John Steele Gordon's op-ed "Obama and the Liberal Paradigm" (Nov. 4) notes that liberals tend to have an out-of-sync-with-reality worldview that divides the American body politic into sheep, wolves, and would-be shepherds—the shepherds being, of course, the liberals.
A number of our founding fathers shared the same view: that it was their job, as shepherds, to arrange things for everyone else, because the lower and middling sorts were incapable of doing so for themselves. Except that way back then, the shepherds were the Federalists (Washington, Adams, Hamilton), who were so conservative that the liberals (Jefferson, Madison, etc.) considered them practically monarchists. Now the liberals are the monarchists.
Ironic, isn't it?
Woody Woodruff
New York
Mr. Gordon's premise that the liberal paradigm splits the country into three large groups—average folk, rich wolves and liberal saviors—does not reflect President Barack Obama's more nuanced tactic which is to shred Americans into hundreds of warring factions. These are those with health-care insurance, those without, the employed, the unemployed, blacks, whites, Latinos, gays, blue collar, white collar, union members, Wall Streeters, Main Streeters, first-time home buyers, foreclosure victims, small business owners, Medicare recipients, undocumented immigrants, those making over $250,000 and those making less. Our identity and security are increasingly tied to membership in one or more of these cartels, each vying for ever-shrinking resources and favors doled out by the government. Mr. Obama and Congress may fancy themselves as powerful emperors turning their thumbs up or down as these groups grovel before them, but a house divided against itself cannot stand, and a country smashed into cannibalizing constituencies will not survive.
Cindy Cosgrove
Palm City, Fla.
Mr. Gordon fails to consider that a new liberal paradigm has emerged. The shepherds are now protecting humanity from the capitalist wolves who are destroying the planet. Give the liberals some credit for moving on.
Karl Kruse
Cincinnati
Mr. Gordon overlooks the liberal ace in the hole. His paradigm has converted (Medicare and Social Security) and raised (welfare) millions of new sheep who are inured to, even eager for, the mediocre feed and shearing, for where would they be without them? The state has displaced thrift, family and good sense as the guardians of security. President Obama's administration as the last liberal one? Are you kidding?
Bruce Bodner
Taunton, Mass.
What liberals fail to comprehend is that the government has become the wolf from whom the general population needs protection. Only the government has the power to determine who succeeds and who fails based on its handouts. Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers know all too well that whoever has the power to save you also has the power to destroy you. The final step liberals are relentlessly pursuing is to put the government in charge of health care, meaning the wolf will now have the power to decide whether you, the sheep, receive health care or die. The time has come for us to rise to Patrick Henry's cry: "Give me liberty or give me death!" It is time for us, the sheep, to become our own shepherds.
Doug Welpton
Clearwater Beach, Fla.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 