Column misapplies part of history
Even trivial events of the past should be uncovered, but there is a reason why there remains, according to Walter Williams (Nov. 7), “untaught history.” His use of anecdotal information from “our war of 1861” to make an argument for less government is a misapplication of history.
True, mainly early Americans looked upon themselves as citizens of their states first, the federal union second. Even Lewis and Clark encountered Indians with the greeting, “From the seventeen United States …” But the implication that Williams makes from the services a relatively few free blacks and slaves provided the Confederacy is a distortion of what was really happening at the time. To say that slaves and free blacks (like Denmark Vessey? Like David Walker?) looked to their states for protection is a stretch. If free and enslaved black Southerners fought voluntarily, it would have been more from ignorance of what their service really meant for them. Slavery and civil rights were going nowhere except, perhaps, as an expedient for better foreign relations.
Turning the controversy over fourth-grade history textbooks in Virginia into a statement for smaller government and “states’ rights” is characteristic of a Walter Williams column.
GRADY S. BURGNER
Does money flow affect scientists?
“Climate scientists plan campaign against skeptics” was a headline in Monday’s Times Free Press. These so-called experts may see the coming end of the infinitely expanding research grants upon (which) they have fed for several years. A fact-filled book by Dr. Roy Spencer tells more truth than countless books written by the self-anointed “man-made climate change” experts. Dr. Spencer’s book, published in 2008, has a secondary title, “How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt The Poor.” Dr. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Congress needs to investigate to see if Washington insiders have gotten too cozy with climate scientists in view of the vast sums of money that may flow to both.
BILL GODSEY
Fairfield Glade, Tenn.
Fight lung cancer with more research
Your recent editorial “Avoiding the ‘scariest’ disease” (Nov. 6) conveys a false message of hope: “Avoiding lung cancer is much easier … Just don’t light up”!
While I concur that smoking invites many diseases including in some cases of lung cancer, the avoidance of smoking is not an “easy’ way to avoid lung cancer. If it were, neither I nor many other nonsmoking victims of lung cancer would be so afflicted.
Recent reports reflect that lung cancer kills more people than any other form of cancer and that only 15 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer survive. Instead of relying on a simplistic “just say no” to smoking, we must add support of research efforts to detect and cure lung cancer.
BARBARA A. DAVIS
Ooltewah