Thank you for printing Alice Mooney's letter of April 26; it sheds much-needed light on one of the ugliest, most destructive trends in our society : growing intolerance of dissent. Ms. Mooney, like some previous letter-writers, condemns the Dispatch as a forum for left-wing, anti-administration views. Has she not noticed that, in addition to some liberal columnists, you also carry the right-wing writings of Charles Krauthammer, George Will, William Safire, Jona Goldberg and Thomas Sowell? Many of us are probably as disgusted by this stream of pro-administration propaganda as she is by opposing views, but anyone who understands what our troops are supposed to be fighting for would never dream of suggesting that voices with which we disagree should be silenced.

The most disturbing aspect of Ms. Mooney's letter is that she identifies herself as a teacher, and claims that she "can no longer share the Dispatch with [her] class" because it is not uniformly supportive of administration policy. If she regards it as her duty to protect students from any material that might challenge them to think about the wisdom of U.S. actions and formulate their own opinions, then she is sadly mistaken about the proper role of an educator. There have been many places in the world where schools have served to indoctrinate students in pro-government ideology - the Soviet Union, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Cuba under Castro, Iraq under Saddam - but that is not a group in which I wish to see my country included.

So she was taught that the president should be honored? Well, I was taught that as citizens we have both the right and the duty to think for ourselves and express our disagreements with our elected representatives. That is especially true when our government is pursuing a preemptive war without having made a convincing case that it is either necessary or in our country's best interest.

Teachers who want to foster the critical-thinking skills that are so rare among Americans today might try sharing some of that "anti-Bush rhetoric" with their students and encouraging them to make up their own minds.

Sincerely,

James E. Toney, Ph.D.