In Kiyoshi Martinez’s column on Tuesday, “Liberal lies of mass fear mongering,” he admonishes young people not to vote in the upcoming election, a nadir from which his standards of decency only, amazingly, decline. His column should be preserved in amber, so that centuries from now, when historians seek to understand all that was wrong with 21st century America, they will have a convenient starting point.

Martinez’s most salient point is that there will be no draft under President Bush and that liberals who assert the contrary are lying in order to achieve some political benefit. While the odds of a draft under any president, given present circumstances, are slim, they are not nonexistent. Such a prospect is a lot more likely now than it was before we invaded Iraq, and it still will be more likely if we continue down the path President Bush has chosen for us.

Where Martinez really goes off the rails, however, is when he accuses liberals of lying and of employing the tactics of fear. At this point, it should be clear to everyone paying attention that, in the words of ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin, “the current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done … (Republican charges of media bias are) all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Sen. Kerry at least partly through distortions.”

To accuse Sen. John Kerry and the Democrats of playing the fear card is to willfully ignore everything that the Republican Party has said or done in the past four months. Martinez, based on this column, is more than up to that task.

Abraham Epton

senior in LAS