
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 1, 1995                   TAG: 9504040001
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THOSE MEEK SIX-FIGURE INCOMES

``AND the meek shall inherit the earth.'' Judging from what the Christian Coalition is saying, the meek are those making $200,000 a year.

According to your March 22 article ``GOP divided on tax-credit limit,'' Republicans who ``favor cuts in school lunch and other nutrition programs'' for the poor are divided on who should receive tax breaks - families earning up to $200,000 a year or those struggling at a meager $95,000 a year?

The report stated that ``support for retaining the $200,000 level was particularly strong with the Christian Coalition.'' It makes me wonder whether they're following the gospel of Jesus or that of the sheriff of Nottingham.

KATHLEEN O'MALLEY

ROANOKE

Reach out to put the touch on someone

I REALIZE there are more important ills that can befall the human race, but I simply detest telephone solicitations.

When I'm home, I'm apt to be working - mentally or physically. And there comes the interruption. Or I may be socializing. But there comes the interruption. I could enjoy my solitude and the chance to meditate. Or I might even be eating. But the telephone rings, and the oh-so-familiar pitch starts. If I had $1 million and had decided to give it to a worthy cause, a telephone solicitation would surely mean that not one penny in my possession would ever go to that source.

Of course, I can just hear your kindly voice: ``Why don't you just hang up?'' I greatly appreciate your advice, and do, of course, act accordingly. But precious time has been wasted, and my concentration has been broken.

While I'm at it, I feel equally antagonistic toward telephone pollsters. They invade my mental and emotional space.

Do they all really think that one just sits home and dreams: If only the telephone would ring and someone would want my money, or my thoughts and feelings?

HERTA T. FREITAG

ROANOKE

There's danger in disdain for science

MOST Radford University professors, including ourselves, do not share Justin Askins' disdain for scientists and the scientific method (March 6 commentary, ``Science, it seems, is not an exact science''). Unlike religious beliefs or ``mythologies,'' the scientific method requires researchers to continuously question and criticize their data, theories and research designs. Only through such self-criticism and questioning can solutions to problems facing humanity be achieved. Anti-science attitudes and statements are, therefore, not only uninformed but dangerous as well.

CLIFF and DONNA BOYD

RADFORD

`Takings' overrides public interest

SO JUST where does this Contract With America take us? Apparently back about 130 years. The contractors have revived an un-Christian, Reagan-era belief that the only ``value'' associated with any human enterprise, action or endeavor is monetary. This cynical and malicious belief was recently elevated to the status of American law in a contractors-crafted ``takings'' statute.

The proposed law - championed by Newt Gingrich, et al., as a panacea to all of the malignancy of an evil and overbearing federal government - holds that if ``we the people'' (i.e., government) determine that a particular act or enterprise is destructive or harmful and ought to be banned, then we the people must compensate private individuals or business for economic loss experienced as a result of the ban (e.g., environmental or product-safety regulation) designed to protect the public. Under such a rationale, the general public good is always subservient to private economic welfare.

So where does this 130-year regression come in? Well, in 1865, the Mississippi state legislature refused to ratify the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery because lawmakers were angry that they had not been ``reimbursed'' for the ``value'' of freed slaves (March 17 Associated Press article, ``Mississippi finally abolishes slavery''). Gingrich would have been proud of those legislators because such shameless spite is fully consistent with the dehumanizing spirit of the Contract With America. It's also an outcome required by the logic of the underlying reasoning.

CHRISTOPHER VanCANTFORT

RADFORD

by CNB