The American Spectator

My husband spoke to a high school in East Texas last Thursday. The students listened with great respect. He told of an America that once dishonored its veterans. He told of this America of the 1970s, when he and others were ordered not to travel in uniform, less it cause him harm. They listened with surprise and perplexed looks covered their faces.

They listened when he said that some in the recent Presidential campaign tried to deny the very freedoms he had fought for, when these veterans raised their voices in chorus, silent no longer. They listened as he told them they must carry the flag for their country, for freedom is earned by every generation, and lost when one generation thinks they need no longer aspire to it.

p>They listened. In my heart, I shouted, “it’s way past time this decent man was given the respect he was long overdue!” Thank you, God. br> — Beverly Gunn br> Quitman, Texas br> Proud wife, proud Mother, proud American /p> p> MY MAN KERRY br> Re: William Tucker’s Go West, Young Country : /p>

William Tucker pretends that this election was a referendum on public crassness and sexual practices that most people find distasteful. I would say that this is what the radical Bush administration tried to convey, in order to take peoples’ attention away from the numerous ways in which it acts against the interest of the average family. The strategy of scaring people was brilliantly successful. As a Kerry supporter, I was voting for an economic policy that values hard work, social policy that respects privacy, and a foreign policy that truly makes us safer in the world. Kerry’s programs and plans would have done much more for the family than what we will have for the next four years — a continued transfer of wealth to those who are already the most affluent, a squeeze on the budget of ordinary families, a valuing of investment over work. The conservative agenda works only for the very wealthy and for religious crusaders who don’t care if they are poor. The Republicans’ tendency to wrap themselves in religious robes belies their actions that hurt the families they say they are trying to help. And by the way, Mr. Tucker mentions polygamy and incest as some of the “new frontier.” I have heard that these practices, as well as child and spousal abuse, are actually more prevalent in the households of religious fundamentalists than in the rest of society.