Declaring Support for the Founding Fathers

Robin Abcarian’s column in which she castigated the framers of this nation for “whining” and “relentless self-obsession” made my blood boil (“A Nation Born of Whiners, By George,” July 3).

Abcarian states that she reread the Declaration of Independence hoping to be “entranced by its statement of principles, its passion for freedom, its exegesis of what was right with the New World and hopelessly wrong with the old.”

The document addresses the first and second objects of her search as well as any in the written annals of man. The third, the “exegesis,” was not ever considered to be a part of it.

That catalog of wrongdoings and repressions was included for a dual purpose: to explain the dissolution of the bonds between the new nation and the British Empire and in a fervent hope that foreign aid would rescue the out-manned, out-gunned, out-trained and undersupplied Continental Army.

C.B. KELLY, III

San Marino

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Robin Abcarian’s July 3 column is an interpretation of the Declaration of Independence by a typical dumbed-down baby boomer whose appreciation for the freedoms enjoyed by Americans for some two centuries is absolutely devoid of any understanding of what the American Revolution was about.

Without recounting the entire period that led to that revolution, suffice it to say that comparing the passion for freedom, as expressed by Thomas Jefferson, to the “whiny tones of a teenager” is about as duncical as anything I have ever read.

HOPE BRYSON

Los Angeles

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Too many people want to bash everything--the imperfect founding fathers, the imperfect Declaration of Independence, the imperfect pilgrims and settlers, the imperfect blood and bones of the imperfect Americans who struggled to build, improve and maintain this country through the years, and the imperfect capitalistic system.

There is no such thing as perfection, but add up what has been accomplished and the results are a better country than you’ll find anywhere else on this planet.

DORIANE LEE PARKER

Van Nuys

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Great Scot, Robin Abcarian, does your bra pinch? I can’t imagine why else you would write so irritably about our founding fathers.

I reread the Declaration of Independence just as you did and got a different pitch. Then I reread your column to detect any signs of hidden humor, maybe satire. I found none. It just sounds like . . . well, whining.

LAEL LITTKE

Pasadena