LETTERS: RUSH LIMBAUGH IS PROPHET PREDICTED BY SOLZHENITSYN

To the editor:

It was predictable that Rush Limbaugh had to come from Missouri. He can be blunt and outspoken like the man from Independence. Missourians are well-known for their plain speaking and for not wasting inordinate time on preliminaries and extravagant politeness. Diplomatic indirection and the emotional buck stops in Missouri. And if Harry Truman were alive today, I am convinced he could only be a Republican, because his own party has drifted too far to the left of common sense for too long.

A number of years ago, the world's greatest living writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, a man who learned his craft the hard way in the concentration camps of Siberia and who is now uncompromisingly engaged in encouraging true democracy in his native Russia, gave a memorable address to one of our country's most august bodies of academics: the faculty of Yale University.

Solzhenitsyn told the assembled professors in plain language that they did not represent the tried and enduring values of America and that they, instead, should look to a small town with a rural state college somewhere along the banks of the Mississippi, in the middle of America, to receive inspiration for their political agendas. For this sensible and sound advice, he was roundly booed and hissed, which, by the way, is the best kind of applause and validation for a prophet.

TED HIRSCHFIELD

Cape Girardeau