Thanks, Dad

Dad,

I am proud to be your daughter and am, once again, floored by your ability to thoughtfully and succinctly express yourself. One day I hope to develop just a smidgeon of the writing ability you have. Thanks, too, for your humble morality. I have learned so much from you. I love you.

Kim

A copy of My Dad's letter to the editor:
Dear Editor:

Jim Redd was my personal friend from the time we were toddlers until the end, and when he was available, he was always my doctor. He cared for my aging parents, he delivered my child, he doctored me through injuries and sickness, always with competence and that signature good humor. We shared a passion for things ancient that took us in different directions starting in the 1970s, when he was a young med student and intern interacting with wealthy doctor-collectors, while I was in the army reading about archaeology and in graduate school studying it. But our friendship always trumped our disagreements, even when his lust to possess collided with my hunger to study and preserve. This is a huge tragedy and something deep down inside me wishes that our places were reversed, a wish no doubt shared at this moment by many of our neighbors.
But, after all is done and the recriminations and anger have settled, we will be right back where we started, faced with the same hard questions (government be damned—this is about us, our personal decisions and their consequences):
--Are we a better people if we teach our children to respect the law even when they disagree with it, or should we teach them to hold it in contempt and only obey the laws they agree with?
--Are kids better served by being taught to gut and dismantle what’s left of our battered archaeological record, or to understand why it’s protected, to be respectful and protective of it, and to try to learn from it?
--Will we love and protect this land, or treat it like a vacant lot in the South Bronx while “outsiders” struggle to protect the land from us?
--It’s always satisfying to rant about big government and to retch in reaction to the whining of self-righteous “environmentalists” (whatever they are) and archaeologists like me, but how many of us in our heart of hearts, if we had the power to decide (oh yeah—we do have that power), would choose to dismantle all protective regulations and open this land up to uncontrolled assault by anyone to do anything they please to it?
And finally,
--Unhampered freedom is wonderful in the abstract, but in a real world, if a hundred people wish to protect something and one person wants to tear it up, who should have the power to decide, the one or the many? In the absence of responsible government, no one has stewardship, and anyone can impose their decisions on anyone else, regardless of consequences. The tyranny of the majority is preferable to the tyranny of anarchy. We have laws protecting the archaeological record from random destruction because a large number of American voter/taxpayers believe it should be protected, and have exercised their rights in a representative government to get laws past to accomplish that. If we don’t like those laws, what should we do about it—flaunt and disobey them, or exercise our rights as citizens to try to get them changed?
Out of respect for Jim, let’s not use him as an excuse for behaving like Neanderthals.
Winston Hurst