An obituary for Nov. 5, 2024
America died today, hope died today. Freedom died today, ethics died today. Morality died today, kindness died today. Fairness died today, decency died today. Love died today.
Cause of death: Ignorance, racism, fear, hate and greed.
Pray for America’s survival.
Joel Blake
Pondering what divides us today
In case you missed this rant in the Saturday, Nov. 2, Times Free Press, here it is: “We were all humans until religion separated us, politics divided us, wealth classified us and race disconnected us.”
We all need to read and re-read it. I’m putting it on my wall alongside:
“When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence.”
Pat Garrett
Trion, Georgia
Without news, where’s TFP digital advantage?
I opened the Nov. 6 edition of the Times Free Press at 9:30 a.m. to find the headline, “The World Waits.”
I thought the advantage of a digital newspaper was to publish up-to-date news. Was there no one on your staff following the most consequential election in our lifetime? Not a single person at the desk who could stay up all night to keep your reporting current?
I had to open my New York Times subscription to find out that Trump won. I am trying to think of a reason to keep my subscription to your paper.
Lisa Scott
Dayton, Tennessee
Mutilated children not gender-affirming care
In the “Southern Baptists Are Going After Trans Kids” editorial on the Chattanooga Times opinion page on Nov. 1, the writer arrogates to himself the right to correct the Southern Baptist Convention on its use of the word “sex” rather than “gender.” As is pointed out in the editorial, gender is a “social construct,” rather than an objective reality. It’s something that a group of people decided to bring into existence because they liked the idea, like “Furries.”
The errors and misrepresentations in the editorial are too numerous to address here but one piece of misinformation, “Gender-affirming care for children — which does not include surgery,” stands out. According to a Reuters-sponsored analysis of insurance claims in the United States, 56 genital surgeries and at least 776 mastectomies among patients ages 13 to 17 with gender dysphoria diagnosis were performed from 2019 to 2021. More recent studies have found far more surgeries.
Someday, when this mania has subsided, when these mutilated children become adults and understand fully the damage that has been done to them, editorial writers such as this one will have to compose their mea culpas. Fortunately for them, they won’t be paying damages as hospitals and surgeons certainly will.
Nick Decosimo
U.S. judiciary exposes allegiance on abortion
On the surface, Roe v Wade was an effort to establish abortion as an endowed, however conjugated, constitutional right. But for global socialists, the irrelevant abortion debate was an opportunity to achieve a much more destructive objective, one fatal to the American republic if left unchecked.
The 1973 Supreme Court was predominantly progressive; sycophants to global socialists seeking to gain control of government, a tremendously difficult objective given the self-regulating “three branch structure.”
For 50 years, activist judges have used judicial activism to devastate the rule of law, expand intrusive government and alternatively use or defy Congress and the presidency. The reversal of RvW (and the Chevron Doctrine in 2024) based not on ideologies but on the rule of law constitutes a nullification of judicial activism. The left’s frenzied response — block the restoration of constitutional law by packing the court with like-minded appointees, discredit sitting justices, falsely persecute political opposition, and disingenuously mislead the public.
As goes the rule of law, so goes democracy. A renegade U.S. judiciary has exposed its allegiance — and such disloyal allegiance is not to America and its legal citizens.
RG Kirn
Soddy-Daisy
Killing the unborn still not ‘health care’
As a reminder to those trying to rationalize murdering babies, no, killing an unborn baby is not “health care,” and you know it isn’t.
Ronald Millsaps
Fewer people voted; What happened?
With the latest election now behind us, everyone is analyzing how it all came about. How did Donald Trump win, and how did Kamala Harris lose?
So far, it seems no one is talking about the lower voter turnout, and how this may have affected the outcome.
As of Nov 7, almost 15 million people did not vote in this election. Donald Trump received almost as many votes as the last election, so almost all of the dropoff appears to have occurred in those voting for the Democrat candidate. That is a huge difference.
What is also noteworthy is that many people shifted their votes to Donald Trump, so that means even fewer people voted for Kamala Harris compared to Joe Biden from the last election.
I don’t have the information to even guess why this happened, but curious why the media or the analysts have yet to discuss or dive into this phenomena.
Richard Spangler
Thanks to those who made free vote possible
Some years ago, my son returned from his third combat tour in the Middle East. He said to me, “Dad, I’m not sure if it was worth it.” I could say the same about my combat tour in Vietnam.
I said to him, “Every time you think about your service being of no significance, I want you to think about the picture of the Iraqi woman holding up her purple ink-stained thumb. You and people like you gave her the freedom to vote, if only for one moment in time. With her vote she had freedom — to express herself, to be human, to be a member of her country on equal footing with everybody else, to be a woman, to go to school. It would have been nice if she had other opportunities. But that isn’t your responsibility. It’s up to the people of her country to ensure that those opportunities continue. You and people like you (some at great personal price) gave her the gift of freedom for a moment in time.”
To those here in this country who enable us to live and vote freely — thank you. Thank you for your service to our country. Never question the importance of your service. It gives us freedom for a moment in time.
Douglas K. Davis