Many men who grew up without fathers will not listen to advice from older male friends, employers or in-laws. They prefer their own way. This becomes a large problem as they stumble through life.
Men who grew up with good fathers have a distinct advantage. They may not always agree with their father’s advice or see the wisdom of it, but often follow it out of respect for what their fathers have done for them.
Very often, that fatherly advice turns out to be quite good, and the son avoids some of life’s plentiful pitfalls.
Our governments, schools, churches and employers cannot succeed with their own agendas when there is such a vacuum of male wisdom in the home.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Trump
supported
All the letters writers express their persuasion and their passion for political discourse to some degree. This is good in America and for the most part is being factual. But on the other hand we see some who just can’t smell the roses because the thorns get in the way.
I for one would like for Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election. My wife and I would request a Republican ballot just so we could maybe put him on the ’24 ballot.
Trump has been a savior for the Republican Party these past six years. Some even went so far as to call him their messiah since his walk down the escalator at Trump Tower. In foreign policy I still remember he shoved his way to the front of the group to get in the center of attention. Man, this is leadership in a macho way! I still remember he said he and Kim Jong-un were in love! Did Kim give up his rocket goals and his nuclear arsenal?
These qualities make you want to vote for him as many times as you can.
Bill Williams
Palmview
Is this
our best?
“I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could.” Many across the country have heard this comment (or something similar) and thus know how Texans feel about our state. It’s a good attitude, but it can also blind us. Wearing the biggest belt buckle doesn’t make you the best person in any substantive way. How about we use one of our custom crocodile boots to pump the brakes a little?
In the area of education, in 2019 the magazine U.S. News ranked Texas 33rd (out of 50) for pre-K to 12th grade and 32nd for higher education. Other ways to report this: We are in last place among the top third of states; we’re No. 1 among the bottom third. We scored a 67 on the test. Feeling “all that” now?
One study tracked 830,000 Texas students who entered 8th grade in 1996; 10 years later, only 22% had earned a postsecondary certificate or degree. It is a shockingly low grade.
The U.S. News ranking is our state’s report card. I worked very hard in high school to be a B+ student. And when I brought home my report card, my father would ask, “Is this the best you can do?” And it was. Perhaps that’s true also for our statewide performance in public education.
These reports raise a lot of questions, and mine would be about the Texas legislature, which sets the rules, and the TEA, which enforces them. But we’ll let my late father, Alfonso Ramirez, ask the first one: “Is this the best we can do?”
Robert Ramirez
McAllen
