Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995 TAG: 9507260001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I take exception to your editorial. I don't object to your right of opinion on the issue of flag burning or your disagreement with the congressman's approach to the issue, but to the sanctimony of your approach to anyone who dares disagree with your opinion. Specifically, you say a part of the congressman's argument ``exhibits perilously sloppy thinking.''
Freedom of speech and expression covers a wide variety of activities, as you point out. But we, as a people, have also enacted laws that limit our individual freedom to protect other of our interests (rights), including our sensibilities.
As an example, a naked individual burning a flag in front of The Roanoke Times building would likely be arrested, not for burning the flag but because he was naked. Should he be treated differently under the law if he were a proponent of nudity as opposed to simply forgetful?
I suspect most people are aware of the limits on freedom of expression in crowded movie theaters. Paul Reubens could probably describe to you his first-hand experience on the finer points of such legal limitations. A public embrace or kiss isn't illegal, but Hugh Grant might be able to educate you on the prohibitions of other public ``expressions'' of intimacy.
An individual's actions don't always rise to the level of expression, and particularly expression worthy of constitutional protection. But it seems that you have knowledge as to the location of the line between freedom of expression and what is an illegal affront to public sensibility. Would you please let the rest of us know the exact location of this line? I, for one, have always wanted to righteously relegate those who disagree with me to the purgatory of exhibitors of ``perilously sloppy thinking.''
PHILLIP A. SHORT
SALEM
Justices must rein in government
IT WAS disturbing to read Professor David O'Brien's diatribe against Chief Justice Rehnquist and recent Supreme Court rulings (July 9 commentary, ``On race, Rehnquist has waited 40 years''). The litany of supposed shortcomings he ululates about indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Supreme Court in our system of limited constitutional government.
Where in our Constitution is the federal judiciary charged with the responsibility to, as O'Brien would have it, combat racism, increase minorities' business success, promote minorities' political representation, promote integration or diversity - indeed promote anything but the rule of law? While O'Brien's agenda may or may not be laudable, it's beyond the purview or even the means of a government committed to equality before the law. Thus any governmental action taken in excess of its limited authority is unconstitutional.
This is what the Supreme Court, in its limited and equivocated rulings, has done, and it's what the proper role of the court should be: limiting the inclination of government authority to expand beyond the constitutional powers designated to it 208 years ago.
SCOTT ANGELL
HILLSVILLE
Medication may not be necessary
I AM reacting to the Knight-Ridder/Tribune article published in your July 5 newspaper, ``Xanax may ease PMS woes'':
It sounds like encouraging news for women suffering from premenstrual syndrome, but data in the article don't support the claims. The 37 percent (helped by tranquilizers) who ``reported significant improvement in overall premenstrual symptoms'' are contrasted with the 29 percent who reported relief on progesterone and the 30 percent who reported relief with the placebo. This translates to about 21 women improving with Xanax and 17 improving in the placebo group. These are hardly striking findings. In fact, a frequency statistic on the data reported in the article (chi square) indicates these findings could be expected by chance alone more than 50 percent of the time.
What is really impressive is the 30 percent improvement in the placebo group receiving no drug or hormonal treatment at all. This implies to me that there's a strong attitudinal or cognitive component in the casual factors creating these symptoms to start with, which is what is found in a number of women seen in psychotherapy. When anxiety, irritability, mood swings and other types of emotional distress are successfully reduced, without any medication whatsoever, there's a reduction in PMS as well. Here is just another problem that may not require medical/drug intervention at all.
PAUL J. WOODS
Licensed Psychologist
ROANOKE
Alcoholics' group creates miracles
I LEARNED very early in my political career that it isn't smart politics to speak out on nonpolitical issues, especially those concerning man's specific relationship with the Almighty. However, after reading your July 9 article, ```Religion' of sobriety, or just self-help?'', and the disparaging remarks directed at Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll cast smart politics aside.
As chief patron of the nation's toughest drunken-driving legislation, I could bombard you with statistical data documenting AA's amazing contributions. But I'll rely on the wisdom of an AA phrase and ``keep it simple.''
Like any other person who has ever been off their front porch, I've had people I've known and loved fight losing battles with alcoholism and addiction. Several of these, whom I would characterize as ``hopeless,'' somehow or the other ended up at AA. Not only have they overcome their dependency, but through their continued involvement in AA have become incredibly productive members of society.
It's unbelievable to me that their detractors referred to AA members as a ``subculture of victims.'' My definition of the members I know is ``miracles.''
C. RICHARD CRANWELL
VINTON
Sidewalk protests don't save children
HOW MANY hungry, homeless, abandoned children have Don Reed (July 9 letter to the editor, ``Clergy sits out abortion protests'') and his group taken into their homes? How many drug babies and abused children have they held? Have they looked at the pain on the face of a child who is emotionally and physically scarred and will always wonder why he was born?
This city is full of ``precious angels'' who are being ``crucified'' every day. Time spent assembling on the abortion clinic's sidewalk should be spent giving hope where there is none.
Pray for the children who are people now - not for more like them! Jesus will read Reed's heart, not his protest signs.
DIXIE LEE DEEL
BLUE RIDGE
A vivid reminder of life's value
MY WIFE and I spent more than five hours recently in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. I had seen film footage before, but never such horror as graphic as this was.
Driving home, we were numb from viewing the degradation of innocent life. As horrifying as it was, we held up pretty well until we saw photographs of children, stripped naked, just before being murdered in the gas chambers. One little boy bore an uncanny resemblance to our youngest son. We stood and cried in anguish before his picture. Later we viewed lifeless bodies being burned or bulldozed into open graves. The bodies were piled in heaps like garbage.
It occurred to me that I had seen pictures like this before, pictures a pro-life advocate handed me once, of dumpsters behind abortion clinics. Inside the dumpsters were mounds of dead babies, some dismembered, all there under the guise of women's choice, for the sake of convenience. There were no visible differences between the remains of these slaughters, except that abortion takes innocent babies of all races and nationalities. The result of America's 30 million ``safe, legal'' abortions can't be dismissed as unrelated to the depravity of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
The Holocaust exhibits explained that the reason Hitler gained such complete control of Germany was because the Nazis gained total control of Germany's media. Sound familiar? When was the last time you saw media coverage showing the horror of an abortion? But we have heard the media demand that pro-lifers stop using terms like murder, genocide and Holocaust to describe abortion. Isn't censorship pretty scary?
One Holocaust exhibit read: ``I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.'' Deuteronomy 30:19. Later that night, our son went to sleep between my wife and me, our hands resting over him, shielding him, because life is too precious and uncertain not to defend it.
STEVE LAWRENCE
BLUE RIDGE
by CNB