Argument not ludicrous

Dear Editor:

In answer to Tony Smith’s letter of the

Feb. 25 edition of The Western News regarding my letter to the same

paper on Feb. 11 : Tony Smith may be correct in his pronouncement

on the timing of the Bill of Rights.

My point, however, was and still is

that the rights over which the American Revolution was fought were

missing in the Constitution. Whether they were included in 1788 or

1791 is not as important as their becoming a part of the document.

Those rights, after all, were why we had just fought a war with

England.

Mr. Smith finds my contention

“ludicrous” that we are worse off today in terms of rights and

freedom than were the colonists before the Revolution. I believe my

contentions are debatable but by no means “ludicrous.” The

colonists were not required to pay half or more, (if all taxes are

added up), of the rewards of their toil to government. Neither were

they coerced into buying health insurance against their will as the

new “Obamacare” bill dictates.

Mr. Smith’s final observation that my

commentaries do not well serve the advocates of smaller government

I believe is irrelevant, because, like it or not, big government is

only going to get bigger. The road to socialism kindled by

presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and now pushed

along by Barack Obama has too much momentum to stop or even slow.

Smaller government has acquired the status of a lost cause and as

such, has killed my passion to fight for it.

Bill Payne

Libby