Power of Language Accrues to All

Re “Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap,” Commentary, June 13: John Balzar splendidly mixes eloquence with euphemism and more than a smattering of myopia when he states that “government is school teachers, highway workers, soldiers, park rangers, air traffic controllers and others. “

What drives the right in general, and the intellectual right in particular, is the stark realization that the U.S. government and its various totalitarian agencies wield absolute power over citizens and businesses and can regulate, litigate and tax them into submission. He then closes with “civilized debate ennobles the idea of self-governance.” When was the last time Balzar witnessed a speaker trying to express a dissident view on a college campus?

Tom Briggs

Bakersfield

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Although Balzar’s point about civility in political discussion is well made, I must take issue with his use of Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and Dick Armey as a representative sample of Washington’s pugnacious fuming. These men are all Republicans. Certainly Democrat Tom Daschle or our own inimitable Maxine Waters might merit a mention as malicious malcontents of the Capitol. I do not normally jump on the bandwagon of media bias, but the sole use of Republicans to demonstrate incivility in political discourse does not look good.

Todd M. Thacker

Pasadena

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Balzar seeks to indict Republicans for using hostile and uncivil discourse during public debate, yet the quotations he cites pale in comparison to the histrionic rhetoric being flung by our own state Democratic officials. Gov. Gray Davis, for example, has declared that we are at “war” with Texas energy companies, while our attorney general, Bill Lockyer, gleefully exclaimed that he would like to lock Kenneth Lay, a respected and distinguished chief executive of a major corporation, in a room with a violent rapist. Hardly the model of civility that Balzar would have us adopt.

Timothy P. Jankowski

Los Angeles