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Letters to the Editor: A totatitarian slap on the back As our government frees itself from the last remaining shackles of the Constitution, I feel we owe gratitude to those who've made this possible. We should thank the corporate media as it goes into rapture and exploits the issue of terrorism to convince folks that we need to send our children to kill and be killed to protect the interests of giant oil companies. Citizens deserve a hearty totalitarian slap on the back for their patriotic duty of remaining silent as the Patriot Act removes the obstacles standing in the way of a war machine ready to assault a sovereign nation, quash dissent at home, and gather unimaginable private information about us. Although Rumsfeld suggested that Washington might present little or no evidence of Iraq's quest for banned weapons, we are going to war against a nation that can do us no harm to pay this administrations political debt. Giving extermination orders packaged in vacuous patriotism and lying to the American people is criminal to the highest regard, but to disagree is unpatriotic. We didn't need those bothersome civil liberties anyway. People might think for themselves and some unabashed troublemaker might think that dissent itself is patriotic. Dave Wise, Medford We must defend our Constitution from being trampled by fear When the twin towers in New York were destroyed on 9/11, many things rose up from the rubble. Pain, fear, sorrow, and a tide of patriotism which rolled across America and swept us away for a while, making us all reconsider what it is to be an American. We have been bombarded again, with the quiet passing of the Patriot Act. I've been doing a little research on this, as the people I talk to on a daily basis seem to be unclear about its ramifications. We are allowing some of our most dearly treasured freedoms to be curtailed in the name of fear. You may not be aware that we have enacted a law which puts us right back in the position we were in when the McCarthy trials were hounding innocent Americans through the unbridled use of surveillance. Do you remember the excesses of the CIA regarding Martin Luther King, Jr.? Steps were taken to make sure no citizen would have to go through that again. Those steps have been erased. Ashland City Council is now contemplating incorporating this act in a local way. Are we so fear driven that we would allow our neighbors, ourselves, to be legally hounded over rumors and suspicions? Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Nobody ever said that to be free is to be comfortable, and so we must exist in these uneasy times, looking over our shoulders and worrying about our security. The trick is to hold open our views of liberty with moral courage, and not allow our beautiful and powerful constitution to be trampled by fear mongers, from other cultures or from our own. If we do allow that to happen, then our enemies have truly won. Kim Cower, Talent Guest forum - Republicans cloak their greed in religion and patriotism By Al Bodin, Ashland Have you ever wondered what the GOP has ever done for the workers? In case many of you are too young to remember the accomplishments of the "Liberals" in Congress over the past 70 years, I present a list of some: Social Security; Medicare-Medicaid; Peace Corps; unemployment insurance; welfare for the poor; civil rights; student grant and loan programs; safety laws (OSHA); environmental laws; prevailing wage laws; right to collective bargaining (which brought about paid medical insurance, paid vacations, pensions, etc.) workers compensation; Marshall Plan; flood disaster insurance' school lunch programs; women's rights; Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage, instituted child labor laws, and set up time-and-a-half pay for over 40-hour week. There was FHA-HUD with its public housing, urban renewal and 44 million residential homes (before W.W.II almost 70 percent of our nation were renters; by the 1970s this had been reversed) And farm-conservation subsidies - USDA programs, FDA (the bankers didn't want to make rural loans) small flood-control lakes, rural water districts, rural electricity (REA) The GI Bill was passed, (free tuition & books) which the Republicans at the time bitterly opposed. They were salivating over millions of returning veterans to hire as cheap labor. Instead, more than 8 million have used college benefits, creating millions of entrepreneurs; most of us had never dreamed of college. For the unemployed GI, there was $20 a week for 52 weeks to help get started (a lot of money in those days) I was a member of the 52-20 club. In addition, the VA provided more than 2 million home loans. The Liberals dragged the GOP into the 20th century scratching and screaming with their heels in the mud, fighting anything that was progressive. The Republicans have never understood that the spending power of blue-collar workers, obtained through Democrats and unions, is what really made this country great. The Good Life was not obtained by their own endeavors. They cloak their greed in religion and patriotism, never comprehending that these programs have benefited all of us. Of course, Bushie did promise to run this country like a corporation, and that he certainly has, and is. While the 1 percent of the rich will continue to reap most from the loathsome tax reductions, the poor will continue to suffer the most. For all of Bush's crocodile tears about those who suffered the loss of jobs in an economy soured by a burst stock market, terrorist attacks and corporate scandals, he does nothing to ease the burden of unemployed workers. Pathetically, Bushie does not know what an unemployment check is, particularly when the failure to receive one would have catastrophic effects in the dead of winter for a family. This wretched guy has not the slightest sense of what so many people are experiencing. He even has the chutzpah to encourage people to volunteer to help the poor when he himself has no reason to take some of the billions of dollars spent on "star wars" to help these poor and those on the threshold of poverty. This man has his head in the clouds while being supported by his wealthy grabby buddies who pay no taxes and are bent on having the middle class pay a higher percentage of taxes. Bush and his corporate cabal have no real understanding what their responsibility should be. While Ashcroft et.al throttles our personal freedoms by any measure they can safely ram down the throats of the gullible American public, George Herbert Hoover Bush is ruling over a country with a shattered economy. 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