Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401310266
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This plan, contrary to the lamentations of the Virginia Education Association, would serve to strengthen our education system. Public schools suffer from an incredibly bloated government bureaucracy and from lack of competitive stimulus. This bill would provide real incentives for public and private schools to offer the very best educational experience possible.
Would this bill take money from public schools? I think not. Roanoke city currently spends roughly $4,500 per child per year for education. Giving a child a voucher for $2,500 to attend private school (which would pay the entire tuition at several local private schools) would leave the public-school system with $2,000 - to not provide educational services.
Opponents of this plan suggest that poor families don't have the intellectual capabilities to make the best educational choices for their children. How insulting! Poor families know best that they are the ones being penalized by the current educational monopoly, and they stand to gain the most by being able to break out of the current system.
The bottom line would be that all children would receive the best possible education at the lowest cost to taxpayers. School vouchers are an idea whose time has come.
President Clinton said during his campaign that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different outcome. Isn't that what we've been doing with our public-school system? Isn't it time to change?
C. ALAN HENRY
ROANOKE
Oliver North lied honorably
HOW EASY for those, secure in their own self-adulation, who've never faced an agonizing decision in a no-win situation to criticize and abuse a great man.
A committee of Congress - seeking only political gain, and so corrupt that one member was forced to resign - put Col. Oliver North in the most unfair position of anyone in our history. Either place his comrades in arms in mortal danger and betray those superiors who had honored him with great trust, or lie at much risk to himself. His previous acts had been of heroic and selfless determination to defend this country. He wasn't found wanting. (He lied honorably.)
I watched every session of North's inquisition and throughout the hearings, I kept hearing a line from Oliver Wendell Holmes: ``The harpies of the shore shall pluck the eagle of the sea.''
No Virginian has a greater incentive or desire to resist the exploding power of the federal government, which has burdened present and future generations with debilitating debt. Let's remember Thomas Jefferson's warning: ``If you ever concentrate all power in Washington, we will have the most corrupt government on Earth.''
North is a proven fighter who believes in Jeffersonian principles. Virginia can do no better than send him to the United States Senate. I only wish his name were Col. South!
FRED M. WERTH
RURAL RETREAT
Writer provides formula for chaos
I CANNOT let the Jan. 22 letter to the editor by R. Edward Mitchell, ``Second Amendment: insurance policy against tyranny,'' stand unchallenged. In the gun-control debate, he poses as ``one of the quiet voices from the center.'' He begins with the pretense of a calm, even-handed presentation of both sides of the argument, but then goes on to make some of the most outrageous statements I've read in a long time.
If the Second Amendment were as ``clear and unambiguous'' as he claims, there'd be universal agreement among students of the Constitution on its meaning. This isn't the case by any means. Mitchell then says that ``the government has no right to pass any law that infringes upon the peoples' right to own their own guns and carry them around.'' Does he really mean no restrictions on gun ownership? Not quite; he later concedes that ``convicted felons and the mentally disturbed'' shouldn't be allowed to have them. He recognizes no limitations on the size, type or quantity of weapons a citizen might own or where they might be carried around. I don't believe even the National Rifle Association goes that far.
Mitchell assures us that ``a well-armed population remains the true source of peace and domestic tranquility.'' One could hardly deny that we now have a well-armed population, but it should be obvious to anyone who can read a newspaper that there are many places lacking peace and domestic tranquility. It seems that Mitchell has given us a formula for chaos. Yet he worries about mob rule if our legislators felt obliged to vote the way their constituents want.
In his paranoia about government's power, he then makes the most outrageous statement of all: ``If the population has more guns and more people who know how to shoot them than the government has, then America's government will never be able to usurp enough power to enslave people ... '' Does he really believe that an unorganized, undisciplined mob could prevail against the combined forces of our Department of Defense? How dare he talk about the naivete of those who question the need for an armed population!
E. JACQUES MILLER
ROANOKE
Legal loopholes for game preserves
THE OPENING of a business venture such as Boar-Walla Game Preserve in the Potts Creek area of Alleghany County is a terrible representation of how the law is presently written. As of now, anyone wishing to open this type of business venture can do so with little or no problems or regulations.
KAY HIGGINS
CLIFTON FORGE
by CNB