ANOTHER FIRST
Re: Sean Higgins’s Democratic Signs of Pro-Life:

I want to exhort your magazine… for the awesome reporting job it does. I just read my first Spectator article (“Pro-Life Democrats”) and I was very pleased with the style and way it was written. Most stories are perceivably one -sided but the one I read was not. It was truly a reporting of the news. The vocabulary was not advanced but considering the reading level of the average American — it was fine. It was very informative and the polls believable. Mr. Higgins did a superb job!! Thank you for being an honest messenger of the news — as an English lover and news-hound I was very impressed. Thank you again.
— Stephanie Jourdan

IN SHOCK
Re: Enemy Central’s Heaven Can Wait:

Your rhetoric is pretty vile, sexist and, frankly, displays your small mind. “Worth more money” so deserve more attention? Nice value statement there. Come home when the “band-aids run out”? Seriously. Tell that to Max Cleland as the band-aids would not have been large enough. Willie Nelson a squaw? Enemy? I may not support G. Bush but I would never call him an “enemy.”
— Ellen May

DEMOCRATS IN ACTION
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Signs of the Dirty Times:

I am surprised that the business community in Boston were unaware that Democrats do not spend their own money when they attend their major political gatherings. True to form, they attend and are guests of various special interest groups, many of them unions, transportation, lodging and meals are provided right down to the bag of “freebies” they take home as remembrances.

On the other hand, those who attend Republican Conventions attend on their own dime. They choose which hotel, method of transportation to get there, where they eat — well, you get the picture. They have the freedom to choose and with that freedom comes choice. The business community always benefits when people come to town with their own money. Tourist attractions, the hot dog vendor on the sidewalk, all restaurants surrounding the venue, the list is endless. They also either come in early or stay a few days after to take side trips in the area. Now, whether you’re a Rep. or Dem. businessman which would you have come to your town.

An aside, notice who leaves the largest amount of trash on the streets… Bingo!!! — the hordes of protesters who follow Republican gatherings.
— Edda Gahm
Diamond Bar, California

Last Saturday, I had the privilege of seeing the President in Canton Ohio. Listening to him you could not help but feel that this man is genuine, he stands firm on his beliefs, he does not waffle, he means what he says, and he says what he means. It was inspiring.

What a difference when we were leaving, and the Kerry protesters were in the streets. They have certainly picked up on the hate filled negativity of their candidates campaign. They were chasing the Bush supporters down, getting in their faces, and screaming at them, one woman was even struck by a young woman because she didn’t like the woman saying a Kerry White House would be the Wafflehouse. They were violent, mean, nasty, just like their candidates.

The choices in this election could not be any clearer.
— BK
Mentor, Ohio

HORSE SENSE
Re: Paul Beston’s Dare Talk About 9/11:

Paul Beston is right. It seems that the Bush reelection campaign is reluctant to engage the opposition on its own terms. It makes me wonder if Team Bush really wants to serve another term. Maybe now that Kerry and Mini Me’s post-convention bounce resembles a dropped ripe tomato they might figure out that the sides have been picked and there is no reason to pull punches. Remember what Bin Laden said about weak and strong horses. Giddy up, Mr. President!
— Diamon Sforza
San Diego, California

It really doesn’t surprise me that the Democrats are fearful about the Republicans using 9/11 images. They know that it’s not in their interest that people are reminded of the terrorist attacks, and the attacks that the Democrats started making soon after.

I think we all need to be reminded of what that attack looked like. When you compare Abu Ghraib photos to 9/11 it makes the prison photos seem less evil. The Democrats do not want people to be reminded of the reasons we are in the War on Terror in such a stark way that the 9/11 photos show.

What does Hillary Clinton, one of the most horrendous exploiters of 9/11 and the War on Terror, care if people think Bush is exploiting 9/11 with pictures from it? It seems to me that if people really feel it is exploiting them, they would be TURNED OFF rather than be energized by the Presidents campaign. Good old New York, heartland of liberals, they are all for free speech, as long as it’s only them that are speaking. Thank God I grew up in the NYC area, seeing those Democrats in action has turned me off their party actions for good.
— Jim Nelson
New York, New York

Kudos to Paul Beston for emphasizing Bush’s best shot at a victory in the presidential election. W took the war to the terrorists, and he shouldn’t be shy about saying why this had to be done, and why his strategy is better than Kerry’s (whose plan apparently is to wait for the appropriate district attorney to issue subpoenas); nor should Bush shrink from pointing out that, had Al Gore been elected, we’d probably still be negotiating with the U.N. to impose economic sanctions against Afghanistan.

