I have the opinion that Tom Knepher (“Let nurturing prevail,” Nov. 27) has the good of his country at heart in his hope for the future.
Like most people who spend their youth in school and then teach in a profession that is highly repetitive, Berkeley professor George Lakoff can see only one approach to political structure. What he couldn’t see was a family structure where simple-minded, unruly children kept the family in an uproar because they refused to consider that the country was under attack by radical Muslims, and they don’t have any idea as to what is necessary to survive.
Bob Kennedy was a close advisor to his brother, Jack. Under the Kennedys, Vietnam participation escalated from an advisory role to major involvement, with 30,000 Americans killed—most of them draftees. I hate to think that is Obama’s future.
The big hope in getting Martin Luther King out was that he was the only one preaching integration at the time. That was in the days when the blacks were burning down their communities because a felon was beaten up while resisting arrest. And the penitentiaries were—and still are—overcrowded with criminals and drug dealers from the black community.
Norman Mehl
Santa Maria
This article appears in Dec 11-18, 2008.