Speak Out A 10/06/02

Turn the other cheek

WHAT HAPPENED to Christian values in this country? We were founded on Christian principles, weren't we? All this talk of war sure sounds like the devil's work to me. I'm pretty sure Christ said to turn the other cheek. If someone smacked Jesus in the face, would he punch them back?

A big pretense

THIS WHOLE food-for-oil scheme is a hypocritical scam. We holler left and right about how Saddam Hussein uses oil money for weapons rather than food for his people. Yet we still buy oil from them without so much as batting an eye. American companies like Amoco open up shop in the Persian Gulf. If we really cared, we'd demand a ban on oil from Iraq. But that would drive up oil prices, and President Bush would lose votes and money from his friends in the oil business. It's shameful how we pretend we actually care about the Iraqi people.

Like bad parents

SADDAM HUSSEIN is our own creation. We are like bad parents who gave a wild pre-teen some fireworks and set him loose in the neighborhood. As long as he's terrorizing those neighbors across the street we don't like, we look the other way. Now that he's messing with the friends next door we borrow things from, we scold and shake our finger. Are we, the stupid parents who gave Saddam Hussein his weapons stockpile to begin with, any less to blame than Saddam Hussein himself for abusing them?

Not propagandists

IN A column reprinted in the Southeast Missourian, U.S. News and World Report's John Leo made a giant and ludicrous leap backward by assuming that since college professors are largely leftists they impose their views on their students. Affirmative action for hiring right-wing college teachers is a horrible idea. A teacher is a teacher, not a propagandist. If teachers don't do their jobs, can them.

Hard work pays off

I'VE HEARD many people complaining that doctors and lawyers make too much money. They worked hard for that money, and most are still paying off school debts. You don't have to be rich to go into those fields. My mother, for example, was poor but now is making a $250,000. She worked hard.

Popular topics

QUIT WORRYING about Walter E. Williams. He is a knee-jerk libertarian ideologue who generally expresses his views on subjects he knows will be popular with a substantial portion of the populace.

Critical institutions

IF TAXPAYERS paid only for roads, fire protection, police protection, defense of our country and a few other institutions like a judicial system, most of us conservatives would stop complaining about taxes being too high. Liberals can't draw a distinction about critical institutions necessary to a peaceful society and something so ridiculous as bovine research and condoms in the schools.

Form of radicalism

DAVID BRODER'S dissection of President Bush's extreme deviation from traditional conservatism was a classic. The policy of federalizing public education coupled with the foreign-policy doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against potential threats is anything but traditional conservatism. It is a still evolving form of radicalism and difficult to define. Because of its radical nature, it has some appeal to the segment of the 1960s generation that supported virtually any manifestation of radicalism just for the sake of it. The consequences of all this for the Unites States are unknown. They could be triumphal or catastrophic.

DDT isn't an option

DDT WAS one of the stupidest ideas this country has ever tried. It was never safe, and there's no need for more scientific research to prove that it was a miserable failure and a poison. It is dangerous to mammals and a contaminant to soil, water and vegetation. The last thing the world needs is more chemicals doused over it. DDT should not even be thought of as an option.