Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412280035
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the good old days, public opprobrium and economic structures served to encourage many young maidens to walk the straight and narrow aisle to marriage. But during the past 25 years, we've been through a social revolution enlarged and enhanced by a pornographic pop culture. Now, marriage and stable family life have lost their glamor for many young men and women.
Today, we're starting to pay the real costs of this social revolution: guns in schools, random shooting in our streets and at the White House, a generation of young people undisciplined and unwilling to stay in school to be educated for the jobs of the 21st century.
Without adding a single new law to the books, we could begin to address these problems. Enforcement of the law prohibiting statutory rape of minors would be a good place to start, and requiring the mother to name the father of her child before she leaves the hospital would be another. Why haven't these laws been enforced recently?
We hear a great deal these days about child abuse. Here's the worst form of child abuse: A child's very existence denied by his natural father; a child living in half a family, with a young mother who can't cope, trying to make it on a base-subsistence welfare allowance; a child whose only inspiration comes from violence on television and the approbation of his peers on the street.
Talk about Dickens and his workhouses and orphanages. He couldn't hold a candle to the horrors inflicted on some children today!
ALICE H. MOYLAN
ROANOKE
Thanks to the Claytor brothers
AS WE witness the passing of an important part of the Roanoke Valley's history - the ending of the Norfolk Southern steam-excursion program and retirement of Class J No. 611 and Class A Engine No. 1218 - it would be appropriate to recognize and honor the true railroad enthusiasts who made the program possible.
Specifically, we should thank the late W. Graham Claytor Jr. who started the steam program 28 years ago on the Southern, and the late Robert Claytor who brought back steam power as a centennial gift to Roanoke and the entire Norfolk Southern system in 1982. With the passing of these two railroad giants, it was only a question of time until the steam program disappeared.
It's ironic the Claytor brothers gave us the steam program so we could appreciate our heritage, and that a Roanoke Valley native, David Goode, current chairman of Norfolk Southern, took it away.
WILLIAM R. COOK
BLACKSBURG
Media contribute to government chaos
THROUGHOUT his presidency, President Clinton has repeated his cliched sound bite that he'll ``end welfare as we know it.'' Although details are scant, the two cardinal features are that recipients must work and unwed mothers will not be rewarded for having more babies. The incoming Republican government has taken up the same battle cry with similar provisions.
The news media lauded Clinton's sound bites as brilliant and revolutionary. The same media label Republicans as mean-spirited and heartless villains, totally lacking compassion. Those diametrically opposed positions provide additional evidence that the primary goal of the dominant liberal media is to demonize and vilify conservatives, regardless of what they propose.
Our political system has been in chaos for the past two years, and the cause shouldn't be a mystery. Biased news media are as guilty of producing mayhem as elected officials. The problem is we can't vote self-proclaimed media intellectuals out of office.
If we really want a self-destruct society, let news media pundits write laws and politicians write the news.
ROBERT M. PLATZ
BLUE RIDGE
Virginia Tech Correctional Unit?
GOV. ALLEN'S budget is easy to understand. Since college students need to be locked up anyhow, shut down the universities and build prisons. Maybe we could save money by just putting security walls around campuses instead, and replacing the faculty with security guards.
MORTON NADLER
BLACKSBURG
Japan's spin on history offends
LIKE MANY Americans, I've visited the A-bomb memorial park and museum in Hiroshima. The museum contains many displays showing effects of the blast, some of them quite compelling.
Museum visitors receive tape players with earphones in a selection of languages that provide explanations of the displays and general commentary concerning the blast. It's this commentary provided by the Japanese that I'd like to discuss, in light of recent complaints about the proposed U.S. postage stamp commemorating the A-bomb's hastening of the end of World War II.
Believe me, the tape far exceeds in offensiveness anything that could result from a stamp simply depicting the historical event. It essentially says that there were innocent people going about their business when the United States decided to wreak terrible destruction on them. Evils of the Japanese government and the need to end the war are never mentioned. Near the end of the tape, the narrative says something to the effect that after the bomb was dropped, the Japanese government attempted negotiation, but another A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Clearly, the implication was that we should have been negotiating rather than dropping another bomb.
Negotiation? I could hardly believe such arrogance. Fundamentally evil men expecting to negotiate some retention of their power? They're the ones responsible for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I wonder whether the museum will ever revise its taped commentary to say that Japan was in the grips of an evil government, and this made the bombing seem necessary to the Americans. Should it do that, I might be able to feel some concern for that country's sensitivity to a stamp depicting this important though tragic historical event.
ROBERT F. FRARY
BLACKSBURG
Welfare `trap' has lots of amenities
REGARDING the Dec. 18 news story, ``Trapped in dependence'':
A picture speaks louder than words when I look at those photographs. For someone on welfare, Laurie Banes sure does dress costly. For example, a Roanoke Express sweat shirt costs approximately $35; an insulated Starter jacket, approximately $120; and a nice leather coat, value unknown, but the cost would probably feed two or three people a couple meals. Where did these come from? They look like luxuries to me. I'm not saying those on welfare can't have nice things, but why do they whine when it looks like they're winning?
How can Banes afford to feed two pets? I know how. She is getting two, not one, child-support checks, Aid to Families with Dependent Children for two of the three children living with her. Her rent is paid for by welfare, and her grocery bill, more than I can afford for my family of four each month, is paid for with food stamps. That leaves only utilities.
As for the welfare recipient not working, two of her children go to school, and I'm sure there's a baby sitter willing to watch an infant for a few hours a day. Why doesn't she work part time during the day? Better yet, why doesn't she baby-sit for other welfare mothers who need a less expensive baby sitter? I think we know the answer.
Banes stated that she was a ``victim.'' There's that word again, of failed birth control. Does she think we're naive enough to believe that four babies were conceived while using protection. Fertility had nothing to do with it, but willingness did.
Banes asked if this country is trying to help her. It seems to me she has had plenty of help.
She should not feel too disappointed if her children don't have a ``good Christmas.'' After working couples and working single parents paid the price for her to live on all year, our children won't have many presents to open either.
PAMELA R. MITCHELL
ROANOKE
by CNB