Dear Editor,
The June 25, 2025 edition of the Radford News Journal was terrific. You folks are bucking the tide and doing a great job for the region.
The paper contained four contributions which, among many, deserve mention. My, oh my but the letters from The Bentley’s and Mr. Huppert are representative of my precepts of the moral behavior and patriotic tenets that I suggest drive the vast majority of our regional and national populations. The ideals held for the Democratic Republic of the United States of America and its seven-Article, 25-Amendment Constitution. Add in a your-choice non-sectarian version of the golden rule, and I think that summarizes who we really are as a people. We aren’t, therefore, a land of authoritarian-loving liars, cheaters, sexual molesters, and convicted felons, bent on the USA becoming a company town with ready-made script and run by one self-seeking megalomaniac. Most of us, I hope, just want the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that includes clean water, air, and wholesome land, shelter, medical care, and food. Also, we want to be the greatest power on earth economically and militarily. Some may disagree with the latter, but that’s fine, that’s America. With the current administration there is one option for anything no other hand, no discussion, no dissent—just the highway, probably to some unsuspecting country that cut a deal with the great Satan, as some wrongly, so far, call us.
You get it! I know you do. We are of one very mixed blood and DNA that is the actual strength of what America is and will, I hope, always be.
Now, what did we get from the other two pieces? Mr. Ballard shared the tired old fearmongering about the left, those liberal people that “wreak havoc,” “weaken public safety,” “undermine police authority,” make Virginia another California,”, and that fight against nearly everything, compare gun death to car crashes. The same old saws to frighten and confuse. Here’s the question Mr. Ballard, what are you going to do for those in need of shelter and food and a job? By the way, California is the fourth largest economy in the world! Have a look at data on the other issues. It’s all in the legitimate public domain. Hurry before that is all ash canned.
The Pablum was much the same from Representative Griffith’s speech, except he totally avoids kitchen table issues with non-content, pretty much useless AI lore. “The Big Beautiful Bill” that cuts muscle and bone from our country’s power, and the DOGE thugs that are illegally decimating our Health monitoring and research capacity, our total scientific research enterprise, our environment and energy policies, and making a further shambles of our long-running national immigration fiasco all get Griffith’s vote. When are both of these elected officials going to tell the truth about their faux right-wing complaints? The truth is a national debt from GOP policy brings a $2.5-4.0 trillion dollar increase, already up $0.3 trillion this year. In the meantime, Griffith talks about “constraints” on renewable energy. Those constraints come from wrongheaded right-wing fossil fuel investors roaming the legislative halls seeking goodies for anyone except you at your place in this world. One more truth is that this administration is ruining our class of the world technological superiority. Can you get used to being second-rate?
So, when do we get see from these two the actual data on crime rates, the US economy, world trade, the reality of ill-conceived tariffs, these and all the issues and conditions as they were last December 2024? When do they admit that we are now the laughingstock of the world because of the foolish right?
And ‘the short answer” from Mr. Griffith? “Who knows?” From Mr. Ballard, we hear nothing of programmatic solutions, just right-wing goo that bogs us down. Ballard thinks idealism is a bad thing.
Clearly, these two wanna-be Barons in the new national order have not sipped but gulped from the poisonous cup of power, of authoritarian control and of the destruction of the Democratic Republic of the United States of America.
John C. Nemeth
Former CEO & Exec. Dir., Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Christiansburg
