Correspondence
"Correspondence" To the Editor: Somebody has sent me a complimentary subscription to your magazine. This is to express my thanks. As a New Yorker might say, this is the best thing to come out of Kansas since the...
...Y can imagine how upset I was then as I read l^ Tyrrell's editorial, for I detected a touch of s casm in Mr...
...Some his Cabinet members may have been involved scandal, but he made some very distinguish appointments otherwise, including Herb Hoover, Charles Evans Hughes, and Andr Mellon...
...Don't the aborters of the world justify their slaughter§ by saying they are affirming life rather than denying it, in granting life only to those truly wanted...
...When I read the news reports of her death, I was deeply saddened and thought of the wish she had once put into song—"Dream a Little Dream of Me...
...His argument is so forceful, it is deceptively convincing...
...Berns asks us, in considering capital punishment, not to seek the preservation of "mere life" but the affirmation of some more fulfilling and meaningful life...
...The defender of capitalism could not argue the moral advantages of reliance on the market, when the debate was set in these terms...
...Market capitalism can be a ME ciless force, bringing misery to many individ als...
...Phillip Stani Findlay, 0! To the Editor: Every magazine put together quickly has distortions and its inaccuracies, even 3 Alternative...
...This is exactly how Adam Smith and his disciples argued...
...The logic involved in how the taking of life, under any circumstances, can be said to affirm life, certainly escapes me...
...The current piece by Walter Berns is fine...
...But just think of some of the impliciations of what he is saying...
...The apostles of capitalism could not defend their new faith on moral grounds...
...Berns discredits "mere life...
...His view, purporting to be redemptive, is actually demeaning...
...And he president at the beginning of what one of y( own writers, John Chamberlain, called I "most creative" decade of our century...
...I have been interested in the_subject Mr...
...The Alternative is a wretched rag and I am terminating-my gift subscription...
...But who is to say whose life is mere...
...What kind of more fulfilling life, he never explains...
...And as capitalism grew more powerful — as capitalistic enclosures drove commoners off the land and into the industrial proletariat—capitalism was condemned for wrenching people out of their traditional ways of life, often against their wishes...
...Let us look, for example, at typical arguments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England, one of the critical periods for the emergence of capitalism...
...Isn't this argument analagous to the arguments for abortion, euthanasia, and other murderous acts...
...Paul Seabury Professor of Political Science University of California Berkeley, California To the Editor: Walter Berns should be hanged for his article on capital punishment (October 1974...
...He had to show the economic advantages (which of course had their moral implications...
...Warren Harding was elected by the seco greatest landslide in American history...
...In working for repeal of high incoi and excess profits taxes, Harding helped usl in the era of prosperity in the 1920s...
...The reason is, that in its formative stages, capitalism was attacked on moral grounds...
...The standard view of things is that only children and the insane are not held accountable in this sense...
...Tyrrell's tone...
...Howe deals with for over forty years, and in my considered judgment, his is one of the most concise and elegant short essays ever to have appeared on capitalism and the grounds over which it should be debated...
...But to my knowledge, not 1 major newspaper or magazine in this countr really concerned about correcting any mi formation or misinterpretation it might be c veying...
...But the very idea of guilt implies maturity: one is held accountable for what one does, and one does repay...
...N. Greene West Palm Beach, Florida To the Editor: I recently came across a pamphlet distributed by the United States Industrial Council reprinting an article which I gather was published in your magazine: Neil Howe's "Defending Capitalism" (March 1974...
...I agree wholeheartedly with Mr...
...Howe that economic efficiency arguments are inadequate for defending capitalism, for the attractions of alternative social structures and economic systems are clearly not based on rationalistic considerations...
...and indeed, laws of centuries' standing forbade merchants from so raising their wheat prices...
...Louis, Missoi To the Editor: As one of the founding members of the Hai ing Society, I was overjoyed to see a drawing my hero on the cover of your latest issue, esr cially with the title, "Our Great Leaders...
...Elizabeth Huntington Greencastle, Indiana To the Editor: I was shocked, dismayed, and disgusted to read your comments about one of my favorite singers, Mama Cass Elliott, in October's chapter of "The Continuing Crisis...
...So I didn't think the errors Jar Grant pointed out in the way NewswE reported Baltimore news were so egregious The deliberate distortion he talks about really only a silly insertion that did nobody harm...
...Menninger's view thus implicitly strips the criminal of a crucial, presumptive attribute of being a responsible person...
...But this may be inhumane to the criminal himself...
...When the new conditions of the displaced were as squalid as they were in the nineteenth century, the moral argument against capitalism could draw particular strength...
...Where I would fault Newsweek is not so rrit in its inaccuracies as in its failure to correct inaccuracies...
...The gross inaccuracy in reporting the timore strike was, well—gross inaccuracy—that's something we might have to expect fr a newsweekly written and edited by fallible p pie...
...Hastings Longstreet, M Harrison, New Y...
...In short, the economic defense of capitalis emerged as a response to traditional and large Christian moral opposition, based on consider tions of mercy...
...The profit motive—the guiding spirit of capitalism—ran counter to Church dogma, at least originally...
...May I submit, however, one reason I think defenders of capitalism developed the tendency to rely more on economic than on moral support for their arguments...
...Mama Cass was, and always will be, one of my favorite singers...
...Comparing Hardi to the likes of Fillmore and Kennedy—surely t Tyrrell was trying to perpetrate some joke at c twenty-ninth president's expense...
...That's a strange stats of affairs for a I fession which so righteously proclaims its d cation to truth...
...The issue is the price of wheat during a year of a poor harvest, and in particular, the issue is whether merchants may let the price rise according to the supply and demand forces of the market...
...I'm dreaming of you, Cass...
...Once the balance between crime and punishment is abandoned, the idea of expiation is also eliminated...
...He might have pushed further on, to make the point that in a crucial sense the rehabilitationist view of punishment, with its stress on psychiatric explanation and correction, eliminates the significance of guilt...
...Defenders of capitalism could not justify- the seeming miseries of the urban proletariat that capitalism thrived on unless they could show, in the long run, that the general standard of living would rise...
...the defenders of capitalism had to show that the benefits of the profit motive would extend not only to entrepreneurs but to everybody...
...He had to show how restraining prices would misallocate resources and would destroy an incentive system which in the long run would provide plentiful grain supplies...
...To joke about a subject as serious as death is sinful and to belittle Miss Elliott's "controversial girth" is shameful...
...As a New Yorker might say, this is the best thing to come out of Kansas since the Emporia Gazette...
...guilt disappears...
...Jasper Stephe St...
...The traditionalist argued that merchants should not raise prices, for to do so would be to make profit at the expense of the hungry...
...Individual selfishness in economic life was held to be morally wrong...
...People kick Harding around too muct thought you were going to stick up for him, b was sorely disappointed...
...To argue against the criticism based mercy, the defender of capitalism had to she that in the long run, capitalism would brir more pleasure to more people, and hence I had to argue economically...
...They could not defend the profit motive and laissez faire against traditional notions of just price, by appealing to justice...
...Insofar as curre assaults on capitalism are relics of traditior Christian opposition to it, modern defenders capitalism either must resort to economic guments or must demonstrate that alternativ to capitalism are even more merciless...
Vol. 8 • November 1974 • No. 2
