Mar 30, 2008

Letters

Barack Obama

Dear Editor: Obama's liberation theology sounds a great deal like the ideas of the old Soviet Union and Karl Marx.

"From each according to his abilities and to each according to their needs," sounds so pleasant and fair in a simpleton's worldview. If one is unable to benefit from the fruits of his own labor and is instead obligated to relinquish a significant portion his treasure by faceless bureaucrats to those deemed incapable or unwilling to work, then where is the future wealth derived from? Wealth does not materialize out of thin air, but is created by those inspired with ideas.

This notion of redistribution of wealth is unsustaining, since those inspired to generate wealth are left devoid of essential motivation to do so. It is likened much to a spinning top that loses momentum and topples over. The old USSR, like the spinning top, failed for good economic reasons. Even communist China recognized this critical deficiency and now employs free-market strategies that create wealth and not merely devour it in a mindless scheme of redistribution bolstered through inefficient centrally planned economies.

Yes, we have our poor and homeless, but remember that in the old USSR, many were and continue to be consumed by alcoholism borne of economic hopelessness and despair, while legions of the homeless found their domiciles in the Moscow subways; so much for socialism's egalitarianism and promises from liberation theology.

Tony Favero,
Half Moon Bay

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Dear Editor: I have been saddened to read the letters of my old friend Bob Cohn about Sen. [Barack] Obama's presidential candidacy - saddened not by his opposition to Obama, which is, of course, his right, but by the reasons he states for it. The reference in his recent letter to Obama's "ingrained, however artfully concealed, and resentful anti-Americanism," like his implying in an earlier letter that the senator is outside the "Judeo-Christian tradition," is too absurd to deserve a reply. His remark that "(Obama) shrewdly bet on defeat - wrongly, it is turning out" reminds me of King Pyrrhus' famous saying, "Another such victory and we are lost." I would add that if we regard any outcome of Bush's folly that can reasonably be hoped for as victory, we are lost indeed.

Michael Wigodsky,
Mountain View

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Dear Editor: I think what disappointed me most about [Joseph] Locasto's letter on Tuesday is how clear it was that he hadn't bothered to do any research on Sen. [Barack] Obama before he found it necessary to attack him.

If he wanted a track record for the past 12 years of his legislative career, a Google search would have sufficed. He could have found out about how Obama passed a strong ethics reform bill in Washington, or how he stood up for veterans and our environment. He could have read about how he fought for middle-class tax cuts and subsidized child care in Illinois, in a legislature where he was not afraid to cross party lines to get government to do the right thing.

I suppose we must accept that some people will willfully blind themselves to everything but what they want to see in a candidate, but I would hope now that we're being offered a new way of participating in politics that we as a people decide to take it.
Dan Lieberman,
Belmont

The war in Iraq

Dear Editor: Retiring Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel stated recently that 900 American soldiers have died in Iraq since the surge. He noted that the surge was supposed to buy time for the Iraqi government to have political reconciliation with many groups but that this hasn't happened. Furthermore, he said we can't sustain deployment of troops anymore. Yet Sen. John McCain backs the Bush-Cheney plan for endless occupation in Iraq while Iraqis want the occupation ended now. Only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton vow to bring our troops home in an orderly and timely way if they are elected. Our economic woes are tied directly to the Iraq war according to economist Joseph Stiglitz, and will cost $3 trillion. We cannot go forward and solve our many problems at home and abroad unless this war ends and all interested parties solve the problems.

Edith Groner,
Palo Alto