Letterbox: Reader Appreciation, Counterproductive Policy

Dear Watchers:

Thank you for publishing Merry Teesdale’s front-page article “Nights’ Out!” (July 2007). Among those needed to join her discussion are police officials and Block Watch promoters who earnestly recommend bright, pervasive outdoor lighting.

One of Teesdale’s points merits further elaboration, namely the theological and metaphysical importance of knowing the night sky. Massive urban night lighting has virtually wiped out traditional human awareness of the heavens, an awareness that finds expression in virtually every past culture and religion.

For example, hundreds of references to stars, the heavens, the firmament above, occur in the Bible. The canopy above, especially the night sky, was a crucial, active part of creation according to the scriptures. One truly cannot understand the biblical worldview or other mythologies without taking planets and stars into account.

For better or worse, we no longer live in a biblical world. Nevertheless, absence of the stars profoundly affects human beings without their knowing it. To spend one’s life without ever having stared into the void of night, into the immensity of our galaxy and universe, entails a massive loss of perspective, a failure to grasp the tiny place and role of humans in the total scheme of things.

A starry night tells us how little we know and understand, even when armed with science, satellites and telescopes. It evokes, at least in me, a powerful sense of awe toward the ultimate mystery of existence, which in turn produces another much-needed human feeling, that of humility. Put negatively, people who do not look frequently into the heavens on a dark night potentially have a highly inflated, warped view of their own importance, and that of their species.

My compliments to the Watch and Ms. Teesdale. Let’s bring back the night.

Dear Watchers:

Energy and immigration policies are classic examples of the ill effects of compartmentalized thinking and policy decisions. We can’t have both policies without disastrous effects, especially when our politicians appear to be misinformed and uninformed.

It is sad that so many pets died from a cheap poisonous additive to pet food imported from China to increase the producer’s profits. Add to that information in the media that the demand for milk in the USA exceeds food available for cows needed to produce the milk.

That might be a wakeup call to those who do not already know that we have a negative agricultural trade balance. Fifty percent of our agricultural land would be needed to produce enough ethanol from corn to replace all imported fossil fuels.

We have about 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country, people with a much higher fertility rate than present American citizens. That means that allowing them to become American citizens instead of sending them back to where they came from would rapidly increase the demand for food. Importing food because we are using our agricultural land to produce ethanol is not energy independence! Give me a break!

The law states that people born in the United States are American citizens. When a child is born from an illegal immigrants mother, do I want to split the family? No, I want the law changed. Children should be citizens only if immigrant parents have already become American citizens.

If all it takes for an alien to become an American citizen is to break the law by entering the United States illegally, the flow of illegal aliens from overpopulated Third World countries will not stop. I want illegal immigrants sent back to where they came from.

We need to admit the cause of illegal immigration. The problem is overpopulation in Third World countries. I would give the women plenty of day-after pills and the men plenty of condoms as they left the United States.

As for the much-publicized statement that illegal workers are needed here because our citizen workers won’t do the work, of course they won’t at the low wages paid to illegal workers. We need to crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and that works.

For example, at our home we hire house cleaners from an agency. For a time there was almost nobody who spoke English. Fortunately, I remembered a little Spanish I hadn’t spoken for at least three decades. When the media stated that the government was cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, the Spanish speakers disappeared.