My LTE in response is below the fold.
Editor:
On Saturday, July 1, the Daily News-Record printed an editorial cartoon by John Rose, the current producer of the Snuffy Smith comic strip.
This from Wikipedia:
"Snuffy is a very stereotypical hillbilly. He lives in a shack, makes moonshine, is in constant trouble with the sheriff, and is very shiftless, occasionally doing a small amount of farm work but primarily working his still and loafing. He also has some proclivity toward stealing chickens."
I guess Mr. Rose understands his audience, and the Daily News-Record, as always, is only too happy to enable this sort of hateful, misleading garbage.
The cartoon depicts the Surgeon General of the United States saying, "Any level of secondhand smoke is bad for you", flanked by a donkey wearing a button reading "Senate Dems", and holding a lighter, saying, "Unless it comes from a burning flag..."
Setting aside for the moment that three Republicans also voted against this ill-conceived assault on the Constitution of the United States, have we come so far that we are prepared to deface the Constitution of the United States to "defend" a symbol that stands for the values it supposedly represents?
The purpose of the Constitution is to guarantee the rights of Americans, not to infringe them.
Patrick Henry said, "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
Many, many distinguished individuals, from United States Senators and Representatives to Supreme Court Justices, have pointed out that the First Amendment, which was the direct target of the proposed Flag Protection Amendment, is designed first and foremost to protect offensive speech, in that no other type of speech needs protection.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in United States vs. Schwimmer (1929) wrote: "The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate."
As the Senate voted on the amendment, a poll was released showing only 49 percent of registered voters thought flag burning was a "very important" issue -- compared with 82 percent for education, 80 percent for the economy, 75 percent for Social Security, 74 percent for the situation in Iraq, 58 percent for immigration and 52 percent for the environment.
Perhaps the Senate should focus on the issues that matter to the electorate.
The cartoon appearing in Saturday's Daily News-Record represents the worst kind of demagoguery. In Monday's newspaper, a letter from a resident of Bridgewater appeared, objecting to the DN-R's use of the "bully pulpit" of the editorial page to advance a divisive agenda of hatred and partisan deception. I wish to add my voice to this objection, in the strongest possible terms.
The Daily News-Record runs columns by Ann Coulter, who has suggested the poisoning of a Supreme Court Justice, the bombing of the New York Times, and attacking liberals with baseball bats. And now this.
From the Marriage Protection Amendment, to the Flag Protection Amendment, to the Pledge Protection measure which would have barred Federal courts from acting on a legitimate challenge based in Constitutional law and died an ignominous defeat in committee, what all this demonstrates, despite the best efforts of the editorial staff of the Daily News-Record to show otherwise, is the utter failure of the Republican attempt to divide and polarize our country in order to either advance their narrow minded social agenda, or use their failures to paint Democrats as unpatriotic and un-American.
Mr. Kirkwood, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Yates, you either know better, or you should. My disgust for your writings and your efforts cannot be fully expressed in the context of this letter.
None of you truly support the values that make this country what the Founding Fathers intended it to be. American novelist Sinclair Lewis wrote, "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."
The Daily News-Record's editorial page seems hell bent on proving him right.
The Daily News-Record seems eager to paint those who do not support the Republican agenda as unAmerican, as supporters of terrorists. I would submit that if the Republicans have their way, from the Bush administration's disregard of the Fourth Amendment and FISA statutes to the attacks on the New York Times for doing their job as conscientious members of the Fourth Estate, to the 750 "signing statements" signed by George W. Bush asserting that he will disregard any bill he signs into law as he sees fit, then the terrorists, in that the events of September 11th, 2001 are used as a justification for this disregard for Constitutional law and American principle have truly won a victory - courtesy of the Republican Party of the United States.
With the eager assistance of this newspaper.
SHAME.
Shame on you, Harrisonburg Daily News-Record.
"Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"-
Special Counsel Joseph N. Welch, to Senator Joseph P. McCarthy in the Army-McCarthy hearings, June 9, 1954
Longest. C&J.Ever.
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