A couple of weeks ago, I responded to a letter to the editor (LTE) in our local paper, the Coastal
View News. My expanded commentary can be found here.
In the first issue following my letter, David
Chamlee wrote a response to Bud Fink’s ‘Slippery Slope’ memo (“Bigoted, racist
and offensive”, the last LTE on the page). In
this week’s Coastal View, Bud Fink responds (“Dont play the racist card with me”) and James E. Finch also comments (“God bless freedom of speech”).

Although I won’t be sending a letter to the editor on this topic to respond to the responses, I want to state that I stand by my initial response. I fail to see any valid comparison between the ‘faults’ that Bud Fink ascribes to our Gov. (using the phrase ‘Girle Men’, increasing state debt, being a successful fund raiser, failing to commute the death sentence of a lawfully convicted murderer), and the ruthlessness with which Adolf Hitler set about to exterminate an entire ethnic group and other groups with which he disagreed. I also was amused at the back tracking that Bud Fink did with his first point. In the original LTE, Bud Fink originally stated that the Gov. ‘wants to disband the legislature …’ But in his response, Bud Fink tones down his rhetoric and instead makes the more accurate claim that the Gov. ‘Pronounce[d] the legislature unnecessary or at best part time’. A part time legislature sounds like a great idea to me, no matter which party controls it.

The public debate has sunk to name calling, so I am bowing out.