DRIVERS

Look to the left, please; a life may depend on it

This is a letter to people driving in parking lots.

I ride a motorcycle with blinking headlight and wear a bright lime safety vest. None of this works when a driver is cradling a phone in a left hand and talking while driving. You never look to the left! I have had to stop suddenly (at only 15 mph) because I could see you weren’t looking as you zipped into the through traffic lane. I hope the phone call was vital to the defense of the USA so you can comfort my wife and children that your call was more important than my life.

Look, if you are in a parking lot and parked, make your call. When you drive, try to make that the focus of your limited attention.

MIKE SCIALES, Boise

KEEPING THE REPUBLIC

Pay heed to the words of our Founding Fathers

At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 a lady asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The Founding Fathers, inspired by God, had developed a tri-partite government the likes of which the world had never known. It was to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people; one which by design had limited (and enumerated) powers, protected individual liberty and promoted free enterprise. These men had rested their work on a fundamental assumption that was commonplace among the citizenry of their day. That assumption was the regenerate state of the common man’s heart. Wisely the framers knew that to “keep” the Republic demanded a citizenry reconciled to a high power than any form of government.

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion ... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams, second president of the United States.

T. ROBERT TAYLOR, Star