PUT AN END TO WARS OF MORALITY

to the editor:

Re: A brutal century ends with hope (Dec. 30).

I share your revulsion at the many monstrous crimes committed by man
against his fellow man during the last century, but there are more
reasons than mass murder to characterize the 20th century as the
century of evil.

I am referring to the increasing tendency of the newly powerful
nation-states to punish their citizens for not following a particular
moral code even though these "crimes" do no direct physical harm to
anyone else.

My hope for the 21st century is that we in the West put an end to
these ineffective moral wars waged by governments against their own
people and return them to the comparatively freer environment of
centuries past.

ALAN RANDELL
Victoria, BC