Incredible
I read the story in The Sun Aug. 2, "Secondhand smoke will cause an estimated 47,000 deaths and about 150,000 non-fatal heart attacks . . ."
Truly incredible numbers! I am curious to know what are the indicators of secondhand-smoke death and heart attack.
How is this determined? Is there a doctor in the house? Truly incredible numbers!
Mike Eller
Baltimore
Moral Values
Is it any wonder that people seem so confused about "values" these days, when long and ponderous essays in newspapers express such views as found in "The Real Definition of Original Sin" by Ray Jenkins (Opinion * Commentary, Aug. 2)?
He seems to say that since all human activity -- and especially commercial activity -- is fraught with some moral taint, why make any discriminations? And in "Technology and Judgment" on the same page the same day, Robert Burruss says that God and his moral judgment of man is a fiction for wimps, that no human impulses are capable of evaluation as "good" or "evil" -- they just exist, like the weather.
It seems that we have run hard and long away from the evils of moral absolutism, only to find ourselves mired in the quicksand of moral relativism.
To these authors I would answer that although it is difficult to make moral judgments, we must still try our best, with caution and humility.
In planning our pension fund investments, we can choose to avoid the most egregiously evil economic activities, such as providing a known poison (tobacco) to the public.
In deciding when to use weapons against other human beings, we can choose to employ them at least in resisting the most flagrant aggression, such as Saddam Hussein's incursion into Kuwait.
In making these moral judgments, we must be willing to incur some costs. But in refusing to make moral judgments, we lower ourselves to, as Mr. Burruss says, nothing more than forces of nature.
The making of ethical choices is what defines us as human beings. It would be well for our public education system to incorporate formal courses in ethics from the elementary years all through college.
We may not all come up with the same answers, but at least we will not be continuing to escape from the questions by asserting that there are no principles that human beings can follow.
Elizabeth A. Fixsen
Savage
No Gay Exemption
Edith Boggs' July 15 letter claims that objections to the acceptance of homosexuality "are not based on religious beliefs or political ideology, but on common sense, reason and the principles that have governed human relationships since time began."
The exact reverse is true. To judge a person just on his or her sexual preference defies common sense, reason and principle.
Religious beliefs and political ideology are in fact the major VTC roadblocks denying gays equal access, and they are contrary to all of the founding principles of our country.
Barry Goldwater put it well recently when he said "there was no gay exemption in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Fred Davis
Pasadena
Mr. Fortune
As with many others, I was both greatly warmed and saddened by the many fond memories left behind by the passing of Stu Kerr.
He and his many characters are a treasured part of my memory of growing up in the Baltimore area, memories which I will cherish always.
Notwithstanding these sentiments, his July 18 obituary might have left the impression among readers that he was the one and only host, Mr. Fortune, on the "Dialing for Dollars" program which ended in 1977 after a long stint on television.
In fact, Jack Wells was the original Mr. Fortune on television here in Baltimore at WMAR from circa 1952 to 1957.
Stu Kerr replaced Jack Wells when the latter began his very popular, as well as the first, Baltimore television morning show on WJZ-TV in 1957.
Jack Wells, a native Baltimorean, left this area in 1963 to work successfully in Hollywood, where he now resides.
To the best of my knowledge, Stu Kerr and Jack Wells were the only individuals to assume the role of Mr. Fortune during the entire history of television in this area.
James C. DeWald
Baltimore
Abortionists Are Like Hitler and Stalin
Sara Engram (Opinion * Commentary, Aug. 7) would have us believe that something Pat Robertson said more than four years ago inspired the tragic abortion clinic slayings that look place in Pensacola less than two weeks ago.
Mr. Robertson's complaint at the time had to do with the fact that two "pro-choice" members of a congressional committee had acted to prevent pro-life witnesses from presenting their case to the committee.
Ms. Engram's complaint is that Mr. Robertson used the word "murder" to describe abortion and compared abortionists and their supporters to Stalin and Hitler. She calls this "inflammatory language."
Further down in the article, she offers an obligatory nod of allegiance to the First Amendment ("A country dedicated to freedom of speech does not easily censor political rhetoric . . .") and then presents her big but. "But it [the government] can -- and should -- punish criminal activity.
"That means, among other things, that leaders need to take responsibility for what they say, to respect the power of words just as they respect the law."
Does that mean, among other things, that people who describe abortion as murder are to be censored and denied their First Amendment rights?
I am amazed -- though not amused -- at the alacrity with which liberal journalists will junk the First Amendment whenever it
gets in the way of their pet causes.
In case Ms. Engram didn't know, the entire pro-life argument is based on the proposition that unborn children -- what "pro-choice" activists would call "fetuses"-- are people, human beings just like us with the same basic human rights the rest of us enjoy.
If that is the case, then killing unborn children with willful and deliberate premeditation is murder, just as it would be murder to kill a mature human with willful and deliberate premeditation.
(Just in case someone reads the wrong message here: This does not justify killing abortionists. I don't want anyone accusing me of being "inflammatory.")
To tell pro-life leaders that they must not say this is to tell them that they must not state their reasons for opposing abortion -- in short it is to tell them to shut up and go away.
As for the comparison of abortionists and their supporters with Stalin and Hitler, consider this: Both men were responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and both tolerated no dissent or criticism of any kind.
Is it really so far-fetched to compare abortionists and their supporters -- who, according to pro-lifers, are responsible for millions of deaths, and who are also trying to silence their pro-life opponents -- with those two dictators?
It is abortion that inflames pro-life activists, not the language used to describe it.
The most inflammatory language I have seen on the subject did not even come from pro-lifers. Rather, it was contained in a technical paper published two years ago by the National Abortion Federation, a nationwide association of abortion clinics.
The article described in cold, clinical detail a new late second-trimester abortion technique called "dilation and extraction" in which the brains are sucked out of a live baby's skull, causing the child's head to collapse, thereby facilitating the removal of the child's intact body.
The author, who recommended the technique to his fellow abortionists as a preferred late-term abortion procedure, wrote about killing a human child as if he were discussing the removal of some sort of malignant tumor.
Nothing I have read or heard from the pro-life movement made me as angry as that article did. In fact, the only thing that has ever sickened me as much were the descriptions of some of the things that went on at Auschwitz.
I do not know of a single pro-lifer who approves of killing abortionists. Many -- myself included -- are even opposed to capital punishment when carried out by the state.
On the other hand, I also do not know of any pro-lifers who have any intention of shutting up and slinking away in the face of threats to their First Amendment rights.
Philip R. Manger
Cockeysville