The letter about the recent reenactment of a Civil War battle in Look Park (“Questions Civil War re-enactors at park,” Oct. 15) provides a terrific glimpse of selective moral arrogance advocated by enforcers of political correctness.
The unctuous letter represents a new wrinkle. Staging a reenactment of a battle fought to reunite our nation (and eventually end slavery) is too much for the writer to bear: facts be damned.
That brute Lincoln used violence to bring treasonous state pols, slavers and their armies to their knees. That adults, kids and dogs had to live and die within the sounds and effects of (actual) violence around them. Well, they do now in Aleppo.
And how would the writer have reacted if she was with the U.S. GIs who liberated Dachau? “What loud noises of gunfire and a terrible smell …” no doubt followed by “Oh, that mean SS guard is pointing a gun at us, please don’t shoot, try talking with him.”
The writer correctly lashed at slavery; after all, our nation was deliberately attacked by wealthy rebel traitors ever desirous to continue, by any means, beyond the lash and chains and possess their plantation society.
And this is a tough one for lots of sanctimoniously self-described “progressive-thinking people” in this self-labeled “Happy Valley” to admit this: There are determined diabolical foes for whom nothing short of receiving the same kind of violence and injustice they would unflinchingly hand to others, remains as the only credible deterrent they recognize.
I’m not a militarist, and proud of our military and our country. Most Americans have never forgotten that freedom for all humanity always comes with a hefty price tag, often paid for in the anguish of maimed-for-life bodies and minds, and lost loved ones. Compare that to what the letter writer crabbed about.
Steven Barrett
Hadley