Dear Editor:
Helloooo, Dennis Taylor! Archie Bunker here. I read your March
10 column on the library bond with great interest. If I understand
your argument correctly, you think that pornography is the root of
progressive thought and will free the masses from the tyranny of
the heterosexual, monogamous oppressor classes. I am, as always,
amazed at the twisting alleyways of thought traveled by the true
progressive.
Dear Editor:
Helloooo, Dennis Taylor! Archie Bunker here. I read your March 10 column on the library bond with great interest. If I understand your argument correctly, you think that pornography is the root of progressive thought and will free the masses from the tyranny of the heterosexual, monogamous oppressor classes. I am, as always, amazed at the twisting alleyways of thought traveled by the true progressive.
Despite that, I almost completely agree with your theme that the people are being deliberately imprisoned in a cage of ignorance. I have only two quibbles with your argument that the library is the great social equalizer and that the religious right sabotages their noble mission: for library, substitute public schools; for the religious right, substitute GUSD. They have denied challenging educational opportunities to motivated students, they have riffed their best teachers because of political incompatibility, they have squandered precious study time on a reading list chosen strictly as political indoctrination, they have virtually eliminated the study of how society functions (economics, law, finance, and history) from the curriculum, they have fiddled contentedly while the fire of mediocre test results burned around them, and they have, with your active assistance, suppressed student and parent criticism of their failures.
Mr. Taylor, I spent several years living on welfare and I can tell you that your perception of what poverty is like in the United States is seriously flawed. Your notion that the libraries provide the only access to knowledge for the working poor is nonsense. Books, CDs, videos, and Internet access are dirt cheap, affordable by pretty much anybody that wants them. If you actually want to help the poor, you might consider the price of food, housing, and transportation.
You lefties have campaigned to keep Super Wal-Mart out of the area so that food prices can remain high. You have done this so that the extra money can pour into the pockets of union workers who are generally pretty comfortable financially and need that money a whole lot less than the poor folks do.
Y’all have also driven housing prices up by supporting slow growth and open space policies that restrict building permits and ensure that there are not enough houses around for the people who need them. Guess who gets squeezed out into the boondocks of long commutes?
Progressives have also run up transportation costs by blocking oil drilling and infrastructure development, by imposing ineffective and dangerous gas mixture requirements that limit fuel availability and increase production costs, and by imposing excessive retail energy taxes.
Mr. Taylor, it is your side that has its jack boots on the necks of the poor, not mine.
Stuart Allen, Gilroy
Submitted Sunday, March 14, to [email protected]
