Free Speech
Next year my wonderful wife and I will celebrate 50 years since my retirement from the Navy. The VA tells me I served during WWII and Korea. I saw combat.
When reading letters to the editor, our favorite part of any publication (especially in The C-J and LEO), we swell with pride knowing my 20 years of active enlisted service helped make such expressions possible. The words cast a spell. They make us cry, laugh, daydream, react in sympathy, horror, anger or disgust. But all are stimulating and evidence we live in this wonderful free country.
Bob Moore, East End
Unaware But There
Cheer up, The Voice-Tribune, WDRB’s Bill Lamb and WHAS-AM’s on-air commentators: Your conservative drumbeats aren’t as invisible as Keith E. Lewis indicated when he said in his Dec. 18 letter to LEO: “There’s no such thing as a conservative media in Louisville.”
Many of us notice your constant right-of-center views. Also, unlike Lewis, we are aware that George F. Will, Mona Charen and Kathleen Parker share their beliefs weekly with this community in the pages of The Courier-Journal, a newspaper the staff of which Lewis chastises as “snobs” who “have no concept of what true journalism is about.”
One thing it is about is presenting facts to substantiate the main point made in the lead of a story or column. Making a sweeping judgment about the character of dozens of people, then failing to show in what ways the writer knows these unnamed people closely enough to have concluded this — or even to cite a single example of any of their writings — indicates no grasp of true journalism.
Brian Arbenz, Cherokee Triangle
Unforgiven
This is regarding Althea Tangco’s letter in the Dec. 18 LEO Weekly: The 62 families you mentioned testifying against a death row inmate’s execution is in relation to how many thousands of families in support of that inmate’s execution? What numbers of people are testifying for or against an execution should be irrelevant. If there is unquestionable evidence to convict (e.g. not just on eye-witness testimony, for example), then assign the death penalty. Otherwise, give life imprisonment.
In my April 25, 2012, Inbox letter, I already addressed forgiveness. (It is archived online.) In opposition to what the letter writer said, the 62 families testifying against a death row inmate’s execution does not “definitely scream forgiveness.” The carrying out of a punishment and forgiveness are two separate things. Just because someone is “forgiven” does in no way mean he is absolved from having his punishment carried out. If the party is guilty of an executable murder, admits to it and mans up to it to be executed (instead of fighting it in a trial), then that person can be open to being forgiven. But if a guilty party actively denies the murder, then forgiveness is an impossibility, as repentance is a requirement.
Robert Veith, Brandenburg, Ky.
Join the Party
I find it ironic that my fellow writer, Paul Whiteley Sr., would be concerned about the Republican Party (LEO Weekly, Dec. 4). Let me assure any doubters of the Tea Party philosophy that those of us who ascribe to this view are not extremists. Many in cyberspace, the blogosphere and the left-stream media portray Tea Partiers in a negative way. If you think adhering to the Constitution, lower taxes and personal responsibility, mixed with initiative and recognizing American Exceptionalism is extreme, then continue to vote for big-government statists.
Whiteley neglects to remind readers of the contempt “Bush lied, soldiers died” Democrats had for our twice-elected Republican president. Tea Partiers, independents and “moderate” Democrats have a vested interest in the success of pro-American, small government and anti-Obamacare politicians in 2014. Remember, if you don’t like your government, you can change it.
Troy D. Kimmel, Jeffersonville
