Winston-Salem Journal LTE's WE 09/07/11

Good AM, folks!

Comments re very early AM posts re Bucky's favorite topic may be posted in the Leopard's Limb. This would be preferable to disrupting continuity here.

Entitled

The letter writer whose tongue-in-cheek suggestion of "human sacrifice" as appeasement for the earthquake and the hurricane ("Volunteers," Aug. 29) no doubt struck a chord with many of your readers. Those who follow abortion statistics know that more than 50 million people have been "sacrificed" in the womb since abortion was made legal in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision. In the beginning it was a clever confusion strategy — "it's just a blob of tissue." Now with ultra-sounds and pre-natal surgery, that canard just won't hunt.

Today we are entitled, we are told, to do whatever we want with our bodies despite the fact that another human being has taken up residence with us.

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ROSE WALSH
Lewisville

Cheney truths

Dick Cheney's memoir, "In My Time," has been released. We can all look forward to the chapters on how water-boarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques led to the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden; how the tremendous success of the Iraq War has led to the democratic uprisings of the "Arab Spring;" on how two unfunded wars and tax cuts can line the pockets of the defense industry and the rich, double the national debt, and still trickle down the economic boom we are all now enjoying; on how to obtain multiple war-time draft exemptions and still be considered a warrior hero; on his modest contribution to the enormous growth of the intelligent prosthetics industry in the U.S.; on how a truly great man can always be right and, with that firm belief, sleep like a baby at night; and, of course, on how it is possible to make a lot of money writing a book explaining the truth of his historic contributions to all the fools that surround him.

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RICHARD B. HILTON
Advance

Just the opposite

The media and the liberals love to blame the tea party and the Republicans for the recent credit-rating downgrade. They say it was their fault for holding America hostage to their ideology. They wouldn't compromise.

The problem was just the opposite. The debate was over whether the debt should be allowed to rise by $8 trillion or $10 trillion over the next 10 years.

It's just assumed by everyone that we are going to keep spending money we don't have. They should go back to 2008-level spending and have smaller increases, not the 12 percent President Obama keeps raising our spending to.

The tea party demands that the spending be held down and is castigated as being unbending and mean-spirited. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters recently said, "…as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell." Where is the outrage from Obama and the left that she is being uncivil, as they accused Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of being? Where is the demand for nonpartisanship that they love to yell at the right?

When will the liberals finally understand that you can't keep spending money you don't have? There's a saying: "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money." The tea party wants to have some restraint in spending levels. The economy will rebound and begin to produce tax revenues when this administration shows some restraint and intelligence around spending.

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DAVID F. MOSER
Winston-Salem

Defining marriage

Rep. Dale Folwell says, "We need to put the decision to the people so that they can define what marriage is, and not us" ("House GOP leaders push marriage vote," Aug. 30). That sounds very well. The fine people of this state should be given the chance to define marriage.

Perhaps, in this time of evolving social norms, the people of this state may wish to redefine our antiquated notion of marriage — which historically has more to do with owning women as property. However, the Republicans have already done the defining for us. The vote — if it ever came to the people — would be for or against amending the state constitution. That's it. That is not defining marriage. It's merely voting whether to ingrain deeper into the state's laws the idea that change is bad.

In fact, the defining has already been done by the General Assembly when it passed a statute defining marriage as between a "male and female person." So what's with the need to doubly ban same-sex marriage in this state?

I don't know what to think of the policies being pushed by the Republicans in this country. Out of one side of their mouths, they scream for deregulation and small government. Out of the other side, they demand government intrusion into the private lives of the people. The goal behind the hypocrisy is to keep the government's hands off the conservatives who think the government's only job is to crush social movements that make them feel uneasy.

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MARK LAWSON
Lewisville