Perhaps if Kristen Griffiths ("Communism: the best answer" Opinion, Monday) wants to live in a society where she has limited money and limited ways to spend it, where personal choice and decision is turned over to someone who knows nothing about her and the government makes all decisions for those both able and inept, she should move to the People’s Republic of China.
While she’s there, she should visit the labor camps and ask the little kids on the fast track to medical school if they had any other ambitions or even know what they are being prepared for at the age of 10.
Also, she should visit the bachelor villages that have resulted in forced abortions and governmental family restrictions.
Maybe one of the residents would be kind enough to share with her the percentage of their income that they give to the government in order to support the "gentle hand" of the programs placed upon them.
Griffiths aptly stated that, "… we have the freedom to make mistakes, and the freedom to make other people pay for them." I heartily disagree – we do have the freedom to make mistakes, but we do not have the freedom to make others pay for them.
This is a "privilege" granted by the socialist government programs in practice (Social Security, welfare, Medicare/Medicaid) that have been, over time, proven inherently flawed.
I would like to know if Griffiths is the only child in her family, or if maybe she would have been one of those aborted had the same restrictions that exist in China existed here.
I would also like to know what makes her think she is qualified to write a column in a newspaper, since no governmental assessment said so.
I would also like to know how Griffiths knows that she is not one of those people contaminating her classes and diminishing the value of her degree.
By what criteria does she, an architecture major, consider herself qualified to write on political, economic and social topics?
Certainly her ideal government would not allow this.
Sometimes, I look at my school’s daily paper and wonder how some people come to form opinions that support the removal of the very freedoms they are utilizing.
I challenge Griffiths to find one communist society that gives the press freedom to write anything remotely comparable to her opinions.
Melissa Grosse
Communication freshman
