Word: essays
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...PHOTO ESSAY...
...Spreading the Wealth Around In his essay, Michael Kinsley agrees with Barack Obama that when governments spread wealth around it is "good for everybody" [Nov. 10]. Kinsley asks, "Who disagrees?" Anyone who knows anything of history would disagree with that assertion. Marx and Lenin advocated a similar idea: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." The reality of a system where hard work is not rewarded is that people lose their incentive to work. That means there is less wealth to share, which is hardly "good for everybody." In the Soviet Union, it took about...
...final line of Kinsley's essay was telling. He implied that unless we spread the wealth around, we'll turn into a Colombia or Mexico, where people "live behind locked gates and hire guards to protect their family from kidnapping." Is Kinsley suggesting that to ensure their own safety the better-off should, via the government, pay protection money to the less well off? This would be playing with public money a similar game to the one rich people in banana republics play with their personal money. Mark A. Mendlovitz, Los Angeles...
...known John McCain all my life, and I’ve just learned that he was thinking about it early in his Naval Career,” he added. Then, of course, there’s Barack Obama’s kindergarten essay, “Why I Want to Be President.” “There is that tension,” Cannon said. “You’ve got to have a huge ego just to even think about [being president], but if you’re not careful, people will think you?...
...What the World Needs Now I appreciated Michael Kinsley's essay on the desirable leadership quality that is toxic to mention because of its allegedly élitist overtones: intelligence [Oct. 27]. I have long felt that U.S. presidential candidates, much like graduate students, should be subject to a preliminary examination in their area of expertise. Candidates should have some knowledge of, if not proficiency in, world history, religions, cultures, geography. As it is now, we assume the media and debates will ferret out deficiencies in candidates' education that might lead to serious, perhaps deadly decisions - and that is not always...