Reader’s Comments

Issue 207 – July 11, 2012

Editor: I sent your editorial “How Romney Can Lose” to one of his advisor friends of mine and this is what he replied: “This is quite excellent. I’m going to put it in front of the team. Thanks very much for sending.” RR

Editor: Regarding “How Romney Can Lose” it is good to know that you are providing sound advice to the Romney group. Hopefully they are listening. I was part of the Friday morning administration group in the early Reagan years. John Schrote introduced me to the group and I represented the USDA. This is a pivotal time for our republic and a lack of focus could derail the efforts of many solid conservatives here in the hinterlands. I hope your voice is not ignored. We do not need more unwise intervention!! Thanks, Jim Handley

Editor: In regard to “How Romney Can Lose,” we should stay out of the Syrian mess. As bad as Assad is the Muslim Brotherhood is even worse. Look what happened in Egypt and Libya. The Christians are no longer safe in these countries, they are having their churches bombed and innocent people are being killed. Wherever the rebels have gained a stronghold in Syria the christians have fled because of being persecuted by the Muslims. There is no law and order when the government is overthrown no matter how bad it may be. Christians had some security when Saddam Huessin was the leader now the Christians in Iraq are being killed and driven from their villages. The people of these Muslim countries are often more evil then their leadership. Ron Paul had the right idea: we should allow other countries to make their own decisions on the type of government they want. We should concentrate on our own problems at home. We can’t even keep our own borders secure. Eileen

Editor: Regarding “How Romney Can Lose” by becoming involved in the Syrian civil war, the Catholic Church has always opposed revolutions. Its long experience shows that overthrowing an existing government too often allows chaos to rule, with the most ruthless eventually taking power. (The American Revolution was not a revolution but a war of independence, with the government of the U.S. fully established before independence was achieved.) Recent examples in the Middle East certainly conform to the Church’s experience and the current position of Catholics and other Christians in Syria. Frederick A. Costello

Editor: My reaction to “How Romney Can Lose” is that we should stay out of all of it. End the wars, bring the troops home, end the wasteful and self-defeating subsidies to countries like Pakistan, Israel and Egypt, focus on the critical problems we have here at home. Until we have control of our borders and have stopped hiring foreign workers to do American jobs I don’t want to hear a single word about “spreading democracy” or “the war on terror”.

Editor: Romney can lose on foreign policy grounds if he makes the same blunder that destroyed the G. W. Bush presidency, which was to surround himself with (and surrender to) neoconservative advisors. Americans don’t want the country bankrupted and its civil liberties sacrificed to any continuation of the neocon wars – which were themselves ultimately caused by the neocon foreign policy on the Israel / Palestine mess. Lexington

Editor: What is most revealing and enervating in your editorial “How Romney Can Lose” is the Fox News poll that says Obama is favored by 11 points over Romney on issues of foreign policy. With regard to the Middle East in general, the world, including most definitely America, is clueless and enthralled with the entirely false notion that the forces of Western style democracy in Iraq, given 10 plus years of American military intervention, have won the war and Afghanistan is ready to be set loose on it’s own path to the same, wonderful outcome. Pure fantasy but for reasons that are feverishly denied and rebuked by almost everyone in a position to make a difference. The Middle East is a cauldron of political intrigue conducted by forces and individuals completely foreign to and adamantly opposed to Western culture, in almost every respect; individuals far more devious, sinister, conniving, manipulative and ruthless than any the West is equipped to deal with. No one not of Middle Eastern origins or aware of the severity of the threat, of any political persuasion or in a position of influence, is. I fear that history will prove the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a terrible waste of human life, blood and capital and that the true existential threat of Islamic hegemony may not be widely understood until a far more deadly and costly war will be necessary, perhaps WWIII. Almost the entire Western world, in need of an epiphany, a wake up call to the reality that is there to see for anyone willing to be pried loose from the conventional wisdom with regard to the ingrained fallacy that surrounds Islam. Respectfully, Donald J. DaCosta

Editor: Regarding Thomas Grier’s article “Walker’s Huge Victory,” public unions should be disbanded because they have all the marbles on their side. Enough is enough; their greed is destroying our country. Gov. Walker has done an excellent job but Wisconsin is a Liberal State and they won’t keep a Republican long. They still want their goodies and spending other people’s money with abandon is the Democratic Party and Progressive way. Michael P DeBenedetto, Vero Beach, Fl

Editor: Regarding Mike Gray’s “Science and religion,” I am both very intellectually scientific and emotionally religious, and understand the relation between the two. While some people believe earth is only 6,000 years old, many creationists and evolutionists believe a combination of truth and error. In college I studied geology, and it seemed that each of the geologic eras ice ages was too complex and massive to have occurred in just a few hundred or 1000 years. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale. As an oceanographer with the US Navy, we did detailed bathymetry, tectonics, volcanic activity and seismic studies of the mid-Atlantic Ridge, and of the deep western Pacific trenches. We found that that North and South America have been separating from Europe and Africa (presently about 3,000 miles), at about 3 cm/year, which would have taken about 8 million years. For this to have occurred in 6,000 years, the rate of tectonic movement would have needed to be 130 feet per year. If earth (and the universe) was only 6,000 years old, we would be receiving light from stars that are only 6,000 or less light years away. But according to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/farthest-galaxy.html, we are receiving light from a star that are 13 billion light years away. A good source of information on the relation between Science and belief in God is a CD called “The Privileged Planet,” which describes 20 physical and biological processes occurring on earth and in our galaxy. If any one of these were varied by a small percentage, it would prevent life on earth. Charles Sproull