Buchanan on Women at VMI

Oh, please. Once again, Patrick Buchanan has shown us that his ignorance is exceeded only by his arrogance (“Leave the VMI Tradition to Its Heirs,” Column Right, Aug. 26). The legal test for excluding women from The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute is amazingly simple. If these schools accept taxpayers’ dollars (state or federal), they may not choose to exclude women. (It may come as a surprise to Buchanan to learn that women pay taxes too!) If supporters of VMI and The Citadel choose to forgo taxpayer dollars and make these bastions of the past truly “private schools,” they are free to do so.

Now Buchanan has the nerve to tell us the federal judiciary should have no jurisdiction over these matters and believes these are “states’ rights” issues. This tired old argument has been used to defend every form of civil rights abuse from human slavery to segregation to defeating equal rights for women.

Thank all these “carpetbagging lawyers, ACLU scalawags and their black-robed accomplices on the federal bench” who protect us from the likes of Buchanan!

EVA F. KNIGHT

Buena Park

* Not often do I agree with Buchanan, but he hit the nail on the head in his article about the VMI tradition. Forcing change in long-established customs and traditions that harm no one, and are overwhelmingly supported by a clear majority, is a reprehensible violation of the basic concept of democracy.

So now we will have “heroic” females in previously all-male military schools. Great! Now stand by for the same kind of male-female problems that are plaguing the armed services.

Whatever happened to common sense?

NORMAN T. VICK

Seal Beach