The American Spectator

Reader Mail

After the Sniper

10.28.02 @ 12:01AM

CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN
Re: Bill Guentner's letter in Reader Mail's Clowns and Frowns:

Bill Guentner doesn't like "Clinton Bashing." Mr. Guentner, Bill Clinton is to bashing as Mt. Everest is to mountain climbing. We bash him "because he is there!"
-- Bob Johnson
Bedford, TX

A ROSE IS NOT A ROSE
Re: Enemy Central's For Pete's Sake:

There are many players of "rotten character" in the baseball Hall of Fame. The same is true of football.

I did not realize that character was the criterion for entrance. Pete Rose was and is a crude person who let gamboling destroy his life, but without a doubt, he was a great baseball player!!!!! He played three positions with great ability and showed more enthusiasm for the game than any other player then and now.

He may be your enemy of the week, but, as much as I dislike the man, he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
-- J.M. Craig

NO KIDDING
Re: Jerry Carter: Children and the Sniper:

While I agree with everything Carter said about the hypocrisy involved in the overwrought anguish about the sniper's young victims, he missed his opportunity to go for the jugular by pointing out how such "concern" does not extend to protecting their right to be born in the first place.
-- Howard Hirsch
Carson City, Nevada

Jerry Carter's article on the sniper and the children was, to use the phrase, right on target. The Horndog president and his fright of a wife made a career of pushing their socialist programs by using the mantra of "for the children" to give us an eight-year nightmare of the Clinton administration. If they were truly "for the children," they would have pushed for more tax cuts, less government, giving real meaning to the rights as outlined in the Constitution, ended welfare, rewarded hard work, cracked down on criminal behavior at all levels, become champions of the free enterprise system -- in short, adopted the principles of conservatives and self-sufficiency.

Now, the sniper case becomes more important because a kid was hit with one of the shots. Why is this any more important than a middle aged man or woman being shot? At what age does someone move from "innocent childhood" to nondescript adulthood? I worked my entire professional life in the government schools so I know about doing something "for the children" is all about. One thing for sure that is a waste of time and money is focusing on and pampering the children. This inflated self-esteem movement running amok in our schools is a disaster because it results in spoiled brats who expect that the world owes them a living rather than buckling down and doing the hard work necessary of be successful. Those who push this nutty self-esteem program are doing it, again, "for the children."

Finally, there is the hypocrisy of the feminazis in the left who regularly castigate those women to choose to stay home with their kids and those who choose life over infanticide which is called abortion or, in their warped sense, choice. Hillary and company tout the "village" in child rearing which is nothing more than a shadow of the communist collective view of state-controlled parenthood. Did those kids grow up to be the promise of tomorrow? That concept has spawned such fiscal black holes as Head Start, a program that has not had any lasting positive long term effects. All of this under the mantra of "for the children."

Instead of short term feel good nonsense programs, we need to focus on the end result. My idea of the goal of public education was to produce fully-functioning self-sufficient adults. Not pampered, spoiled and phony self-esteem filled brats. Kids are important but they are only part of society; they are not society.
-- Al Martin
Portland, OR

Way to go, Jerry! I'm sure you will receive all sorts of flack about this, but it's the unvarnished truth. A life is a life is a life. To see just how gullible the "great unwashed" is about this "children" appeal, one has to look no farther than Hillary's It Takes A Village.
-- Bob Johnson
Bedford, TX

So Jerry Carter can't understand "this mysterious hypersensitivity to 'the children,'" and the resultant over-reaction (in his opinion, no doubt) to the sniper's threats to children. In this Carter shows himself less a student of human nature than was the sniper. What a pathetic substitute for a man he must be!

I read this article three times to be sure I wasn't missing the deliberate use of satire or black humor. But no! This "man" is evidently serious. Get this paragraph: "Screw the children. My first thought is that the note's a little off. I am not safe anywhere, any time." And this one:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, Satire, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Oil