Bicentennial of Bill of Rights

In response to “The Bill of Rights: An Orphan Document” (Opinion, Dec. 15):

The Times is to be commended for two separate but philosophically related articles. Richard Rodriguez’s article (“A Legal Fix for Private Failure”) correctly defines the Bill of Rights as a delineation of individual rights against the power of the state. Individual rights and the accompanying responsibility are two sides of the same coin. That is nowhere more clear than in the matters of personal health.

The excellent L.A. Times Magazine article “Faith, Hope and Fraud” (Dec. 15) focuses on individual choice versus the rulings of the state bureaucracy. Responsibility must ultimately rest with the person or persons who must suffer the consequences. The FDA, the FBI and the assistant U.S. attorney general will not suffer from the destruction of Jimmy Keller’s clinic. Only those people who seek his help will lose. It is further evidence of 19th Century economist Frederic Bastiat’s dictum “Government, to be respected, must first be respectable.” The further we get from the real meaning of the Bill of Rights the less that respect will be.

C.R. ESTES

Camarillo