This letter is in response to Rasmieyh Abdeinabi’s column titled “’Liberal’ is not a slander” that appeared in Wednesday’s Northern Star.

I appreciate young journalists who ply their craft and produce forward-thinking, edgy articles to challenge our thinking. But there is a responsibility to do research and post articles backed with substance beyond half-truths and half-baked emotional arguments. Let me share some gaps in your reasoning, Rasmieyh.

You define the term liberal as “someone who calls for change and improvement.” Conservatives share this definition. As a quick read of your U.S. history text will show that it was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who led the nation into the Civil War to overturn the practice of slavery. I’d call that change and improvement.

You credit the liberals with the New Deal. You can have the New Deal and all the waste and dependency it created. Government programs that are responsible for creating third and fourth generations of perpetual poverty in welfare communities is not “social change or improvement,” as you put it. I serve weekly at a church in a low-income, African-American neighborhood in Elgin. It is not progress when families have been conditioned not to work because the government will pay their way with no expectations in return. A 70-percent illegitimacy rate in the black community is not progress. Last month on “Meet the Press,” Barack Obama blamed the illegitimacy problem on a lack of jobs. Why should anyone work if the government is going to pay his or her rent, buy food and send welfare checks to “help” them? Republicans push for welfare reform (another word for change and improvement) to offer short-term assistance and programs to provide a hand up, not a handout. Liberals aren’t keen on this because handouts obligate welfare recipients to keep voting liberal candidates into office. Thus, Democrats have a stranglehold on the black vote. Wake up, everyone!

You mention unemployment is up – but Bush has brought the unemployment percentage down from 6.3 percent to 5.4 percent in the last two years. Unemployment was 5.6 percent under Clinton. Looks like the tax cuts worked (more change and improvement). Liberals cry endlessly about the richest Americans getting tax cuts. Did you know that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans (those earning more than $300,000) pay 34 percent of the taxes in this country? Seems a little lop-sided. I’ve got some news for you. Those people are largely business owners and represent most of the job creation in this country. Raise taxes and they will invest less in their businesses. Lower taxes and they will invest more. Investing in a business can mean purchasing new equipment, technology, expanding and, yes, hiring more people. Higher taxes inhibit growth and productivity – economics 101.

Finally, you said, “We aid and abet countries that are on Amnesty International’s list of human rights violators.” That would include Afghanistan and Iraq, yet you are against the war that has liberated some 50 million people from the very oppression you oppose. Enough of the emotional arguments. Get your facts straight. Reason with your intellect, not your heart, and you will see things more objectively.

Kevin Kedzior

NIU alumnus