A Letter to Sen. Jim Webb

I have not received a response to this letter, and assume the staff probably didn't pass it on, so I decided to post it.

January 25, 2010

Hon. Jim Webb
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510

Dear Sen. Webb:

I received the enclosed fund-raising letter from your campaign, which went to my old address at ______________. I supported your first campaign for the senate with as much money as I could spare, (though a few hundred dollars isn’t much in such a campaign, I know), and I wrote letters to newspapers and friends in Virginia on your behalf. I did so, because as a Marine Vietnam veteran, I have endless respect for your service both as a Marine officer, and at the pentagon as a civilian. And I’ve bought and read all your books—plus The Nightingale’s Song.

I am writing to tell you that, while I still greatly admire you and your past service, I cannot support you again. I say that with great sorrow, for you are one of my few living heroes.

You once said that you, “Didn’t take the bit well.” From where I sit, it seems you have taken Harry Reid’s bit all too well. The unbelievable debt the senate has passed, cap and trade, a bribe-ridden healthcare bill that will raise costs, the lack of tort reform, a senate that is quiescent in the face of enemy POWs being treated as petty criminals, putting the country at risk through public trials in NYC, voter intimidation in Philadelphia ignored because of the color of the thugs, TARP, a job stimulus that is being withheld to favor certain districts before the elections, the gobbling up of major portions of the economy by a government out of control—this isn’t what I served to defend. The oppression of collectivism is what I was trying to defend the country from—your Scots-Irish ancestors would be appalled at where the country is going!

Switzerland has universal health coverage without multi-millionaire trial lawyers and bloated government programs/public unions—but maybe supporting trial lawyers and public unions was the point of the Reid/Pelosi/Obama legislation? (See “Swiss Health Care Thrives Without Public Option” in the NYT by Regina Herzlinger, PhD, a Harvard Business School health economist at her website: reginaherzlinger.org.)

Capt. Webb, I would follow you into hell, despite my age, weight and a chronic lung disease. But I cannot help in ruining the country by following you quietly behind Harry Reid.

Sincerely,
Robert A. Hall
Former SSgt, USMC