Bob McClellan is a prolific letter writer in the Daily Inter Lake on the merits of Democrats and the failures of Republicans. His recent piece expounding the legacy of President Johnson and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 begs for this reader to set the story on a different historical path — that of truth.  

You can pat Democrats on the back all day, Bob, but one thing you seem to leave out of your version — It was the Republican Party that should be celebrated for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They voted 80 percent of their party to pass it and the Democratic Party only voted 60 percent.

Congress’s trust rating in America is at its all-time “lowest” and when you have a party that only wants to grow government, exponentially, and raise taxes, I would hope there would be some opposition.  

Many votes are unfortunately won by voting in large government programs, but that can only go so far. Eventually the people paying for the “other folks” to receive these programs — you know the “workers” who actually pay taxes? — will get tired and weary, Bob, seeing their hard-earned dollars paying for these programs.  

The government doesn’t “give” anything to any particular class of people without robbing the monies from another class of people.

Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, believed, that a successful republic requires a moral or self-controlled people. He believed in a self-governing nation, of, by and for the people. (Gettysburg Address)  That is a far, far cry from the massive government over-reach we have today with bloated programs, rules and regulations, and horrendous debt to us and the generations to come.  

Me, personally, I would rather have a do-nothing Congress, Bob, than a Congress that enacts laws to aid and abet an already over-budgeted fat government. —Linda Johnson, Kalispell