Letters To The Editor: Liberals Love Utopia, Conservatives, Reality

Liberals Love Utopia, Conservatives, Reality
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Your editorial, "Don'tcha Hate It?" provides a good description of the views of liberals and conservatives on hate crimes. Actually, a review of basic differences between the two political philosophies is in order now that liberals control power in Washington.

Liberalism is strongly rights-based, distrusts the private sector and capitalism, and supports utopian and statist ideas that it believes can help realize Heaven on Earth. "If any single thing identifies the modern radical mind," writes sociologist Robert Nisbet in Twilight of Authority, "it is the invariably negative reaction to private enterprise, profit, and competition." He also writes that "in its struggle for individual allegiance, the Western state has actually manufactured individualism . . . in the positive creation of individual rights, freedoms, and benefits," an argument that explains the proliferation of entitlement programs since the New Deal.

Conservatives, on the other hand, distrust the encroachment of the state and defend capitalism because it offers opportunities for all groups to improve their economic condition. They also embrace political institutions that foster slow, organic growth and not rapid tumultuous change that endangers society. Conservatives strongly support the values of pluralism, habit, tradition, custom, and prudence. Very importantly, like Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville in the past, modern conservatives view civil society and independent voluntary associations as a vital bulwark against the encroachment of the state and an important protector of our freedoms.

Lee Rice.
Richmond.

AARP supported the creation of a new prescription drug benefit in Medicare that was pushed by President George W. Bush with strong Republican support. In the current Congress, AARP supports several bipartisan bills, including HR1558 Pre-existing Condition Patient Protection Act, S979 Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), HR1427 Biosimilar/Biogeneric biological products, S975 Seniors and Taxpayers Obligation Protection Act -- sponsored by congressmen and women from both parties. And the list could go on.

While AARP has not endorsed any of the major health care reform bills moving through Congress, it's clear that our present course is not sustainable. Without change, Medicare premiums will more than double in the next seven years, Medicare Part A costs will outpace revenues in the next eight years, and beneficiaries will continue having problems finding a doctor who will accept Medicare payments.

Several bills before Congress will strengthen Medicare by closing the Part D doughnut hole, reducing the costs for preventive care, increasing access to doctors by paying them fairly, and addressing the solvency problems in Part A by aggressively tackling waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system.

If it's good for seniors, it will receive our support regardless of whether the idea is supported or opposed by the left or the right. Bill Kallio, Associate State Director/Communications, AARP Virginia.


Richmond.

Time for Boorish Behavior to End
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I was appalled by the rude behavior exhibited by Republican members of Congress in the health care address by President Barack Obama. Their boorish behavior only continues prominent examples of offensive manners that congressional Democrats exhibited during past speeches by Republican presidents.

Imagine the reaction by a principal or classroom teacher if an officer of the student government association was seen using a personal digital assistant during an address to a high school assembly by Rep. Eric Cantor.

Imagine the outcry that would ensue if this same assembly booed Cantor during his remarks. What would happen to the student who shouted "You lie!" to Cantor as he repeated his earlier view that Democrats "bought two car companies"?

Each of these disrespectful examples of behavior was exhibited during the president's address. We teach our children that responsible, thoughtful people should have differences of opinions and express them openly and with respect. It is past time for our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans, to lead by example. Our children deserve no less.

Timothy A. McDermott.
Ashland.