Correspondence
semblance to the one you and I live in (the one in which not everybody is nice)--chews it up, digests it, and it all comes out innocuous and remarkable in its sameness. Though reviewers...
...that Persians will ignore any power that is not violent, overwhelming, and absolute...
...America Last" has shown me why today [Jan...
...After only a few years living and working in Iran, I cannot understand why my President's more experienced advisors have not told him that Persians regard his decency as a character flaw and fair play as weakness...
...It moves on out of sight and vanishes as easily from the mind...
...point is something I am not used to seeing in the other publications I read...
...They will "walk and talk" with anybody because they all walk and talk the same...
...I have read the Spectator for over a year, each month growing more satisfied with its expression of a neoconservative philosophy...
...After you have thoroughly squelched those responsible for our foreign policy with such sophisticated jargon as "idiot," "one has to be an idiot and a drunk," and "Wonderboy," you finally treat your readers to your profound and learned conclusion: "Our government must cease rendering itself contemptible to the world and must respond decisively and punitively to those who violate our rights...
...In 1950, his ~father died while in the custody of the Soviet secret police...
...that a 13th-century mullah cannot he treated as a 20th-century liberal...
...In 1948, at age 15, he was arrested and subsequently imprisoned for the "crime" of being the son of a famous Ukrainian nationalist...
...McPhee's writing slips by like a skillfully paddled canoe on a placid lake--silently, hardly causing a ripple on the water's surface...
...Likewise, you referred to Ramsey Clark, Richard Falk, and Don Luce as "these three meatheads...
...the idea of nationalism--many of them bravely wielding pens inside editorial offices and almost daily quoting Dr.-Johnson to the effect that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel--therefore welcomed detente, rushed to embrace the Soviets, and soon enough found themselves denouncing a variety of "injustices" in America...
...Unfortunately, the whole concept of nation probably depends on an externally directed mistrust...
...It is simply a way of filling empty time with empty words...
...they reappeared in the form of "Watergate," Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, and others...
...Mark Weber Cleveland Heights, Ohio THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1980 37...
...Those antagonistic to...
...I have a good friend among the Tehran hostages...
...It is writing of this kind which is sometimes found in high-school newspapers when the staff is not closely supervised...
...His meticulous descriptions of people always fail to characterize...
...The enemy is us, in the banal and oftrepeated judgment of a cartoon character whose name escapes me...
...In 1970, he signed a joint statement in defense of persecuted Ukrainian historian Valentyn Moroz...
...20] is the 78th day of captivity for my friend--he is less a prisoner of the Persians than of a President and government who have ceased to believe in America...
...When the external enemies disappear, they "reappear" internally: In the U.S...
...Put Up or Shut Up The editorial, "America Last" (January 1980), by R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . , is an example of the kind of journalism I have come to expect since reading The American SpectaCAPITOL IDEAS (continued from page 6) tente was that Americans were encouraged to believe that they were no longer confronted by an external threat, or enemy...
...I seem to have strayed rather far from the Lefever/Godson volume, but not really, because it is, in part, a report on this dismal period...
...The CIA appeared to be operating in a political and moral vacuum devoid of threats and adversaries...
...Carter's Hostages I thank you, R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . , for showing me the way to go home in your January editorial, "America L a s t " . . . . I have tramped through America and many foreign parts embarrassed by my President and government--who believe America should walk humbly in the world, ashamed of our great wealth, power, and imagination--and I found few friends...
...Though reviewers have commended McPhee's ear for dialogue, in truth it all sounds like McPhee, whether it's blacks in Harlem buying vegetables or conservationists canoeing in Alaska...
...With detente, there is no adversary...
...It is important that citizens of all persuasions protest this gross violation of human rights by the Soviet Union...
...He suffers from an intestinal ulcer and is denied medical attention...
...Please write to President Carter and urge him to intercede with Soviet authorities for the release of Yuriy Shukhevych...
...Well, that is over now, thanks to some rather incautious moves by the Soviets, who can be expected to move into a dynamic phase in the 1980s...
...Read it backward, forward, or upside down, it makes no difference...
...Godson has useful chapters on Congress and the so-called "pressure groups," the latter chapters including much interesting information on the Institute for Policy Studies, the Center for National Security Studies, and other such outfits, primarily anti-American in nature, staffed for the most part by Soviet apologists and unavowed Marxists who find that in their personal lives they prefer the comforts of Washington to the potential rigors of Gorky...
...Regardless of what one thinks of certain people, is it cricket to say of Khomeini that he is a "dyspeptic Holy Man," or to speak of his "ancient ruin of a brain," or to refer to the "buzz between his ears...
...Today, Yuriy Shukhevych continues to languish in a concentration camp...
...He repeatedly refused this demand and was sentenced to a ten-year prison term for "anti-Soviet agitation among inmates...
...In 1958, on the eve of his release from prison, Shukhevych was visited by KGB officials who demanded that he renounce his father and ptrblicly condemn the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists...
...It was a villainous Don Quixote tilting at vaporous windmills...
...This is of course a comforting thing to believe...
...Finish the book or don't...
...There is nothing memorable in his work, but neither is there anything troubling or disturbing, and this must explain his popularity...
...He makes no claim on the reader, asks nothing of his intelligence, and in no way affects his feelings...
...I have seen the misery visited on him and on his family by the Persians and by my President...
...All to the good, of course, but it is rather depressing to consider that the gullible peanut farmer from Georgia should be the fortuitous beneficiary of this tidal change...
...and that if my President would free the hostages soon he had better act more like the Shah...
...Name Withheld State Department Washington, D.C...
...That's it...
...Such tactics are the product of an immature mind...
...With detente behind us, and our old enemy back, America should reunite...
...In 1968, Shukhevych was set free but was denied the right to live in the Ukraine...
...Born in 1933, Yuriy Shukhevych has experienced persecution at the hands of Soviet authorities for almost his entire life...
...Then, to emphasize your inane rhetoric, you offer not one thing "Wonderboy" could do to respond decisively and punitively...
...The result was a distorted view...
...But it required your summary of the idiocies of our current leaders in "America Last" to convince me that I had finally found my compatriots in your band of rebels...
...Herbert E. Steingass Chesterland, Ohio Free Yuriy Shukhevych The life of Yuriy Shukhevych, son of the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, is in grave danger...
...In 1944, his mother was sent to a Siberian camp...
...In 1972, he was sentenced to a tenyear term of confinement in a concentration camp...
...I suggest, Tyrrell, that you either put up or shut up...
...In a study of television evening news, Lefever reports that in the period 1974 to 1977 "slightly less than 5 percent of the intelligence news on network TV was devoted to Soviet-bloc agencies, while slightly more than 95 percent was focused on the CIA...
Vol. 13 • March 1980 • No. 3
