ROGERS — I would like to reply to the letter in your paper by Mr. Ben Owen on Saturday, Oct. 9. I would have written sooner, but I was on vacation at the time.

First of all, Mr. Owen accused Mr. Glenn Beck of “being an entertainer, a profit-seeking showman.” Also, you say that what he is doing is “bad for public discourse and dangerous for democracy.” Why don’t you attack Mr. David Letterman who makes off-colored jokes about Gov. Sarah Palin just because she has taken a conservative stand on moral and political issues?

Yes, Mr. Glenn Beck is an entertainer and, yes, all entertainers must make a profit to stay in business just like any normal business must do. As I heard a very wise executive state, “The first order of business is survival and in order to survive in business you must make a profit.”

Now you seem to be against free speech, which is one of the principal foundations of democracy. Would you rather live in a totalitarian type of government (which seems to be the way our country is headed) where the government will cutoff all freedom of speech and you must believe everything that those in power tell you?

Finally, by the headline of your letter, Mr. Beck is “totally dishonest,” without offering any proof when he has been distorting facts as you stated that Mr. Beck is “distorting facts and stoking racial fear.” But can you truthfully say that President Barack H. Obama has been totally truthful with the American people? I can cite several times that he has out and out lied. One such lie is when he stated that there would not be a tax increase for those making less than $250,000 per year, but now comes his “health care proposal” that includes a penalty, as he calls it, of a sizable amount of money if you do not have health insurance.

This is a tax no matter what you want to call it because there is no place in the Constitution of the United States of America where health care is guaranteed for everyone. Have you and your family ever gone without health insurance? Well, my wife and I went without health insurance for quite a few years during several years of our marriage, but we always paid the doctors and hospitals totally and completelytheir charges. Or when he stated that he would not sign any bill into law that would increase the federal deficit.

My concern over your letter boils down to this: You have a perfect right to your opinion and even voice them, but you or the government does not have a right to shut down someone else if their opinions differ from yours.

You not only would like to shut Mr. Beck down, but take away his livelihood at the same time.

My advice to you is if you don’t like what he has to say then don’t listen to him, just turn off the radio or television. I personally believe that Mr. Beck is telling the truth about our present leaders from President Obama on down to all the liberal-leaning senators and representatives in Washington. We the people should be big enough to care for ourselves and not have our government dictating our every move.

Come to think about it, if it was up to a totalitarian govervnment I would have needed prior permission to even go on vacation and especially to cross state lines.

LABAN D. NEEDHAM

Rogers

Opinion, Pages 4 on 11/03/2009

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