Letters to the Editor for Friday, March 5, 2010

Now is the time to save our schools
At the conclusion of Tuesday night’s Lynchburg School Board meeting two things were abundantly clear.

1. Lynchburg and the country in general need more citizens like Stephen C. Smith, assistant superintendent of schools.

2. We, who are able, need to step up if we care about our childrens’ educations and the future of civilization.

Mr. Smith is organized and prepared. He is able to communicate his knowledge in an articulate manner that no next-generation Lynchburg citizen will be able to, if a segment of this city, this state, and this nation do not devote more time and effort to public service and voluntarily support public education and “reconstruction” through taxes and/or private investment.

Tea-Partiers, people who are broke and underpaid even when they are not broke, are legitimately upset, if not distraught, about personal finance and government misrepresentation.

Anyone in this country who truly does not have sufficient funds in the bank to pay for shelter, food, insurance, and enough remaining each month to pay for family medical and dental services which insurance will not “cover” should not only be taxed less, they should not be taxed at all, as long as they file honestly with the IRS each year.

However, all of our citizens who have the means to do more, have a civic, if not moral, obligation to do more without coercion from the IRS, the mayor, the governor, the president, or the pastor.

As thinking men and women, with or without religious faith, we are, at our core, compassionate beings.

Add to this fundamental attribute of human nature the Biblical creeds of brotherhood and selflessness, and it only stands to reason that the Christian “capitalist,” who has been blessed with good fortune his entire life, should feel compelled to give, of his own free will, to any person or any community which lacks that which he possesses in abundance.

Without voluntary sacrifice from this country’s most fortunate citizens, in time, sooner rather than later, our children will all be home-schooled and the boulevards of Rhode Island will be indiscernable from those of California, Texas, or Wisconsin.

Leave the Tea-Partiers, affluent or otherwise, to their own devices. The energy they currently possess is formidable, but it will not build bridges and classrooms, only barriers and animosity.

May those of us who still have the desire and the means to save our schools and to creatively rebuild America find the courage, the imagination, and the will to stand up and do it ourselves.

We will have the thrill which comes from completing daunting, physical tasks. We will derive satisfaction from the knowledge that we did it, not by order, but through our own free will. We will again be fit.

And we will be comforted to know that we will have left our grandchildren monuments to study in, to climb upon, and to remember us by, long after we are gone.

DOUGLAS THOM III
Lynchburg