Dear John

Dear John Brummett,

Now that you know how bad it is to be taken out of context, we would hope that you would quit doing the same to Senator Jim Holt. Your June 24th column shows you still want to dish distortion out to others, even if you don't like taking it yourself. I don't have time to deconstruct your whole column, so I will take a SINGLE PARAGRAPH. Examples here include....

"He (Holt)supports legislation that would remove the state's option to provide Good Samaritan medical aid to illegal immigrants or their children"

FACT: The Good Samaritan used his own private funds to help someone in a medical emergency. Is Holt suggesting this should be against the law in Arkansas? Of course not. Anyway, the reality is that the government at both the state and federal levels MANDATES that hospitals be "good samaritans" to illegal aliens even if it bankrupts them- which it has in many California hospital emergency rooms. Holt's bill, SB 206, deals with "public benefits" which does NOT include emergency medical services. Holt's bill would not deny emergency medical care to anyone under either state or federal law. Nor would it deny anyone access to non-emergency medical care, just automatic access to someone elses' pockets to pay for it.

"He wants to take evolution out of the textbooks."

FACT: The only bill Holt has written on this subject did not propose to "take evolution out of textbooks". This is a misrepresentation that has gotten a life of its own because the establishment media does not care that what they are reporting about Jim Holt is untrue. The bill's purpose was to mandate the removal of arguments for evolution which have already been proven to be false.

There are a number of such discredited "proofs" which still regularly appear in school text books, such as Hackel's fraudulent drawings of embryos to the diagram of horse-like animals that imply that one was a direct ancestor of the other (which we now know are factually incorrect). The bill did not say to take out the "evidence" for evolution that creationists thought was incorrect, but the ones that evolutionary scientists themselves now acknowledge are incorrect. Does Brummett want school children taught stuff we know is wrong just because it supports his views on evolution? Based on his willingness to distort facts in his column, I'd say yes.

Microevolution no doubt does occur. I am sure even Jim Holt believes that and would have no objection to what we know has occured being taught as fact in text books. On the other hand, teaching stuff we know hasn't occurred in order to get school children to accept macro-evolution (molecules to man evolution) is wrong. Even if macro-evolution is true, it is wrong to use lies to try to get a child to believe it.

Now what Brummett says about two other things is true. Jim Holt has "opposed recent increases in public school funding to oblige a court order". Jim Holt understands that our system of separation of powers gives the purse strings to the legislature and judges should not be allowed order legislatures to spend money or raise taxes. Good for him. Hardly a mark of "extremism", unless actually understanding checks and balances in our form of government is now "extreme". If Holt loses this argument judges can raise your taxes regardless of who you send to the legislature.

He also writes that Holt "has likened prekindergarten programs to Soviet communism". Pre-K is not communism, but the point is that in communism there was a statist philosophy that government should try to shape and build a "new socialist man" through state programs. Opposing that is a traditionalist view. A traditionalist would say that families are where young children should be socialized, and so the state's role in that should be limited to policies which promote strong families. Holt is a traditionalist. You Mr. Brummett, may not be a communist, but you seem to ridicule people who don't accept polices that have the same root philosophies as Communism. Think about it.