Reader mail

I expected some people to respond angrily to my last column, but got a special treat when Charles Davenport, Sr., who I can only assume is the father of our esteemed columnist Charles Davenport, Jr., wrote me this scathing email:

Sarah Beth,

Perhaps you should stick to baking cookies.

Google Tokyo Rose, Hanoi Jame, Ramsey Clark, Benedict Arnold and other traitors. "Demonstrating" against the troops during a time of war is called giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Treason. Back before the fatal illness of political correctness took over this nation, we had ways of dealing with traitors. Again, see Tokyo Rose.

My Country, Right or Wrong, but My Country.

Generally, I don't post reader mail but this was just too good. The apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree in that family. In fairness, my response:

Sir,

You may be willing to let a corrupt administration destroy all that makes America the greatest country in the world. You may be willing to kiss your liberties goodbye, to see our good reputation tarnished by a moral-free war, to see America go from compassionate to bully, all in the name of “My country, right or wrong.” In this, you are putting the president, a transitory figure in America’s history, above the good of the country itself; you are putting partisan, fundamentalist politics over the good of our democracy! And you call yourself a patriot?

As I said in my column, the demonstration in which I participated was led by Iraqi vets. Men and women who served our country in this farce of a war are standing up to say, “Our lives are more important than the president’s quest for oil and ongoing revenue,” and I stand with those vets. And I will march with them wherever they go.

Back before the “illness of political correctness,” we lived in a country with “separate but equal” schools for people of color, women couldn’t vote and polio was crippling our children. You may long for the good old days; I am more interested in America’s future and our progress toward the ideals our founders set forth in the Constitution.

At a time like this, with an administration as corrupt at the Bush administration, dissent is the highest of patriotic acts. In the face of this terrifying administration, your barely-veiled threat means nothing to me.

But hey, that's part of why this country rocks: he can spew his vitriol just as I do mine. Of course I believe I'm right - but I also believe it is his right to be wrong as loudly as he wants, on whatever platform he chooses.