In response to Ms. Rose’s obviously political and unattributed quote, “Tyranny is always sold as freebies, as compassion, when in fact it is an iron fist in a silk glove.”

I would give you FDR’s “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Diann Coate
Idyllwild

Editor’s note: President Franklin Roosevelt spoke those words on Jan. 20, 1937, as part of his second Inaugural Address.

Rose’s quote was in a letter to the editor published in the Oct. 11 issue of the Town Crier.