LETTERS: COLUMNIST'S CONCLUSIONS ARE QUESTIONED

To the editor:

In his Oct. 17 column, Missouri's premier pessimist, Jack Stapleton, cited the steps the nation is taking toward the demise of democracy as predicted by our second president, John Adams. Though I'm sure Mr. Stapleton refers to the United States as a democracy in a generic sense, technically it is not. Rather it is a representative republic and designed as such by the Founders to avoid the kind of disintegration that Adams feared. While I'm no scholar of American history, I don't think Adams' bleak view of democracy was directed toward our system as Mr. Stapleton states. At any rate, by the time he became president, Adams thought we had the best form of government yet devised because he said as much in his inaugural address.

You can summarize Mr. Stapleton's 11 steps to the demise of democracy as stating it's because government isn't bigger and more powerful than it already is. Some people make too much money, some people work too long for not enough, government doesn't provide health care to everyone, too much money is spent on elections and so on, and he implies government should fix all this. Obviously this would require more government authority and correspondingly less individual freedom. It's more than a little ironic that a government which would reverse Mr. Stapleton's 11 steps to the demise of democracy would of necessity be a polar opposite to the limited government established by the Founders.

Finally, had I the time, it would be interesting to verify all of the statistics Mr. Stapleton cites to support his opinion. I suspect they may be spun somewhat to favor his view. Case in point: He states presidential election campaigns are funded in part by taxes of the lowest-income Americans, implying they are somehow unfairly burdened. In fact, the presidential campaign funding system is a purely voluntary checkoff on ones tax return. The lowest-income Americans do not have $3 of their taxes applied to presidential campaign funding unless they choose it so.

MICHAEL BUCHANAN

Cape Girardeau