Make Your Own Rules,

But Don’t Call Them ‘American Rules’

To the Editor:

Whether or not you agree with a person’s beliefs — political, religious, or moral — we should always show respect. This is the foundation that makes the United States of America and all our freedoms work.

Regarding: “Rules of Life in America” [by Brendan Duffy, Letter Hive, 3/9/12], I do respect your opinions, but calling them “Rules”?

 Here’s a word for you: “Respect.” Courtesy, politeness, and manners. Within recent years, four major radio and television hosts were pulled off the air for disrespect towards others. To date, Rush Limbaugh has lost many advertisers because of his disrespect shown not only towards the Georgetown law student, but towards all unmarried women who use contraception. Even our US Congress has lowered themselves to public name-calling and blatant insults of our current President. Recently, a train in the Washington, D.C., Metro area carried a political ad saying “Go to hell, Obama.”

And all that was okay per Freedom of Speech. And it is okay in form. But in principle? It is just awful. It is disrespectful.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.” —The Declaration of Independence.

America was founded on respect and equality. Where is the respect and equality these days? A bunch of men deciding what birth control a woman can use, yet publicly calling her names for using contraception in the first place? Telling females their baby conceived from rape is a “blessing”? Allowing women to die rather than performing a medically ordered abortion, thus killing the mother and child, and, God forbid, leaving behind her family? Keeping contraception and cancer screening from women by defunding Planned Parenthood, which uses none of their federal monies for abortions? Understanding the burning of The Koran was an accident. If it were The Bible that the Iraqis accidentally burnt and were they urinating on corpses of US Soldiers, then taking a picture of it in triumph, would you feel a rap on the knuckles was sufficient? People losing their right to vote? Water being turned off on people in an entire state because of their immigration status? The wealthiest one percent in America saw their income increase by 275 percent in the years 1979 to 2007 (Wall Street Journal). How much of that went to philanthropy?

In as recent as 1920, women were given the right to vote. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr, worked and died for civil rights, then President Lyndon B. Johnson made those rights official. Yet somehow, after all that, Alabama is still learning harsh lessons about civil rights, and never has a US President received such disrespect as our current President Obama, especially the hatred and disrespect shown from within the political arena.

Go ahead and make your own rules, but don’t call them “America’s Rules.” America belongs to people who live by very different rules, and your statement is revolting to those who stand for everything you disrespect.

Liz Sortino

13 Turkey Roost Road, Sandy Hook                           March 12, 2012