Comments about ‘GOP and Democrat conventions are Saturday’

Why stampede off extremist cliffs? Our inspired Constitution (best described in Catherine Drinker Bowen's "Miracle at Philadelphia") was designed with checks and balances. It's to prevent lopsidedly radical factions from imposing single-view pogroms that destroy our God-given individual rights.

One extreme resembles most of all it's so-called "opposite" extreme, using illicit tactics to impose its one-dimensional dogma to triumph over all others, as Saul Alinski advocated in Rules for Radicals.

I lived for several years in Southern Hemisphere lands that gyrated between libertarian no-rules regimes unable to provide effective infrastructure, vs. totalitarian dictatorships whose jihads wiped out infrastructure and effective use of great natural resources. Don't repeat their mistakes. Though "opposite" in views, both were alike in avoidable losses.

Our First Amendment encourages us to petition government for "redress of grievances". Yet if government is forbidden to fix problems, especially ills resulting from improper government action or inaction, redress is vetoed. Utah's Senators rightly got Congress to quarantine (ungrandfather) Utah's worst-ever Federal judge, Willis Ritter.

Crickets hatching on inaccessible Federal lands engulf our daughter's crops. Bennett redressed that. "Earmarks"? Our Senators properly redressed Federally-caused problems.

Time to get us a new senator.