Wednesday, April 9, 2014
The arguments about whether persons with concealed carry permits should be legally allowed to carry a firearm into - wherever - are just plain silly.
I go to these places now, but never do I see anyone being searched. Never.
So what makes anyone think no one is carrying a gun now?
BILL LAUDEMAN
I read in your newspaper March 29 that the Obama administration announced a strategy to start slashing methane emissions - a greenhouse gas released by landfills, cattle, and leaks from oil and natural gas production.
Perhaps the White House could propose that Congress pass a bill requiring all farmers to hang bags on the rear ends of their cattle to catch the methane released by flatulence. What the farmers are supposed to do with the bags when they get full is not clear.
Critics of this plan might contend the bags instead should be installed on White House officials.
GARY HAYES, Ooltewah
The letter to the editor on March 30 - "Debating two world religions" - is a debate of one uninformed person against himself.
The author attempts to tell us what Muslims believe, without the advantage of knowing anything about Muslims. I am a Christian who was employed for eight years in the Middle East, six of them in the Asir of Saudi Arabia, "The Buckle of the Koran Belt."
I can tell you that after all those years, Muslims are a lot like the Christians who live in the "The Buckle of the Bible Belt," known as Tennessee. Like Christians in the Bible Belt, Muslims love their families, worship their God and support their communities.
Muslims come in many varieties, just as Christians.
I was working in Asir when 9/11 occurred. Asir is where nine of the terrorists who attacked America came from. Did I feel threatened by the people around me? No, I did not.
The community held a prayer service for those Americans who died. Total strangers would stop me on the street to apologize for the actions of those who use the Islamic faith to rationalize their actions.
So the next time someone wants to make a sweeping generalization about a people or religion, they should get on an airplane and spend some time with those they judge.
JOHN MAC NEIL
Paul Krugman uses a false analogy in his column titled "America's taxation tradition" dated March 29.
He compares America's wealth today to the Robber Baron era over 100 years ago and quotes Theodore Roosevelt to justify the Democrat Party's war on successful people.
Barack Obama is not truly "hostile to the rich." If only wealthy people knew the alleged "tradition," he argues, they would eagerly embrace confiscatory taxation in the name of equality. Krugman writes as if Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan never existed.
These singular voices and the economic growth from reduced taxes made defunct his brand of Keynesianism. The crisis of our time is not inequality and concentrated wealth, but a question: Do we seek equal outcomes - the Communist model - or equal opportunity?
Our culture teaches victimization, not how to achieve financial independence. Becoming wealthy in America is a product of lifestyle choices and learned behaviors; it should be celebrated and taught.
To pursue one's self-interests, as Adam Smith eloquently wrote in 1776, is the best public policy; to enjoy "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," one must be economically free.
KEN HARPE, Signal Mountain
[Columnist] Mark Kennedy places his political views in the political middle.
He lists examples, including skepticism concerning the Affordable Care Act, more concern over paying for nursing home care than over climate change; belief that federal government should yield to state legislatures "when possible" (whatever that means); preference for charity over social justice; acceptance of increasing the minimum wage "a little, over time" to decrease the demand for food stamps, the view that Howard Dean is a comparable political candidate to Sarah Palin.
Such values are not those of a political moderate, they could perhaps be characterized as a moderate Republican viewpoint. Such moderation among Republicans is rare.
The Republican Party today is a party of extremism, dedicated to obstructing sound government. Even though a few Republican members of Congress may hold moderate Republican views, regardless of how they feel and speak as individuals, they conform to the party line when they vote.
Thus, the Republican Party by never breaking ranks, shrewd gerrymandering and other ploys in state legislatures is exerting much more power on federal elections and ia able to obstruct the will of the people in ways that its numbers do not merit.
FAYE WALTER, Sewanee, Tenn.