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Many people now know it's good to question authority

Re: The baby boom turns 60.

On the Jan. 1 front page was the following quote: "When I was a kid, you looked up to authority. Today, it's just the opposite."

What might be the reason? Just take a look at how private interests rather than public interests have come to dominate both major political parties and our daily lives: real estate and insurance agents, oil-industry corruption, military-spending schemes, false Christianity, etc. America is different, to the point that young people, with all reason, do not have much use for authority.

I am a pre-baby boomer by six years. I understand the youth of today and their opinions and efforts to make this a better country. Some of the opinions in that front-page article imply a lack of understanding as to why things have gone "bad." They have not gone bad. Questioning is good. For if we were the cows that some want us to be, the political situation and all it influences would be worse.

The forces that shaped a generation

Re: Baby boomers.

If our generation is special, it probably has a lot to do with the particular rung it occupies on the technological ladder that the world has been climbing for the past 150 years.

It perhaps also has something to do with the fact that survival requires a people or a country to bounce back extra hard after coming back from a brink. And what a brink it was: a difficult two-front war at a time when technology suddenly made the instantaneous obliteration of a city a simple thing to do.

We made it through, and our generation was born. The vitality of our generation was shaped by war, and its members should carefully remember the strength and the sacrifices of our parents' generation during World War II.

Health care problems arise elsewhere

Re: The baby boom turns 60.

Your statement that baby boomers "threaten to devour the nation's health care programs and leave future generations to clean up the mess" struck me.

Could it be that instead of baby boomers being the threat, other dominant factors are the culprits? The health care market in reality is tightly controlled by the American Medical Association and health maintenance organizations. Call it contrived scarcity. After all, their own interests are special, above the nation's. In concert with our nation's elected leaders, devoid of vision and courage to do the right thing, they perpetuate health care rationing and ever less affordable care.

Your Dec. 19 editorial, America's health care albatross, highlighted some of the shameful realities of our failed health care system. Courageous, visionary leadership from Washington is urgently required to reverse the decline in our nation's health care toward Third World status, or even worse.

Not greedy or ravenous

In the Jan. 1 front-page article, The baby boom turns 60, the writer states that the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) "threaten to devour the nation's health care and Social Security programs and leave future generations to clean up the mess."

I am appalled and insulted by this observation. I have worked for 39 years and my earnings have been taxed each of those years for Social Security and Medicare. Webster defines the word devour as, "to eat up greedily or ravenously." I am neither greedy nor ravenous about the pittance I will receive from these programs.

The reality most baby boomers are facing is the possibility that no funds will be available in these programs when many of us retire within the next 10-20 years because our monies have been supporting retirees for decades and this pool of program money has been mismanaged by the federal government for decades.

Additionally, if there is money to be allocated to us for our retirement, how does this create a "mess" for future generations? (By "devouring" or using up funds taxed out of our pockets?)

Judging intelligent design

Re: Defenders of our liberties, Jan. 1.

I couldn't help musing over the comment in this column that intelligent design has been "sliced and diced" by Judge John Jones III. Having the good judge ascertain the validity of the intelligent design theory is like asking an accountant to describe the molecular mechanics of a bacterial flagellum.

It is unfortunate that the judge's opinion in the intelligent design case rested on the emotional decisions of the Pennsylvania school board members rather than the legitimate scientific substance of the case. There are currently thousands of scientists who are Ph.D.s, M.D.s, university professors and Nobel Prize winners who increasingly are challenging macro-evolution due to the stunning lack of evidence to support this theory.

The decision of a judge, judges, or the Supreme Court will have little impact on the scientific community's ongoing examination of Darwin's theory. They will pursue the issue simply because the evidence (or lack of the same) demands it. Many scientists now believe that Darwinism is no longer a sustainable theory and will fall as suddenly as the Berlin wall, only to be relegated to the side show of scientific blunders, marveled at for the scope of man's stupidity.

Is-ness business

Re: The year that was what it was, Jan. 1.

I would like to soothe Robert Friedman's distress about the phrase "It is what it is." The meaning of the phrase is "This is not a situation that I can change, but a state of being that I cannot change, and God helps me to know the difference."

Street patois sometimes finds a shortcut to verbose elocution, and when it is good - elegant - it catches on. "Don't go there" means "I really would appreciate if you did not attempt to discuss that topic because it is a very sensitive issue for me (or to some others)."

So, at the end of the day, when we seek closure and beg the question, we simply find that it is what it is. Have a great day.

The entombment tactic

Re: Growth and the gopher tortoise, editorial, Jan. 1.

It seems that if Wal-Mart can pay a measly $11,409 for a state permit to entomb tortoises under the store's foundation, dubbed an "incidental taking" what's to stop developers from getting that same permit? That way they can just entomb mobile home parks and their residents under the condominiums or townhome foundations.

This would solve the problem of having to pay to "relocate" those residents. After all, mobile homes and their inhabitants aren't a "species of special interest."

Problem solved!

[Last modified January 7, 2006, 00:16:01]