The American Spectator

Reader Mail

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I can't imagine why Americans are so upset about running trillion-dollar deficits, year after year. After all, soon enough I'll be able to take a newly printed $100 trillion bill out of my pocket and personally pay down the entire national debt -- and get change back, to boot. Problem solved, worry warts.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

CARRIES HIMSELF LIKE A...JOKER

Re: Nicole Russell's Al in a Box:

Mr. Franken certainly does not have the bearing of a Senator; few Democrats today do. Mr. Franken is typical of today's Democrats, most of whom are motivated by anger and hatred. They are angry that we, the people, do not buy into their hokey social and economic theories. And they hate the country that allowed their parents and grandparents to accumulate the wealth that sustains them now.
-- Jay W. Molyneaux
Denver, North Carolina

OLDER MODEL PERSPECTIVE
Re: Eric Peters's The Future of the Car Industry:

Mr. Peters is right, of course, it can't be stopped now. The native auto industry is in for big changes under the direction of the country's number one tax cheat and most of it is unavoidable but it did not have to be this way. GM, which has fed my family since my parents came to Michigan at the start of World War II, deserves a better fate even if it has made big mistakes, but these pale into insignificance when compared to the abuse from our own government. These, as I have written previously, include but are not limited to the awful CAFE, almost unlimited support for an increasingly clueless UAW, environmental overreaches, stupid inhibitions on the development our own resources, and the like. All while the over-capacity scenario was gathering with the support of Socialist governments the world over.

I suppose that one can't overestimate the cost of health care on the Big Three. I recall that after I left GM in early 1991 to work for the State of Michigan, I was appalled when all the auto companies embraced the Clinton health care take over. At that time the litany was health care was 17% of our GNP and something must be done. We are hearing the same from Obama's people this time. I gave speeches around the state in 1991 as Director of Workers' Compensation for Michigan to the effect "who says 17% is too much maybe it is not enough considering the advances in health care in the USA that has improved the lives of all citizens and especially seniors immeasurably. I ask essentially the same question today: "why do we want to ruin the best if not perfect health care system in the world because someone thinks 17% is too much?" Well Mr. Peters, change is hard for everyone and I guess more so for "seasoned citizens" who have been around long enough to see the whole picture but we also know change is inevitable and each generation will have its own failures and successes. I just wish this generation had evolved from a less toxic culture.
-- Jack Wheatley
Royal Oak, Michigan.

COST-BENEFIT
Re: William Tucker's The Next Subprime Mortgage Meltdown:

The Looney Left frequently attacks missile defense as being too expensive and ineffective (too little bang for the buck); they have no patience for working out the bugs from the system. Yet the very same people have no problems with, or question about the expense and effectiveness of, alternative energies; they simply accept that the technology is possible and efficient. Consistency in logic is needed -- by both sides of the aisle.
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

NOT-SO-GREAT EMANCIPATOR
Re: Roger Kaplan's Lincoln at 200:

Lincoln worshipers continue to claim that his actions were justified by one of two angles, "saving the Union" or ending slavery.

No where in the Constitution does it say a thing about leaving the Union. The Constitution is silent -- if viewed as a legally binding contract, there is nothing that binds the states to the union of the states in the founding documents. The founding documents did not create an all powerful central government like the one they fought a war to get away from.

Those who use ending the institution of slavery by force as a worthy or singular justification need to explain why that institution was any less an abomination in 1619 when the first slaves were traded at Jamestown Virginia, in 1776 when the northern colonies essentially begged their southern slave colonies to join in their war of independence or more importantly why the Constitution was ratified with slavery left intact as an institution?

All rolled up, the end justifies the means is what took place between 1861 and 1865. The precedents set by Lincoln's actions have spawned some pretty negative consequences for which we are all paying.

The Civil War didn't just happen one fine day. It took decades of discontent and friction between those that were trying to limit it or destroy it by simple majority rule and those trying to preserve it and their economic way of life or expand it. It is my belief that a separate Confederacy would have been an economic failure in a relatively short period of time if they had been let go