In “A Hero Among Heroes” (Sins of Omission, March), Roger McGrath wrote, “Ever since the late 1960’s, the cultural Marxists of academe have worked assiduously to destroy American heroes.”  I surely agree with him; however, he uses the term cultural Marxist, which sounds to me like an oxymoron, since Marxists have no culture in the traditional sense of the term.  They tear down and destroy all that has gone before them, replacing it with nothing.

The culture that remains in the United States is in the Southern states, where some real element of cultural conservation has survived, though it is fading at the same rate as that of Southerners who find higher-paying jobs in the West or North.

American socialists reject and demonize the past while they spend its capital and prosper on the success that past views and policies of liberty have brought them.  It does not occur to the United States—or to the world, for that matter—that the catastrophic violence and massive financial and social failure of socialism have anything to do with socialism and its “invincible arrogance,” as Michael McMahon described it so well in his article “The Abolition of Learning” (Views).

The South, like a “Stonewall,” still honors Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Randolph, Calhoun, Davis, Lee, and Jackson, while American socialists scrounge for heroes among the world’s failed socialists “leaders,” some of whom led the United States into the great wars—men such as Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy.

The truth is that free people mind their own business and establish those permanent things that create order and sustain liberty—faith, family, tradition, community, private property, loyalty, courage, and honor.  Without the permanent things, a nation becomes just another bankrupt and crumbling empire.

When democratically determined values have fully replaced religious morals, a society is finished, and new civilizations will replace it, over the bones and ashes of its true heroes.

I always look forward to reading your excellent magazine each month.

        —Timothy D. Manning, Sr.
Kernersville, NC

I have a highly technical quibble with one item in Roger McGrath’s “A Hero Among Heroes.”  He refers to Audie Murphy firing a “.50 caliber” machine gun from a German tank destroyer.  Neither German tanks nor German tank destroyers carried .50-caliber machine guns.  Those that had machine guns (and not all types did) used the 7.9 mm gun.  That is (approximately) .30 caliber.

        —Henry E. Heatherly
Lafayette, LA