Family Foundation: How Right Is Right?

Your story on Victoria Cobb was quite interesting. She is intelligent, charming, good-looking and obviously formidable in the political arena. She would be a strong ally or a harsh opponent, depending upon which side of an issue you took.

She and others like her are often referred to as conservative, but I believe that authoritarian would probably be a better label. I am often right-of-center on many issues and share some common ground with Cobb, but I highly doubt that she really favors smaller government as I and other more liberty-minded conservatives do. While I probably share some of her distaste for certain things in society that we both might find objectionable, I wouldn't seek to use the power of the state to enforce my beliefs on others. Part of living in a free society sometimes entails putting up with things we might find icky or offensive.

When some of the social conservatives stray too far from truly believing in limited government, they end up sounding just like the statist liberals they so despise. I admire her passion, spirit and determination, but hate to see us move away from a liberal welfare state — only to gravitate toward a puritanical nanny state. Either way, we lose freedom and government becomes stronger and more oppressive; certainly not what true conservatives stand for.

If we let the government into our bedroom, it will soon want to be in our garage, our kitchen, the dining room and even the children's room. “Sic semper tyrannis” goes for despots on both the left and the right!
Jeff H. Kleb Jr.
Midlothian

The Family Foundation says that it promotes these positions: pro-life, traditional marriage, parental authority, constitutional government and religious liberty (“Divine Right,” Cover Story, Sept. 29). In reality, it is just another political action organization that is devoted to electing, multinational, corporate owned Republicans.

While there are millions of rank-and-file Democrats who share the published core values clamed by the Family Foundation, it ignores our Democratic citizens and throws all of its resources behind Republican candidates. The Family Foundation is a partisan, Republican operation, and is therefore not qualified to have 501 c (3) classification.

During the Bush regime, the Family Foundation was dead silent on Bush's domestic warrantless spying on U.S. citizens, the torture of U.S. citizens and other U.S. prisoners, or the transfer of prisoners to other countries where they were tortured to death. The foundation also sees no contradiction in having a pro-life stand, while supporting state-sponsored murder (aka the death penalty).

The Republican side has fooled many Virginians into supporting it by claiming exclusive ownership of family values when the reality is that the Republicans' actions show that they're dedicated to delivering our citizen-owned assets into the hands of their multinational corporate backers.

People of faith, who also love liberty, are welcome to become active in their local Democratic Party. We too, have family values.
J. Tyler Ballance
Richmond

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