‘A Lesson From the Heartland’

Some of us in Rockford, Illinois were glad to see the article titled “A Lesson From the Heartland” by Andrew Wolf in The New York Sun [Opinion, January 21, 2005]. It was about the battle Lewis Lemon Global Academy Principal Tiffany Parker had taken on in the Rockford Public School System regarding midyear loss of a federally granted program called “Direct Instruction.” The story was an accurate portrayal of her struggle to support the children of Lemon, an impoverished minority school.

Sadly, today Ms. Parker was relieved of her duties at Lemon; ironically, immediately after The New York Sun article ran. It is too bad that she did indeed become more of a victim of the reading wars than Mr. Wolf had initially predicted. Parker was a great advocate for a successful reading program and a group of kids who are many times overlooked.

I do hope New York can indeed learn a lesson from the heartland.

MICHELLE LANG
Rockford, Ill.

‘Tested But Not Weary’

While America should support the growth of freedom across the world, President Bush is dead wrong that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands” [“Tested But Not Weary,” Opinion, January 21, 2005].

America’s security demands only the willingness to act against any threat to America with an immediate, unilateral, and ruthless military response. It means ceasing to evade the fact that countries harboring terrorists have already declared war on America. It requires refusing to place America’s national security at the mercy of other nations’ approval, and holding America’s defense above any concern for civilian casualties.

A real defense against terrorism would have named the enemy clearly and unequivocally: militant Islam. It would have involved raining massive destruction on the prime state sponsor of Islamist terror – Iran – then announcing: “Any further threats and we’ll do it again,” leaving the enemy to deal with the wreckage it had brought on itself.

But Mr. Bush is too much of an altruist to support such an unapologetically self-interested policy – which is why, for him, victory against terrorism can come only in some distant future. He has allowed the national security of America to be held hostage to the success of a vote in Iraq. Small wonder that so many Arab nations are interested in making Iraq a quagmire for us: Bush’s policies have made it possible for them to weaken America in a way they never could have achieved on their own.

Forget nation-building. Freedom is a value, and like any other value it must be earned by those who would benefit from it. Even had Iraq been the primary terrorist threat, our venture in rebuilding Iraq has just meant granting that country an unearned benefit; it’s just one more altruistic welfare program.

Mr. Bush stated that “the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another.” But that is exactly what freedom means. If he is asking Americans to sign up to bring welfare statism to the Arab world, he can count me out.

PAUL BLAIR
Manhattan

‘Reading for Javits’

I believe that New York politicians, city officials, editorial writers, and taxpayers have heard of Heywood Sanders and his critical review of convention center feasibility studies before Sanders’s latest “Space Available: The Realities of Convention Centers Centers as Economic Development Strategy” [“Reading for Javits,” Editorial, January 24, 2005].

In fact, the Independent Budget Office in their July 1, 2004 fiscal report, “Inside the Budget,” reads, “As University of Texas Professor Heywood T. Sanders has made clear in studies such as ‘Convention Myths and Markets: A Critical Review of Convention Center Feasibility Studies,’ estimating the demand for convention center space is highly speculative. Jobs and earnings at the West Side facility would fall considerably if the convention activity failed to meet expectations. For example, if convention activity is 10 expositions a year, then total direct and indirect output would fall to $429 million and the employment impact would be 2,930. The increase in earnings would be $118 million.”

QUESHAUN SUDBURY
Mr. Sudbury is a project analyst at the New York City Department of Design and Construction
Long Island City, N.Y.

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