The Power Of Democracy Derives From Dissent

To the Editor:

With President Bush’s approval rating at an all time low (with 53 percent of the American people unhappy with the job he is doing in a poll released today), it may be that the three letter writers who endorsed a curtailment of first amendment rights in The Bee last week are in the minority.

Incredibly, those are the same rights President Bush has told us our soldiers are fighting, and dying for, for the people of Iraq.

Of course, he also told us we were looking for WMD, then he said we were fighting for democracy, and yesterday he said we’re fighting to protect the oil fields. (Which, of course, didn’t need protecting until we toppled Saddam Hussein.)

We do not serve our country when we stop questioning our leaders. This country needs all the brain power it can get and every idea deserves a hearing. More importantly, it is when we listen to dissension that the great power of a democracy is truly shown.

The hearts of everyone in this great country go out to everyone who has lost a child or whose loved one has been affected by this war. They deserve so much more than the blind obedience advocated by these writers.

President Bush would have honored all the grieving family members if he had met with Cindy Sheehan. Here was a distraught mother who only wanted to be heard and the President’s reaction was that his life needs balance and, hey, he was on vacation. (Which just may make the term Compassionate Conservative the new standard for oxymoron.)

Is it too, late to remind him (or would he even understand?) that a grieving mother never gets a vacation from her nightmare?

Laura E. Lerman

55 Main Street, Newtown                                           August 31, 2005