LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Debate isn't about reform

The national debate over health care has nothing to do with health care. It is about power and control.

Any physician, nurse, insurance billing clerk or hospital administrator could give pages of ways to dramatically improve health care delivery without a penny of tax money. However they haven't been allowed to beheard.

Fifty years ago, John Kenneth Galbraith let the cat out of the bag in "The Affluent Society." He argued that the majority of people did not spend their money wisely. What should happen was that Northeastern intellectuals and their hangers-on should take money from citizens (taxes) and spend it for the common good. The political elite would thus control an ever greater amount of the economy and remain in power.

For 80 years, academic departments have taught that the values of individual liberty and freedom embodied in the Constitution are not important. These arrogant elitists feel that bigger government with them in control is what is best for us.

Vladimir Lenin called those who are ill informed or flattered into promoting the totalitarian expansion of government useful idiots. Unfortunately, the Arkansas senators and half the representatives put misguided party loyalty above the welfare of their constituents. It would be a better world if the government were held to the legal standard for medicine: First of all, do no harm.

E. MITCHELL SINGLETON Fayetteville

Critics overreacted

Oh, the effrontery, the calumny, the unspeakable horror. What more accurate emotions can describe the speech of the president of the U.S. to children throughout the country in which he urged them to stay in school and study hard to be able to achieve their goals in life?

I knew from the time the president was inaugurated earlier this year that a heinous event of this sort would take place. After all, patriotic Americans on radio talk shows, columnists and bloggers have warned the citizenry that as soon as Barack Obama entered the White House, his beliefs-socialist, fascist, libertarian, communist, vegetarian, free silver, neo-platonist-would radiate from the Oval Office in an ever-increasing mass assault on the traditional values of the American people.

It's clear that the speech illustrates all of the president's many pernicious belief systems. Well, perhaps as I read the speech online a second time, it might be difficult to detect any neoplatonist ideas in it, but all the others are clearly evident.

And the blogosphere is already speculating as to how long it will be before Michelle Obama gives a speech to our school children extolling the virtues of planting a vegetable garden, as she and students from D.C. schools have already done on the White House lawn. The corrupting effect of this on our nation's school children cannot, at this point, even be imagined.

RICH CORBY Monticello

Threats don't cut it

The recent Washington Post commentary on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed answered a question I have long had. If he was waterboarded 183 times, when do you suppose it dawned on him that they were not going to drown him? If it did dawn on him, all he had to do was wait out the unpleasantness.

He was quoted as saying that he decided to give out a lot of false information to stop the ill treatment and that he thought the interrogators' methods were stupid and counterproductive. It seems he was not stupid then, the interrogators were.

Maybe I need to know why waterboarding is considered torture if it is not in the fear of drowning. Once when I was a lad, I was pulled under the water by a larger boy who wasangry. I was frightened while in his grip and thought I might drown, but once I broke free, the fear was gone. Is there a "coercive torture" because the subject knows it will continue long enough for the lungs to have to take in water ? I just would not trust the information I would get from someone who was waterboarded.

Threatening someone with an electric drill or gun, perhaps not even engaging the drill or discharging the gun, is threatening torture, not actually administering it. Pulling out fingernails, stretching limbs to the breaking point, the Chinese water torture: There are a good many ways of treating a prisoner horribly if we really want to torture him.

GARY SCHMEDEMANN Morrilton

Reconsider priorities

Hey, maybe we are at fault. Did we elect the officials who are thinking with their pocketbooks instead of their purpose in serving the public? Just because they are in office is no sign that we should vote for them. If they dodge our questions and speak as if they have been givena script, should we listen to them?

We need to take a long, hard look at our priorities. We are in a position to have a big input into how our nation's health care is provided. If we don't stop, study and act, it will be our own fault what happens to American health care.

Our national health care is way, way down the world's list of quality health services provided to citizens. We have a president willing to take the plunge and do something. We must let him know what we think. Do we want the insurance companies to continue to make life-and-death decisions for us so they can show a profit? Do we want to continue to pay 10 times more than foreign countries for the same drugs just because our elected officials have been bought off by the pharmaceutical companies?

Look at the Blue Dogs who wanted to stall the voting until after their fall break so the crazies could get out and disrupt any intelligent debate and take the spotlight off of what was really important, quality health care for all Americans.

Remember, we have more votes than the corporations. Let your representatives and senators know how you feel.

SYLVIA CHUDY Hot Springs Village

Feedback

Others yelled, too

Much has been made of U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during the president's address to Congress, but the only thing unusual about it was the volume-and that only by his location, as millions at home screamed at their televisions.

HUGH HOLDEN Cecil

Liberals might rule

Just wondering if letter writer David Weaver of Sherwood has ever thought of the possibility that there are more liberals than conservatives in the United States; therefore, they are the majority.

Also wondering what he does not understand about separation of church and state regarding religion in schools.

THOMAS A. SWENSON Little Rock

A different energy

Our auto giants are missing developing an engine that operates on hot air. Our federal government operates on hot air. Why not autos?

JOHN ARTHUR Benton