She might have been absent the day in eighth grade when most of us were taught that the backbone of our nation, the organizing principle as it were, was our Constitution, still in vibrant use today. But to be fair, she is talking about success, and I wonder why she didn't acknowledge other prominent influences; stuff like technology gains, medical advances, demographic shifts, the internet, the growth in international trade and communication, a doubling of our population, and so forth.

But her conservative agenda singles out the nuclear family, ignoring all the rest. Conservatives love to grind their revisionist history axe by positing a secret and pernicious war for the moral soul of our nation, where liberals are somehow destroying the will of people to follow a strict path of sainted Christian formula in order to couple and reproduce. Ignoring individual free will and choice in the matter, Pam thinks all of this nefarious activity by progressives began in 1965, with Lyndon Johnson and his social policies. And to add more absurdity to her simplistic analysis, her beliefs also fly in the face of overwhelming evidence that gay/lesbian parenting is as good or even slightly better for children then traditional hetrosexual parenting, a fact she could have easily verified by googling. 

One final note, if creating a nuclear family was such a better choice than other options, more folks, not less, would be doing it. I agree with conservatives that freedom is not about being herded in one direction, it is about the opportunity to make individual choices with multiple options available. In this important sense,  America is healthier today than in 1965 when racially mixed and homosexual couples were not allowed the basic right to marry as did everyone else.

Even worse is her paranoid delusion that our kids are being taught gay and straight sex techniques by school teachers and corporations. I suppose I should be grateful to be provided this wake up call since I didn't know that some companies and some out-of-control teachers were somehow accessing my grandkids for some evil purpose like that. 

But I'm not, because the letter writer is clearly making all this up. If she is not, I look forward to her publishing in the near future her actual facts about who is promoting exactly what sexual materials to what children, and how wide spread this problem is. Anyone can say anything they want, but the ignorance and the lack of evidence being displayed here for the purpose of political mudslinging is way beyond the pale. 

Rick Wirth

Bryson City