WITH SHOUTING

EDITOR: Josh Feit's CounterIntel column "Talk of the Town, Seattle Version" [Aug 9] gave me pause. Josh posits that "class [is] a more just tiebreaker" than race and that our school-board candidates are focused on "real problems—inequity in housing and jobs." Well, Josh, I kinda, just kinda, thought that the problems facing our schools were things like, uh, you know, EDUCATION and the district BUDGET and, like, maybe the school-lunch program and getting lead out of drinking fountains. Ya know, all that unglamorous stuff we hire the school board to deal with. It would really concern me if these candidates felt the real issues were JOBS and HOUSING, as it would imply that these folks are more interested in GRANDSTANDING their POLITICAL VIEWS instead of working on the issues that face our kids in school. Regarding class, I'd say a better predictor of student success is a parent who maintains focus and discipline on their kids' schoolwork and monitors their results. Parents don't have to have money to do that, and it has nothing to do with class. Kids need a decent, controlled learning environment, so let's give the school principal and teachers the ability to discipline the unruly students and get some school-board members WHO WANT TO DO THE ACTUAL JOB.

S. Bonosa

OUR CONSERVATIVE READER

PAUL CONSTANT: I thank you, as I believe in just about everything you detested about conservatives at your National Review encounter in "Freedom Isn't Free, and Neither Are the Drinks" [Aug 2], and I couldn't help but feel you made our points very well.

There was one thing you encountered that I don't agree with: that conservatives in Seattle should feel like Jews in Nazi Germany. As a conservative in Seattle, I feel much more like a Jew in a country surrounded at the border by Nazis—but in a country populated by the French. Be it the French of 1936 (please, read a little history about Nazi Germany's invasion of the Rhineland in 1936 or Sudetenland in 1938 before you speak) or the French of 2007 as they deal with an Islamic France.

Freedom is worth sacrificing for (for American-style freedom of speech or women's or homosexual rights), be it Iraqi or Afghani babies or American soldiers—always. And please, don't try to pretend any of those precious freedoms had a chance of existing in Saddam's Iraq or the Taliban's Afghanistan before America arrived.

The left is good at creativity and imagination, so please try to imagine a world now dominated by the Nazis or the Soviets or Iran—and tell me that FDR, Truman, or Kennedy, or Reagan and, yes, George W. were wrong. The Stranger would have been shut down years ago.

Standing on principle and conviction isn't always popular because war is most often the result—but it does work and is the reason prosperous and peaceful Seattle is what it is today. Educate yourselves and avoid blind hatred.

Tim H.

BORDERS AND LOONIES

HI ELI: I liked your article ["Running on Angry," Eli Sanders, Aug 9], but thought I'd point out to you that while a European Union of no borders has unified, so to speak, a number of countries each the size of our states... such a union in this hemisphere would be quite scary to me and, I believe, to most people... not you? We haven't even adopted such a union pact yet—other than NAFTA—and look at all the trouble that the squalid Mexican migration has caused? I don't even want to imagine what it would be like if we completely dropped borders.

I support Ron Paul because he makes more logical sense than anybody else out there, and he makes sense even to the loonies. The phenomenon of Ron Paul is exactly that: a phenomenon. You strike me as a good journalist. Do some deeper digging on Paul and you may not have to join the media bandwagon that just does not know how to handle this phenomenon other than by poor attempts at mockery.

Estrella Eguino

RECONSIDER THE ODDS

ELI: [You wrote:] "No one seriously thinks an antiwar Republican like Ron Paul can win the presidency."

I do, simply because of all the disenfranchised voters out there who rally behind his message of freedom and limited government. Consider that in the average election, 50 percent of the people don't vote, and many of the 50 percent who do are now severely dissatisfied with both parties. In a two-way race against a Democrat, Paul would win (chances of him winning the Republican nomination are slim at best, I'll admit); in a three-way race with Paul running under the Constitution Party platform, he has an even better chance, as the number of votes he needs to win a majority is reduced.

Mark

SINCERE THANKS

ELI: Thanks for the thoughtful, fair article on Ron Paul. I apologize for the flak you must be getting from Dr. Paul's more socially retarded supporters.

Brien

FILM NERDS

UNITE

TO THE EDITOR: In The Stranger's current mini-review of No Reservations there is no mention that the movie is an American remake of a German film, Mostly Martha.

If someone had to write a review of the pukey Point of No Return I'd want to be bloody sure that there was some mention of Luc Besson's enjoyable La Femme Nikita. (Of which, the pukey Point of No Return was a pukey, pukey remake.)

Not a huge error. Lindy West's mini-review was a nice, quick read. But please remember to nod to the original European films when dissing American remakes!

Thank you,

Lindsay Meagher (nerdy former clerk of Island Video in Anacortes)

ANNIE WAGNER RESPONDS: Lindy West's capsule (which appeared under the heading "Recently Reviewed") was condensed from a longer review, in which West noted that No Reservations was "adapted from the 2001 German film Mostly Martha."