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Letter: Political courage often is not politically smart

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

A house divided against itself cannot stand, President Lincoln said in his 1858 bid for the Illinois Senate. Some historians say he lost that bid because he took a stand not for or against slavery but that it needed to be resolved one way or another. In other words, don’t tell us what we already know but don’t want to deal with. Political courage often is not politically smart.

What must be resolved is that in a country where the lower most needy income group is growing much faster than the upper or, for that matter, the declining middle class, is how do we pay the bills? Helping those who are less fortunate than us is the American way and a tenet in, I would think, most religions. Rugged individualism sounds great, and should be encouraged, but starving children in the streets is what we prefer to see on television ads helping foreign children. So what do we do?

We take care of our own first, meaning those living in the U.S.A. This may requ...

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