The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Palin's New Pals

9.2.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 7 of 8)

Unions have the same mentality. If you don't want to be in one you must be too stupid to take care of yourself and so need a union to look after you. So they want (and democrats will do it) to take your choice away.

If you think this lack of intelligence is not real, I offer you the question posed to my brother by one of the union people he supervises: "I don't want to go to war with Russia over Georgia, but where in hell are we going to get our peaches now?"

Obama has a chance.
-- Jay Molyneaux
Denver, North Carolina

OVER OUR HEADS
Re: George H. Wittman's Genius Left vs. Stupid America:

The support for the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, has always been an interesting phenomenon. In the past, when the Soviet Union was inarguably the worst totalitarian dictatorship in the world, intellectuals and the media were their most ardent supporters. Even though it was intellectuals and media members who were being stood against the wall or sent to die in Siberia. So the "Russia Was Provoked By The Evil Americans" diatribe coming from media organs and intellectuals in both Europe and the U.S. should not be surprising. There is no rationale, no basis in fact and no sanity in this position. It simply exists.

If you look at history, it is truly amazing that any rational person would choose to side with any culture that is willing to use brute force to stifle individuality and diversity among its people. If the Soviet/Russian political culture is so wonderful and Western/American political culture so abhorrent, then it stands to reason that vast throngs would be marching into the Russian Federation and out of Western democracies. Unbelievably, this isn't happening. As we all know, people are most likely to vote "with their feet." They will leave a less hospitable place for a more hospitable one. And the vast majority of people are voting against the Russian Federation, rather than for it.

The leaders of the Russian Federation are correct when they say that a European anti-missile shield is aimed at them. But, it is a defensive system, not an offensive one. It causes no harm unless Russia initiates a hostile action against the West. That it is also aimed at Iran, who has been supplied with Russian equipment to support its nuclear program, is also true. The fact that Russia chose to actively work against the interests of the United States and Europe in the Middle East, particularly in regards to an increasingly aggressive Iran, and its activities in support of a return of the old Soviet Bear forced the decision to deploy an anti-missile system to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. When this happened, the Old Bear showed its true colors and reverted to brute force to attain its goals.

So don't expect the European media to suddenly support the United States and condemn Russia, After all, the U.S. is extremely unlikely to occupy Europe, but there is always the possibility the European journalists could be sporting "I Like Vlad" buttons in the future.
-- Michael Tobias

BOB COSTAS WITHDRAWAL
Re: John C. Wohlstetter's Curing the Hangover After Beijing:

Baron Pierre de Coubertin did not conceive the modern Olympic Games. He gave them follow-up momentum by founding the International Olympic Committee in 1894. The Panathenian stadium used for the 1896 Olympic Games had already hosted modern international Olympic Games, sponsored by the Greek philanthropist Evangelis Zappas, in 1870, and 1875.
-- Mike Pagomenos
Founder of Zappas.org
Member of the International Society of Olympic Historians
Gainesville, Florida

Well, despite a lot of talk about China getting "credit" for hosting the Olympics, I think of Berlin 1936 and Moscow 1980. In a dozen years after getting their "credit" for their Olympics, those regimes were gone...
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

The Olympic Games maxim has become citius, altius, fortius, pretentious.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

EASY TO FORGET
Re: Charles Campbell's letter (under "No Apologies") in Reader Mail's One Reason Alone:

After over thirty years, I thought maybe we would have sobered up from the romance of the Kent State Shootings. Instead, that tragedy seems to work as a Rorschach test for deeply buried feelings. When dealing with such things, rational but emotionally "superficial" argument misses the point I suppose.

I do want to make a humble emphasis of fact that seems to get lost in the smoke and heat. The soldiers at Kent State that day were not regular army. They were Ohio National Guardsmen. Here in Hoosierland, when troubles arise, the Governor doesn't call up the 7th Armored out of Fort Knox. He calls up the Indiana National Guard. Our Guard is used for everything from riot control, rescuing folk who don't have the sense to go somewhere else before high water becomes high water, hauling food and medicine where no one else will go, and filling sandbags before the threat of flood. In view of the disturbances (both real and imagined) on the Kent State campus that May, there was nothing surprising in itself about the use of the Ohio National Guard to restore order. Given that most of the Guardsmen that day were the same age as the students if not students themselves, I'm sure they would rather have been flirting with the Co-eds rather than shooting at them.

Letter to the Editor

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