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A friend of mine (John Bloom) shared a “letter to the editor” that his brother (William S Bloom) wrote to the Quad City Times.   For those of you that are outside Iowa and Illinois, the Quad Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois.

Anyhow, the piece, as edited by the newspaper, can be found on their web site at this link.  The text of the original letter is below.  Although I understand the concept of editing letters to conserve space, and a few of the edits made sense in that regard, there are still some key parts that were cut out.  You be the judge… starting with the second paragraph (the first one was rewritten by the editors) I have used strike-out to highlight the text below where it was cut.

Are Americans Once Again In The Wilderness?

Last Sunday, I was listening to “Father Joe” (Father Joe Scalisi, Trinity Church, Rock Island), as he gave his Sermon for the first Sunday of Lent.  Father Joe was talking about the role of “the Wilderness” in the Bible.  How sometimes people hid there, how Jesus went there to be tested, and how sometimes, people ended up in the Wilderness for a long time, if they were going in the wrong direction.  While “Father Joe” was not injecting politics in his excellent sermon, I started wondering about many of the decisions being made today.

In it’s first week, the new Administration immediately freed up millions of dollars in funding for overseas abortions.  Many Americans question whether the government should be funding abortions here, what business do we have funding abortions in other countries, when our economy is under such duress?

The “new era of fiscal responsibility” has yielded other decisions as well. After Israel attacked Hamas in retaliation for it’s relentless rocket attacks, the US pledged $900 million to rebuild Gaza, a city who’s only government is run by terrorists. This week, the new President announced that he wants to give away $50 billion in foreign aid… This announcement came only weeks after asking for the biggest deficit budget in the history of the country.

To pay for this, the President announced higher taxes on the rich, and significantly, a reduction in tax deductions for “charitable donations”.  The top 2% of the country provide 29% of the funding for charities.  How does making it more expensive to support Charities help support the poor?  What does any of this have to do with fiscal responsibility?

When Americans endorse decisions that make it harder to donate to the poor, give millions to terrorists, and help people end the lives of the unborn “for free”, we have truly, entered the Wilderness.

William S Bloom

I thought, by the way, that this was a great letter, and I thought William’s made some solid, articulate points.  Again, some of the edits were probably appropriate for the sake of space.

It seems, however, that more than half of the struck out content provide both deeper meaning and valuable reminders (or for some, previously unrealized information) of why these situations are so problematic.  For instance, as edited, one would think that Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza was unprovoked, which in my opinion is little less than subtly perpetuating a lie.

This is not just an issue with the Quad City Times… this is classic in newspapers across the country.  And as readership declines, on both print and web editions of these bastions of journalism, one wonders how the publishers can’t see this part of what is erroding their reputations.  It’s sad when both the media and politicians are held up by the public with the same level of contempt and presumption of guilt, and both groups continue to act without integrity and without concern that they are observed plainly as motivated by meeting only their own ends of attempting to manipulate the public.

If you have a letter that you want published without editing, leave it as a comment here or send me an email at [email protected].  Whether you have a story of chop-shop treatment of your work by another agency or not, I’m interested in what you have to say and will gladly publish your comments here (according to our established rules, found on the “About” page).

My thanks to William S Bloom for allowing me to publish his excellent letter!

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