Published Friday, January 27, 2012 12:05 AM

Letters for January 27

Why should government support student loans?

Edward Wasserman (Eagle, Jan. 19) made the astonishing complaint that the federal government is not spending enough money on student loans and on support of state colleges. Don't we have enough federal debt?

Why is this a federal government responsibility? It is bad enough that President Barack Obama ran private student loan lenders out of business by seizing student loan programs.

Is there some reason students can't work part-time? I am very proud of my granddaughter Rachael for working to help pay for college and for enrolling in Blinn College to get a head-start at A&M or another university.

And why can't parents set aside some money in 529s? I put $5,000 in a 529 for another granddaughter soon after she was born and it paid for three years of her degree from A&M.

One of the things wrong with this degenerating country is that so many people expect the government to prevent and solve their problems. Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

BILL KLEMM

Bryan

Harry Belafonte a good choice for King event

I thank the Carter G. Woodson Black Awareness Committee and its university mentor and advisers for bringing Harry Belafonte to College Station as part of the Martin Luther King awareness and celebration events.

Harry's soliloquy was informative, amusing, and most impressive. Harry is a true American hero who had an instrumental role in Rev. King's work and legacy.

I enjoyed Bill Bryne's opening remarks, the food and the other attendees. I am sure Barnes and Noble wish it had brought more of Harry's memoir My Song -- it sold out quickly.

I look forward to next year's event.

WILLIAM ADAMS

Hearne

Heading down a slippery slope on religious belief

I must respond to Sue Gower's letter (Eagle, Jan, 25). I'm not sure that I agree with her position that God gives us a fair choice of whether or not to believe in His revealed truth.

As I understand the choice, it is either to believe in Him and reap eternal splendor or be tortured for eternity if you don't. Some choice! If I were a truly loving God, I think that I would make the offer to allow those who didn't believe in me also to have access to the same fun-theme park in the sky that apparently awaits some of us after death.

I think there is a very dangerous slippery slope when we allow some people to do or say what they want and to allow them to dictate to us how we should behave solely because they may think that they are under divine orders or intervention.

I think left to our own devices, humans are generally good. I don't think it took Moses coming down from the mount with the Ten Commandments to inform the inhabitants of the Bronze Age Middle East that murder, rape and theft among other things were wrong. To believe so would be an insult to our early ancestors who couldn't have possibly gotten as far as they did as a society unless they already developed a sense of human solidarity in their hearts.

I feel it's likely that gods and associated dogmas are man-made, and it shows. Even with a laymen's review of all the hundreds of gods that have been created by man, I feel it's clear that these gods are exactly the type of gods that you would expect to be created by a species that's about a half a chromosome away from a chimpanzee.

JOHN GILLAR

College Station

We need a Congress full of Gabrielle Giffords

Strength, wisdom, grace and courage. What I wouldn't give to have every seat in the United State Congress occupied by a Gabrielle Giffords.

E. G. CARLS

College Station

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