Let us hope that, to John Kerry’s statement, “Reporting for Duty,” the American people will respond with a resounding “Fall Out!” come November.
— David Carter

Another excellent article by Beston.

The Dems’ warning to Bush and the GOP regarding 9/11 “not to go there, we won’t allow it” is a huge insult and Bush should feel insulted by the insidious insertion of an assumption that he doesn’t care sincerely about 9/11 the way that Dems profess to care about poverty, joblessness, rising medical insurance rates, etc. If the GOP warned the Dems not to “exploit,” “not to go here, we won’t allow it” on such issues of life, death, and health, the Dems would go freakin’ nuts. The Dems do care less about 9/11, to them it’s a highway bill with strangely misbehaved characteristics when in fact it represents the de-materialization of their world. Evil, as such, was not vanquished for all time when we beat the Nazis, nor does evil have the Nazis for its only template. The Dems decided not to address 9/11, but Bush and the GOP are not bound by this or by some imaginary need for the Dems to speak first on it in order for the GOP to have permission to do so or by Kerry’s camouflaged decision flee his own record. Bush and the GOP should take the issue by the horns and explain just why they will talk about it and show it and why the incumbent, Bush, will run on his record which includes the response to the horror of 9/11. What is a presidential election about, if not the important things? What is 9/11 but the most explosive event in American experience in our time?

Spitzer, Clinton, Kerry, this is not a courtroom where you’re going to squawk interminably about the ground rules of building a case and get evidence and imagery ruled out lest it “unduly influence the jury.” The Dems’ warning against “exploiting” 9/11, their hissyfit against showing its images, is an even huger insult to us, the American people, and our political system — it insinuates that the people and the system are not capable of responding appropriately in political terms to 9/11. Take the bull by the horns, GOP!
— name withheld
Queens, New York

Country music artist Darrell Worley had much foresight when writing the song “Have You Forgotten.” We as a nation, Democrat, Republican or Independent have forgotten 911. We have the tendency to do that, react vehemently when the crisis occurs, then when things seem to calm down forget about it all. We are complacent.

Of course, that is exactly what the radical liberals want us to do. They want us to forget that our President took control, that he made us feel safe at a time that was paramount in the history of our country, and a time when our fear was at it’s highest. If I remember correctly, Democrat and Republican alike in many cases, and by poll results (legitimate polls) were glad Al Gore was not our President because they knew they would not feel safe.

How dare the Democrats ask this country to forget one of the most heinous attacks on America? How dare they have their party, their agenda, then threaten Republicans for showing the American people, and reminding them that they were grateful for the job President George W. Bush did. If anyone should be taken to court, it should be the threatening Democrats. Is freedom of speech available only to Democrat politicians?

If you don’t know the lyrics or have not heard the words to “Have YOU Forgotten”, take a look at them, or listen to it. I haven’t forgotten and never will.
— L. Hesler
Cincinnati, Ohio

LOFTY HEIGHTS
Re: Paul M. Weyrich’s The MIA Senator:

“…the tallest candidate in the Presidential debates gets elected. ” John Kerry is 6 feet 4 inches tall. If Bush manages to get Kerry into Bush territory, he just might be the exception to the rule.”

The quotation from Mr. Weyrich’s article above seems to have already been disproved. Gore lists his height as 6′ 1″, Bush as 6′ 0″.

Unless, of course, this is further proof that Bush really stole the election!

Cheers,
— John McGuinness

It’s no wonder that in his speech, Kerry concentrated more on his four months in Vietnam than his twenty years in the Senate. Being a war-torn veteran is much more impressive to most these days, especially compared to Bush’s stateside National Guard service, and besides, his senate record is much more accessible than his military record so any untruths he utters in that regard can quickly be assailed. A liberal voting record is not exactly in the best interest of the country’s defense, and is rife with government giveaway programs to non-workers and non-carers — not something that a thinking rank and file American supports.

