Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Bush's legacy
[Read the article: So what does that rug say now?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush will be remembered as the president who brought back torture.
In a way it is understandable. Reading today about the people under interrogation over the Glasgow terrorist attack, my first gut reaction is to hope that they are being tortured painfully and are surrendering the names of their co-conspirators.
But this is just a gut reaction. As president of the US, you have to take a wider view.
When Henry II roared "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest!" some well-meaning knights took a day trip to Canterbury and killed Archbishop Thomas A'Becket, but when the king was informed of the assassination he was consumed with grief.
One hopes that modern leaders would not make similar errors.
After 9/11 Bush should have made it quite clear to all his cabinet that we needed to get to the bottom of who was behind 9/11, but that the Geneva Convention woud be adhered to and that torture would not be tolerated, and that anyone on our side who used torture, or condoned it, would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
He didn't because he did not have and does not have the leadership qualities and ability to project American values.
Impeachment would be nice, but failing that perhaps funds could be cut off from his Presidential Library and his name deleted from the history books, so that in the long run he will be forgotten. That is the best that can be hoped for. A vain hope, of course, because his place in the annals of infamy is assured.
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It's over, Dover
[Read the article: Big momma's house]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sorry Dover, I used to be a great fan of yours, but your latest comment about disenfranchised women misses the mark.
Disenfranchised means not being allowed to vote.
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Agnostic on abortion
[Read the article: Pregnant and poor in Mississippi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]syoung2007 has written a very comprehensive list of why she thinks people oppose abortion. So detailed in fact that when you add all these types of people together, you probably get somewhere close to a majority of the electorate.
I'm not sure, though, that she has got it entirely right. Just before the last presidential election, I was having lunch with a woman of about 60 and we vaguely discussed the upcoming election. She said that she felt that one had to vote on the side of morality. I said that I agreed and supposed that would mean a vote for Gore. She said, no, Bush because of his stand on abortion.
I mention this only because there is a very strong feeling on the part of many people who don't follow politics closely that abortion is wrong.
My own sister is fairly strongly opposed to abortion. As a physician who spend many years running contraception clinics, it might be assumed that she knew enough about the birds and the bees to avoid unwanted pregnancy. WRONG! Having given me a nephew and a niece is very short order, she immediately got pregnant with niece #2, making it three babies in less than three years. She gave a lot of thought to terminating the pregnancy, but in the end decided not to.
Now, 25 years later, having got to know niece #2 better, and having coached a girls' soccer team to winning every trophy in her home area, and a bit later having had bragging rights to a daughter who has played for the national team, she is rather glad she didn't have her torn from her womb.
And this is my point--sorry to be long winded--that the main reason many ordinary perfectly liberal people oppose abortion is that they look at their own children and remember thoughts, however fleeting, of terminating those accidental pregnancies long ago,and think, whew, glad I didn't do that.
My lunch aquaintance told very much the same story, too, and that was why she voted for Bush.
So I don't think it has all that much to do with a desire for a fascist state--appealing though that might be for some of us--or with religious fanaticism. Just a gut feeling that it is not right.
And I, like another poster, note that the article studiously avoided any suggestion that the biological fathers should chip in for the cost of out-of-state abortions, travel expenses, etc., or that the link between conception and unprotected sexual intercourse has been well-known since about the time that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
I used to be fairly pro-choice, but now I think I lean the other way. Clearly there are sometimes circumstances where terminating a pregnancy is the right thing to do, but I don't think that cheap, free, and universally available abortion on demand is the right way to go.
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Calling Dover, over
[Read the article: Big momma's house]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Definition:
disenfranchise Show phonetics
verb [T] (ALSO disfranchise)
to take away power or opportunities
So what do you mean that women have a "disenfranchised" view of men? I bet you mean disillusioned--the wool has been pulled from their eyes.