Letters to the editor 11-5

Teacher not taking allergies seriously enough

Kudos to the person that wrote about kids and peanut allergies. The ignorance of some people that do not take this condition seriously, or are merely not concerned about a child, because it is not their own, is appalling to me.

A Carson High School teacher had the audacity to put up the argument that she deals with children daily with food allergy conditions, and that it is the teacher's responsibility to make sure a child does not ingest foods that contain peanuts. She was comparing this to a facility where the oldest child is 4. Apples and oranges, my friend.

And the argument that a child that does not eat meat has to have peanut butter throughout the day is absurd, as there are alternate forms of protein out there.

I agree that it is the teachers' and childcare givers' responsibility to keep the children safe, but young children are always putting things into their mouths. What if a child who has had peanut butter puts something into their mouth and the allergic child comes along and plays with that same toy? There are some children who cannot even be around peanut products without having a reaction. Are people really that self absorbed and inconsiderate? How sad.

And where are the nut-free childcare facilities? Not in Carson. I pray that more people, especially teachers, become more educated and sensitive to the conditions of others. I don't want that high school teacher having an influence on my children.

Kristi Callahan

Carson City

Today's GOP bears no resemblance to forebears

Annette Mankins' letter lauding the Republican Party's history of "fighting for rights" needs a little fact-checking.

The first glaring error in the letter is egregious: Abraham Lincoln did not "start the Republican party" in 1854 - Alvan E. Bovay started the party on Feb. 28, 1854. Lincoln wasn't even the first national representative. John C. Fremont was the original Republican, anti-slavery presidential candidate in 1856.

But stating that neither John Kennedy nor LBJ supported Civil Rights is worse. This claim comes from a single party-line vote Kennedy made as a senator in 1957, which hardly negates his legacy of fighting for equal rights. Also, it was Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Bill for which Everett Dirksen lobbied, not the other way around, and do you really want to get into a down-and-dirty about filibusters and cloture at this point?

Pre-1860 southern Democrats were struggling to hold onto not only slavery, but states' rights, holding the federal government in contempt and denying its meddling in their lives. They called for secession as a solution. Who does that sound like?

The current incarnation of the GOP is nothing - nothing - like the original party. The current ideologues would be unrecognizable to the party's founders. Heck, even party stalwart Barry Goldwater would be branded a left-wing nutcase these days.

Any attempted correlation between today's GOP and the noble precepts of the original Republicans only hammers home the point that modern Republicans have no sense of irony.

Leigh McGuire

Stagecoach