Catherine Foxson is wrong to excoriate Laura Bush (Feb. 10 letter) for canceling today’s scheduled White House poetry symposium. Mrs. Bush did this upon learning that the event was to include anti-war poetry. Foxson references the Patriot Act as an apparent explanation for the cancellation.

I think it has more to do with the First Amendment. Those who would have participated in this event have every right and constitutional protection to recite anti-war poetry to their hearts’ content in other public formats; but Laura Bush is under no obligation, legal or otherwise, to listen to it. Why should she? The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, but not the right to be heard.

And these anti-war protesters haven’t exactly been respectful of the Bush administration or of law enforcement. The kind of inane and mindless drivel one hears in their anti-war speeches is stunning. The oft-repeated mantras at these protest rallies include things like: war = racism, Bush = evil, police = Klan, America = imperialism.

The irony is that these people are free to publicly advance their radical agenda without fear of being jailed or muzzled. All the while they loudly proclaim, among other things, that President Bush is carving our dictatorial powers by revoking the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And they seem impervious to the kind of clear and compelling arguments for the war against Iraq that Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and others have made. These protesters have marginalized themselves. America should ignore them.

David D. Wilson

Levant