There are those who want to destroy this great nation, and I don’t understand why. They are ashamed of America and go around the world apologizing for us. They burn our flag and do not want it displayed, as in Laguna Beach, California, where they are trying to remove the flag decal from police cars.
They are destroying history by removing statues of our heroes and Founding Fathers. The Pledge of Allegiance is under attack. They want open borders. They want to change our form of government by doing away with the Electoral College and allowing noncitizens to vote in our elections.
Their idea of Medicare For All, free college tuition, climate change and abolishing ICE and other radical ideas will soon change us into a socialist country.
We are living far better than most people in other countries. Just look at how many foreigners are trying to enter this nation. The people who are pushing these radical ideas will soon make us into a Third World country.
Gene O. Wagner Sr.
Rossville, Ga.
Dictators-gun control: No link
A May 14 letter to the editor attempts to link the elimination of political dissidents, ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust with gun control. This linkage is a non sequitur. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Amin were all dictators. Ironically, all these regimes had the popular support of the people and, in some instances the international community, when they came to power. The emergence of these dictatorial regimes and the aforementioned mass exterminations had more to do with the nature of the regimes than gun control.
There are, however, a number of democratically elected governments that have stringent gun control laws, no mass exterminations and low rates of gun violence. Measured on an average per annum basis per 10 million people: Japan has stringent gun control laws with six gun deaths; the UK has restrictive gun control laws with 23 deaths; Canada has gun control laws with 205 gun deaths. The U.S. with its focus on the Second Amendment has 1,221 gun deaths.
Though there is no connection between gun control and mass extinction, there is a strong correlation between gun control and reduction of gun violence.
T. William Alexander
Hungarian leader wrong U.S. friend
On May 14, Donald Trump welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the White House and held a meeting with him in the Oval Office, during which he emphasized that Orban was controversial but “respected,” singling out for special mention Orban’s work on immigration and his support for “Christian communities.”
So who is Viktor Orban, a man whom neither President Bush nor President Obama asked to the White House? Since Orban took power in Hungary, he has worked steadily to concentrate power in his own hands and in those of his political supporters; he has eliminated constitutional safeguards and has encouraged crony capitalism and corruption. Focusing on ethno-nationalism, he characterizes Muslims as “terrorists” and has presided over a rising tide of anti-Semitism within Hungary.
No one should be surprised Trump finds Orban and other authoritarians appealing since he has made his distaste for democratic norms and any form of opposition clear. Concerned Americans should be contacting their elected representatives, in Washington, their state capitals, and their own localities, to request they make their opinions on Trump’s friendship with dictators and would-be dictators clear, and to make it just as clear that such friendships are not acceptable.
David Cofield
LaFayette, Georgia