Can we handle the truth?

I think columnist Dick Lyles (Aug. 21) has really put his finger on the source of much that ails American culture, but I think its worse. The moral relativism, even agnosticism that we cannot apprehend the truth, puts us in a position where we cannot say what is good and we dont even have a basis of fact to start the discussion from. If one opinion is as good as the next, then none of them can be right. Its logical conclusion is nihilism.

Where I disagree with Mr. Lyles is blaming it on higher education. By the time you get to college, you should be ready to deal with questions about what is true and how do we know it. Grade school education, however, should be supplying our children with a basic set of knowledge and the principles to use it. The educational elite that is responsible for training our teachers too often has advanced a philosophy of moral and even factual relativism that has become nearly institutionalized. They have attempted to force their own views on childhood education instead of fostering what is in the best interest of the country as a whole. I dont know what they stand for, if anything.

Maybe we cant handle the truth anymore. If thats the case, then America is surely out of luck.

Gregory West, Poway

Likes column, but

I share columnist Barry Cronins worries (Aug. 14) about the possibility of being dragged into a terrible war like World War I. His example undermines his last part of his article however.

World War I was started by belligerent empires who couldnt keep their hands off their neighbors, not by superpowers who werent comfortable in their own skins. As he points out, several of those empires who felt comfortable being meddling superpowers no longer exist.

Joe Shea, Poway

Voters must OK increase

Read more:
Letters to the editor: Aug. 28, 2014