To the Editor:
I read with interest the opinion of one John Proctor, extolling the virtues and wisdom of our Founding Fathers. They are weighted with lovely sentiments and dainty prose. But our Founders were not forced to deal with $14 trillion in debt, a health care system that consumes 20 percent of our nation’s output, an ever-increasing inflow of poorly equipped immigrants who burden our educational system and strain our entitlement programs. Nor were they taxed by a welfare system that continues to encourage abuse and moral decay as it strips faith from our communities. Neither were they confronted with an unseen foe that daily threatens national security No, they were blessed with seemingly unbounded riches of a new continent teeming with resources and opportunity.
Let us not forget, The Founders chose to stay in their homeland and defend for themselves and posterity the rights and privileges they so cherished. They did not flee to safer shores where freedoms had already been paid for with the blood of patriots. They faced the greatest military might in the world and stood their ground. Freedom then, as freedom now, is neither free nor easy.
The alarm that Mr. Proctor so cleverly characterizes as pandering to fear is but a real and pragmatic defense of community values—the common values and moral standards that constitute the foundation upon which the nation is built.
The Real Crucible in which we find ourselves is of our own making. This fire is the result of Values not upheld, Principles not maintained, and Liberties shared too freely with those unwilling to uphold a common moral standard. Let us indeed shine Lady Liberty’s light on those “Tempest Tossed,” but let us carefully choose those best equipped and most willing to uphold our common values and virtues.
“Judge John Hathorne”
P.S.: The last time I saw John Proctor he was about to be hanged.
(James H. McCord IV,
Old Greenwich)
Editor’s note: John Proctor and John Hathorne were a farmer and a judge, respectively, in the Salem, Mass. of 1692; Arthur Miller brought them to life in his 1953 play The Crucible.
