Wow! What a difference in responses to the torture questions (Feb. 26)!

Makes me wonder: what ages mailed in their responses? E-mailed? Is the e-mail group also the group that finds vicarious violence entertaining?

I’m the one who wrote the lead-off sampling of reader responses in the highlighted section. I’m 63 and teach kindergarten to sixth-grade school kids. I have consistently been faced, over the last 20-plus years, with the attitude that vicarious violence on the screen (movie, video, TV, computer and whatever) is entertaining and OK. “It’s OK, Mrs. Rogers. It’s against the bad guys.” This attitude pervades our culture. It’s no small stretch to hold that same attitude toward real violence … whether it be dragging someone behind your truck in Texas, shooting someone over a water balloon in Maine, or torturing Muslims.

The 20th century saw a change in the way “we” treat war prisoners. The 21st century is seeing a return to the inhuman standards that allowed the killing of all men, women and children enemies as we “settled the country,” the torture applied to non-Christians in historical Europe, or to other sects of Christians. That’s our history, too, just as much as profiting from the slave trade and slavery.

Inhumanity is a human trait and we are returning to it in this country after a 75-plus-year break in this as policy.

I could preach on, but people who read the letters to the editor are probably the choir.

Vickie Rogers, Otisfield