I hope you get a ton of mail protesting Jim Kendall’s hate-mongering piece in your September issue. Our society is as much endangered by his kind of extremism as it is by the many other types which exist.

The fact, which he attributes to Rick Wilson, that law enforcement in the U.S. amounts to less than three-tenths of one percent of the population, attests to the ability of our democracy to include radical extremists from both the left and the right without resorting to the repressive philosophies of Hitler, McCarthy and our own Canwell.

Kendall weasels his way by asserting that there are ‘good Muslims’ and ‘bad Muslims’ without explaining how we are to differentiate between the two, therefore we must suspect all Muslims: he gives us Agent Wilson’s formula for turning them in.

Kendall says “In a very real sense we are returning to the original meaning of the term ‘militia’ which meant all able-bodied men.” I don’t believe Kendall is very well informed:

Article One of the Constitution as it was adopted in 1787 reads as follows:

“SECTION 8: The 15th Power of Congress: To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia — reserving to the States respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the Militia according to the disciplines prescribed by Congress.”

Clearly, the “Militia” in 1787 was not regarded as a cluster of independent, armed citizens but was to consist of groups of men formally organized, armed, trained and in the service of the individual States of the Union. Clearly, the mission of the militia was not that of a bunch of red-necks skulking in the woods of Idaho or of white-collar hot-heads spying and informing on their neighbors.

John Pennell
Bainbridge Island