To the editor:

I believe the 1980s demonstrated that most college campus opponents to the Vietnam War did not fully complete the conversion from imperialist to altruistic democrat. Materialism and worship of the twin gods of profit and property were too powerful for the average American to resist. They voted for Ronald Reagan, the ethically-deformed imbecile whose depraved finger on the nuclear button probably did more to topple Communism than any economic competition. Now we are seeing the true nature of Clinton and others who apparently opposed the war, not for moral reasons, but to avoid any personal sacrifice.

A truly converted person would have recognized that the U.S. and the other imperialistic powers have one rule for themselves: Preservation and perpetuation of the privileged class, its power, property and profits (6P rule). They have lots of rules for everyone else which explains the atrociously high prison population.

Under the 6P rule, the U.S. logically can support a democracy in one nation and autocracy and tyranny in another. It can rationalize the incineration of hundreds of thousands of people with nuclear weapons, and is the only nation ever to do that, while condemning other nations for attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction. It can justify inhumane treatment of its own disadvantaged and unfortunate people while killing people around the world for what it claims to be humane reasons. It can deprive its own people during their periods of greatest need and vulnerability, as the barbaric healthcare system does, to feed the avaricious and voracious appetite of the military industrial complex.

Under the 6P rule, the U.S. killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians then self-righteously called Pol Pot a butcher when he killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians. Why has Henry Kissinger not been called before the War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the Cambodian atrocities? Under the 6P rule, no standards apply to the privileged class. They apply only to everyone else.

The incompletely converted liberals can condemn the welfare system for mothers that cost about 3% of the national budget before the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 ended that "government waste", while failing to comprehend the immensity of the interest on the Ronald Reagan national debt which consumes 33% of all income taxes.

Under the perverted American ethical code profit is moral. Poverty is immoral. Winning is moral. Losing is immoral. Then we sanctimoniously claim the right to arbitrate with whatever means we deem necessary the problems, real or imagined, of everyone else in the world.

HT Skokie, Illinois, US