To the Editor:
“When
Greatness Slips Away,” by Bob Herbert (column, June 22), is painful
to read, but all too true.
Barack Obama won a historic election victory, then followed George W.
Bush into the quagmire of Afghanistan. We have turned our backs on the
victims of the economic catastrophe and are becoming the land of lost
opportunity. As the world’s most greedy consumers of energy, we still
have no coherent, responsible energy policy. We are a world leader in
weapons sales and prison population per capita.
If what’s left of our greatness is not to disappear, then all of us need
to do some soul-searching and act like responsible, humane citizens of
planet Earth.
Theodore S. Voelker
Copake, N.Y., June 22, 2010
To the Editor:
Bob Herbert is correct when he states that the government has “lost
sight of how to build and maintain a flourishing society.” But the
solution is not more government intervention, more regulation and
“radical change.”
It is not government that makes our nation great—it is the people
within the nation, the decisions they make, the products they produce,
the ideas they generate. The government should allow these people to
live relatively unimpeded, so they may develop solutions to the problems
our nation faces.
If the nation is to again achieve greatness, it must come from
individuals and not the government, which, as Mr. Herbert observed, is
“good at destroying things.”
Andrew Knauer
Arlington, Va., June 22, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 