Assistance renewed faith in humanity

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Assistance renewed faith in humanity

Recently I was most unfortunate to lose my balance while walking on Clinton Street. A young man saw my plight and came to my rescue. He offered to take me in his car to my doctor’s appointment down the street.

This act of kindness has restored my faith in humanity that there are still more good people in the world.

Thank you, Joe Messier.

Frank O’Connor

Rotterdam

Do more to ensure black lives matter

If black lives really mattered in our society, we would see a push for abandonment of all drug laws. This would remove the financial alternative of becoming a drug dealer to working hard in school. As a side effect of this policy, the cost of local law enforcement and drug treatment would decline.

A reasonable objection to this policy is that it would lead to the community paying for the drug consumption of those on welfare. This objection can be dealt with by treating all who get money from he government as employees, and thus subject to random drug checks.

If black lives really mattered in our society, we would see a push to jail school officials who proceed to deal with failing schools by giving raises to those who teach in these schools, rather than face the reality of needed fundamental changes.

One fundamental change is to keep the school open for those who would want the help of a teacher to do homework rather than to play football. This policy might require some public-spirited group to bow to local custom and buy football helmets for kids. But in the end, what is important is that those who want to work hard at their personal school achievement are given the public support and respect that they are entitled to.

Finally, if black lives really mattered in our society, we would see a push to hammer those parents who raise thugs. In particular, if you father a child and put the work of parenting and supporting the child on the mother, you should be deprived of all state-provided social services. In effect, this is transferring what would be available to the father to his child. A second unsupported child would be dealt with in the obvious way.

If we are going to hold absent fathers accountable for their behavior, I think that we should facilitate their path to responsibility by treating them as illegals and thus give them a pass on their previous criminal activity.

These policy changes would help to pull all people out of poverty and the cycle of violence — black, white, Latino, Asian, etc.

Fred Barney

Albany

No need to resort to stereotypes on guns

Mr. Michael Winn invited “factual, not emotional responses” to his Aug. 30 letter on the New York Safe Act. “Gun control” is actually older than the use of gunpowder in Europe. Henry II’s Assize of Arms of 1181 disarmed all peasants below the status of freeman — 80 percent of the population — and strictly regulated weapons possession by all others based on social class.

Interestingly, it also required those subjects to possess those proscribed weapons. On April 18, 1775, when Gen. Thomas Gage sent troops to Lexington to seize the patriots’ military supplies (including cannons), he violated the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Our Founding Fathers refused to comply. The British, of course, called this an act of treason and rebellion, and accused the patriots of attempting to violently overthrow their government.

I could fill a page of this newspaper with the recorded words of “radicals” like Washington, Jefferson and Adams. But let me quote Democratic socialist (but staunch anti-communist) George Orwell: “The rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working-class flat is a symbol of democracy. It is our job to keep it there.”

In “United States v. Miller” (1938), the government defended the ban on sawed-off shotguns by arguing (in part) that “the Second Amendment protects only the ownership of military-type weapons appropriate for use in an organized militia.”

There is currently no U.S. federal law against possession of a flame-thrower, and machine guns weren’t regulated until 1934.

In conclusion, I am saddened that Mr. Winn resorted to stereotypes of hunters, gun owners and gun-rights advocates that are as deeply offensive as other negative stereotypes.

Mark Stockman

Scotia

Stop public funds for Planned Parenthood

Have you viewed the YouTube videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing prices for the sale of body parts, methods of crushing the unborn to maximize body part recovery, taking legs, hearts and livers from lab dishes to package and sell, as I have?

If you have not and defend taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood, then your opinion has no standing. If, on the other hand, those who have viewed the videos and are OK with what goes on in the organization, then I think they have no soul.

I assume that recent Gazette letter writers like Mary Ellen Riell [Aug. 16 letter] together with New York’s two senators who support taxpayer funding of the organization would have also supported Josef Mengele’s experiments in Nazi Germany because they were legal.

Speaking of Mengele, the Planned Parenthood doctors shown in the videos would probably have cheerfully worked for Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz while swilling wine, as they do in the video.

I get it that abortion is legal after Roe vs. Wade, but that doesn’t mean that I need to support the sale of unborn or partially born baby parts with my tax money. The argument that taxpayer money doesn’t support and, therefore, is not responsible for the abortion part of Planned Parenthood is absurd.

Planned Parenthood is one organization and money is fungible. What goes into their coffers benefits the entire organization, just as the food you eat nourishes your entire body. No, let’s not use our taxes to further the reprehensible actions of this entity.

William F. Malec

Galway

Abortion is a slippery slope to future of evil

The Planned Parenthood videos are out. The “left” says they are not fair; they were filmed sneaky-like. True about sneaky, but who can forget the sneaky 47 percent Romney video? Do as I say, not as I do is the credo of the left. “The Gates Of Hell” are now open. Welcome on in.

Abortion is a path to the slippery slope of evil. One can argue that abortion in the circumstance of medical complication is justified. One has to wonder about rape and incest children; do they carry the stain of their father in DNA? How many babies were conceived in a state of perfect love? Not many.

It is difficult for me to see the vocation of a doctor who practices abortions as routine, a money maker, a badge of honor in some circles. Who would want such a doctor making life-and-death decisions? If you are old or faced with a life-long disability, maybe you should be dead, out of the way, off the books.

I have tried to maintain a “live and let live” attitude about issues of personal choice. The videos tell me such an attitude allows evil to prosper. Who is not moved by the innocence of the newborn? A Planned Parenthood doctor.

The issue of abortion should never have become an issue of government policy. Abortion should have remained within the domain of the patient, doctor and spiritual adviser, assuming there is a belief system present.

Abortion became “public policy” because those driving the issue wanted abortion paid for by the taxpayer and used as a tool of social engineering. The fact that the patron saint of Planned Parenthood was a racist and believed in genocide (eugenics) does not offend the left.

They are offended by the death penalty and “all lives matter.” I can see now why all lives matter offends the left. The lives of some are worth more under a microscope. Car thieves and chop shops have the same economic formula as Planned Parenthood.

When did the value ($$$$$) of human “life” get trumped by desire and lack of self control? Irresponsible people have always existed. In the 1960s such attitudes became the “in thing,” a cultural norm.

I fear we are too far down the path of self destruction to turn it around. This will make Planned Parenthood happy. What Stalingrad did for Hitler’s Reich, the videos will do for Planned Parenthood.

Edmond Day

Rotterdam

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Categories: Letters to the Editor