LETTERS

Environment in peril

As someone who has lived and farmed in Newton County for 40 years, I was offended by the editorial, “Conspiracy Theories.” Simply because we want to preserve the beauty of the Ozarks and keep the Buffalo National River pollution-free, our efforts are characterized as “environmental McCarthyism.” Seriously? As the editorial requests, “let us reason together,” and please consider these facts:

The owners of C&H Hog Farms in Mount Judea do not have “a history of running such farms that goes back eight generations.” This is the first and largest hog operation permitted under the state’s new General Permit. Roughly 6,500 pigs is not family farming; it’s factory farming.

The owners have a contract with Cargill, an out-of-state industrial giant that provides the animals, the feed and the market. The manure, the urine, the smell and the leakage are a threat not only to the Buffalo River, but to the people who have lived in these hills for generations. Alarmed neighbors, many of them small farmers, may see their property values plummet and a way of life disappear. The owners of the factory farm want to talk about property rights, but what about property values?

I don’t think the owners are “out to ruin this beautiful part of the state.” But if you spray over two million gallons of hog waste per year on porous land adjoining one of the largest tributaries of the Buffalo, that’s what will happen. Factory hog farms have ruined the environment in other states-don’t let it happen here.

GORDON WATKINS Parthenon

Gordon Watkins is president of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance.

The goal is ignorance

When our forces exit Afghanistan, I believe that country will fall back into the Dark Ages. The Taliban will re-emerge, schools will be shut down and ignorance will be again the goal of those in power.

As they say, “you can’t fix stupid.” JOHN HOGAN Little RockHad a choice to make

Before I retired from the railroad, I was running trains into and out of Memphis. The company provided us lodging in a seedy hotel in a seedy neighborhood. Folks were being mugged as they walked around theperimeter of the hotel, in the elevator, in the hallways and in their rooms. Consequently, I started to carry a pistol, legally.

I checked in late one night and was assigned a roomon the top floor. I walked into the room, placed my grip on a bench, took out my pistol and placed it on the far nightstand. I then heard the door open and in walked the biggest black man I had ever seen and he was walking straight for me.

I had a choice to make: Do I stand there and let him beat me up and rob me, do I retreat by jumping out the seventh-floor window, or do I stand my ground? I chose the latter. I picked up the pistol, pointed it at him, cocked the hammer back and told him if he took another step I would blow his head off. As I backed him out of the room, he was stammering that he had the wrong room. Well, duh! Just thankful he made the right choice and I did not have to shoot him.

I am for standing your ground.

JIM HENNEBERGER Austin Some are demonized

I read Don Switzer’s interpretation of the Texas law on Christian holidays. He concluded this was the “most dramatic attack upon freedom of religion ever made against the bedrock principle of this nation.”

I challenge that statement. I believe our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian religion-that is our bedrock principle; its roots have been attacked since. It seems disbelievers use the guise of force-feeding our youth whose parents are of another religion when in actually the opposite has and continues to occur.

He even stooped so low to say Christians or those who profess to be Christians could not effectively complain at having their rights infringed.

I believe this statement is not only arrogant but shows a lack of knowledge; Christians are daily and openly being demonized. His letter is an example. The opinion page of this paper is another example, unbeknownst to the public. How the latter, do you ask? It refuses to publish the chapters and verses when quotes are taken from the Bible.

I believe many public and numerous private institutions demonize Christian beliefs under the pretense that Christians are Christianizing our society when the opposite has been ongoing for more than two centuries.

When disbelievers knock on the door of heaven they will hear God’s reply: “l say I do not know you, depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.” HIRAM B. COOPER JR. Bella VistaDownright amusing

The Bible knowledge of some religious people just downright amuses me. One religious dude seems to think that Sodom and Gomorrah was an ancient homosexual couple since his preacher said the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was homosexuality.

I know a woman who defines adultery as sex outside of a marriage,and believes that since she isn’t married, then she can do it all she wants and is not sinning. Her church backs up her belief as long as she says that she loves Jesus and puts a nice tithe in the collection plate.

God commanded that there be no other gods before him. Yet so many people really think Jesus is God when in the Bible Jesus said, while pointing upward, to “worship the creator,” then thudding his thumb toward himself, saying, “not the creation.” Jesus was an individual soul leaving his tomb to go home to the father and this world will see him no more. Also, “neither the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the father” knows when the last day will be.

And lastly, but not amusing, is how I see someone pray for the pimple on their nose to go down by morning and it gets answered. But I never see the fervent prayers get answered from parents of terminally ill children who want to become a grown-up as bad as any other child does. Instead I see these parents become shattered and grossly pained by their child’s hopes and dreams being so mercilessly denied.

GARY McLEHANEY BentonCartoon was offensive

The Voices page editorial cartoon showing a woman on her back with her feet in stirrups is offensive to me, and perhaps to other women. I believe that “If you can read this, you are too far up my uterus” is not a comment appropriate for a family page, nor is the caricature … just sayin’.

Of course, it was drawn by a man. Go figure.

PRISCILLA STONE Beebe