Letters to the Editor Jan. 10

We've heard that line before from Democrats

Dr. Paslov starts his column by stating, "The congressional Republicans are getting ugly. They refuse to do what they were elected to do - negotiate, compromise and implement."

He calls the Republicans the party of no, which, of course, is what all the Democrats are also stating. I hope that Dr. Paslov was more honest with his students than he is in his column. The real party of no is the Democrats. They are the ones to say no - to negotiations or compromise.

Just one case in point is the health bill the Senate passed. The Republicans submitted 788 amendments to this bill. Does that sound like the party of no?

I am waiting for Dr. Paslov to write about the cap and trade bill put forward by the Democrats and approved by President Obama. The president states that it will double our energy cost but that it will also make us energy-independent. Where have I heard this before? Oh, I remember, it was late 1977 when President Carter introduced the new Cabinet post called the Energy Department that was to make us energy independent. This year, the Energy Department's budget is $26.5 billion and employs over 150,000 people. Your guess is as good as mine as to how many people will be employed once the health bill starts.

Patrick McIntyre

Stagecoach

How can we tolerate our broken health system?

I'm appalled at the armchair quarterbacks who cynically criticize our president and our Democratic Congress for trying to bring our health care system into the 21st century. They throw around words like "socialism" while they collect unemployment benefits, send their kids to public schools, drive on government-maintained highways, sign up for Medicare, and grow old on Social Security.

These Americans have been too comfortable for too long, turning a blind eye to those in our own nation who suffer from lack of access to even basic health care, something all other industrialized democracies consider the obligation of a civilized country.

While even one baby in this great social experiment cries from illness without a doctor's care; while even one elderly person in this compassionate nation suffers or dies because medicine is too expensive; while even one human being in the richest country in the world is denied a life-saving medical procedure because a medical insurer decides her life is not worth saving; while even one traumatized American veteran sleeps on a sidewalk or commits suicide because we failed to care for him after we used him - how can we continue to tolerate a broken system driven by what is best for insurance companies and not what is best for Americans?

We are better than that. Am I idealistic? You bet. It was idealism that founded our nation over 200 years ago, and it may be what saves it now.

Marilee Swirczek

Carson City

Reid is driving our nation to ruin

One of Sen. Harry Reid's defenders has responded to my criticisms in an earlier letter. We now know that we pay taxes to provide Reid the corrupting baksheesh he requires to buy votes for utopian socialized medicine. We also know from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Thomas Barthold that ReidCare includes jail time for refuseniks.

Jail and bribery are part of the health care debate because Dirty Harry put them there; he has a history of abusing the law. Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto indicted Brian Krolicki to kneecap his Senate run against Reid, a case recently laughed out of court. Whose idea was that?

Responding to my criticism that Reid declared the Iraq war lost, his defender asked: "What is it that we have won?" Eight years of safety under Bush, which ended these last 11 months with a sharp increase in terror attacks, including the killings of soldiers in Little Rock and Fort Hood.

Democrat policies that weaken us include the courts-martial of Navy SEALs, treating terrorists like shoplifters, and the PC rules of engagement in Afghanistan that are killing Americans.

Better men than Reid are fighting and dying for this country. Reid is the arrogant, ungrateful beneficiary of trusting Nevadans who overlooked his personal enrichment while in public service and re-elected him to the U.S. Senate. The reward for that trust will be submission to a government-run medical gulag or a year in prison.

Lynn Muzzy

Minden

Muth and his ilk are not true conservatives

Mr. Chuck Muth praises 10 top conservatives. The folks he praises are movement conservatives, but bear little resemblance to historical or classical conservatives.

Classical conservatives such as Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, Richard Nixon or even William F. Buckley would agree that the basic tenet of conservatism is to preserve existing institutions and carefully reform the traditional established structures as necessary.

Muth and the movement conservatives that he adores are anti-establishment and disparage existing institutions. In a classical sense, Muth's political beliefs are more akin to anarchism than conservatism. Classical conservatives such as Burke warned against the destabilizing perils of extremist politics of any kind. In arguing against the excesses of the French revolution, he believed that the existing form of government and established civil institutions should be preserved.

Muth and movement conservatives of the modern political right are ideologues who disparage the role of government. For them, paying taxes is unpatriotic. This anti-tax ideology is at its core anti-institutional, as it wishes to dismantle the existing form and structures of government.

This position is in opposition to the institution of the federal income tax established first by Republican President Abraham Lincoln and later reintroduced by Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Perhaps it would be more prudent to consider Mr. Muth and movement conservatives as anti-tax and anti-government radicals and not conservatives.

Robert Jennings-Teats

Carson City

Appeal, find a less radical columnist than Paslov

I am so glad that Dr. Paslov is no longer involved with the education of our youth. Whoops, I'm wrong. He is still a board member of the Silver State High School. I also hate to think of the hundreds or even thousands of our young people he has infected with his sick, biased political views.

The Nevada Appeal should review and or edit his commentaries before printing. Better yet, the Appeal should find a less radical contributor to fill his space.

Glenn Bush

Carson City