Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

October 14, 2012

Letters to the editor: Join forces to aid 'hurting people'

Sitting here on a quiet afternoon, my thoughts go back many years. Not as a farm boy but as a young scholar in Windham.

One of the subjects that made school interesting was history -- "the making of a nation." Yes, I was very young then, but what stood out on those pages of history was the dedication of the people to this new and difficult life that they, our forefathers, saw in their vision.

It was not the military that fired the first shot heard round the world! It was folks like us who wanted a life of freedom -- freedom from being governed by another nation and taxed to support that nation's desire to own and rule the underdog.

Back then, as a young boy, I didn't realize those demands. As I grew up and realized what it takes to support a nation, I have wondered why we who have struggled to support family and country need to support a world that has no discipline to contribute to their own welfare!

As Veterans Day draws near, I clearly see those white crosses all over the globe. Folks who fell in battle "holding high the symbol of freedom"! I, too, carried that symbol, in the battle for Iwo Jima.

I saw my comrades fall in battle, I even held them as I heard their last words about their mother and asked for the Lord's grace.

I see them every day; today I see the images on screen and words that degrade in the media. I have a difficulty to realize these people seeking political office are going to represent me and you.

I have had dreams where some of my fallen comrades stood before me and asked, "Is this why we gave our last ounce of devotion? For a nation that refuses to pull together for a hurting people!" How would you, the guilty, answer them if you stood before them?

Just think -- there are no guns pointing at you who stand in Congress. You will have a good meal and a warm bed when the door closes each night; not so, for those who gave their all. Some went down in a flaming cockpit or sank in a turbulent sea, or lost a leg and arms by mortar fire. Where is the handshake that we all knew that meant we will pull together?

Pointing fingers and offering ridicule will not heal a wounded nation! "Cooperation is the key." Let's open those long-ago warehouses that have stood dormant for so long, fill them with machinery to make the goods we now buy from Third World countries.

Give our unemployed a job, give them the opportunity to pay their way! Give them a reason to live. They are willing to pull their load.

Fred Collins

veteran of two wars

Westbrook

Professor misses the mark on federal debt obligation

In University of Southern Maine professor Susan Feiner's commentary about why our $16 trillion national debt is not panic-worthy, she points out that $7 trillion of this is money the government has borrowed from Social Security and other federal agencies and represented by U.S. Treasury bonds ("Here's why the national debt is not panic-worthy," Oct. 7).

From this, she concludes that because these bonds are "in an exactly equal and offsetting amount (to the $7 trillion owed to these agencies) that nets out to zero."

(Continued on page 2)

Tweet