Consider the consequences of feelings

To The Eagle:

Ref: Recent letters by Mike Swift, Howard Brawn and JB Bouchard.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy the back and forth by members of this community; it truly is a pleasure to read the weekly excerpts from the combatants.

I do have to say that I’m more in line with Howard than JB, and Mike hits the nail dead center (“There is no wisdom on the left.”) I have always felt that the primary force behind liberals has been feelings, regardless of actions or consequences as a result of those actions driven by feelings.

Let’s take a look at some of them: 1. The schools are graduating students without learning the basics to enter college, due to teachers that themselves were not properly taught. 2. Common sense results has been replaced by feel good actions, as to not make somebody feel bad (heaven forbid, but that’s real life.) 3. Self righteousness on the left has the rest of us labeled as racist, homophobes, neanderthal and on and on. 4. History has been lost on the left, particularly the founding of this country and the lessons learned good and bad.

I could go on and on. It’s my sincere feeling that people, children and society need and require guardrails. The Founding Fathers sensed this too. I would recommend reading the Federalist Papers which formed our representative republic (this country is not a democracy.) One of the amazing things they did was establish the Electoral College. They realized that the popular vote was not necessarily the best outcome in an election or the country as a whole. The last election is a good example. Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she lost the electoral vote. The founders reasoned that the popular vote could be influenced mainly by large concentrations of people instead of the will of the rest of the populace. Hillary took New York, California, Oregon, Washington and a few smaller states. While she took the largest concentrations of voters, she didn’t necessarily get all the electoral votes in those states nor the rest of the country. Which is a good thing unless you prefer to be governed by Hollywood, liberals on the left coast and liberals in the Northeast.

We, here in Washington, are also a good example. We, for the most part, are governed by the I-5 corridor population centers, as a result don’t have a whole lot of influence in Olympia. I had a Korean War vet as a history teacher in high school (1959) who said to us, “You can not be free without responsibility,” and it is sorely lacking today.

I happen to appreciate the musings of Thomas Paine and how true they are:

“To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead,” and “he who dares not offend can not be honest.”

Bob Ward

Puget Island