Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here is Ann Coulter's latest column.

To the Editor:

Re “In Trump Tweets, Blacks Perceive a Callous Rival” (front page, Jan. 16):

Donald Trump’s words of hatred toward Representative John Lewis and his constituency hurt all Americans, regardless of race. Black, white, Asian, Latino, whatever we may be, we all have a stake in our unified future and welfare.

As a staunch civil rights advocate over many years, Mr. Lewis is a national treasure. No one should attack this man.

The hatred Mr. Trump brings forth does not belong in the White House. There are too many questions that should have been answered through investigation and the release of his tax returns. Whom is he beholden to?

Mr. Lewis is correct to question the legitimacy of this president-elect, who won the election with the help of Russian hackers and rampant disinformation. I am outraged.

CAROL HEGARTY

El Centro, Calif.

Note from KBJ: This is rich. John Lewis (who has gotten more mileage out of a beating than anyone in history) gratuitously attacks Donald Trump; Trump replies in kind; and Trump is the bad guy. Leftists such as Carol Hegarty are not used to Republicans fighting back. They'd better get used to it.

Tubular Bells (1973).

Here.

Here.

Here is the final kilometer of today's stage of the Tour Down Under (in Australia). The heat was intense (at least 104º Fahrenheit), so much so that the race was shortened.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this 2009 column by Kurt Schlichter. I hated "Imagine" even when I was a leftist.

To the Editor:

Re “Who’s Really Limiting Free Speech?” (“On Campus” series, Op-Ed, Jan. 9):

I applaud my colleague Donald P. Moynihan’s critiques of the legislative interventions with university courses that have emerged in recent times. A critical aspect of academic freedom is the freedom of faculty and departments to choose what and how to teach. But he is wrong to play down the suffocating effects of identity politics activists and the forces of so-called political correctness.

Recently, activists disrupted—without sanction—a conservative speaker in a public forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and they have demanded that the administration disallow conservative speakers from appearing on campus.

Dissenting students tell me that they “shut up” in class out of fear of being targeted for harboring inappropriate views. And the evident lack of intellectual diversity fuels legislative disrespect in the first place. The University of Wisconsin is not alone in experiencing these and related problems.

Freedom of thought needs protection from threats left and right.

DONALD A. DOWNS

Madison, Wis.

The writer, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of “Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus.”

The rhetoric of rights still performs today the noble, time-honored function of protecting individual life and liberty, a function now perhaps even more necessary than the originators of such rhetoric could have imagined, given the tyrannical possibilities of the modem bureaucratic and technologically competent state. But with the claim of a "right to die," as with so many of the novel rights being asserted in recent years, we face an extension of this rhetoric into areas where it no longer relates to that protective function, and beyond the limited area of life in which rights claims are clearly appropriate and indeed crucial. As a result, we face a number of serious and potentially dangerous distortions in our thought and in our practice. We distort our understanding of rights and weaken their respectability in their proper sphere by allowing them to be invented—without ground in nature or in reason—in response to moral questions that lie outside the limited domain of rights. We distort our understanding of moral deliberation and the moral life by reducing all complicated questions of right and good to questions of individual rights. We subvert the primacy and necessity of prudence by pretending that the assertion of rights will produce the best—and most moral—results. In trying to batter our way through the human condition with the bludgeon of personal rights, we allow ourselves to be deceived about the most fundamental matters: about death and dying, about our unavoidable finitude, and about the sustaining interdependencies of our lives.

Let us, by all means, continue to deliberate about whether and when and why it might make sense for someone to give up on his life, or even actively to choose death. But let us call a halt to all this dangerous thoughtlessness about rights. Let us refuse to talk any longer about a "right to die."

(Leon R. Kass, "Is There a Right to Die?," The Hastings Center Report 23 [January-February 1993]: 34-43, at 43)

To the Editor:

Re “The Fight for Health Care Has Begun” (column, Jan. 10): David Leonhardt is correct about the Republicans’ wish to crush the Affordable Care Act. But their likely strategy is one of neglect. They will shout “repeal, repeal” and cause such confusion that some insurance companies will drop out, premiums will rise and patients will be so uncertain about their options that they will not sign up.

The G.O.P. will then say “see, it’s a failure” and offer unworkable travesties like high-risk pools. The Republicans can then move on with their real agenda to privatize Medicare and provide starvation block grants to unravel Medicaid.

JAMES WEBSTER

Santa Fe, N.M.

The writer is professor emeritus of medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.

Note from KBJ: There is no need to "crush" ObamaCare, for it is imploding. It is one of the worst pieces of legislation in the history of this country, and the main reason Donald Trump was elected president. The Republican Party will give people affordable, high-quality health care, and people will have choices. The days of totalitarianism are over.