Friday, July 09, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LETTERS: Inconsiderate revelers leave behind their filth

To the editor:

A recent move brought me and my family to southwest Las Vegas. We were excited to be a part of a community where pride in appearance helped maintain property values and created an environment friendly to new families.

Last Sunday, we celebrated a birthday . . . the birthday of our nation; truly a cause for celebration. However, both my wife and me were appalled at the aftermath. Monday morning we awoke to roads cluttered with debris from Sunday's celebration. Understandably the remnants needed time to cool, so I assumed people would clean up Monday afternoon. Many did in my neighborhood. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for my drive to work.

As I passed Desert Breeze Park I was sickened at the garbage spread from one end of the park to the other. Beer cans, bottles, candy wrappers, miscellaneous containers of various sizes and shapes. The squalor of filth was piled almost knee high against the fence line, like drifts of contaminated snow. Apparently people don't care for this community as much as I thought they did.

Is this considered normal behavior? Acceptance of behavior this atrocious explains why no one seems to notice or care when smokers toss their butts into the street (yes, that's littering too).

I'm sure the city or perhaps a well-meaning group of Scouts performing a service project will clean the park, but it shouldn't even be an issue. Didn't everyone learn long ago to clean up after themselves? Apparently not in southwest Las Vegas.

CORY STEED

LAS VEGAS

Dark Ages

To the editor:

As the stem-cell rhetoric heats up, it is interesting to read supposedly scientific articles written by those who put their ideology above reality. Such a commentary was written by Kathleen Miller, director of the Respect Life Foundation of the local Catholic Diocese and recently published in the Review-Journal.

From her religious point of view, destroying human embryos only 14 days old is the taking of human life, so she tries to convince us that we don't need embryos for research.

But there is another point of view. One espoused by law in every civilized country in the world. It is based on the writings of John Locke, the 17th century philosopher of freedom, who defined a human as a "thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places." Clearly biological humanness does not equate with personhood.

Rationality tells us that an embryo without a brain, or a fetus without consciousness is a pre-human, not a human. They can lawfully be aborted. A human that is brain dead has the machines that keep the body alive turned off, legally. They are post-human. Without the gift of consciousness, there is no life and no rights.

Human cells fall off and out of our bodies each day and die. Why must we make a fetish out of a few common cells that are so abundant and easily replaced when humans now alive still need to be educated, housed, fed, healed and empowered to live their own lives to achieve their fullest potential?

For this task, science needs to be free from superstitious taboos and the reigning religious authority. It needs to be free to go where its reflected clarity of thought and rationality lead it. It needs funding and reverent support. Let's not go back to the Dark Ages. Let's move forward to our bright and shining future.

SHIRLEY BRAVERMAN

LAS VEGAS

Willing dupe

To the editor:

While the voters may have deserved a bit more journalistic skepticism than John L. Smith provided in his July 6 column on Shelley Berkley, at least he has opened the door for some discussion on her pro-war vote on Iraq. Generally, he paints a favorable picture, with such statements as, "She reacted decisively with anger and revulsion." But when you add to this her own admission that we went to war for the wrong reasons -- and her explanation that she was duped by the president -- I think the voting public has good reason to question the congresswoman's judgement.

Whether the president misled her or not, her conclusions were her own. While the president paraded his dog-and-pony show, other experts were correctly pointing out that Iraq's military complex had been dismantled after the Gulf War, and that international sanctions made it implausible that it could have rebuilt either its nuclear capability or the armament needed to launch an attack on the United States or our allies in the Middle East. But Rep. Berkley saw what she wanted to see, and heard what she wanted to hear. And by raising her voice as an early and enthusiastic proponent for this administration's plan to invade Iraq, she curtailed a national discussion that may have revealed the truth to herself and the American people.

At her campaign kickoff, Rep. Berkley said that this presidential election "is the most important election in my lifetime, for this nation." She is right that as Democrats we should be united in our effort to elect John Kerry. But I would also add that she may have already been in the most important vote of her career in Congress -- and she failed to discern the truth. Duped or not, this is essentially why there are two Democrats challenging the congresswoman this year.

BRIAN KRAL

LAS VEGAS

The writer is entered in the Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District.

A Creator

To the editor:

Perhaps John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston -- the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, which you published on July 4, were radicals for their day. They certainly are radicals for our day.

Their historical document begins "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."

And they close this document just as they began: "And for the support of

this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

In both the beginning and the ending of this landmark in American history,

these founding fathers -- these radicals -- had the audacity to publicly declare their belief, and their dependence, on their Creator.

Perhaps someone should have told them that they were not being Politically Correct.

MARSHA NORTON

HENDERSON