As humans, we have developed wonderful ways of using language to describe how we see reality, how we feel, our highest hopes and dreams for ourselves and our world. Labels short-circuit communication and reduce us to “You are!” “I am not!,” resolving nothing.

“Conservative” and “liberal” mean just what the user wants them to mean.

To Paul Lowell (letter to the editor, Aug. 30), liberalism has an “ugly head” yet, under the present, not liberal, government, Census Bureau statistics reveal the number of Americans living in poverty and the number without health insurance increased in 2003 for the third straight year. The number of children living in poverty increased by 1.3 million to 35.9 million, the largest percentage jump since 1991.

I do not believe Mr. Lowell takes comfort or pride in those numbers and the human suffering they reveal. I do not believe President Bush intended for his policies of tax breaks for the rich and drug price deals with his rich drug company supporters to cause this. But that is what happens when government forsakes its obligation to care for the poor, the sick and the frail among us.

If there were profit to be made in providing programs to do that, Halliburton and other for-profit companies would be quick to sign up. Because there is no profit and because it is right to do so, we must elect a government courageous enough to spend our money to care for even the most defenseless among us.

Silver Moore-Leamon,

Auburn