Individual Rights

I am compelled to respond to a letter written by Kate McFadden (Sept. 22). Although I agree with her conclusion that the abortion issue is a reflection of the much deeper issue of restricted personal freedom, I find that her arguments reaching that conclusion are both logically and philosophically flawed.

Ms. McFadden seems to believe that governmental funding of health care and the arts is an enhancement to freedom while governmental curtailment of personal action is restrictive to freedom. Since governmental funding of any kind requires taxation and is therefore a forced restriction of economic liberty, I find both of these actions limiting to personal freedom. Enforcing either action (or both) is only a matter of which forced morality happens to be in vogue. The only true difference between the right, center and left in today’s political spectrum is the pursuit of the set of rights which they choose to remove from the American public.

Until our society realizes that the rights of the individual must take precedence over the rights of the collective both in matters of economic and personal freedom, America will remain a declining nation.

JAMES A. BROWNFIELD

Pomona