Letters

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Aug 24, 2007

WORDS TO LIVE BY

Students could benefit

from gift of Constitution

About 70 years ago, when I was 10, I was handed a small bound copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by an aged friend of the family. It took me years to grasp why he gave that to me and even longer to get around to reading it carefully. I kept it until it deteriorated, but now have a pocket replacement for it.

While I wouldn't agree with Doug Bruce 99 times out of 100 on his political views or initiatives, I think his gift to the local schools was generous and thoughtful ("2 districts don't care for Bruce's civic gift," Metro, August 21). And given the recurring press stories showing that Americans don't recognize passages from either, I hardly think today's school children really know either document or why they are important. And I even wonder about their teachers.

So I find the refusal of the Fort Carson-Fountain school board to accept that gift for its graduating students very distasteful. And I don't buy board president Dave Herrmann's lame excuses one bit. Especially since many of his students are the children of Fort Carson Army parents who are risking -- and losing -- their lives and limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan under the powers carefully granted to government in those pages.

I think the board had better reconsider.

Dave Hughes

Colorado Springs

LET THEM READ BOOKS

Students would benefit

from exposure to literature

I think Ralph Zimmermann confused School District 49 with Tinseltown, as if the only alternative to "Schindler's List" were "Disney-esque illusions" ("Showing only Disney does students no good," Other Voices, August 16).

The district's decision to ban certain movies provides the perfect excuse to expose kids to the joys of literature. If teachers want to "help teenagers understand the plight of the Jewish population under Nazi rule," they can read Anne Frank's diary or Elie Weisel's "Night," and learn about the Holocaust at the same time they're learning how exciting and powerful books can be.

Zimmermann thinks that public schools need Hollywood to "bring dull historic and social science reading material to life." Let's make sure that today's kids someday beg to differ.

Anne Wadman

Colorado Springs

ROAN PLATEAU

Energy-hungry country

can't forgo drilling

This month, to pander to the environmentalists, Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Ken Salazar, Reps. John Salazar and Mark Udall have taken a stand against drilling on the Roan Plateau northeast of Grand Junction.

Anybody with any sense realizes that production of natural gas and oil in the U.S. peaked several years ago and is now in decline. We import a lot of natural gas from Canada, but the Canadians will be curtailing their exports because they'll need to use more to extract and process their oil sands. So if we come up short of gas to heat our homes, and for all the new power plants fueled with natural gas that Democrats have encouraged because it is cleaner than coal, U.S. citizens will suffer. But the Democrats who are blocking drilling today will probably be retired and on big government pensions by that time.

The Democrats are also the main ones who have objected to drilling on the north slope of Alaska because they want to keep it pristine. Pristine for whom? The caribou?

Environmentalists have been the leading opponents to nuclear power, which is environmentally clean. In the meantime, France and many other countries have jumped out ahead of us on nuclear. China, Russia and India have dozens of nuclear plants in the planning stage, while the U.S. is behind the curve, largely because of the obstacles Democratic legislators have enacted.

I don't want to hurt our environment, either. But it's not necessary to be a wacko about it. Drilling on the Roan Plateau, for instance, has been studied for years by government agencies, and plans have been instituted to drill in an environmentally wise way.

It will eventually happen. But in the meantime, the Salazars, Ritter and Udall will have made their obeisance to the environmentalists in order to keep their campaign contributions coming.

Earl Asbury

Colorado Springs

ARMCHAIR GENERALS

War will be won or lost

in Washington

Congress is made up mostly of lawyers and radicals of the '60s, who have no concept of war. They are experts in writing laws and regulations and have made a profession of litigation, but know nothing as professional politicians about their role in the Iraq war. It is any wonder, then, that they are thoroughly confused concerning their role in the war on terrorism, specifically on Iraq?

They approved the war and almost immediately made it a political issue by meddling in the conduct of operations. Quite frankly, what we have witnessed is un-American, shameful and unpatriotic. To send troops into combat and not wholeheartedly support them is something I find deplorable. It's not support if you seek withdrawal instead of victory, and condemn their mission.

The terrorists' mission is to break our will, and they seem to have accomplished that in the Democratic Congress. The war will be won or lost in Washington, not on the battlefield. The armed forces are at war; Congress is on vacation.