LETTERS

Working to advance

In response to your recent editorial in which you refer to the University of Arkansas Advancement Division, with advancement in quotes, apparently for “humorous” effect: I work for the University of Arkansas Advancement Division, which I figure makes me almost as biased on the subject as your editorial writer seems. I am writing to offer some perspective.

During the three years that Brad Choate was vice chancellor for advancement, the division worked with friends and alumni to raise more than $300 million to advance programs, students and faculty at the University of Arkansas. During that period, the division ran an operating deficit, which is a bad thing, but that deficit amounted to a little more than 1 percent of the money raised during those three years.

We who work in the Advancement Division are proud of our work. In the past capital campaign, the division raised more than $1billion to support the U of A and advance the university’s mission of serving the state. That’s $1 billion that Arkansas taxpayers didn’t have to pay to support public higher education. Our goal for the future is to raise another billion.

We did and we do work to advance the University of Arkansas. We will continue to do so.

STEVE VOORHIES Fayetteville

Important principles Your editorial on the nuclear option was interesting. Sen. Harry Reid seems to think limiting the filibuster will help break the logjam in the Senate. One only wonders if his principles will reverse (again) if/ when the Republicans win a Senate majority in November.

Surely there will not be a rush to re-institute the filibuster before the Republicans take charge the following January. After all, principles are important.

PAT KING Hot Springs

Reveals his hypocrisy

I find the actions of Republican Party Chairman Doyle Webb to be quite revealing.

This past August, he condemned state Sen. Paul Bookout for spending campaign funds for personal use. He said it was a breach of the public trust. Webb demanded that Bookout be held accountable.

Now with Lt. Gov. Mark Darr revealed to have also dipped into campaign funds for his own use, even deeper than Bookout, Webb apparently fails to see any breach of public trust or need to be held accountable. Webb seems to plead for understanding and forgiveness for fellow Republican Darr.

If one is confused by the hypocrisy of Webb, fear not. It is easily cleared when you remember that Webb has a known history of ethical misconduct. And thus his reasoning: Democrats and Republicans can both be guilty of wrongdoing.

Democrats must be held accountable; Republicans must be forgiven.

JAKE TIDMORE Little Rock

A utopian Neverland After pondering Plato’s Republic, wherein the philosopher sought to imagine the perfect political system, Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia, seeking to imagine the perfect social order. “Utopia” means nowhere.

It can be conjured in the mind, but pretty awful things happen when utopians try to impose one on the real world.

I believe a recent Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial-The Decline of the West/As the evil empire strikes back-reflects a hearty brand of utopianism. Russia, seeking to hold together what’s left of its crumbling empire, is portrayed as the evil empire, while the United States, seeking to hold together what’s left of its, is apparently the faltering Promised Land, sullied by appeasers who have lost faith in the true believers’ imagined utopia.

I think we’d have a better chance of solving current problems if we dealt with the real world, not the utopias. Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other protagonists have done some pretty awful things to survive in a competitive world. Those who would rather overlook the fact that the United States has also done some pretty awful things to survive should read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine or Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars (for starters).

DAVID SIXBEY Flippin

Of diplomacy and war

Tirelessly and repetitively, Paul Greenberg beats the drum for American militancy. It seems according to him that the president and secretary of state are weak, spineless avatars of Neville Chamberlain at Munich;

gullible and misguided in their dealings with the Iranian mullahs; weaklings who have sacrificed the Syrian people. Column after column, Mr.

Greenberg seems to imply that we must once more seize control, awaken from our slumber, and take back our position of world dominance.

But what would he have us do? What is this tough, aggressive stance about which he constantly hints? Should we invade North Korea? Russia? If we overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad, we will then stand between two opposing forces in a civil war. How many decades will we then be willing to remain enmeshed in yet another Middle Eastern conflict with no viable resolution in sight?

I applaud the measured, cautious approach I believe this administration has chosen to take in dealing with the dangerous world in which we now live. No existing government can be unaware that we still have in our possession the biggest and most impressive military in the world. If we are speaking to our enemy, we are not killing our enemy;

there will be plenty of time for more killing if that conversation fails. As Americans, we love the image of ourselves riding off on a white horse to right all the wrongs of the world.

But I suggest that in these explosive times, we would be better off cultivating our underused qualities of patience and diplomacy.

ANN LINK Little Rock

The seamy side of life A hearty thanks to the editors of this paper for publishing images of a pair of the delightfully seamy, platitudinous, artsy paintings of Mark Rothko.

His art of putting two colors together along an exquisite seam is absolutely the seamiest anti-convulsion of seams I have ever examined.

Rothko was a courageous innovator who designed lines that were more than lines. They were boundaries with a very present eventualism, and as the art world senses, carried a very present eventualism to its extremes.

ROD J. PARKER Amity