Debate Over Cuban Boy

Re “A Good Ruling; Now Stick With It,” editorial, Jan. 13: Is this a nation of laws or bureaucracies? I note the left has discovered property rights: Elian Gonzalez is escaped property of his father and must be returned. Do we live in the antebellum, Dred Scott South, with an escaping mother dying for her son, yet getting her child to the free states, only to have the child torn from his extended family and returned by force to a land of the unfree? I don’t pretend to know what is the very best for Elian.

Let the courts, not the INS, thoughtfully and in due time decide the issue.

DEVON SHOWLEY

Cypress

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Re Elian Gonzalez: Once again, the Clinton administration has done the right thing in backing Atty. Gen. Janet Reno’s decision based on her opinion that immigration law is a federal matter (Jan. 13). Also, according to reports out of Miami, the protesters are a relatively small group of hotheads.

I believe it is one thing for these people to exercise their right to free speech on this matter; it is another for them to interfere in the lives of a father and his son simply because of their political beliefs. They are stridently “American” but need some lessons in what that means.

RITA SOKOLOW

Los Angeles

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This international tug of war over 6-year-old Elian seems similar to a case out of biblical history. I wonder what Solomon would do?

STEVEN DAVIS

Garden Grove

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Congressional complicity in violation of international law, in the form of the subpoena issued by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), favoring those wishing that Elian stay in Miami (Jan. 8) demonstrates to the world the depths to which democracy stoops when it supports crass materialism, arrogance and uncivil disobedience.

The rule of law is abandoned while rampant, base emotions are embraced. Is this the example we wish to set as a world leader with military troops around the world in supposed support of moral right? Or do we enforce the premise that might makes right?

SYLVAIN FRIBOURG

West Hills