To the Editor:
I would like to make some points about what Dr. Owens was saying that seems to have been lost on Mr. Innes.

Based on this [which Innes wrote in a Letter to the Editor included in the July 14 issue], “Without progressive laws, opinions, like the ones you share in your weekly column, would be prohibited and the author jailed,” Mr. Innes seems to believe that our rights come from the laws written by progressive elected politicians.  That is not the case, and just by looking at the First Amendment of the Constitution, you can see that.  It starts, “Congress shall make no law,” thus acknowledging that those rights already existed and that Congress could not take them away. 

Our rights exist because we are human, and government exists to protect those rights.  When government steps on those rights, it moves toward tyranny.  Can Mr. Innes tell me why I should have to give up my right to handle my own health care, a right that was not given to me by the government in the first place?  This is one of many examples of where our government has taken rights from us for the greater good that did not come from them in the first place.

Yes, there are those that do not have the same basic resources as me, but on the other hand, they have more ability in other areas then me.  We each have our gifts and curses that we have to deal with.  I have full use of my body, but Mr. Stephen Hawking has a mind that is one of the greatest in the world. Should I be confined to a wheel chair and he be given a lobotomy so that we will be equal?  Of course not; no, we have both taken what life has given us and made the best of it. The problem with progressive policies is that they destroy the drive of those who take advantage of progressive programs to succeed.

I recently found out about a person I greatly admire for what he accomplished.  He started out with $25 and a sixth grade education and became a multimillionaire.  By the way, he did this during the Great Depression, and, finally one last point, he was African-American.  His name is S.B. Fuller, and you will not find much, if anything, about him in the history books, because he would not toe the progressive line.  He achieved not because of their help, but in spite of their help.

The question our society has before it is not between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.  It is a question between how much control over our lives we will give the government.  I, like Dr. Owens, believe that government control over me should be limited, and the most stringent of those controls should be at the level closest to me.  Others believe that people in far way cities that have very little contact with us should have the most control over our lives and those closest to us, including ourselves, should have the least.

That is the question that our founders dealt with, and I believe solved by realizing that we should have the most control over ourselves, even if we fail.  Because the freedom to fail is necessary so that we have the freedom to succeed.  Failure and success are two sides of the same coin, take away one and you take away the other.

Frederic Boisseau