas Jefferson prayed, "My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, which no other people on earth enjoy?" According to Horace Greely, "Liberty cannot be established without morality or morality without faith."

If then our founding fathers knew that faith in God was the primary source of our existance, why then do we continue to impose our belief system on the people of Iraq?

These people do not recognize our creator as God. Their Koran tells them to kill Christians and Jews. Therefore, they are not endowed by the creator with the same rights as We the People. Thus, freedom and liberty are illusive concepts that they cannot comprehend. Still, the administration holds to the world view that freedom and liberty are commodities that can be legislated and traded like coffee beans.

Noah Webster hit it square on the head when he said: "All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war proceed fromtheir despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."

The people of Iraq are a people in need of change. We the People of this Nation Under God, need to hold them up in our prayers because only God can change the heart of this people. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."

May we as a nation, and as a people never forget (2 Corinthians 3:17) "Where the spirit of God is, there is Liberty."

-- Kenneth R. McClure

Fort Scott, Kan.