How did some lawmakers ever get elected?
I am aghast that Tennessee has now passed legislation that will require teachers to be armed with guns.
So, I am wondering, do teachers wear holsters with their guns loaded? Or are the guns in their desk to be loaded if a shooter arrives? How much time does the teacher have to load the gun? What if a student finds and uses the gun? Oh, I know! It is safely locked, so in the case of an active shooter the teacher has to get the key to unlock the gun. Then load the gun. By that time students are probably already dead.
In the same newspaper, I read that libraries are also a danger. Who knows what explicit sexual activity one might read in a book? Nothing is said about a student reading about a murder. If a child or the parents of a child do not want to read books about sexual acts or murders, they do not have to check said book out of the library.
Women and doctors are facing jail time for an abortion because life is so sacred while in the womb. However, it appears to me, as a reader, that life is no longer sacred once it leaves the womb since there are no restrictions for the purchasing of guns that kill children attending school, people grocery shopping, attending a movie or just walking down the street.
My conclusion is that the same politicians who embraced the overturning of Roe v. Wade because life is so sacred are also the same politicians who are beholden to the NRA and its financial support. These thought processes make me wonder how they were ever elected to Congress.
Patricia Roop Hollinger, Westminster
It’s time we make America great, strong, rich and safe again
Growing up, the United States was No. 1 or in the top five in all things good: Education, job creation, affordable housing, humanity, technology and landing on the moon. I was encouraged to realize I was a unique individual who was capable of doing anything, which was a big deal being a girl in the 1970s. And there was no confusion about being a girl.
We smashed the glass ceilings, wouldn’t take no for an answer, found a balance between mothering and working, loved our husbands, had an active social and community life and we looked back at our mothers and grandmothers with gratitude. We truly came a long way, baby.
Now, men pretend to be women, because they fall short of being men and we’re supposed to accept their failure, in women’s sports, locker rooms and bathrooms? Boys are boys, girls are girls.
I long for the day when the evil people mutilating children, calling it care, face the music. If they don’t understand the crime they commit, how can a child understand changing gender? No wonder, suicide rate is off the charts.
Our education system was already suffering, and not letting a good crisis go to waste, Team Obama decimated education with Common Core. What it’s done to inner city kids is nothing short of criminal. These kids have been robbed of their future, sentenced to struggling or life of crime. The amount of money dumped into Baltimore City schools should produce Rhode Scholars, yet they’re lucky if they can read.
America has more crude/gas than Saudi Arabia, we have the technology to safely extract it, are in the position to supply most of the world with clean energy, but President Joe Biden stopped all things energy for the ill-conceived climate approach. Al Gore said I should have beachfront property by now.
Charity begins at home and sending printed and borrowed money from China to give to so many other countries boggles my mind. We have way too many homeless while the invasion of our southern border has created many more.
Crime is rampant while so-called leaders stick their fingers in their ears and pretend they don’t hear us or believe they know best. Definitely not Ward Cleaver.
So yes, I want to Make America Great, strong, rich and safe Again.
Michelle Jefferson, Westminster
As a county, we need to sit down and engage, not debate
Conservative guru Arthur Brooks defines contempt as “a habit of seeing people who disagree with us as not merely incorrect or misguided, but worthless.” This is on full display in Chris Roemer’s column, and I wish to counter the culture of contempt with some observations of mine from George Washington University’s student encampment.
Students don’t “think they’re smarter than everyone else” — in fact, they spend much of their time studying and conversing over tables full of books. They realize that they have much to learn and are dedicated to learning it. There’s no “mindless fury” here — the chief sound is quiet, with occasional chanting every few hours, but not predominating. Students watch documentaries, attend lectures and make art.
Roemer seeks to write on encampments but doesn’t even look at the demands. And he speaks of antisemitism when Jewish students are a significant percentage of those arrested, and many encampments observe Shabbat, Orthodox Easter and Muslim prayer. Or are those not “real Jews”? Such a statement would also sound antisemitic.
One cannot bring up Catholicism without Pope Francis’ appeal for a ceasefire. Ultimately, the truth is more than a “one-dimensional simplistic view of the world” — these groups cannot be instrumentalized to make an editorial point and hold vastly different, equally strongly held positions on this conflict. Hate is there, and it’s on us to call it out, but so is abiding love.
I want to hope Roemer’s dedicated to peace, or at least fewer civilian casualties. In a war whose considerable civilian toll will, as we learned in Afghanistan, only create more Hamas terrorists, I hope we can look at demands for peace and view them as laudable to a degree, even if we view them as misguided or naïve.
Brooks also states “As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: … unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn’t know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used.”
What if we as a county sat down together, disagreed vehemently, but truly sought to engage — converse, not debate — and learn what exactly our ideological foes think without writing them off? This is sorely needed today. I challenge readers to have a conversation with someone who disagrees, without demonization. This won’t bring consensus, but will, hopefully, bring illumination.
At the very least, we’ll learn how to spell TikTok.
Phoebe Shatzer, Taneytown
Has anyone noticed that forced sterilizations continue?
How does the pro-life movement feel about forced sterilization? In 1927, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 8 to 1, affirmed the constitutionality of Virginia’s law allowing state-enforced sterilization.
This decision was known as Buck v. Bell and is still on the books of 31 states including the District of Columbia. This was one of the court’s worst decisions in history. This ruling allowed for the sterilization of a person considered unfit because they were deemed to be mentally deficient.
That decision is part of a larger chapter in American history in which the eugenics movement was behind preventing so-called mentally deficient people from procreating by not allowing them to marry by sterilizing them and/or segregating them in special colonies.
In Mississippi the sterilization of black women was so common it was called a Mississippi appendectomy. California has forcibly sterilized more than 20,000 people.
Today these sterilizations continue, primarily affecting people with disabilities and individuals under guardianship. Under such a guardianship, Britney Spears could not have her IUD removed. This was a case of proxy sterilization.
Harvey Rabinowitz, Taneytown