He’s playing it smart, accentuating the positive and downplaying, or ignoring, the negative. It’s up to the Bush campaign to turn that tide. President Bush should listen to Bill Weld.
— Gary Johnson
Madison, Alabama

Mr. Kerry’s “brilliance in sidestepping issues” gets support from a partisan press which continues, pretty much daily, to serve as his own personal Fourth Estate.

Also the president and his team have been unexplainably timid — or is it fearful? — in challenging Kerry. Why? If they don’t explore Kerry’s lies and distortions about his service in Vietnam and the extent of his anti-war activities-as well as the senator’s anti-military/anti-defense positions, non-career in the Senate and more-then Mr. Bush deserves to lose.

Just on Kerry’s postures on national defense and intelligence, you’d think they would’ve pounced solidly and continuously by now. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., says Kerry attended only 11 of 49 public hearings of the Senate Intelligence Committee during eight years as a member. Kerry hadn’t even had a recent intelligence briefing until that issue arose recently in the press.

Are the president and his campaign and the Republicans frightened to take off their velvet gloves, roll up their sleeves, start slinging “liberal” and other appropriate labels at Mr. Kerry at every turn, and respond knuckle-to-knuckle to the street fight they’re in?

They’d better bring the fight to their ground, not the senator’s, pretty soon. What’s to lose other than Mr. Bush’s re-election and maybe our national security?
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

When G. I. John had sufficiently recovered from his combat wounds and painfully removed the last Band-Aid, he testified before a Congressional committee of the United States government. During that documented testimony he called his fellow Swiftboat soldiers specifically and other Vietnam veterans in general “war criminals.”

At the Democratic convention I noticed his earnest salute after having battled to the high ground of the speaker’s podium, hereafter known as “Tough Talk Hill.” One wonders if he was saluting his fellow “war criminals” or his peasant liberators who ultimately triumphed in Southeast Asia after nobly resisting “Kerry’s Criminals.”
— Doc Watson

EASY READING
Re: Lawrence Henry’s Me and My Radio:

You didn’t mention one of the great programs, Jean Shepherd on WOR in NY. I remember listening to his long broadcasts Sat. night on my radio when I couldn’t sleep,

Thanks for a pleasant article.
— Stu

Lawrence Henry replies:
And remember Ken Nordeen and Word Jazz? You don’t hear that stuff any more. Shepherd was great.

SNOWBALL
Re: Jed Babbin’s The Blizzard of ’04:

Boston is covered, but not with a blizzard of snow from DNC 2004.
Politely, it’s coated in bull puckies.

And it will take maybe another full presidential election cycle, if that — especially, should Kerry get elected — for Boston and America to shovel their way out of it or clean it off our collective shoes. That is, if we’re not cleaning something worse off of them, due to Kerry’s fecklessness with and duplicity about threats to America.

The piles of that steaming stuff hid the word the Dems dare not utter, a word that scares them as much as terrorist and terrorism do: liberal.

The mounds of that manure also hid a nearly 35-year-period of John Kerry’s public life, from his returned-from-Vietnam, anti-war activities through his to-date non-accomplishments in the Senate.

That brown business also covered up his anti-defense, anti-military, pro-abortion, pro-U.N., anti-gun-control, pro-homosexual, pro-European, extreme-enviro-wacko positions and flip-flopping history.

Its stench and volume-spread amply and continuously by the Dems’ hired cheer-leading spreaders, the partisan broadcast and print news media, who failed miserably in their responsibilities last week-also obscured the main thing to come out of DNC 2004: John Kerry remains visionless, a caricature of who knows who and someone unable to articulate one solitary, justifiable position which does not straddle someone’s fence.
— C. Kenna Amos Jr.
Princeton, West Virginia

WE’VE GOT MAIL
In the past I have read the Spectator‘s opinion pieces and found them interesting and sometimes insightful. However, I have become absolutely hooked on Reader Mail.

The intelligence and wit of your readers is priceless to me. While the doom and gloom of the current crop of Democrat voices (including the repetitive voices from CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, WPOST, LAT) try to convince me that the USA is on a train to disaster, the voices of your readers always, even the liberal voices, shine a light of sanity and hope.

I had begun to doubt … but now I know … your readers have convinced me: There really are people who THINK.

Such a relief.

Thank you for providing the space for their comments. More importantly, many thanks to all of the people who have taken the time to THINK and then prepare well written letters.
— Nelson Ward
Ribera, New Mexico