Letters to the Editor: Masks Off? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Letters to the Editor: Masks Off?
by
EugeneEdge/Shutterstock.com

Cirque de Masque

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting very tired of the mask game. As Shakespeare might have put it, “To wear or not to wear, that is the question.” Actually, wearing a mask is not that difficult. As a dentist, I wore one for most of my forty-plus years’ career. I wore it because it was standard of care, not because it was politically correct. We all knew that their efficiency was questionable, but we wore them anyway.

Send your letters to editor@spectator.org, and check back on the blog each Friday for more!

Now we are told that we should, or even must wear them because of COVID-19. My step-daughter resides in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and she and her sons are required to wear masks any time they step foot out of their home. In her neighborhood, the folks next door are highly likely to call the authorities on anyone seen without a facial covering. It is nearly that bad in many locales throughout the country.

I am fortunate to have retired to the great state of Florida where at least some sanity reigns. I am able to go about in public without a mask. Some folks wear them, but many don’t. That’s fine with me. If you are frightened to the point where you feel in danger of infecting yourself or others, by all means wear one. But please stop the pontificating.

I constantly read that if I don’t mask up, it means that I don’t care if my fellow citizens live or die. That is, as Harry Truman might have put it, a lot of manure. I absolutely believe that the pandemic scare is being used as a political tool by the left to damage the economy and bring down President Trump. I also firmly believe that the strategy will backfire on the Democrat party and not only help Trump’s re-election cause, but also likely will give the Republicans control of both houses of congress.

What really makes me mad, though, is that the left is using good people to spread their political BS (Bess wouldn’t let Harry use that term, but we know what he meant by manure). They are taking advantage of kind and decent people by feeding them distortions and lies, knowing all the while that the goal of putting a mask on every face was political and not health-related. They want this shutdown to continue. 

I have a niece that I love as much as I love my own children. She is of Hispanic origin and has disliked our president from the beginning because of what I believe was a misinterpretation of some of his remarks. She has been led to firmly believe that people must wear masks to get us through this crisis. She states her views quite often on social media. Often as not, her comments provoke a spirited debate. I am not, however, going to engage in this argument with her because she truly is convinced that she is right. She even sewed masks during the early shortages and distributed them to friends and neighbors. I care too much for her to disparage what are truly well-intentioned actions. She is a wonderful person.

Lenin coined the derisive term “useful idiots.” He felt nothing but contempt for individuals who supported his cause merely because of the lies, distortions, and false promises made by the true believers. Furthering his cause was all that mattered. Furthering the cause of pushing this country towards socialism and grabbing power for themselves is all that matters to people like Nancy Pelosi and her crowd. My niece is no more an idiot than I am. In fact, she is almost certainly less of one. But well-intentioned people like her would be pushed aside if the left prevails. She has too big a heart and cares too much for others to fit into their plans if they succeed. Let’s pray that never happens.

Bill Hansmann

May 26

The Globalist Crack-Up

From my little cranny of the world America’s response to the recent events is obvious. Yeah, we tried foreign entanglements of every nature. We gave it a Herculean effort, but it doesn’t work, at least not in this day and age. We are in deep doo-doo. Time to move on.

After WWII we formed or joined just about every organization out there that was available to us. This was the first time America went against Washington’s admonition to avoid permanent foreign entanglements of any nature with friend or foe. But the world was devastated and needed to be rebuilt, if for no other reason to develop markets for our goods and services. George Marshall was masterful in rebuilding Europe. McArthur was largely responsible for Japan’s redevelopment. The Wilsonians were instrumental in forming the UN. JFK faced down the Soviets with his airlift. We felt responsible to rebuild and safeguard the freeworld.

Henry Kissinger got the whole trade thing with China going, and replacing Taiwan with the ChiComs in the UN Security Council. The theory was if we traded with them they would become capitalist and soon free-thinking Democrats. Clinton joined the WTO, GW let China join. We were told the trade advantages we were giving them were just long-range strategy. If it was logical thought at the time is immaterial now. We have intentionally made China stronger, and now they are hell-bent on destroying us. In every imaginable way.

It seems most institutions have failed us. Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Club for Growth consistently lobby for more globalism. Even old conservative stalwarts like National Review have decided that multi-national corporations’ interests are dearer than conservative American principles. Foundations, academia, main-line churches, and as a result the mean worldview, have all lunged leftward the past fifty years. The Henry Ford and John Rockefeller Foundations were established to advance capitalism, at home and abroad. They now advocate for various brands of socialism. Most mainline religions were led left by their seminaries and universities. The one notable exception is Pepperdine. The Church of Christ congregations that I’m aware of teach a far more liberal doctrine than the philosophy and political thought being taught at Pepperdine. George Pepperdine was a shrewd philanthropist.

