Letters to the editor

OPINION:

Count all the votes

Michigan and Florida defied the Democratic Party’s rules by moving their primaries to January in an attempt to leap-frog other states’ primaries (“Democrats nix do-over primary,” Around the Nation, Saturday).

As a result, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is planning to deny seats to the delegates from these two states at the Democratic National Convention.

In spite of all this, a legally binding primary was held in these two states. It is only a matter of time before someone who voted in these primaries will file a lawsuit because their vote must be honored. Nobody in this country can be told that their legally cast vote does not count because leaders of a state and national party made a mistake.

Before those primaries were held, the DNC and the Michigan/Florida Democratic committees should have realized that you cannot simply disregard a vote once it is cast just because they could not come to an agreement.

And you cannot just “do-over” an election to fix a mistake. If anything, the DNC and the Michigan/Florida Democratic committees should have learned this from the 2000 presidential election.

Unless every legally cast vote is counted, we run the risk of putting in jeopardy the very foundation of our nation. Unfortunately, this issue will once again have to be resolved by the courts because the so-called party leaders tried to get cute with the process.

JOE BIALEK

Cleveland, Ohio

Garbled economic theory

Not only does William Hawkins misunderstand the principle of comparative advantage, but he incorrectly suggests that it is the lone pillar supporting the case for free trade (“Economic theory ignores reality,” Letters, Monday).

Adam Smith didn’t know about comparative advantage when he wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” but his case for free trade remains powerful. Smith explained that free trade expands the size of markets, making possible capital investments and greater specialization of workers.

These investments, along with the improved skills that highly specialized workers learn, increase output and wages. Confining economic activity to the nation keeps the market artificially small and, thereby, reduces opportunities for output-expanding investment and specialization.

Smith also explained a danger that Mr. Hawkins who wants government to pick economic “champions” overlooks: “The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a many who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX

Chairman

Department of Economics

George Mason University

Fairfax

A shelled perspective on immigration

Ben Wattenberg’s Commentary “Rise and fall of nations” (Sunday) supplies evidence, based on a sample size of one, that immigrant children are getting fine grades and learning to speak English well.

Proponents of immigration claim that by the third generation, Mexican-Americans will be on par with native U.S. citizens. Research shows this is not true. In their 2007 book “The Immigration Solution,” Heather Mac Donald, Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga write: “Proponents of unregulated immigration simply ignore the growing underclass problem among later generations of Hispanics, with its attendant gang involvement and teen pregnancy.” The rate of Mexican welfare recipients is twice as high as that of natives. Worse, welfare use increases between second and third generations to 31 percent. Miss Mac Donald noted that “third-generation Mexican-Americans remain three times as likely to drop out of high school as whites and 1 and a half times as likely to drop out as blacks. They complete college at one-third the rate of whites.”

JEROME BLONDELL

Springfield

Nation building

I just had to comment on the article “Bush a convert to nation building” (Page 1, Monday), which discusses the Bush administration’s adoption of the “humanitarian” intervention concept as a tool/excuse for illegally interfering and “building” new nations. This sounds a lot like the “white man’s burden” of the 19th century, which was used as a justification to create the British Empire and concomitant conflicts from which many nations and peoples are still suffering to this day.

The problems associated with our nation “building” can be summarized as such: 1) We have created nations (Kosovo, Bosnia) that have no historical experience to govern themselves. 2) In creating these nations, we illegally intervened in civil wars, chose sides and forced “victor’s justice” on the defeated side. Much of human history shows that long-lasting peace was rarely obtained via force. This merely sets the stage for more brutal conflict and instability in the future. 3) We rarely respect international laws in creating these states and, therefore, set a horrible precedent for new nations to do the same. 4) We have created nations that are not democratic, but rather ethnically and religiously “pure,” terrorist-supporting states.

Is it really any wonder why all of our nation-building efforts have failed? And at what cost of American lives and capital? I would like to make a suggestion to our misguided, quixotic leaders to focus on rebuilding our own broken, collapsing nation instead of worrying about fixing and further breaking other nations at the American taxpayer’s expense. The money would be far better spent, and we might find, miraculously, that we are far less hated throughout the world.

MICHAEL PRAVICA

Henderson, Nev.

Blacks and Planned Parenthood

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, responded to Gerald R. McDermott and Carol M. Swain’s Op-Ed, “The abortion industry” (March 26) (“Planned Parenthood’s record,” Letters, Friday).

Mrs. Richards said that “Ninety-seven percent of our services” are not related to abortion, but the organization’s annual report for 2006-2007 shows a rapid increase (9 percent over the previous report) in the number of abortions to 289,750 more than 25 percent of the national total at the same time the number of abortions nationally is decreasing.

Mrs. Richards says, “Planned Parenthood follows federal, state and local laws regarding minors.” But the Life Dynamics telephone survey cited in the Op-Ed showed that more than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood facilities would cover up statutory rape.

Mrs. Richards says, “Planned Parenthood adamantly rejects racist policies ,” but college students in a telephone survey found Planned Parenthood affiliates anxious to accept donations made with racist intent to kill black babies .

Mrs. Richards says, “We help reduce the need for abortions,” but with huge increases from year to year and almost 290,000 women undergoing abortions last year at Planned Parenthood and their personnel conspiring to avoid reporting statutory rape to sell more abortions and accepting donations to kill more black babies, it is clearly a reprehensible “machine of death.”

MISSY SMITH

Silent No More Awareness

Campaign

Washington