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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 13, 1989)
The Battalion OPINION Mail Call Mysticism not the answer EDITOR: I am writing in response to Todd Honeycutt’s column of Feb. 9. His nauseating and boring solution to humanity’s problems is to revert to a philosophy combining mysticism and ecology. How many times have I heard those emotion-driven, moth-eaten arguments condemning the world, humankind, technology and reason? First, Mr. Honeycutt tells us that humans have turned to pollution- producing, greedy, materialistic beings; we have reined a once perfect Earth. Let’s try telling that to an African malaria victim. Try telling a woman from Bangladesh who walks miles through muddy swampland to get food, that America is fouled with family cars and paved roads. Without machines and technology and a greed for living on this Earth, mere survival is oppressive to the mind and the body. Second, Mr. Honeycutt tells us that by shutting our eyes tight and moaning like an ascetic from the Dark Ages we can achieve spiritual transcendence. The Dark Ages were not the only era dominated by mysticism; also note that political tyranny, slavery, and rule by brute force has always accompanied mysticism — from tribal savagery to the Pharoahs of Egypt and the Kings of Europe. As Ayn Rand put it, “When men claim to possess supernatural means of knowledge, no persuasion, communication, or understanding are possible.” Mysticism reduces humans to the state of wild animals where disagreements end only in physical violence. If we are to live successfully on Earth we must recognize the supremacy of reason. So why does Mr. Honeycutt want us to return to meditation, faith in the supernatural, and tribalism? What is the nature of that non-material, non profit world that Todd can only explain by telling what it is not rather than what it is? Is that other dimension worth denouncing the tremendous virtues of integrity, willpower, reason, and skill necessary to farm the food you eat, provide you with antibiotics, ley you fly home for the holidays, and give you a word processor to write your column on? Kevin Copps ’89 Don’t blame progress EDITOR: I sincerely hope that Todd Honeycutt can live with himself. After all, he surely must include himself in the human race that he spoke of in his column of Feb. 9. Every morning he must wake up in his cursed bed that our technology invented for him. And those ecologically detrimental blankets that kept him warm in this freezing cold weather— how awful. It must be pure torture for him to look around at his possessions, be they many or few, for they are not really needed by one who looks inward for mental self-awareness. But he realizes that he too is a part of this sickening idea of making oneself comfortable, a habit mankind cannot break. I hope that Mr. Honeycutt remembers a few points. One, if it were not for a mind-polluting education, he could not have presented his opinion of this world, nor could we have read it. Two, if it were not for thinking people that were progressive enough to present the world with new ideas for advancement, the printing press that he used to distirbute his ideas would not exist. And three, I could not help but notice Mr. Honeycutt’s corrective lenses in his photograph, another result of technological advancement. Without these, he could not clearly see the beauty that still exists in this world. The point of this is that there are indeed severe problems in this world, but not all progress is bad. Mr. Honeycutt, this world that we live in is here to stay, and all the lamenting about humankind’s self-destruction you can muster will do nothing to save it. Please realize that our technology is also here to stay and that the only way to correct the numerous ecological and human problems on Earth is to do something about them, not just wish them away back to a primitive and simple time. Douglas E. Baker ’89 Create abortion alternatives EDITOR: In response to all the recent letters on the abortion issue, I cannot believe how lacking in common sense people are. Let’s look at some basic questions of life. Did you exist in your mother’s womb before you were born? Or did you just “appear” out of thin air? Obviously, we are who we are in the womb. Even my five-year-old knows that. So the fact is that through abortion, lives are being eliminated. If I kill my child one second after he or she is born, I will be charged with murder. But if I abort my child before he or she is born, society says it is OK. The only difference is that in one case you can see the baby with your eyes, and the other one you cannot. Does not seeing make it right? If so, then it must be OK to kill someone if you have a blindfold on! There is another victim of this holocaust, the pregnant woman. Several of the letters to the editor have said “What about the woman?” Well, I agree that