The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 4)

From your article: "But what Senator McCain doesn't tell you is that the average cost of a family health care plan these days is $12,680." I'm retired and never know how much my GE health plan costs, but my oldest son was just laid off and his Cobra insurance for himself, wife, and three kids is $1,800 per month. That is $21,600 per year and would put him above the $5,000 tax credit. Doesn't seem a $5,ooo credit is really worth much for someone in the middle income bracket. I really would like to know where that $12,680 comes from, certainly not Northern California.
-- Hal Careway
San Jose, California

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OLD SCHOOL
Re: George Neumayr's Sleepwalking Toward Cultural Revolution:

A nation that would knowingly and willingly send its women into combat is a nation not worth defending. A nation that promotes the pairing of perverts as marriage will go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.
-- W. B. Heffernan, Jr.

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Another aspect of an Obama win related to the registration of women is the effect such a win will have on the overall morale of our Military. Should Obama begin to implement many of the policies we fear, it is likely that many junior officers will resign out of disgust as they did during the Clinton administration and re-enlistments will drop. Recruiting goals will be harder to achieve as well. Thus the irony as Democrats end up resorting to a Draft to maintain an endstrength that was cut to the bone during the Clinton years and never properly restored during the Bush years.
 
So would women be included in such a draft? As you point out, that could be a real possibility- to the outrage of many young women and to their parents. I doubt the Libs will appreciate the irony of all those parents urging their daughters to burn their draft cards in protest or move to Canada, as I would urge my now 18 year old daughter
to do.
-- Paul Doolittle

HANDS TIED BY VALUES
Re: David N. Bass's Breaking the Silence:

I don't believe that the "values voters" turned out to vote for G.W. Bush simply because he supported their stands on the marriage issue; I believe that many of them came out to vote because in many states in the last election marriage amendments were on many state ballots during the presidential election. These voters came out to cast votes that directly affected the course of events at the state level, but for most their voting for Bush was a foregone conclusion. And as for McCain not voting for a federal marriage amendment, I don't fault him for that. Most of the "values issues" are actually state issues that should be handled at the state level. If the people of California, Massachusetts, or Connecticut were to vote to make homosexual marriage the law of their states, I would have no problem with it, just as I have no problem with South Carolina, Georgia, or Mississippi voting to enshrine marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It should be left to the people of the various states to decide, not for the federal government at any level (executive, legislative, and especially judicial) to decide for the people. McCain could have condemned the ruling, but what good would it have done him in the end? If he had done that the media would have immediately accused him of trying to shift the focus from the economy to attacking the independence of the judiciary; that has been the practice of the Obamedia throughout this cycle, and would have held true in that instance as well. You may think it could have helped McCain, but it is going to take more than a rote condemnation of the Connecticut high court to convince many conservatives that McCain is one of them.
-- Eric Edwards
Walnut Cove, North Carolina.

POOR EVERYBODY
Re: Larry Thornberry's Red Florida Singing the Blues:

Mr. Thornberry, McCain recently said he'd whip Obama's "you know what." Well, in 1980, Teddy Kennedy said he'd whip Jimmy Carter's "you know what." Poor McCain. Too many years in the Senate. Poor Governor Palin. Hitched to a broken wagon. Poor us. We get to look forward to the first elected Socialist government in the history of the country.
-- Mike Showalter
Austin, Texas

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CAPITALISM'S BANE
Re: Reid Collins's It Can't Be Done:

Mr. Collins fails to point up the single most important reason for most, if not all, of Capitalism's ills: socialism.

The collapse of the credit industry, and the subsequent fall of the financial markets, is due almost entirely to socialist ideas forced upon banks and other credit institutions by the government. Individual capacity for work has also diminished in the last thirty years. Once again thanks to Socialist practices adopted by the government. Things like welfare, expanded unemployment compensation, Medicaid, and overly stringent standards for employee termination have caused decay in worker dedication in large business organizations.

In fact, the effects of the socialist, nanny-state mindset has been so pernicious that many people have even come to blame the politicians for the current financial crisis. Those that are ultimately responsible for the crisis are those who will pay through the nose for it: We The People. Why? Because in reality, each individual bears personal responsibility for, not only his or her actions, but also inactions. Socialism allows people to ignore this reality and delude themselves into believing that someone else bears the responsibility. But that is merely delusion.