LETTERS: PROUD TO CLAIM `LIBERAL' HONOR

To the editor:

A comment was made in Speak Out about a possible connection between the undeniable fact that I retired from the Postal Service and the highly dubious fact that I "espouse liberal, big-government views."

I do not know whether the caller was patronizing me or sincerely praising me when he professed faith in the honorableness of my career and in my excellent performance therein. As it happens, though, he is bang on. During my career, I did indeed receive numerous certificates and awards because of my work. I would have to demur, though, at his assertion that my views are more of a big-government nature than those of, say, Newt Gingrich or Phil Gramm. It is just a matter of emphasis.

Conservatives claim that they are getting government off the backs of the common person. What they really mean is that they want the federal government involved less and lower governments involved more in people's affairs. For example, the federal level is in the position of defending the right of women to have access to abortions. And defend this right against whom? Against states. If conservatives truly want personal decision making to devolve to the lowest possible level, why not to the level of the individual? Is an intrusion into one's private life any less oppressive when done by a state or county or city rather than by the nation?

Also, one would think that such august anti-statist figures as Gingrich or Gramm would have job histories that would lend credibility to their anti-statist pronunciamentos. As it turns out, according to the "World Almanac of U.S. Politics," the number of W-2s, issued yearly, I have received in private industry probably exceeds the number of paychecks Gingrich and Gramm together have received in private industry. These guys have suckled at the public teat for far longer than I. And as to their imposing personal term limits upon their own political careers, there is a song that goes, "Put your dreams away for another day."

I was in the armed forces and, therefore, at risk of being sent -- wherever. By contrast, Gingrich and Gramm were of prime combat age during Vietnam and nevertheless did not go. I will assume that both were beneficiaries of draft exemptions as married students. The mere availability of the exemptions did not mean that they had to take them. Their being conservatives, one doesn't have to ask if they are hawks. But their camping out in the groves of academe during Vietnam can make one question their sincerity, can it not? To me, it is not sufficient for these poseurs to have served in even the rear echelons in Vietnam. To satisfy me, the vocal hawk has to have served in-country where he would have been given lots of chances to bayonet some Commie scum.

Finally, as to the caller's characterization of my expressed opinions as a liberal, I am proud to claim that honor. Liberalism is not an adherence to a given system of economics such as communism or capitalism. And liberalism is not a method of rule such as democracy or monarchy or theocracy. It is this misuse of the word "liberal" that befuddled conservatives find useful in pushing their agenda. Liberalism refers to a state of mind in which new ideas are not discarded merely because they do not jibe with the traditional state of things. A conservative rejects policies, good or bad, that do not have a track record and hangs on to policies, good or bad, that do. It is no exaggeration to assert that innovation and progress are fostered by liberals and resisted, tooth and nail, by conservatives.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.