To the Editor:

Larry Britt’s recent letter to the editor seems to ignore the reality of what is going on around him. He attempts to explain away the increasing irrelevance of political parties by launching off into a rapturous dialogue about Ronald Reagan and the political utopia he is supposed to have created. A wonderful example of the Republican spin machine humming along for all it is worth spreading revisionist history and attempting to divert attention from the issue at hand. Meanwhile the good ship of state slowly sinks into the depths due to the ongoing incompetence. The truth of the matter is the fiscal policies adopted by the Reagan administration laid the foundation for the fiscal difficulties the country now faces by buying into the myth that you can balance the budget by decreasing revenue. One can only wonder at what sort of mental process goes on in a mind that can embrace this sort of nonsense, but a good grounding in basic arithmetic and budgeting is obviously not part of the mix.

I do not know of anyone who actually wants to pay taxes, but if we want services from our government and the freedom for our government to engage in foreign military adventures whenever it feels they are necessary, then we need to be prepared to pay for them. Borrowing money from foreign governments to pay our current expenses and then passing the bill on to our children is just plain immoral, not to mention the path to fiscal ruin. The modern Republican spin machine continually puts forward the myth that with respect to taxes, we can have our cake and eat it too. This myth has not worked over the past three decades, so one wonders why hope springs eternal that it will work in the future. This sort of stupidity just postpones the day of fiscal reckoning until the monetary crisis we are creating becomes so overwhelming that our economy may finally buckle under its weight.

So Larry, the next time you are sitting around sipping the Republican Kool-Aid and nostalgically musing about a lost world that never was, give some thought to the final stanza of the old baseball poem that goes: “Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright, the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout; but there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.” And it might give you an insight into why the Grand Old Party is slowly becoming irrelevant.

KENNETH L. BOYD

Washington