David Roepke is quite right (“Letters to editor could use more logic, fewer morons” Feb. 25): Anyone who would wield a pen against a sword can fairly expect to get whacked, snicker snack.

As the inveterate letterwriter I am and as a teacher of writing, the dilemma is quite real.

I ask myself, have I been selling pens for hapless villagers to wave at the sword-wielding barbarian hordes thundering across the plains?

“Okay, students. Today I want you to write a 250-word letter to Attila and his chieftains persuading them to attack the village to the north of us. And quickly, please.”

The fallacy here is believing that every opponent is amenable to persuasion.

Actually, very few are. Remember the first time you saw Indiana Jones confronted by the sword-wielding assassin: snick, snick, whicker whack? Now, James Bond might have pulled out a pen, engaged the assassin in witty conversation, tossed him the pen, causing the witless fellow to drop one of his swords to catch the object that was really a canister of nerve gas disguised as a pen.

Not Indiana Jones.

He pulled out his very large revolver and shot the guy.

My point? Oh, yes. Well, there’s more than one way to deal with a sword.

Unless you’re Duncan McLeod of the Clan McLeod and have a long sharp katana tucked up under your short leather jacket, you ought to have some alternative defense strategies to choose from.

The main thing to remember about McLeod is that he gets killed all the time. Dying hurts. “It always does,” quips the finest swordsman you are ever likely to see on any screen, at least in the Americas and Europe.

The reason Adrian Paul is so incredibly good at portraying this breathtaking epitome of masculine power and ethical behavior is that he got his training as a sissified dancer.

A really convincing sword fight is one that is choreographed down to the smallest detail.

One missed apostrophe and, swish, you’re the headless horseman, sans horse.

When the unethical assassin, immune from persuasion, confronts you with his sword in his hand, you might as well kneel gracefully and bow your head for the death blow if your only alternative is to reach for your pen.

If he’s just passing through town, my advice would be to keep a safe distance.

If he wants to rape or sodomize you, torture your cat, burn your village and/or eat your lunch first, you might have time to look around for some alternative means of defense.

A letter to the editor would not be my first choice.

Uninformed public discourse has already been adequately described by Roepke, and I won’t retrace his path.

On the other hand, informed public discourse is the best defense yet devised by our species to counter the power of moronic tyrants and the irrational passions of a mob of your holy kinsmen bent on proselytizing you to death.

You cannot reason with a tyrant, a mob or a gossip, so save your laser jet’s ink cartridge.

Quarrel? Yes. Reason? No.

Likewise, when you find yourself under the institutional control of a hierarchical power structure whose administrative chieftains are oblivious to theories of moral choice and obtuse as any triangle to the constitutional rights of individuals, all I have to I offer you are lessons in penmanship, spelling, logic and academic integrity.

None of these will protect you from the rain.

The best any of us can do is choose how to live the time in front of us.

For most of us, the choices seem to come down to kissing the backsides of petty puffed-up tyrants, bowing our heads for the death blow, or picking up our pens to capture the words in front of us.

Even Adrian Paul couldn’t be immortal forever.

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Virginia Allen

Graduate English examiner