It just seems to me that left in peace and security for long periods of time man tends to become more humanistic and less analytical, and drift left. As the saying goes, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

Think tanks and institutions mostly just think of who can come up with the most humanistic plan to benefit some forgotten segment of society or another. The more outrageous, the more scholarly it is viewed. Usually in history we have more frequent periods of starvation and horror that forces hard-thinking common sense back to reality. Sometimes there’s an entire upheaval of government, and new winners and losers.

Almost every national or international institution has either failed us or turned against us. The NIH and CDC have mostly provided lifelong sinecures for secular humanists. National and international climate agencies cook the numbers. The UN, WTO, WHO, and even NATO just exploit us, year after year. We bitch a bit and keep paying the bills and supplying troops. The MSM is largely leftist propaganda. The Koch brothers even became far more globalist than Americans. It is truly everywhere. But I have a sense that perhaps even a majority of Americans are beginning to see what’s going on. Especially with many on left yelling for rights for illegal immigrants over those of citizens. It won’t happen overnight, and most of our current political representatives will need to be replaced. But I get a bit of the same feeling when Reagan first ran in 1976.

Anyway, that’s just how I see it. I am hopeful.

Dale Anema

May 27

Free Free Speech!

As a citizen of the United States, it troubles me to see its culture so passive in spite of the rising tides of tyranny. History demonstrates that when a people are unmoved to act against forces that would mute their freedoms, they are made near-eternal bondsmen to tyrants. In this century, the pervasive forces of tyranny, even unconsciously, are growing ever stronger and ever larger. In the name of order and safety, these forces target all manners of individual liberty, even the most fundamental, natural rights of humankind. At the expense of freedom, tyranny promises an easy way of life. These forces are not abstract: in American schools, where the minds and dispositions of our nation’s citizens are nurtured and molded, the freedom of speech is eroding. Universities in Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and New York, to name a few, have dismissed faculty and students for their speech and opinions, or have censored certain words and topics outright.

These universities are acting as unconscious tyrants. They are driven to abuse by the current culture of our country. In the face of the world’s modern challenges, the culture of our nation has grown permissive of tyranny. Rather than protecting an equality of power in the defense of liberty, government has been made able to concentrate power in service of majority interest. Rather than defending the freedom of speech, institutions throughout the United States of America are coercing a great number of individuals to only agreeable speech. The further extension of this course of action promises only a people made wholly unable to defend all the other liberties they so presumingly enjoy.

There ought to be a renewed standard for the freedom of speech in our time. The speech of each and every American ought to be provided the same measure of protection as any other individual, and all Americans ought to be free to speak and publish their ideas and opinions freely. The validity and value of every idea or opinion ought to be registered on the merits of their argument, not censored beforehand. Rather than censoring the ideas we disagree with, we should instead engage them, debate them, and prove them wrong. But to abdicate their protection would be to leave the rest of the nation vulnerable to the same tyranny. For if just one person is denied that freedom, then we all may be denied that freedom by the same reasoning. If such a forfeiture of freedom were accomplished in this land, then we all would surely suffer a millennium of darkness.

Cody Reinhard

May 22

Biden’s Gaffes — Nothing to Laugh At

Biden’s recent “gaffe” seems like the PERFECT time to remind voters how surprised and delighted he was to find Obama to be “clean and articulate.” 

It needs to be clearly and broadly understood that “you ain’t Black!” wasn’t a one-off gaffe by a man more or less gradually losing his marbles.

Rather, these (and other) Biden comments over the years (decades!) demonstrate his consistent, long-term, condescending, and — dare one say — racist* attitude toward Blacks.

I have yet to see the linkage of these and other Biden remarks, even in conservative media. And where’s the Trump campaign (also laser-focused on the latest instance only)?

*Here I’m a big guy out on a thin limb; Biden is not, after all, Republican, much less conservative! (And thus, immune to the R-word charge.)

Kevin Amaro

May 27

On “Biden Reelected Trump Last Friday,” by David Catron

I read your article about Biden getting Trump re-elected…. I am still laughing so hard it hurt my abdomen. If you have a couple days we can go over the many ignorant and downright illegal acts by Trump. I have a grand that says Biden is our next president.

Phil L.

May 25

Sign up to receive our latest updates! Register


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Be a Free Market Loving Patriot. Subscribe Today!