LETTER: We need to return to common values

To the editor:

The actual issues facing America today are not being responded to with civil discourse and respect for the truth. We are seeing the unraveling of our democracy and a growing support for autocracy in our government. One political party doesn’t have a platform stating its positions on actual issues. The party is becoming a white, phony Christian party that is hedonistic and is generating a culture of, “I got to be me, I got to be free, beefsteaks, gadgets, cars and frivolity,” and to heck with society’s common good.

America needs to embrace a set of common values which are moral and directs attention to the needs of all Americans. The former speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill, in his autobiography, presented a values statement that most people should embrace.

He believes that every family deserves the opportunity to earn an income, own a home, educate their children, and afford medical care. That is the American dream and it’s still worth fighting for.

The government has the obligation to help you along the line until you achieve that dream; and, when you do, you have an obligation to help out the next group that comes along.

In recent years. this idea has fallen out of favor. Today, there are those who argue that the way to achieve the American dream is to go it alone. The new morality claims that the young should forget about the old, that the healthy should ignore the sick, and that the wealthy should abandon the poor.

This is an alien philosophy in our country. While we, Americans, certainly believe in getting ahead through education, sacrifice and hard work, we also believe in looking out for the other guy. From our earliest beginnings, we have insisted that the individual human being is of fundamental value, and that even the humblest, meekest person has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

Herbert J. Grover, Gresham