Dear Editor:
Why do we teach our children good values, especially since such things are so mocked in today's world? Why don't we let them grow up to behave as they please? It surely would be easier.
Simple. A depraved people cannot be trusted with liberty. The strong invariably use that liberty to enslave the weak, and the weak are ever with us. All people age and become dependent on the virtue of others. Invariably, some are born handicapped in one way or another. They, too, are dependent on the care of others. Otherwise they would be preyed upon by the strong and merciless.
There is no way to be both depraved and free. The two are mutually exclusive. A people will invariably be either free and decent, moral and law-abiding, refusing to accept all forms of tyranny, or they will be divided into masters and slaves. There is no middle ground.
Why have Americans remained a free people for these centuries? Because they have struggled both to be decent and good and to rear law-abiding, honorable offspring. They have recognized that depravity and freedom have never successfully coexisted. There is always, and has always been, either depravity or liberty, but never the two at the same time.
Why? Because the very degeneracy in which such people wallow forms the fetters that enslave them. Any and every people who have ever tried to make the two coexist have failed, and always will fail.
This is why we try so hard to rear an honest, basically good, posterity, even in a culture that glorifies everything we abhor. Now is not the time to throw in the towel, though a hefty percentage of Americans demand that we do so.
Let's choose leaders who understand this.
Until next time,
Muriel Sluyter
