I read with interest Jason Joiner’s Feb. 16 “Sound off” in the Whidbey News-Times. While it is refreshing to have input from a member of the younger generation, I tend to believe that Mr. Joiner has been caught in the trap of listening to the rhetoric and disregarding history.

The duty of government is to provide for the welfare of all its citizens equally without overly interfering with their constitutional rights.

The current federal administration is conducting an illegal (and immoral) war of aggression, an illegal campaign of eavesdropping on its citizens and is attempting to present the philosophy of creationism as a scientific theory; it is depleting the federal reserve by grievous deficit spending with no counter-balanced increase in taxation, and, worst of all — they have attempted to foist their extremist views of morality into the most private part of our lives, namely the bedroom. This is hardly the action of a government that is interested in the welfare of its citizens. Rather, this is a policy of extremism that was abhorred by our founding fathers.

In the past 30 years we have seen budget surpluses by only two presidents, namely President Carter and President Clinton. The other three presidents have taken this country into such enormous debt that it is hard to imagine that our children, grandchildren or even our great-grandchildren will ever get this incredible debt paid off. It would be a small price for Mr. Joiner and me to pay a little more tax in order balance the budget and secure our children’s future.

For many years, I crossed party lines to vote for the candidate which seemed to best represent the values of our nation. I voted for Ronald Regan in 1980 believing in the rhetoric, a trap Mr. Joiner has also fallen into recently. The extreme right wing policies by President Regan, President Bush 1 and President Bush II do not permit me morally to support the Republican Party. I am not suggesting that the Democratic Party has had the good of the nation in the forefront of its policies, but, at this moment it seems to me the best hope for our country is the progressive policies outlined by Sen. Barak Obama.

I would ask Mr. Joiner to take a look at history and reconsider the validity of his point of view.

Gordon Burton

Coupeville