Ferri Tales

To the editor: In a recent “ Letter from an American ” (March 15), Historian Heather Cox Richardson recounted the motivating factors that created the Republican Party. Southern landowners (whose wealth was based on free slave labor) were pushing Congress to pass laws that would permit the spread of slavery in the West to gain leverage over the North. A group of Northern politicians from different parties joined together “to stop the Slave Power that was turning the government into an oligarchy.” In 1856, the Republican Party was founded, and in 1859 Abraham Lincoln defined the party as one of “ordinary Americans standing together against the oligarchs of slavery.” Bradford County has many good “ordinary Americans” who consider themselves ‘conservative’ and are registered Republicans. They believe in the once-accepted platform of limited government, fiscal responsibility, law and order, support for veterans. Many of them believed that Trump, master salesman and liar, had their backs. To...

Every order from the Trump Administration is on behalf of Trump's handler, Vladimir Putin. Every order hurts the United States and helps Russia. A few examples follow: -- Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force which investigated violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. -- Bondi disbanded Task Force KleptoCapture which monitored sanctions against Russia. -- Bondi disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. -- Elon Musk gave a 19-year-old with ties to Russia and cybercrime full access to systems and data at the U.S. Government Cybercrime Agency. -- Trump's CIA director sent a list of CIA employees to the White House in an unclassified email. Trump is also giving out security clearances without background checks. -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive operations against Russia. -- Trump is shutting down U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that supports programs for health, ...

I have been a lifelong Republican. As a Vietnam combat veteran and former law enforcement officer, I have been a proud American all my life. Watching the spectacle that took place in the White House on Feb. 28 has made me ashamed to be a Republican and an American. When Ukraine was attacked, and it appeared Russia would overtake their country, we Americans stepped up and vowed to help the Ukrainians, which rallied their people to fight on. Because we Americans promised to support them until Putin was defeated, they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their soldiers and civilians. Our country’s loudest supporters were our Republican leaders. They encouraged the Ukrainian people to fight on and to sacrifice. These Republican leaders in the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the governors now are silent, afraid to stand as proud men and women, cowards to position and power. Because we change presidents should not change our country’s promises. I, for one, will change my po...

Dear Editor Keeler, Your editorial last week about the re-renaming of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, contains historical errors and misunderstanding. As a grad student of history at the University of Alabama, I learned that Confederate place names and statues across the South had absolutely nothing to do with “an effort to ease tensions between the North and South, heal wounds and reunite the country,” as you stated. This is far from the truth. Fort Bragg was named in 1918 (as you pointed out). The Civil War ended in 1865 and none of the efforts to honor the Confederacy took place until after most of its’ veterans (on both sides) had died. The elevation of Confederate “heroes” was part of white southern efforts to reassert domination. It’s not a coincidence that the Confederate statues, names and romanticism about “the lost cause,” took place right along with Jim Crow laws, the rise of the KKK and the scourge of lynching. All of them were designed to scare and oppress the blac...