Correspondence
• correspondence A To the Editor: David Brudnoy's review of The Hiding Place (February 1976) shows a misunderstanding of the relationship of Judaism to Jesus Christ. "...the movie is insidiously...
...If yours is the alternative give me Joe Stalin...
...Hence government and other societal forces almost as powerful though not as official (churches, civic organizations, mass media, business and labor interests, and even the gossip and personal feelings of neighbors or fellow workers) must always play a large part in governing our lives...
...she believes the Scriptural prophecies and the Gospels, I don't...
...T.H...
...So I started calling myself a libertarian...
...Hoggatt Elite Barber Shop Perry, Oklahoma The Editor replies: I am sorry I have let you down but I am glad I have never asked you for a shave.—RET To the Editor: At one time in my life I considered myself basically a conservative, till I found too many things being said, advocated, condoned, and even occasionally done in the name of conservatism that I could not in all good conscience agree with...
...If libertarianism were indeed as he paints it I would have to find a new term for my political ideology once more...
...Corrie ten Boom has said, "We are told, `Pray for the peace of Jerusalem...
...Janet K. Tower Indianapolis, Indiana David Brudnoy responds: Janet Tower and I cannot argue Scripture...
...A relief mother bringing an illegitimate baby into the world is infringing on my rights by draining tax revenues I pay and probably by adding to the parasitic or criminal segment of the population...
...All too true, of course,but the monsters who perpetrated such atrocities were hardly libertarians...
...they shall be blessed who love her.' Don't forget that on the divine side my Savior was the Son of God, but on the human side He was a Jew...
...Please do not semi us ANY more copies of this terrible magazine...
...Itsborrowed from Punch and possibly some Russian humour to boot...
...I lived in Indiana, once, and I felt the gross stupidity of Indiana people, unfortunately, because I don't like to think in mass terms of American stupidity...
...Salvation, the movie makes abundantly clear, is possible only through faith in Christ...
...Faith dribbles away from many of the characters, but never entirely for Corrie ten Boom, who through her messages (conversion material, in effect) brings Christianity to the Jewish woman, who is thereby saved...
...Then the film devotes the remainder of its seemingly endless duration to scenes showing the ten Boom sisters in a German camp...
...I fear that our crowded, almost over-evolved and specialized economy and society—which, barring nuclear war, can only grow more congested and complex in the next few generations—will continue to narrow rather than expand the areas of our individual lives in which we can act freely without affecting the rights or welfare of others...
...And, more importantly, legislation Dr...
...But, depending on who is defining those rights, and depending on how interdependent the individuals of a given society are, the range of genuine freedom allowed even by this purely libertarian formula can be very narrow indeed...
...If they considered themselves and were considered by others to be anything but nationalist revolutionaries it was anticlerical liberals, which is one reason I never considered myself a liberal (back in the days when the only choices I knew were liberal, conservative, radical, and reactionary...
...Christ Himself was a Jew, raised in the Jewish customs and traditions by His Jewish mother, Mary, and His Jewish stepfather, Joseph...
...This is not American humour...
...Certainly we should all be free to live our lives as we choose so long as we do not violate others' rights...
...So the libertarian magic formula is written in quicksand, albeit in ringing terms...
...Please send no more...
...No amount of the standard references to Jesus' ancestry and Old Testament prophecy (which Jews deny refers to Jesus) can obliterate the feeling that virtually every Jew gets when confronted with the conversionist message, which is all The Hiding Place amounts to...
...Part of the problem is undoubtedly that certain people who have taken to calling themselves libertarians are instead really cynics, nihilists, or anarchists...
...I am infringing on her rights if I force her to use birth control or submit to 38 The Alternative: An American Spectator March 1976 abortion...
...Graf speaks for the current libertarian movement, I find his statement sympathetic...
...The Philosopher's Disease" in your January 1976 issue) is inadvertently trying to get me to switch labels again...
...Aram Bakshian, Jr...
...The Hiding Place depicted Jews, in its first segments, as terrified and/or haughty...
...Jesus Christ entered the human space-time frame in direct fulfillment of the writings of Moses, Isaiah, Zachariah, and other Jewish prophets...
...lie Alternative: An American-Spectator March 1976 39...
...They were terrified in the face of Nazi tyratiAy, and some no doubt were haughty...
...W.K...
...The only thing I can do honestly is to wish you "go broke...
...The movie is insidiously anti-Semitic because it makes quite plain its creators' message that only through Christianity can the one Jew who figures in the bulk of the movie find the road to salvation—not through her own efforts, or her ancestral faith, or through any other means...
...Graf Washington, D.C...
...But this paper of yours smells of really a rotten kind of stupidity...
...Graf himself refers to ;hem as "cynics, nihilists, or anarchists") who have captured the libertarian flag are wisting even the spirit of the movement into something vicious in application and absurd in heory...
...It is smart-alec, in such extremes as to make you positively, in my estimation, so "right," if you are "right" (politically) but so far "right" that you are just a bunch of wise-guy communists...
...And I have a Book that was written by Jews...
...Experience also teaches us that, however sound one's basic philosophy is, the philosophy by itself is not long capable of holding a complex and volatile society such as ours together...
...I, too, want to keep government prying, pressing, snooping, and compulsion to a minimum, though I suspect we would disagree on what the achievable minimum is...
...Constitutional amendments' can, at any time, make anything a "right" for anybody, pr strike a current one from the lists...
...And the new wave of extremists (Mr...
...Some examples of what I mean...
...We are ashamed to get it in the mail...
...I used to keep Noel Coward in my mind, and also James Dean the movie actor...
...The Jewish scriptures abound with references to the Messiah —Jesus Christ...
...Bakshian again: "The excesses of Free Thinkers in power—during the Terror in France and the twentieth-century revolution in Mexico, to cite only two examples—were remarkably similar to those of the Inquisition, even, in some cases, down to the torture and burning of victims...
...Never have I seen such a collection of egghead writings as you have assembled in your so-called periodical...
...There they encounter a Jewess, who is crude and vulgar, but with the proverbial heart of gold...
...Now it seems your Aram Bakshian, Jr...
...It is interesting that he mentions "moral, ethical, and traditional" restraints but doesn't mention government ones, yet if libertarianism stands for anything at all it is the abolition of all unnecessary government restraints, leaving individuals free to choose which moral, ethical, and/or traditional restraints seem most proper to them to embrace...
...You pollute the mail...
...To the Editor: It is against all my principals [sic] to waste time, fighting with you over your revolting sheet, The Alternative...
...Perhaps, then, I should close by giving my definition of the term, if only so that those who differ with me know what they are disagreeing with...
...replies: To the extent that Mr...
...A libertarian is a person, regardless of his or her religious or philosophical convictions, who believes that adult human beings should be free to live their lives as their consciences dictate as long as in doing so they do not interfere with the rights of others to do likewise, and who further believes that the purpose of government is to protect people's rights to so live rather than to force others to live as they do against their wills...
...the movie is insidiously anti-semitic...
...Really furious...
...Anne Kirk Cooke Cooperstown, New York To the Editor: You have assembled more words and said less than anybody it has been my misfortune to run across...
...They predicted His birth, lifestyle, death, resurrection, and the salvation He would bring to all peoples...
...Bakshian: "...when you boil down all the Libertarian fustian about abolishing moral, ethical, and traditional restraints—all of the socio-religious dogma of the past—what it comes to is the most dogmatic (and self-contradictory) absolute of all: 'Thou shalt have no Commandments.' " This, however, sounds more like nihilism to me than libertarianism...
Vol. 9 • March 1976 • No. 6
