The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 7)

Thank you, Lawrence Henry, for making the effort to write every week in spite of your illness, and thanks to the editors for publishing you. Your words enhance my life. Thank you for the gift.
-- Peter Kline

Please pass to Mr. Henry that I am not a religious man, but I will pray for him.

I wish him peace.
-- Rich Watko

Please tell Mr. Henry I will be praying for him and his family. I don't have it as bad as he's got it, but I hear him. Many of us do. We'll be together, one day, soon I hope, where all is safe and kind -- in His arms. God bless you all.
-- Desiree Effner
Gresham, Oregon

Lawrence Henry replies:
Dear All:

I'll be busy this week with a couple of minor surgeries -- switching over from peritoneal to hemo dialysis. Your loving responses have humbled me with gratitude, and also made me realize what a complete horse's ass I made of myself, popping off the way I did. "Writers write," yes indeed, but more writers, myself included, ought to pay attention to Bill Wilson's dictum, "Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen."

I will reproduce a paragraph from a friend's letter to me for now, and leave it at that.

"Your article broke my heart. First for its dire nature, secondly for your presumption that controlling pain is a character flaw. It isn't. Neither is it the same as chronic alcoholism. I speak with a knowing clear heart. If God offers a physical measuring to lessen the pain you are going through and your doctor feels it will help in whatever lies ahead, then use it. This in no manner implies you are a mindless addict."

I will pick up writing in two weeks, and I hope by that time I will write about something a lot more interesting than myself.

Best to all of you,
Lawrence Henry

NOBODY'S INNOCENT
Re: Quin Hillyer's It's the Culture, Stupid:

Every political figure has associations with bad people. Everybody has something in the past that they did wrong. If you want to go on about Bill Ayers, the other side can bring up the Keating Five and can bring up all the lobbyists on McCain's staff. The other side can bring up Palin's long association with the Alaska Independence Party, which is a pretty despicable group with whom Sarah and her husband were both very involved for a long time.

What's the point? This is gutter politics. Let's talk about things that really matter. The economy is melting down. The two candidates have really interesting, contrasting proposals on health care. And oh yeah, we're fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please let's move on from the personal attacks.
-- Mitch Gar

Kudos to Quin Hillyer for having the self-awareness to be able to step back and see the spectacle of a seriously disturbed social process unfolding. Elections have always brought out a full range of human behavior.

McCain, flaws and all, has his (and America's) best chance of winning only if he sticks to easily observable facts and that means voicing the simplest American conservative ideas about the traditional standards of decent behavior, limited government, a virile respect for life and respect for the Constitution as written.

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