Good And Bad

"In life there is good and bad" was the headline of your Monday editorial. Yes there is; one thing that is very bad is a small conservative town misrepresented by the embarrassingly prejudiced scribbling of a very liberal local editor.

In an editorial printed by another paper and printed in Highlands Today, saying it's hard for see how the new workplace law allowing firearms in locked vehicles owned by concealed firearm permit holders could pass, clearly shows alliance with anti-second amendment partisans whose claims and views have been consistently disproved by statistics and recently debunked by the Supreme Court.

Another editorial praised the passage of another law requiring an extensive and expensive training course for motorcycle riders. Education and experience are definitely a good idea before hitting the road (not limited to motorcycles either, driving on U.S. 27 shows the need for training or restraining of most drivers of all kinds of vehicles,) but it's your willingness to support governmental control and restriction of personal behavior that is troubling.

But it was your depressing "Happy Birthday USA" message of July 7 that took the partisan cake, inferring that the various troubles that are symptoms of a cyclical (and necessary) temporary economic downturn are the responsibility of, and fixable by, federal government (they are not) is one thing, but the final clear expression of your preference for "change" in the upcoming elections goes beyond the ethical purview of a local editor, especially one whose views are not supported by or representative of the paper they edit, or the populace they serve, the majority of whom are likely to agree with the message of a popular online writer, "gun control? Socialized medicine? No thanks, keep the change."

The hidden message that America's current low esteem can be fixed with unilateral pacifism, government meddling in free-market economics, and passage of oppressive laws limiting freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, has the golden era of the late seventies to speak to that folly. Ronald Reagan, we need you now, again.

J. Terry Curtiss
Sebring