we need to increase efforts to help women that get pregnant and do not know what to do. We need to brainstorm and find solutions that give them alternatives to killing their babies. There are some organizations doing this and one in our area is the Brazos Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center. They and organizations like them are concerned not only with the babies, but with the women involved. This is America, the greatest nation in the world. We as a nation have a remarkable history of tremendous accomplishments. We can solve this problem if we wake up and realize what we are doing to ourselves. All we need to do is see the answer to the basic question of life and work together to help all victims of this tragedy. Fred Wells’81 Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff resemes the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address and telephone number of the writer. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Becky Weisenfels, Editor Leslie Guy, Managing Editor Dean Sueltenfuss, Opinion Page Editor Anthony Wilson, City Editor Scot Walker, Wire Editor Drew Leder, News Editor Doug Walker, Sports Editor Jay Janner, Art Director Mary-Lynne Rice, Entertainment Edi tor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarilv rep resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, fac ulty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 230 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M L'niversitv, College Station, TX 77843-1111. Second class postage paid at College Station. TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battal ion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University , Col lege Station TX 77843-4 111. Highway shootings provide argument for gun control Remember all of those freeway shoot ings that took place in California a cou ple of years ago? Well it seems they’re back — not in Los Angeles, but in De troit. Detroit police have had 28 highway shootings reported to them since No vember 1988. In one incident, a man who was sleeping in the passenger seat of a car was shot to death by the driver of another car. Evidently, the motorist who fired the gun was upset because his car had been passed. What the heck is going on here? There are always going to be crack pots out there, so one or two isolated in cidents probably aren’t anything to worry about. But there have been al most 30 of these incidents reported in one city in the past few months. Even if some of the reports aren’t valid (police suspect that only half of them actually happened), there are still too many to classify as mere accidents. What kind of people would do such things? I’m not a psychologist, but if I had to guess, I’d say that these people must be very frustrated and very un happy with their lives. Does shooting someone sound like something a men tally balanced individual would do? Sure, I can see it now. A husband and wife are driving to their home in the suburbs after a day of work in the city. The husband (an accountant) is telling his wife (an interior designer) how his day went. It’s rush hour and the freeway is congested with traffic. After getting farther into the suburbs, the traffic starts to clear out. The husband and Dean Sueltenfuss Opinion Page Editor wife are talking about their plans for the weekend. Husband: “I was thinking we might drive over and see what Bif and Suzy Talbert are doing this weekend. How does that sound to you dear?” Wife: “Oh, that sounds just wonder ful. We haven’t seen them in ages.” Husband: “Yeah, remember the last time we — Hey! Did that guy just pass us on the right? He did, didn’t he? Why, that s.o.b.!” Wife: “The nerve of that guy! Who does he think he is?” Husband: “OK dear, hand me the 12 gauge. We’re going to teach this jerk a lesson he’ll never forget.” (Then they pull up next to the offending driver and blow his brains out.) Wife: “That’ll show him.” That scenario is pretty tough to be lieve. Is simple frustration the root cause of these shootings? Driving in heavy traffic can be quite frustrating, but frustration alone hardly seems to be a plausible answer. I don’t know what the cause of all this is, but one thing seems clear to me. Nor mal, sane people would not perpetrait such acts of indiscriminate violence. The people who are responsible fom provoked shootings such as theonesoc curing in Detroit have emotional prot lems that need to be treated. And they certainly don’t need lobe carrying guns. As one police inspector said, “If peo ple weren’t carrying guns in cars, thii wouldn’t be happening.” 