The following letter is reprinted with permission from The Daily Sentinel. It appeared on their editorial page on 9/6/2022:
There are a several billboards around town that have a photo of Representative Boebert highlighting the word FREEDOM. Exactly what does she mean? Does she mean President Roosevelt’s four freedoms – – freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear? Does she mean that we are free to worship or not worship as we see fit, without the government using our tax dollars to support a church or forcing us to believe a specific religious doctrine? Does she mean that we are free to speak in the public square without threats of violence? Does she want Americans to earn a living wage? Does she want her fellow citizens to be able to afford healthcare, housing, clean water, and healthy food? Does she believe that medications should be affordable, and that Big Pharma should not gouge diabetics for insulin? Finally, does she believe school kids should not live in fear of a mass murderer entering their school?
Does our congressional representative believe in any of these freedoms? She clearly does not believe in the basic freedoms accepted by the rest of world’s democracies. She has already said she does not believe in separation of church and state. Her support for the January 6th insurrection shows that she is willing to throw out the votes of millions of Americans, denying them the right to speak through the ballot box. She has voted against bills that will help veterans fight cancer, control the cost of insulin, restore the climate, and build the infrastructure that would help farmers get their products to market. Finally, she believes that dead school children are acceptable collateral damage for the right of an 18-year-old to be armed with a high velocity semi-automatic rifle with a large capacity magazine.
Exercise your FREEDOM to vote her and her party out.
Charley Allan
Colonel, USAF (ret)
Grand Junction
This was a good piece, and worth reprinting. Lauren Boebert’s conduct and values as a representative are completely un-American and I wish that her critics would focus on that. There’s been quite a few criticisms of Boebert that have been published in the Sentinel letters, but they tend to focus on two things: (1) the fact that she hasn’t done anything for her constituents with her voting record in Congress, and (2) her history of flouting the law.
However, these two things are assets in the current GOP. On (1), the GOP has taken the obstructionist strategy for years, before Trump was even in the picture. It’s easier to dismantle the “deep state” when you’ve been obstructing and undermining peoples’ faith in the system. On (2), Ruth Ben-Ghiat recently explained that fascist movements recruit criminals because they are more easily corruptible and willing to go along with corruption.
Boebert recently called a segment of her voters “neutered Republicans”. Maybe she’s right. “Moderate” Republicans claim to care about things like the constitution and democracy, but do they really?