The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Biden His Time

8.26.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 4 of 5)

I wish to defend my man, Reid Collins, against the sharp rebuts by those wimps who maligned him in the letters section on Monday.

Clearly there is an aspect on this issue that old men like Mr. Collins and myself have that our younger whippersnappers are completely ignorant to their embarrassment: Character building.

When I was a young man in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we could buy beer and wine once we were 18. We couldn't buy whiskey because our state representatives couldn't see their way past that one. We had it easy. It was practically given to us on a silver platter. It was so easy we missed out on one of life's significant rites of passage. Oh, sure, we still had to be funnin' with those blue laws that wouldn't let us buy our alcohol on Sundays. But all we had to do then was just buy ahead. Besides, everyone except the geeks knew which houses were "open for business" on Sunday to provide that valuable service. In the town where I went to school, the sheriff was very happy to invite us college boys into his "barn" which serviced as the local tavern while the normal bars were taking the day off. We were spoiled sissies.

But after the wise men in Washington blackmailed that states telling them they couldn't have their highway money unless they raised the drinking age, the whole landscape changed. The generations since had to toughen up and use their wiles and determination to get their hooch. The knowledge that with each brew they become notorious desperados put us old men to shame. Oh, sure, we had that Vietnam thingy; but how could that be a growth experience when most of us didn't know where Vietnam was and couldn't find it on a map?

To this day, when I get in a room with these real grownups who had to fight for their beer, I bury my inadequacy and keep my eyes looking down at the floor.

Please, don't make the mistake our parents made and let your children legally buy their beer and wine at eighteen. You have no idea how much I look upon my younger betters and wish I were like them. It really hurts inside.
-- Mike Dooley

Don't forget the concept of an on-campus rathskeller. "University Presidents are there to raise money... " Connect the dots.
-- Eric Liederbach

INNOCENCE REDEFINED
Re: Charles Campbell's letter (under "Kent Hate") in Reader Mail's Here's to Youth:

As one of the, er, more experienced voters who was at university trying to get educated while a small minority of rat [censored] did everything they could to prevent the same, I would like to take exception to one paragraph of Mr. Campbell's otherwise trenchant letter.

Mr. Campbell states: "But to have United States soldiers fire into a group of unarmed children was an absolute disgrace, a total abuse of government power, and absolutely made those kids martyrs to this wonderful country. To suggest anything else is to make this country less than what it is."

Now, I know that Generation Whine considers that, except for the purpose of obtaining beer and abortions, university students are at the same developmental stage as toddlers (now called pre-schoolers) were back in the 1960s. However, we who were the first generation of our families even to graduate from high school, much less attend university, and who had been working since we were old enough for working papers in order to afford the same, considered ourselves to be adults and most of us were very clear on what we were doing and why we were doing it. To characterize the Kent State mob as a crowd of three-year-olds who were assassinated by the Army is simply specious.

Incidentally, at the age of 5 my oldest boy saw Palestinians hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, some of them sitting in tanks, and said in a shocked voice, "NEVER throw rocks at people who have guns!"

It's a shame the Kent State mob didn't have parents who gave him the common sense that first grader had, isn't it?
-- Kate Shaw
Toronto, Canada

In yesterday's reader mail there appeared a missive from Mr. Charles Campbell, of Austin, Texas, who took three TAS reader/contributors to task for various offenses, myself among them. In my case, he was distressed by a subordinate clause in a letter I submitted last week, which said the four students killed at Kent State University in 1970 are now held to be, "martyrs to any cause any leftish wingnut deems important."

For reasons not yet apparent, Mr. Campbell read in that clause an intention to slander those same four students. "I hope ... you are not maligning the students themselves," he said. He went on to say that, "to have United States soldiers fire into a group of unarmed children was an absolute disgrace, a total abuse of government power, and absolutely made those kids martyrs to this wonderful country. To suggest anything else is to make this country less than what it is."

Letter to the Editor

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