THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 18, 1994 TAG: 9407140017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
With the newspapers' new editorial direction, letters to the editor are enlivened by clashes between conservatives and liberals - with a generous dose of pejorative adjectives.
Conservatives tend to advocate ``traditional values,'' although both parties invoke the moral uprightness of the past when it suits their purposes. This is pure sentimentality.
Despite the seeming intractability of social problems that beset us today, this is a much better country than it was only a few decades ago.
An American born 50 years ago who wished the benefit of ``traditional values'' had best pick his inheritance carefully.
To be born native American with a 1,000-year-old claim upon this land was to be born into ghettos called reservations.
To be born of African lineage was to arrive in a similarly ghettoized world in which skin color determined whether one could vote, hold public office or advance unhindered in business or professional life.
To be born Jewish or Roman Catholic was politically and socially disadvantageous.
To be born female was to look forward to the recently achieved right to vote but to mature into legal and economic inferiority, particularly within the marriage contract. To be divorced was to be stigmatized.
It should be a matter of great pride in our country that over the course of this century we have had the courage to overcome many of the innate tribal impulses that are the curse of mankind, and have moved toward the accommodation of the seemingly enormous range of differences in religion, race and social mores that constitute our nation.
There is, nevertheless, much left to do, and there will always be much to do in the war against intolerance. Meanwhile, we should continue to welcome the inevitable clash, in such public arenas as this newspaper, between conservative and liberal - stripped, if possible, of excess pejoratives - and look toward a resolution that preserves the best of what is fair and honorable and decent in our heritage, but that expedites for every American an existence in a nation truly ``indivisible . . . with liberty and justice for all.''
ARTHUR A. MacCONOCHIE
Norfolk, July 4, 1994 by CNB