Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. What follows are a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed herein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.

Re: “Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day”

“I am annoyed with those who complain about Europeans killing native populations with diseases as though they did it deliberately. The people carrying those diseases were mostly just as ignorant of them as the people they infected. (Early on, anyway.) In this case, ignorance is an excuse. If the American Indians had invaded Europe, they might have infected Europe with an unknown disease and killed a significant portion of the population. Would they be unfairly reviled 600-plus years later? One must presume that would be the case, at least in Europe. And no, it is not true that smallpox-infected blankets were routinely given to Indians. That was known to have been done on one occasion in the 1700s, and it isn’t even known if it actually worked.” —Florida

“Here’s a question: What if Isabella had turned Columbus down? Pedro Cabral, a Portuguese captain on his way to India who got blown about 50 miles off course by a storm, would still have discovered Brazil in 1500!” —Montana

“The Left can be intellectually bludgeoned by merely asking it to name one, just one, modern country that is not the result of colonization by a foreign band of people.” —Missouri

Re: “Dems Are Panicking About Biden”

“Not one challenge our nation faces today is part of a situation that didn’t already exist when Biden took office. Had he done nothing, he could have accepted credit for simply continuing Trump administration policies that were working. Joe Biden hasn’t been ‘overtaken by events.’ Events were overtaken by Biden, and in every case his partisan ‘solutions’ have turned good situations bad, and bad ones worse.” —Georgia

Re: “Big Government Socialist Welfare for Families”

“Debating the dollars-and-cents pros and cons of Biden’s family leave ideas is like debating the merits of the ‘artwork’ created when an open can of paint gets kicked up against a wall. The debate is moot when the idea is fundamentally unsound. Our competitiveness in the world economy, especially against China’s slave-labor workforce, is damaged by taxpayer-funded idleness. And there’s no excuse for these programs when they can only be paid for by either making tax slaves out of the 50% of us who pay taxes or by printing dollars. The mere idea is a sign of a broken moral compass. Voluntary charitable works are admirable. Forced charity via the redistribution of wealth, pushed by Biden and his fellow profligate Democrats, is oppression.” —Illinois

Re: “Beware the Third-Party Trump Haters”

“Weird that Goldberg says ‘a third party with a simple, Reaganite conservative platform.’ I guess he really doesn’t know what Reagan stood for. He stated in An American Life: ‘The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It’s a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.’ So, either Goldberg is ignorant of what Reagan believed, or he is no longer worthy of using the memory of Ronald Reagan.” —Florida

Re: “Biden to the Rescue on the Supply Chain?”

“As a former over-the-road trucker, I know why there is a shortage of drivers. One reason is that the job sucks. You’re away from home most of the time and you live in a truck. Another is the pay. I live in Texas, but when my time-at-home break ended, the company sent me directly to the Northeast, where I spent most of the time on short-haul runs. That hurt my paycheck because I got paid by the mile (short hauls don’t pay much). Even when I did long runs, when I got to places like Chicago, I spent hours sitting in traffic or sitting at the warehouse listening to gunfire. I wasn’t allowed to carry a firearm in the truck.” —Texas

“Well done, Nate. No one at any of the Web rags I frequent has mentioned the CARB diesel emissions restrictions on drayage trucks. In July 2008, California began banning trucks built in 1988 and before. In 2010, trucks built from 1989 to 1993 were banned, but trucks built between 1994 and 2003 got a pass if they were retrofitted to meet 2007 emissions standards. California created the problem and now we are seeing the unintended consequences.” —New Jersey

Re: “Why the Semiconductor Shortage Matters”

“When a semiconductor plant is shut down, it is not a simple matter to start it up again. If power was cut, it can take days to obtain a high vacuum in some of the equipment. Ultra-high purity water supply systems must be flushed and tested. Clean rooms must be re-certified. Chemicals for photo-etching and plastic packaging that have passed their open-container shelf life must be discarded. Many complex mechanisms must have their operation verified; seized-up parts would be disastrous if not corrected before wafers start through the line. And if there is a problem, upstream supply chain problems may make machine parts and supplies hard to obtain. It can take a month to restart. Meanwhile, the backlog keeps increasing.” —Minnesota

Re: “California Kills the Lawn and Garden Industry”

“This appears to be a really dumb move especially in a state whose electrical grid is already stretched beyond capacity at times. Let’s add more load to an overloaded system! I assume this bill is authored by another ‘never held a real job’ politician.” —Washington

“I’m sure the backup power in Facebook’s and Google’s data centers will still be powered by gas/diesel generators.” —Texas

Re: “The Biden/Fauci Vaxxing Mandate Wrecking Ball”

“If you took the jab and you feel that you are protected, what business is it of yours whether I kowtowed to the demands of the government to also get jabbed? I am in charge of my body. If you want me to sign a waiver that I will not charge the government for my illness, then fine. I will agree to that. My choices should not cost the taxpayers. I do not know what is in the vaccine or what the long-term repercussions are. I will not tell anyone else what to do and do not want to be told what to do. Is there a trust issue involved here? Yes. But that is beside the point. I also do not take the flu shot because I do not believe it works as well as claimed. Someone is getting rich on this and I do not feel the need to contribute to their wealth.” —California

Re: “Stay in Your Lane: Teachers Unions Lecture on Guns”

“The issue is the human element, i.e., the immorality and disregard for life that’s growing in our culture. That has come as those in government schools are taught racism, perverse sexuality, envy, gender confusion, mental weakness, and low self-esteem — all while concerned parents are shut out of the process. The result is fearful children who hate themselves, hate others, and seek revenge.” —Illinois

Re: “Loudoun County School Board Covers Up Sexual Assault”

“It’s been reported that the board subsequently transferred the sexual predator to another school where he repeated the same scenario. If this is true, the school board is no better than the bishops who sneaked pedophile priests off to another parish, knowing they would continue their crimes. This school board should be charged with aiding and abetting or similar charges.” —Pennsylvania

Re: “Where Are All the Workers?”

“Odd how The Washington Post blames systemic racism for blacks not working when just before the Wuhan virus caused governments to shutter, blacks had the lowest unemployment rate since that data had been tracked. What has changed so that now all of a sudden businesses, especially those desperate to hire, are discriminating against blacks? Methinks that WaPo is clueless.” —Colorado

Re: “Trump-Hating Traitors Nabbed”

“I was a reactor operator on our submarines in the ‘70s to 1981. The security level of the engineering space was 'confidential,’ which meant we were required to have a secret security clearance. I doubt that even with the newest subs that the nuclear system and engineering spaces are different. So I am guessing that they were trying to sell the much more highly secret information. Just a guess, given my security clearance only covered ‘secret’ and below, and only then what was a ‘need to know.’” —Colorado