OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Free press essential | They're out of control | They deserve justice

Free press essential

Thursday's editorial about the importance of a free press makes me want to ring the Liberty Bell.

Yes! Our free press may not be perfect, but it's free. Having a free press, freedom of speech and legitimate newspapers like this one is what separates us from authoritarian countries like Russia, China, and Cuba.

Democracy dies in darkness. Legitimate journalists shine light on darkness, whether we like it or not, because Americans are not immune to darkness.

PATTI JONES

Dumas

They're out of control

It seems that our public schools are going to have to become a police state. During the last decades, with the massacres and terrorism, something else is making our public schools unsafe: The TikTok app is telling kids to vandalize the public schools.

Kids are destroying school property by busting the toilets and pulling the sinks, soap and paper towel dispensers off the wall. They're also slapping teachers. Back in my school days you didn't think of doing this. We had order and discipline.

It looks like the schools are going to have to hire police officers or the National Guard or both to restore law and order in our public schools, install metal detectors and closed-circuit TV cameras, have locker inspections, and put police officers in every classroom to monitor the classroom and back the teachers, not to mention break up fights.

If you don't start controlling the kids, they will wind up in either two places: the lap of the law or the cemetery.

DONALD PUTMAN

El Dorado

They deserve justice

In 2015, several of our great female Olympic gymnasts reported to the FBI that they were being sexually abused by the team doctor. The FBI did nothing. In 2016, more of these great and brave young ladies reported sexual abuse by the same doctor. The FBI did nothing.

These brave young ladies testified that they were victims of sexual abuse before Congress this year. Current Director of the FBI Chris Wray apologized to these victims. That is not justice.

Justice for our brave young Olympians, or anybody else, is not an apology.

The director of the FBI in 2016 was James Comey. I believe he and all the other FBI agents responsible for not investigating multiple reports of a serial rapist should be charged for their negligence.

We all want justice for the victims. We all want to know why so many voices went unheard and unheeded. What has Chris Wray done to fix the FBI so these voices will be heard? What has he done to make legal action a priority?

An apology is not justice.

JEFF LAHA

Little Rock

Skeptics nothing new

In 2013, Jeffery M. Shaara published "A Chain of Thunder," a book about the siege of Vicksburg, Miss., during the Civil War. One of the principal characters, Private Bauer, is granted furlough to attend to his parents in Milwaukee. The following is quoted from pages 29-30:

"He [Bauer] was surprised to learn of a smallpox outbreak, causing weeks of panic in the town, the older citizens especially aware that smallpox could sweep away entire families. The newspapers had jumped on that with stern warnings that those who ignored the availability of the vaccine should be made to comply with the governor's call for the entire population to receive the medicine. Those vaccinations had been available for years now, and Bauer's family had long ago visited the doctor, accepting the needle pricks without protest.

"It had amazed Bauer that so many in town, and in the army, had responded instead with outcries against the vaccinations that seemed born of nothing more than superstition. Though the outbreaks had become much less frequent, the disease still came, suddenly bursting through those families who had thought themselves protected solely by the Hand of Providence. As had happened in every city, with each outbreak, more of the people lined up at the doctor's office, forcing themselves to accept that it could be Providence after all that had given them the vaccine."

Evidently Ecclesiastes remains accurate in summarizing human behavior: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

ROBERT WIDEMAN

Fayetteville

Thank you sooo much

Well, you sensitive, weepy folks out there who had your feelings hurt for four years by mean tweets got your way and created the perpetual Biden crises. Your fingerprints are all over this mess, and we have you and Biden to thank.

The Afghanistan crisis, which I believe is our worst military defeat ever and an eternal shame; the border crisis Biden created by stopping the wall and inviting desperate people from around the world to die traveling here, a true crime against humanity; the supply chain crisis which has left our store shelves bare for the holidays; the crime crisis where criminals are released and the police are retiring by the thousands; the inflation crisis which has gasoline, meat and milk prices soaring to Jimmy Carter levels; the school board crisis where Biden apparently vows to turn the FBI loose on concerned parents while turning a blind eye to a hulking boy wearing a skirt allegedly raping a little girl in her school bathroom; the IRS crisis where Biden wants to hire thousands of IRS agents to monitor every one of our bank transactions over $600; the Biden corruption crisis where the president's troubled son Hunter is blowing paint through a straw on to canvas and selling it for many thousands of dollars; the Biden covid crisis where thousands are still dying even though Joe was handed the vaccines on a platter.

So, only nine months in and all these crises. Good job.

You can thank yourselves in '22 in the midterms when the Republicans win big majorities in both the House and the Senate and in '24 when Captain Orange sweeps in with billowing cape to win in a landslide, allowing him to put two more justices on the Supreme Court.

EDWARD CHEVALLIER

Horseshoe Bend

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