Kudos to Behlen

To the editor:

Thanks for Andy Behlen’s excellent piece titled “Producers, Looters and Parasites.” I had just purchased a copy of “Atlas Shrugged,” another of Rand’s remarkable works; my daughter on a visit saw it and said, “No dad, I read it a long time ago.” The over-arching theme Rand made in so many of her books is that oppressive political systems like those under which she lived in the Soviet Uniion are corrupted and evil means to incapable of producing human equality or high standards of living.

Behlen tells us about a recent example of how government policy, taken to an extreme in Sri Lanka, casues human death. People need to eat and the golden rice offered a real and successful answer. But the attack against GMO’s was certainly not a new idea. The Communist Party under Stalin did the same thing with their support of a nutty, misdirected scientist, Trofim Lysenko, director of the Institute of Genetics in Russia. Lysenko made successive years of profoundly stupid and bad decisions for the Soviet Government, ending in widespread death. Later, his methods were applied in China, with the calamitous result that 15–55 million people died.

My heart is gladdened to know Americans can say NO to our own Federal Government unable to admit errors in so many critical areas, such as vaccine design, justice for citizens and the rule of law. Citizens must be bold and exercise freedom.

Scott Rodibaugh Flatonia