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I think we should help Ukraine. Russia is massacring civilians. I think we should not send troops into Ukraine because we’re not trying to start a major war. I think ways to help is by donating to the Ukrainian relief fund and that the U.S. government to send supplies to the Ukrainian military.
Connor Gibson
Mission
Public schools
draw support
I totally agree with Shirley Rickett as relates to her take on the ascendancy of charter schools in the past couple of decades. I also see the sincerity of parents who want “the best education for my children!”
I currently have two grandchildren teaching in public school, one preparing to teach there and a son-in-law who just retired from public school career. Of course all have complaints about their jobs (who doesn’t), but at the same time are committed to their students.
Ms. Rickett’s point about public schools having to “accommodate any and all” students and increasingly having to mainstream them into a regular classroom is well taken. I wasn’t in education other than having gone through it myself, having grandchildren who attended and now great-grandchildren who are there. I have personally witnessed some severely handicapped dealt with in the effort to “educate” them into functioning lifestyles. Not an easy task.
I don’t claim to have an answer, but I don’t see abandoning the public school system as the answer. I do see it as fueling the current divisiveness in our country. Not a good outcome!
Glenda Garza
McAllen
The fetus
and religion
Our Constitution declares a treaty to be the law of the land. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1829: “In the United States, a different principle is established. courts of justice as equivalent to an act of the legislature, whenever it operates of itself, without the aid of any legislative provision.”
The Treaty of Tripoli states that America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. This treaty was initiated by President Washington. It was ratified by the United States Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, taking effect June 10, 1797, with the signature of President John Adams. The founders were unanimous that the USA was, in no way, founded upon the Christian religion, any more than it was founded upon the Muslim religion.
Judeo-Christian became widely used in the United States during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism. Theologian and author Arthur A. Cohen, in The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, questioned the theological validity of the Judeo-Christian concept, suggesting that it was instead essentially an invention of American politics.
The USA was founded upon deistic principles. The Golden Rule of that religion is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Nothing in any of the founding documents suggest a fetus is a human being; that is theology and not fact. In The Christian Bible, the fetus is simply a piece of property, carried by a woman who was also a piece of property.
Hank Shiver
Mission
