Puerile shibboleths. LTE Answer to last week's LTE by Thesarus Guy

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

Puerile shibboleths

I read with great amusement Richard French's March 2 letter "Just be genuine," trying to imagine anyone using the words he wrote in ordinary conversation.

If he does talk this way, he's a walking Funk and Wagnall dictionary!

What really amused me was French quoting Richard Whately, the great educator, logician and social reformer of the 19th century, and a decided liberal.

Other quotes from Whately that are more germane to this Republican administration are:

"A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbors."

"All frauds, like the well daubed with untempered mortar, always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support."

"Men (read Republicans) are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one."

"Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those (read Democrats) who love the truth to give them the full light."

Lastly, "Weak arguments are often thrust before my path, but although they are most insubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword."

I do not mean to denigrate French's splenetic utterances, congeries of rebarbative puerile shibboleths as they are, but the invidious quiddity of his contumacious innuendo are ineffable! We can only hope that, come November, the Republican Congress and administration will experience a peripeteia and become epigones!

Brian T. H***,

Huntsville, 35811

(The Original LTE)

Just be genuine

Have others ever noticed that Democrats are always talking about a strategy?

During the primary process, political advisers tell their candidates to appeal to the left and then move to the center once they become the party's candidate. John Kerry, and Al Gore before him, pleaded with their handlers to come up with a way to make the public find them acceptable. What is wrong with just being genuine?

We have a president who never looks at a poll or opinion survey.

Democrats are untrammeled in splenetic effluvium designed to denigrate any utterance from a Republican. Before Bush can complete a sentence Democrats will unleash a congeries of rebarbative puerile innuendo.

The Democrat party has lost its greatness. It has no quiddity. Put a hundred or a thousand Democrats in a room and find a common thread and all that unites them is abortion.

Their leader, Howard Dean, persists in an ineffable contumacious view of his fellow Americans. The invidious janissaries of the left have co-opted the message and purpose of the party's epigoni.

Democrats should disabuse themselves of their shibboleths of democracy in favor of embracing its dynamic practice. Look at their penchant for the filibuster.

Democrats should abandon their pettifoggery if they are to even approach a peripeteia of their circumstances. Americans are not stupid, especially Southern Americans.

Quoting Richard Whately, "Everyone wishes to have truth on his side but it is not everyone that sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth."

Richard L. Fre***,

Madison, 35757

Looks like a local Dem tagged Poor Richard well.