A well-educated citizenry required

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, May 24, 2001

I am commenting on the May 3 letter by Margaret Ford regarding becoming a Gestapo state (“Court ruling: We’re moving to a Gestapo state”).

I think that Ms. Ford is appropriately alarmed at the possibility of the United States becoming a totalitarian state. I cannot agree with her on several other points made in her letter, however.

The USA has never been a democracy. Its founding in 1783 was as a representative or federal republic and has remained so until the present moment. It is committed to democratic processes, such as voting with the majority determining the fate of the issue, free speech of individuals and the press, protections against unlawful search and imprisonment, and trial by juries of peers, to name a few.

It is my personal belief that we will remain a representative republic only if our citizenry is well educated, including an adequate knowledge of our history and political system.

It is a matter of world history that highly literate nations are more susceptible to fascism, pre-World War II Germany, Italy and Japan, for example. Illiterate nations tend to adopt communism as its political system, the example being post-World War I Russia, with many other current examples of poverty-stricken and less-literate nations adopting communism as a panacea for their desperate problems.

In response to Ms. Ford’s concerns, I will point out that the officer’s actions were well supported by current legislation and judicial edict.

Lynnwood