Vote for endless possibilities

To the editor:

The children of today are growing up in the technological age, where volumes of information are available at one’s fingertips. Literally, with the strike of a few keys a school-aged child or young adult can use an internet search engine like Google to research a historical figure for a school project or make a cyberspace visit to a potential college before applying.

The possibilities are as wide as one’s imagination. Unfortunately, not every child in Pike County has internet access at home. This lack of technology can put a young person at a disadvantage to peers striving toward similar goals: a good education or a prosperous and satisfying career.

Public libraries level the playing field by providing equal access to important state-of-the-art technology like free internet service. But that’s not all. Libraries are brimming with free resources like SAT study guides, online study tools, CDs, DVDs and audio books, summer reading programs and more. As an educator and coach for both young children and teens in Pike County I see firsthand the importance of these materials and programs.

Unfortunately, our local library system—the Pike County Public Library—is struggling to meet the growing needs of our community. Pike’s population is skyrocketing and library circulation is following suit. Library funding, however, is not keeping pace, and Pike residents are at risk of losing important library services that provide us—and our children—with resources that keep us up to speed in the information age.

On November 3 voters will decide on a dedicated library tax—of about $35 for the average homeowner—to preserve and improve our library system for the benefit of everyone.

Join me in saying “yes” to this measure, which supports one of our county’s key educational resources, and helps all citizens—especially our young people—to prosper in the information age.

A misused quote

It is infuriating to read in your paper that Thomas Brown quotes the phrase “general Welfare” in the Constitution of the United States to promote national health care. Mr. Brown should read the Federalist papers to understand what John Adams and James Madison had to say as to the meaning of that phrase. Liberals like Brown have so distorted “general Welfare” that our Constitution has become nothing but a meaningless scrap of paper, written by dead white men.

Registering urgent complaint

To the editor:

Let’s consider the liberal establishment’s vehement criticism of Americans who scolded their elected representatives on national television. What were the people doing and why? The people were venting when they criticized representatives for failing to listen to them. “Venting” is a vital method of registering urgent complaints, when it’s necessary to relieve social pressures resulting from discussions of major issues of public interest.

Let’s compare the people’s authority with that of the liberals. The people’s authority to criticize their representatives derives from a historic compromise in which ultimate constitutional authority was reserved for the people, as a substitute for “direct representation.”

The apparent basis for the liberals’ harangue is “pedigree,” that is identified with education from prestigious institutions of higher learning, relatively high social and political status, as well as professions, as distinguished from occupations. These are, also, criteria for “aristocracy,” a status most Americans assumed had died with the Revolution.

The thrust of aristocracy is the attitude, “we’re smarter than the people.” Let’s conduct a performance-based evaluation of that hypothesis, beginning by recognizing conditions 21 years ago, when George Bush assumed office. Since then, we had Clinton, GW and, now, Obama. We’re currently struggling to recover from an economic disaster that evolved over the previous 21 years, while Obama is directing national affairs on destructive socialist principles, expediting our plunge to global anonymity. Here are the final critical facts, relating to relative legitimacy: all four presidents were the products of Ivy League universities.

I submit that these circumstances provide great weight to the observation of Alexis de Touqueville that the presumption of “intellectual equality” is an integral part of “Democracy in America.” If this isn’t true, consider that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Schumer and McCain will do all the thinking for us.