To the editor:

Our country should not conduct pre-emptive strikes.

Our country should not assassinate anyone. Our country should not allow masked police to kick down anyone’s door and start shooting.

No matter what our intelligence community tells us (and remember, they didn’t know about the collapse of the USSR or the 9-11 attacks), it is not right for us to shoot and ask questions later. We are supposed to be the example of justice and freedom to the world.

Instead, we spread fear — fear of communism, fear of Shiites, fear of crabgrass, fear of exposed breasts, fear of wearing the wrong color, fear of taxes, fear of liberalism, fear of corporations, fear of getting old, fear of salt, fear of being wrong, fear of secondhand smoke, fear of not having enough megabytes and, worst of all, fear of us.

You know what’s right. Speak up. You don’t need a gun under your pillow, but if you don’t pay attention, think and vote, you soon may.

John Bowden,

Lawrence