Scott Johnson’s June 18th letter to the editor certainly was a strange thing to read.

How can it be, we are forced to wonder, that one who speaks with such fervor of the benefits of small government could rationalize his own attendance at a state-funded, land grant university?

Are not “the guns of government… used to rob individuals of their wealth in order to support” our Mr. Johnson in his attempt to acquire a higher education?

Moreover, the views expressed in Mr. Johnson’s letter seem just as ill- conceived as his presence here at ISU.

He, like Rush Limbaugh, assumes that the proposed public policies of those working for a more egalitarian society have no basis to appeal to other than the altruistic sentiments of the electorate.

Let us leave for a short while the abstract world created by the philosophical and literary hack Ayn Rand in order to consider what is actually happening in this nation.

Of stocks owned in the U.S., 90 percent are owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of households.

Only 10 percent of stocks are owned by the remaining 90 percent of households, with 80 percent of those stocks owned by households which rank overall in top 11 to 20 percent in terms of wealth.

There is no necessity to appeal to altruism when numbers like these reflect what is happening: the vast majority of Americans are forced to work for a small minority who receive the profits created by that work.

Is it not a bit absurd to claim that the owner or stockholder “earns” the profits which he or she receives?

What exactly does the owner or stockholder do to “earn” this profit?

The answer: nothing of significance.

Mr. Johnson would somehow have us believe that a just society can be based on the principle that individuals have a right to “earn” something when they do nothing, and as such, he denies the right of individuals to receive the profits created by their own work.

In other words, Mr. Johnson discounts the right of individuals to keep what they earn through their own work, opting rather to recognize the illusory right of other individuals to steal these earnings.

Is reality as simple as I have presented it here? Of course not. I, like Mr. Johnson, have been forced to over-generalize.

He, for instance, failed to point out that it is the guns of government which are used to keep the have-nots from taking back what is stolen from them by the haves. Nor did he mention that a great deal of the taxes taken in by the government are used in schemes which sacrifice the have- nots to the haves, as is the case with our maintenance of a huge military industrial complex.

I have no doubt, however, that it is the description I have provided which more accurately identifies and accounts for the problems facing the U.S. today.

No single group poses a greater threat to this nation than its own capitalist class.

It is they who cause the deaths of 17 U.S. workers every day, then try to gut the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

It is they who ram free trade agreements through Congress, then move their factories to third world countries and import goods made using virtual slave labor.

It is they who profit when the land is raped, then seek to further eliminate environmental protection laws.

It is they who stand idly by while low income youths kill one another, and then raise a media storm when a member of the Chamber of Commerce is killed. It is even they who wanted their area of economic influence expanded, and then had thousands sent to die in Vietnam.

Given that this subsidized class persistently uses its wealth and power to act against us, there is no reason that we ought not have as our goal their complete elimination.

Though the elimination of the capitalist class may not be inevitable, it surely is in the best interest of the vast majority reading this letter.

Tyler Wayne Roach

Senior

Philosophy, English and

Religious Studies