To the editor:

I hope that I am not the only one who noticed a little irony in Monday’s Public Forum. Two letter writers chimed in with their disapproval of congressional Democrats “blocking” the president’s Social Security scheme, while two others disparaged homosexuals in one form or another. In one letter, we are told that we citizens do not need “nanny-state paternalists” in Washington who have decided that “Americans are neither competent nor capable of running their own lives” (in the writer’s own words). In another letter, we are told that those who wish to discriminate against others who accept gays in society are only doing this out of concern for “the eternal welfare” of said people. How ironic.

Perhaps a clarification of the opposing sides’ positions is in order: Liberals feel that an individual’s personal and spiritual choices are in no need of a “nanny-state paternalist” to dictate to them that they are wrong or amoral, whereas conservatives feel it is their business to dictate to others how they should live their lives (always according to the conservative’s definition of what is “moral”). However, in terms of economics, most liberals feel that the government (composed of all citizens) has a moral role in helping those who are in financial straits, especially retired persons, while conservatives abide by the “every man for himself” notion of economics, which almost always ends up neglecting those most in need.

To me the choice is obvious: personal freedom and a shared economic responsibility or moral dictates from religious zealots and a 19th-century economy. Which do you choose?

Andrew Duncan,

Lawrence