President Bush on the Rioting

Linda Hirshman’s column (“GOP Strategists Shouldn’t Be a Bit Surprised,” Column Left, May 4) requires a response. As predictable as the rising of the sun, whenever there is inner-city violence, rioting and looting, liberals try to blame it on “Republican” policies. Their solution is always the same: pump more money into the bottomless pit dug during the Great Society and War on Poverty.

Remember those programs? As benchmarks of liberal wealth redistribution they were great successes. As effective programs to correct poverty, ignorance and barbarism they were total failures--as the recent riot proves. If those programs had been successful, the denizens of the inner city would by now be happy, educated, useful citizens. What has been produced instead is visible on every TV screen. Spending yet more on failed programs will only compound the disaster.

The riots are the direct product of the liberal agenda, which has created entrenched policies that erode the family, discourage responsibility, promote dependence on welfare handouts and foster a contempt for law.

JAMES F. GLASS

Chatsworth