Letters to the Editor

• we shouldn't sink to his level.

  [Read the article: The stone is cast]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I usually try to read all the posts before I make one of my own, but there are way to many to get through for this. Clearly this is a 'red rag to a bull' subject with us liberals.

  I'm amazed at the vitupertiveness of some of the posts. We are not like those child-adults on the right, we can unpack our thoughts without becoming so nasty. We can explain our positions rather than saying, "because I say so...you JERK".

  The death of Falwell ties many threads together of the sheer poverty of debate in American public life. I was listening to Bill Moyers the other day and later to Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and I was struck by just how articulate and straighforward they were [agree with them or not]. It was like being enveloped in a waft of fresh air after being stuck in a broken down elevator for 10 hours. Bush can't articulate anything, he's a childish brat pretending to do real man's work. Falwell could mostly only articulate fear [his own] and bilious hate based on his fears.

  People take to public platforms for all sorts of reasons. Some do it reluctantly, some do it because they feel empty inside, some do it because they feel it's the only way they'll get their father's approval, some do it because they can't imagine being the little man, or this way they'll be someone, but whatever their reasons, we can scrutinize what they say.

  These are just people, we shouldn't get hysterical about the fact that they are more flawed than most and have a platform from which to inflict their neuroses on us, we should use cold sharp and calculating reason to challenge their utterances. I don't think he's gone to heaven or hell since I don't believe in either.

  You don't counter mindless hate with hate, you counter it with pertinent, dogged and reasoned argument.

  Whilst he might have seemed all-powerful and to have gotten away with it, you could feel sorry for him because he wasted the one and only life he had on being wrong and publicly so about all the major issues of the day and on neurotically giving in to the lure of easy and overwhelming certainty....actually that sounds like someone else doesn't it?

  Permalink Wednesday, May 16, 2007 06:58 AM