This past Sunday at church, someone quoted the old Greek proverb, “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.” As the speaker continued to make a connection with the proverb and the future of our church, I quietly sat with the words and let them wash over me. 

To the Editor:

Out with the old, in with the new: time for reflection, perhaps resolve; certainly time to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies. As Lord Chesterfield believed, “that refuse of fools and cowards.” 

To the Editor:

“No taxation without representation” the patriots cried 260 years ago. Now there is a move to change the voters’ representation of District 2 on the Macon County Board of Commissioners. Currently there are five commissioners, each representing approximately 6,000 voters in Macon County.

“Here’s why the original neocon thinkers — people such as Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — can be so helpful right now: They focused their attention on the bloody crossroads where morality and politics intersect. They saw politics through the lens of not only polling and social-science data, but also literature, philosophy, psychology and theology.

To the Editor:

The Immigration Act of 1990 was the last time significant changes were made to legal immigration and is considered outdated for today’s challenges. In 2013 a bipartisanship bill passed the Senate with a strong majority, including provisions for border security, E-Verify and a pathway to citizenship, but failed to get a House vote due to lack of support from House Republicans. 

To the Editor:

I’m sorry to read that Tracy Fitzmaurice resigned as head of the Fontana Regional Library System, and I want to say something clearly in defense of Tracy.

Tracy has given decades of steady, public-minded service to the Fontana Regional Library community — she’s been with the system since 1991 and stepped into the director role in January 2023. That kind of institutional knowledge and calm competence isn’t replaceable on a 30-day timeline. 

To the Editor:

In response to guest columnist Walter Cook’s recent article, “Don’t expect better results with the same choices,” (Dec. 31 edition of SMN) Mr. Cook accurately describes a political reality in Western North Carolina: for far too long, many voters have cast ballots strictly along party lines — then wondered why so little changes, or why things get worse. 

The first thing is to tame the rage so that you do not live in it all the time. Or worse, repressing it so often and so much that it calcifies into all-consuming despair. That won’t do. 

The next thing is to cultivate joy stubbornly and aggressively. You know, that “pursuit of happiness” business. It is not easy to do it in our madhouse of a country. You know it and I know it. 

To the Editor:

I volunteered to serve during wartime. We had experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis and had military advisors training foreign nationals in Vietnam. Things escalated quickly and we found ourselves, “Neck deep in the big muddy ....” to quote the song by Pete Seeger. Our nation slowly slid into commitments that would cost thousands of young Americans their lives. 

To the Editor:

I write you as Western North Carolina's regional director for the Alliance for American Leadership. I am horrified by US actions undermining the autonomy of the Venezuelan people.

The United States should not be putting its hands into Venezuela’s oil production or revenues. Our country should not be making military strikes with the goal of pillaging resources of sovereign nations.