The American Spectator

Reader Mail

One Referendum Too Many

6.23.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 6 of 6)

Much of human history involves new generations reinventing the wheel. That is, relearning the cultural wisdom our forbearers already worked and fought so hard to learn and pass down to us. We dismiss the old wisdom as old hat and then we end up going through so much grief to conclude for ourselves what had already been passed down to us. Our course of rediscovery is costly and immensely wasteful on each of us. But what is worse, it is our children -- the most vulnerable and the ones with the least resources to get by -- who bear the crush of our "experiments." They are the ones who suffer the most.

Every bit of empirical evidence shows the in the main children are best nurtured in an intact family consisting of both their father and their mother. There is nothing to suggest this will ever change. It is an ideal until recently we have held up as having crucial value. Being just men and women, we often fall short in keeping the ideal. But it is a hard won wisdom to aim for; but it is a touchstone to measure ourselves by and to mark the way to go.
-- Mike Dooley

GET OUT
Re: George Neumayr's What the Counterculture Has Joined Together:

Mr. Neumayr ends his column with, "The revolutionary path blazed by the Summer of Love has terminated in the Summer of gay marriage, and there is no turning back unless the issue is engaged at a deeper level than politics."

An interesting statement, and one to which I couldn't agree more. However, I say we take it one step further. We need to engage on all "social" issues on a level deeper than politics. I'm a major promoter of getting government out of marriage. No more state-sanctioned marriages, only civil-unions. Leave marriage where it should be, the province of the church.

I feel much the same on abortion. Retain the legal access, and make the practice socially unacceptable, and discontinue public funds for it. Government, even state and local government, has very little place in social debate. One of the major problems in this country, for both the "right" and the "left" is that both sides have agreed that it is appropriate for government to make social, moral laws. This allows people the easier path; convince the politician and have him order your side into law. Remove this, and people of the "left" and the "right" have to go back to convincing the people.

Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal. That's all the government needs to be telling us. The rest should be up to us to determine.
-- Charles Campbell
Austin, Texas

State and federal governments should get out of the marriage business. Marriage implies a religious sanctification committing two people. That introduces the issue over separation of church and state issues. States and the feds are not in the sanctification business. Unless we are talking about Obama.
-- Wolf Terner
Fair Lawn, New Jersey

Letter to the Editor

topics:
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