Jerry Brown’s Flat Tax Plan

The single most important implication of your article “Brown Captures Connecticut in Stunning Race” (March 25) is, I think, more revealing than “stunning.” As a Republican, I am surprisingly enamored with Jerry Brown! And I submit that many other Americans, of similar persuasion, might be too, even though they’re not openly admitting it now. But the success of the Connecticut primary clearly sends a revealing message that could be compared to one of those from an afternoon TV show that, by a sort of public airing, gives credence to certain heretofore “socially unacceptable” behavior.

Why? Because I think Brown stands for something that many feel has eroded or completely disappeared from our modern way of life. Since the early 1960s, this missing “something” seems to be trust, dignity and national self-respect. Like someone who we say we hate, but really secretly love, Brown represents “an idea” that may be truly right for us but we are afraid to embrace the responsibilities that go with it in fear of repercussions from “politically incorrect” ideas.

But just maybe--just maybe!--if Brown were elected, there would be a resurgence of true American spirit that characterized Americans before World War II. The result could lead not to “Utopia,” that is wrongly implied by Brown’s iconoclastic approach, but to Americans retaking the reins of power in the true spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Teddy Roosevelt and turning this country around.

RONALD CHARLES NESBITT, Orange