Regarding the Aug. 23 news article “Canada readies new tariffs as trade talks fail”:
My mother was raised on the Canadian side of the U.S.-Canada border in Stanstead, Quebec. Stanstead is one of the “three villages” that straddle the border: Stanstead and Beebe in Quebec, and Derby Line in Vermont. Though the international border runs through the area — in some cases cutting through private property — the residents have always seen themselves as a united community, sharing resources and looking out for each other. Crossing the border is a daily activity for many.
I was raised in both French Canadian and American cultures. My mother made tourtière — French Canadian meat pie — at Christmas, and in the winter, if we had snow, my sister and I made tire d’érable, or maple taffy.
The implications of the current trade war are significant for Canadians because their economy is much smaller and highly dependent on the United States. But the willpower that Canadians have shown in standing up to the U.S. is impressive.
Beyond the economic consequences of the crisis, there are the human ones. Over the course of history, we’ve had our differences, but by and large we’ve had similar world views. We can compete over hockey and unite over Celine Dion.
Whether trade and international relations will be reset is hard to know, but we can hope for it. But in any case, Canadians are always welcome in my house. That bond will not be broken.
David J. Smith, Rockville, Maryland
AI is the new ghostwriter
James Madison may have personally written the Federalist Papers, but do we really think all speeches and op-eds are written by the names associated with them? The complaints from critics in the Aug. 25 online news article “Wall Street Journal defends billionaire’s use of AI to write op-ed” are much ado about nothing.
I have spent much of my career writing letters, speeches and op-eds on behalf of U.S. senators and corporate executives. In almost every instance, most of the words on the page were mine, but the ideas, judgments and conclusions belonged to the person whose name was associated with them. People generally don’t suggest that a senator’s floor speech is less authentic because a staffer drafted it, or that a CEO’s shareholder letter is somehow dishonest because communications staff helped write it. That has been standard practice in business and government for a very long time. An artificial intelligence writing assistant is doing the same job a human ghostwriter does: taking a person’s arguments, priorities and voice and turning them into readable prose.
Stanley Druckenmiller said plainly that he rejected many of the AI tool’s suggestions and that the argument is his own. That is precisely the relationship a principal has with any ghostwriter. The final judgment and responsibility rests with the person whose name is associated with the piece.
If we are going to hold public figures to a standard of having to write every word themselves, we should apply it consistently. The relevant question has always been whether the ideas are genuinely the author’s own, not which tool helped put them on paper.
Edward Merlis, McLean
After more than 70 years of trying constantly to increase my vocabulary (in more than one language) and improve my literary voice, sentence structure, grammar and scope of knowledge, I find my memory slowly declining. I’m a semi-retired professor of medicine and a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy’s medical corps. I find my memory loss frustrating and, frankly, quite scary.
Is the word I’m looking for “juggling,” “jiggling” or “jogging”? How do I format the versions I am trying to combine into a concise, polished final, and where best to send it? I no longer have a medical administrative assistant or Navy yeoman who might help me. So instead I have learned to use AI and have been recommending (and sometimes tutoring) my students and peers to do the same.
There are many of us with experience and expertise that we can offer others through the written word. AI is a legitimate tool for age-related word-finding difficulty, not as a shortcut around thought, but as a compensatory aid for people who still have the ideas but increasingly lose the exact word or phrase they’re looking for. Consider moving to a more fine-tipped brush.
Robert Krasner, New York
The debate over the Senate is old news
Regarding the Aug. 25 news article “This document causes headaches for candidates on left”:
While the Democratic Socialists of America’s proposal to abolish the Senate may be politically implausible, critics calling the underlying objection crazy might consult some unlikely radicals: the founders.
James Madison found equal state representation in the Senate to be fundamentally unjust, while Alexander Hamilton argued for legislative representation based on population. Equal state suffrage survived not because the Constitutional Convention considered it an obvious principle of representative government but because the Connecticut Compromise broke a bitter deadlock between large and small states.
The distinction survives in constitutional law. In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Supreme Court rejected the “federal analogy” as justification for state senates that gave political subdivisions such as counties representation without regard to population, requiring both chambers to be apportioned substantially by population.
And bicameralism itself is hardly sacrosanct: Nebraska abolished its second legislative chamber nearly a century ago.
Of course, none of this justifies abolishing or retaining the U.S. Senate in its current form. But it does make debating how citizens should be represented in a legislature considerably older than the DSA.
Brian J. Gross, Austin
I wish I could read outside
Oh, I wish it were so that I could find an outside nook to read a good book in without being bothered by mosquitoes. The Aug. 21 Weekend article “Where to get lost in a good book” didn’t mention the nuisance while sharing ideal places to read in D.C., including some outdoor spots. Unfortunately for me, if I stay outside even five minutes, I get tons of mosquito bites unless I spray myself with an insect repellent.
I have lived in the District for over 50 years, and I remember a time when there seemingly were fewer mosquitoes in the area than there are now. These days, I regret that I have little choice but to stay inside if I wish to read a good book and remain mosquito-free.
Gail West, Washington
Turf wars
Regarding the Aug. 17 Metro article “A Maryland school district’s turf war”:
Montgomery County should learn from mistakes made by New Haven, Connecticut: Don’t replace any more grass playing fields with turf, and change the ones that are already turf back to grass. On a recent 90-degree afternoon, I used an infrared thermometer to measure the surface temperature on a New Haven public high school artificial turf field. In contrast to the grass next to the plastic, which was 90 degrees, the turf was 135 degrees, and the nearby asphalt was 131 degrees. I repeated my experiment on another nearby high school field and then came back on another 90-degree afternoon and repeated the process on both fields. I got similar results each time. A man walking on one track said his feet felt like they were burning due to the heat.
Save Maryland taxpayers a lot of money and keep the fields grass.
Laura Cahn, New Haven
The writer is a former chairwoman of the New Haven Environmental Advisory Council.
University partisanship
I agree with John Tomasi and Tyler VanderWeele’s argument in their Aug. 28 Friday Opinion article, “If universities don’t want to be neutral, they should admit it.” Universities with ideological missions should own it. But I don’t accept that the institutions can at the same time claim the pursuit of truth as part of their mission. Looking through an ideological lens inevitably obscures and distorts the truth. A university that proclaims an ideological mission is not a university in the traditional sense of being dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and the pursuit of truth. It is an advocacy organization devoted to influencing public policy and the core beliefs of its students.
James Huffman, Bozeman, Montana
Letter submissions
Send letters to [email protected].
Submissions must be exclusive to The Post and should include the writer’s address and day and evening telephone numbers. Letters are subject to editing and abridgment. Please do not send letters as attachments. Because of the volume of material we receive, we are unable to acknowledge submissions; writers whose letters are under consideration for publication will be contacted.
The post This trade war won’t change my bond with Canada appeared first on Washington Post.
