LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: RECONCILIATION WILL BE GREATEST COMEBACK

Dear Editor,

During his eulogy of Richard Nixon, Sen. Robert Dole said that the last half of the twentieth century will be remembered as the Age of Nixon. I doubt that he -- and know I -- have no idea whether that will ultimately be the case. Still, those words moved me. And I imagine they moved millions of others as well.

Many have become so cynical and hardened by events of the recent past that psychological overload seems to have made us collectively immune to feeling much of anything. Perhaps a kind of societal sociopathy as a defense mechanism against seemingly out of control events, both foreign and domestic, has us in its grip.

We "felt" Nixon. Many professed love of Nixon. Others, hatred. The truth was likely an ambiguous mixture of both, but the strength of emotion was undeniable. Whether our individual and community responses to him were propelled more by his personae or more by events he and we were "caught up in" will remain difficult to sort out.

Could it be that his death, in difficult to understand fashion, will help restore faith in the idealistic goals he strove so hard to achieve? Will his death alleviate the cynicism he unintentionally instilled? I think so. His earthly redemption, accomplished before he died, could, after his death, forge an impulse that leads to international reconciliation, and a clear vision of a New World Order so frustratingly clouded in recent times. Yet another Nixon "comeback"? I hope so.

STEPHEN MOSLEY

Sikeston