The mail.(Letter to the Editor)

According to Garrison Nelson in "Keeping Cool in New England" (October/November), John Kerry is imbued with the "Brahmin's sense of public duty and rectitude that manifests itself in [his] willingness to enter combat service in Vietnam and his subsequent career as a state prosecutor." What an insult to Boston Brahmins!

Kerry apparently authored his own citations for gallantry, filmed re-enactments of his dubious exploits, and accumulated enough shrapnel in his butt from his own ordnance to get sent home after four months.

Then he finagled an early out from his Reserve obligation, testified in uniform to the Senate about largely if not totally fictitious atrocities that he knew nothing about, threw what proved to be somebody else's medals over the White House fence, milked the radical left-wing Vietnam Veterans Against the War for all the publicity he could get, rushed back to Massachusetts to run for Congress, and married into money (later annulled so he could marry into even more money).

A Brahmin sense of public duty and rectitude? Give me a break.

John McClaughry, president

Ethan Allen Institute

Kirby, Vermont