LETTER: Ability to criticize a mark of true freedom

Talk about it

To the Editor:

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution printed at the top of the Opinion page of The Daily Republic reminds readers how lucky we are to live in the U.S. We can criticize our public officials and our government without fear of reprisal. We may not get invited to the White House for tea, but as long as we don’t make it personal and threaten the official, we probably won’t get into trouble — even if we bend the truth.

Some entertainers take advantage of this to make daily inflammatory doom and gloom remarks about public officials and the government to draw large audiences. Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Huckabee and others are making themselves rich exploiting the public’s appetite for scandal and inflammatory rhetoric while adding nothing positive to the national dialogue.

We can complain about the degeneration of our popular culture: the video games, music, Internet, smart phones, radio, television and movies and how they are corrupting our young people. I agree, it is hard to find any program worth watching and even the ads aren’t safe. But do we really want to increase censorship? Do we want morality police? Sounds like a radical Muslim (Taliban) idea doesn’t it?

We can complain about what is being taught in our public schools, but science is an important subject we expect our children to learn. As they grow into adults they will need knowledge of science to benefit everyone with new energy sources, better agricultural methods and medicines. They need to know how this planet Earth works with all its complex interactions, so that they can protect and preserve the air, water and soil we all depend on for survival.

And, by the way, I have it on good authority that God has given up on evolution as a means of creating intelligent beings: too high a percentage of failures.

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