OPINION:
There have been and will always be individuals who will exploit the freedoms we enjoy as U.S. citizens. We see it in the manner in which the right to free speech is manipulated, the slop which passes for entertainment and the high incidence of disgusting erectile-dysfunction advertisements that air on television at all hours of the day and night.
A powerful illustration of liberty run amok is also found today in the actions of former NBA star Dennis Rodman and 11 fellow naifs, all of whom have traveled to North Korea to participate in a basketball game as a “birthday present” for ruthless leader Kim Jong-un (“Dennis Rodman scrounges up ex-NBA players for North Korea game,” Web, Jan. 6). Kim is an unstable man who Mr. Rodman offensively characterizes as a “friend for life.”
In his odd state of mind, Mr. Rodman certainly does not recognize that he is a traitor to the nation in which he achieved vast wealth and adulation, but that is the reality. Mr. Rodman is a “useful idiot” providing propaganda value to a murderous dictator under whose regime hundreds of thousands of innocent people are imprisoned in concentration camps and millions are starving — while those at the top know no suffering.
If any justice is to come of this debacle, it will be that Mr. Rodman and other foolish North Korean visitors are forever held in contempt by the members of civil society.
OREN M. SPIEGLER
Upper Saint Clair, Pa.
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