1 don’t consider myself to be a gut control advocate. In fact I own several guns and I enjoy hunting. But tlit shootings in Detroit (and manyotherre- cent shootings around the country demonstrate the need for somesortof nation-wide gun control laws. This could simply be a law that requires a waiting period and a background cited before someone is allowed to buy a gut This way, if a person is a convicted felot or has a history of mental unstabilitv they can be denied a gun. If you disagree with me on this point 1 ask you to take a long, hard looku what happened in California two years ago and what is happening in Detror right now. I’m not saying that contpe tent, stable individuals should be denier the right to own guns. I’m simplys that we need to keep firearms out of the hands of people who aren’t able to use them wisely. Maybe you’ll believe me when you're driving down the highway, and some one pulls up beside you and points! gun at your head. Dean Sueltenfuss is a junior joum lism major and opinion page editork The Battalion. Loyal Ag gets lesson in success I know that people are getting tired of hearing about Ollie North, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned from him.If you watch carefully and take good note's, you too can: wear a really spiffy uniform, have a gorgeous blonde secretary named Bambi, be on television a lot, shred classified government docu ments to your heart’s content, receive thousands of dollars worth of gifts from arms dealers, flagrantly lie to Congress, and just generally ignore the Constitu tion whenever you see fit. OK, I can see that you still don’t be lieve that it can work for you, but believe me — it really works. You see, I got a job with the Texas A&M athletic department over the sum mer. I was hired to wash towels in the basement. One day the telephone rang and I was the only one in the room. When I answered, a voice on the other end said that he had connections with the National Collegiate Athletic As sociation and could get them off our backs. Being a loyal Aggie, my first priority was to get the department out of the hot water that it was in, so I lis tened. The caller then admitted to being a teasip whose father was on the board of the NCAA. He said that if I helped him, he could get A&M out of its dilemma. I knew I could get into trouble, but he sounded so sincere. Alan Lehman Guest Columnist The catch was that Texas needed some good arms and I had to sell them a couple of our reserve quarterbacks. No problem — we had too many of them anyway. So I walked into The Coach’s office and asked for his approval. He said OK (well, actually he was sleeping, but he didn’t say no). So I sent the QBs to t.u. and made a quick profit of $100,000. I had my sec retary, Miss Goodbody, put the money in a special account. But soon the Board of Regents came down on me. They asked what 1 was doing selling arms to our enemies and then diverting cash into controversial projects. So I did the logical thing — I had Miss Goodbody shred all the evidence. It didn’t work. They were still after me. In fact, they put me on trial. When the scandal broke, the major television stations, KAMU, Channel 3 and MTV all carried my trial live. Public opinion of me was dreadful. I knew I was in big trouble. But just when things were getting desperate, some “very influential” friends of the athletic department re: ized that I was actually just trying6 help, so they bought me a very slick la. yer. I le advised me to wear my bestn;- roon to every hearing and boughtaspe cial pair of contacts for me that gavenn eyes that perfect “innocent patrion puppy” look. I knew things would work out for lit best when I saw the patriotic speechila he wrote for me. We practiced it [« hours. Whenever I got stuck duringffl testimony, I just made it up as 1 wet along. It worked. My performances television really got through totheAf gies across the state. The next day, the Board of Reger: was flooded with letters praising i courage and Aggie Spirit. Since most the Regents wotdd be up for re-electia soon, they all decided to postpone case until after the elections. The break has been nice. I’ve k) i time to write a best-selling book, make shameful amount of cash from speakis j engagements, and just generally enji ; my new-found fame. Now my trial is starting up again,h I’m not afraid. I did what I didbecaieH I thought I was doing what wasbesti the University. Alan Lehman is a junior journals major and a guest columnist for 1: Battalion. The Battalk AUSTIN ( lators who clai $7,200 a ye: least if compa many other st£ An Associat that Texas, w largest popul hind the two lative pay. Many smal too. In Texas, s part-time Le^ month, plus S during session In contrast legislators get $87 a day whe New York : A& abo to 1 By Alan SENIOR S' Texas A ing its tecl expertise and com groups acr In an el developme nomic Dev tion has av Texas En Station to network opment ou “The nr program i munities ii conditions living dm maintenan residents,” Dorsey, dii Municipal This pi N Texa: abou chain Carat 2.08 1.78 1.61 1.51 1.43 1.33 1.18 1.17 1.11 1.03 1.06 1.03 1.03 1.00 1.00 .95 .93 .92 .91 .90 .89 .88 .85 .84 .83 .81 .76 .70 .64 .64 .62 .60 .57 .56 .55 .55 .53 .52 .52 .51 .51 .50 .50 .47 .46 .46 .30 .22 T 84 40