Molyneux on Conservatives

In response to “Conservatives: Are They Now Softheaded?” by Guy Molyneux, Opinion, Oct. 17:

Upon reading the article, I had to wonder where the writer has been during his adult life . . . under a rock somewhere or in outer space! How can anyone living in the United States have such a twisted lack of understanding of what conservatives believe! There are so many erroneous statements in the article that I don’t have space to enumerate them!

The one that I find particularly wrong-headed is his statement, “But we know that the best predictor of a child’s school performance is the parents’ education and financial status. . . .” My own experience disputes his statements completely. I was raised on a Midwest farm, my father having completed eight grades of school, and my mother only six years. During the Depression of the 1930s, I attended one-room country schools with only one teacher.

I found that upon entering high school in a college town, my education was superior to most in my class. Due to economic conditions, I had to leave college early in my second year; then came World War II during which I went to sea for the Army and rapidly reached the top job aboard ship in the purser’s office (at age 21). Without any further schooling, I had a good career after the war with Getty Oil Co., retiring as assistant corporate secretary.

There is absolutely no way that my parents’ education and financial status could have predicted my scholastic achievements or what my life was to be.

J. BROOKS McNEILL, Los Angeles

I believe that Molyneux missed the mark on two counts. He states, “Conservatives propose to eliminate poverty through what they call ‘economic empowerment.’ ” Conservatives do not believe for a minute that poverty will ever be “eliminated” through market forces, government entitlement programs, or any other ideology in between. The question is what is the best approach to a problem that will never be fully resolved.

Conservatives, unlike some liberals, do not suffer from utopian delusions. Secondly, he opines that “(Conservatives) remained trapped in free-market dogma, oblivious to the fact that the country has not judged 12 years of this a success.” This observation fails to note that conservative values run deeper than the whims of the popular opinion of the day. The raising of a wetted finger to the wind is a practice left for others.

DAVID C. BLOXHAM, Huntington Beach