Dear Editor:
 
I feel that we owe our American youth much more than we are providing. We owe our students an environment of respect. I propose this be accomplished on two fronts:
 
All students must stand when the teacher enters the room and when addressing the teacher. They must be required to wear simple uniforms at the school. The school and the teacher must be objects of respect.
 
Secondly, all people must at least obey the traffic laws. Sadly we humans are such that we will not do this unless have to, and so enforcement with religious zeal is required. We owe the youth an example of respect for law. Once we make ourselves do this our youth will grow up in a world where it is simply understood that laws will be obeyed.

Incidentally, but not insignificantly, universal compliance with traffic laws would result is fewer and less serious accidents, and considerable savings in energy costs. The longer trips (in terms of time) will call for higher transportation costs, of course, but at least these costs would benefit American truck drivers rather than foreign oil cartels. It will slow us down, but I think the benefits, especially on our youth, will make it all worthwhile. And it might prove beneficial to slow down anyway, to live more slowly. The premise here, of course, is that the traffic laws will be rational.
 
As the first American ambassador to Great Britain, John Adams, left his initial audience with King George III, the king said to him, "I hope the American people will not suffer unduly for the lack of a monarch". Do we have the internal fortitude and rationality and opened eyes to continue to prove the king wrong, and to show that a free people indeed can make laws that they will themselves respect, and that liberty does not mean lawlessness?
 
God bless the American people with wisdom and courage.

Philip McPherson Rudisill