I also read Skutnik’s column on our freedoms and national unity, Mr. Johnson (“Skutnik trying to break U.S. unity,” Dec. 11″), and I can only conclude that you missed its point.

Skutnik hardly tried to “destroy our nation’s unity at the time at which we need it most.” Rather, he applauded the United States for the human rights that we, as a nation, claim to uphold. He wants to ensure that those rights continue to be upheld because they are the reasons the United States is great.

His point seemed to be that it is our freedom and courage to disagree, not unconditional agreement, that makes this a unified and powerful nation. If you study it carefully, you will never find a time in which we as a nation argued bitterly on how the country should be run or how our rights should be interpreted.

Often, our textbooks conveniently imply a consensus of the citizenry, but it is far from the truth. And it is from that disagreement and debate that we have created compromise and consensus that have improved us as a nation of unprecedented freedoms and prosperity.

It’s the freedoms we enjoy and maintain that make me feel safe, not the possibility that my neighbors in the apartment above me could be incarcerated, convicted, even killed, without a whisper from the people.

J. Edwin Johannes

Graduate student

English