ProudProgressive

I had a letter published today in the Colorado Springs Gazette, with the title, “Iraq not responsible for 9/11 attacks.” You can read it on the Gazette’s web page.

The letter I submitted was actually in response to two letters: “Young people’s politics spring from postmodernism,” and “Many want choices without the consequences.” The editor trimmed my letter to address only the first letter. For comparison, here’s my original text:

The Gazette published two letters on November 15 that seemed very concerned with the idea of consequences. In the first, “Young people’s politics spring from postmodernism,” Haley Smith claims that the “…efforts of the Bush administration in Iraq…” are a direct consequence of “Events such as 9/11 and other terrorist attacks…” However, the general understanding of a consequence is that it has some logical connection to the original act. Invading a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on 9/11 is not a natural or desirable consequence of that event.

In the second letter, “Many want choices without the consequences,” Charles Mueller says that, “The decision to allow access to birth control…endorse[s] the belief that we can live with choices and without consequences.” However, the consequence to which Mueller refers, pregnancy, is but one consequence of sex. There are myriad other emotional and medical consequences. Muller, it seems, would like to punish girls who have sex with pregnancy. I would rather that teens consider the multitude of consequences in their decisions, without a life-changing pregnancy resulting from a poor decision.

I can’t quibble too much with the editing, as the connection between the two points was fairly tenuous.

Tags: 9/11, contraception, Iraq, letters to the editor