Letters and Reaction
A Lethal Injection of Reality
Jacob Sullum's interesting column on physician-assisted execution, "A Lethal Injection of Reality" (August/September), aptly illustrated the location between a rock and a hard place in which libertarians frequently find themselves.
Sullum correctly points out that "most people with medical expertise do not want to assist executions because they view it as contrary to their professional ethics." By what euphemism can we justify abortion and how do we square professional ethics with that act? Must our ethics be selective and are we to give certain medical interventions a free pass on those ethics? The smallest minority is the individual, and none are smaller than the life inside a woman's womb.
Dave Quirk
Mosinee, WI
Putin's Russia
Cathy Young ("Putin's Russia," August/September) confirms that Russia is not a great place to live, but she gives too much credence to the Ukrainians and the European Union (E.U.).
As an English expat legally residing in the United States I know how undemocratic, unaccountable, bureaucratic, and intolerant the European Union is-a reason I left England. The E.U. stirred up the problems in Ukraine for its own grand expansion plans.
Ukraine itself has been corrupt and incompetent since independence in 1991. And before that it had a fine history of supporting Hitler and suppressing Jews and other ethnic groups.
The present problems have more to do with E.U. meddling and the "liberal" Ukrainians in Kiev than with Putin, who acted to protect his Russians in Crimea.
Graham Webster-Gardiner
Mims, FL
Letters are welcome and should be addressed to
reason 1747 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20009 fax: 202-315-3623 letters@reason.com
"The only problem with millennials accepting the notion that the government should manage the economy is that the government by virtue of its structure is not, nor will it ever be, capable of managing anything."
-reason.com commenter "The Realist" in response to "Generation Independent" (October)
"As someone strongly in favor of criminal justice reform, I'll take the support where I get it. However, the realization that prison is really expensive does not mean that people advocating change care about racial justice."
-reason.com commenter "maddarter" in response to "Rand Paul, Racism, and Prison" (October)
"I for one (as an Xer) welcomed the term millennials. What they were using before, Generation Y, just irritated me, for the reasons that it had no real meaning and the pundits were being obnoxiously lazy in their search for a demographic definition."
-reason.com commenter "Thomas O." in response to "Generational Generalizations Gone Wrong" (October)
"Explaining to young people that the government is keeping them from doing the things they desire has value, as does letting those that already are natural libertarians and anti-authoritarians [know] that there is a political movement of the like-minded."
-reason.com commenter "SugarFree" in response to "Rise of the Hipster Capitalist" (October)