To the editor:

I have received much criticism from Mr. (Tony) Marconi for not providing him with facts or proof. The intent of my letters is to spur the reader to seek the facts on any particular topic on his/her own initiative, with an open mind, and the use of common sense, not (ask) someone else to do it for them.

There’s an old saying, “The proof is in the pudding” — proof that the recipe was good, and it was followed properly, so the pudding satisfied the taste buds. That is how I judge our government’s actions — local, state or federal — and determine the end results as proof of whether they are good or bad for America, or the world, for that matter. …

So let’s assess our federal government’s recipe/solution to some social problems. Due to space limitations, I will only address two of the many — poverty and crime.

In the many years of its war on poverty, nothing has worked. They have tried giving the poor just enough money and food stamps to barely keep them alive — not to help them out of poverty, but to keep them trapped in it. They put severe limits on how much money they can earn before losing their benefits. They promoted the breakup of many families by making it so that more money could be had if there was no man in the house. They enlarged the poverty rolls by making it so that the more children a woman had, the more money and food stamps she could get.

To me, if their intent is to eliminate poverty, this is a poor strategy for winning this war. Mr. Marconi, as a “social advocate,” you should be infuriated … and be seeking answers to several questions on your own, instead of just sparring with me. You should be asking yourself, is victory in this war your government’s desired goal? If so, why have they not changed the recipe/strategy? They have the power to do so. If victory is not their goal, what is and why? Do you think, as a social advocate, that government intentionally keeping the poor trapped in poverty is denying them their right to their pursuit of happiness?

Their war on crime is yet another example of a poor recipe/strategy. They’ve passed law after law, and none have worked, because … criminals don’t obey laws. No law is capable of preventing anyone from doing anything they are intent on doing, or any spur-of-the-moment crime committed in a heated dispute. So, as supposedly highly educated people who should know these facts, why are they working so hard to take away the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms from law-abiding citizens, which has no effect on criminals? They’ve tried gun buy-backs, and establishing “gun-free zones,” to no avail. So … the same question as above needs to be asked about their real intent/goal. Why do these politicians find it necessary to skirt/violate the Second Amendment, the “law of the land?” Is this not, in and of itself, a criminal act by them? Again, Mr. Marconi, have you asked yourself any of these questions. If not, why?

By comparing the actions of some of the world’s evil governments with those of our own, I find several similarities, and know that those governments had evil agendas/ideologies that seem to match perfectly with the agenda/ideology that’s driving our government. By whatever name it goes by, or whether it can be found in a dictionary, is totally irrelevant. It’s what that agenda/ideology do either “for the people” or “against the people.” For it is the people that governments are supposed to serve, not suppress. A true “social advocate” would know this fact. …

Stefan Schemine

Delaware