Letters to the Editor
Daniel Dvorkin
Published Letters: 194 Editor's Choice: 32
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"the worst crime there is, worse than murder or treason or torture"
[Read the article: Tracking sex offenders with GPS]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, BitterKarl, it's really not.
I was molested when I was ten years old. Was it a deeply unpleasant experience that I wish I could have avoided? Of course. Do I wish that I had had the courage and understanding to speak out at the time, so the perpetrator could have received the prison sentence he deserved? Absolutely. Would I prefer that he had beaten me, or cut me, or killed me? Hell no.
As an adult, I spent nine years of my life in emergency medicine -- eight as an Air Force medic, including time in Desert Storm, and one as a civilian EMT at what was then called Denver General Hospital, a place with the well-deserved nickname "the knife and gun club." So believe me when I tell you that I have a pretty intimate understanding of the horrible things that human beings can do to each other, and that sex crimes, even out-and-out forcible rape, are a long way from being the worst of them.
If every single person who were sexually assaulted were "destroyed" by the experience, then there would be a whole lot more destroyed people out there. I know an astonishingly large number of people, both men and women, who have experienced some sort of sexual assault as children, as adults, or both. And I don't think this is unusual. Like combat vets, or like people who have had terrible diseases, some victims of sex crimes crack under the strain, but most move on with their lives.
And if you think that non-sexual violent crimes don't leave long-lasting psychological scars, then you are desperately naive. A victim of rape or molestation is in exactly the same situation as a person who has been tortured, or stabbed, or shot -- except for people like you, who feed into the cult of unique victimhood surrounding sex crimes, which I honestly believe makes things worse for the victims.
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deja vu all over again
[Read the article: Bush: "We're not winning, we're not losing"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or should that be "freedom re-memory all over again?"
You could take every single bit of rhetoric from the White House and the Pentagon under both Johnson and Nixon, substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam," and publish it today, and no one would even notice the difference.
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He can't possibly be that stupid
[Read the article: The Alberto Gonzales School of Constitutional Interpretation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gonzales is a lawyer, and I'll bet he did pretty well in his classes on Constitutional law when he was in school. He knows perfectly well that the Constitution doesn't need to grant rights such as habeas corpus; we have those rights, unless the Constitution explicitly gives the government the power to take them away. It is terrifying to me that Congress is willing to allow the nation's top lawyer to get away with saying things that are so obviously contradictory to the fundamental principles of American law, and the freedom which depends on that law for its preservation. Any one of the deliberate, evil lies that have come up during his testimony should be sufficient for impeachment, disbarment, and charges of criminal negligence.
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By all means ...
[Read the article: ETC Group warns against "bio-error"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... let's put together a governing body composed half of left-wingers who think any genetically modified crop is "Frankenfood," and half of right-wingers whose understanding of biology begins and ends with the Book of Genesis. That should be fair and balanced, right?
Feh. The idea of impartial, well-informed oversight by thoughtful people outside the field is a nice one, but the reality will inevitably be more like the scenario above. Most people not only don't have the education or insight to know what's going on in modern biology, they don't want to know, as has been made abundantly clear by the public "debate" (i.e., screaming match) over issues such as teaching creationism in schools, stem cell research, GMO foods, and bioterrorism. In such a climate, scientists are the only ones who offer any chance at all of rational controls.
Ethical issues? You know what's ethical? Curing disease is ethical. Feeding hungry people is ethical. Increasing our understanding of the living world is ethical. Sharing information that allows us to do these things is ethical. And throwing up roadblocks to these goals is not only unethical, but evil -- which is a pretty good description of the Luddite backlash against modern biological research.
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Please get the terminology right
[Read the article: Surge of danger for U.S. troops]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This was an interesting and informative article, but this line made me cringe:
"... the M1A1 Abrams tank -- the backbone of America's armored infantry ..."
No, the M1A1 is the backbone of America's armor, which is a different beastie from infantry. Armor: tanks. Infantry: guys walking around with packs and rifles. Mechanized infantry: infantrymen riding around in things that look like tanks, but aren't. These are three different things.
This may seem like a trivial point, but it's this kind of screwup that will lead a lot of vets to say, essentially, "That bunch of lefties at Salon can't even get the basic facts right, why should we trust anything they say?" As a liberal and a veteran, I desperately want to see more of my fellow vets realized how badly the military is being used. Articles in left-leaning publications with correct information will help move us toward this goal; articles with elementary errors will have the opposite effect.
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Guess I should have checked my own facts first ...
[Read the article: Surge of danger for U.S. troops]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The M1A1 is no longer the front-line tank of choice for the US Army; it's been superseded by the M1A2. So again, it's important to check first. And really, none of this information is hard to find. Changing one line of text could greatly improve the entire article's credibility among military readers -- and trust me, there are a lot more active-duty personnel and vets reading Salon than you might think.
(My only excuse is that the last time I was up close and personal with one of these things, in Desert Storm, it was still the A1. Not to mention that I'm just some guy writing a letter to the editor, not a journalist for a major publication.)