Correpondence
*.~o~.~176176176176176 C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C...
...New York, New York Positive Elements I regret that in Joseph W. Bishop, J r . ' s otherwise extremely wellwritten and thoughtful review of Theodore H. White's latest book (TAS, October 1982) his comments on the antinuclear demonstrations border on the sophomoric caricatures of liberals all too common in The American Spectator...
...Each motivates me to action...
...The concept of self-interest in this approach makes Maital's implication that "altruism lies beyond self-interest" quite inapplicable...
...report how they have managed to (Incidentally, some figures suggest extract a few concessions from the that the U.S...
...Miller's example, it is clear, is of an end, personal fame, which is both selfish and nonmaterial...
...In short, all the elements of TV news...
...Its plot is weak and its setting grand...
...His primer on good yachtsmanship and network derring-do was bracing, like the seaspray that comes off whitecaps...
...Now, as far as Dinesh D'Souza's honesty is concerned, I'd like to say that at the luncheon at the conference I sat at the same table as he did...
...Our offices, too, have been receiving quexies from campuses for advice in starting literary (not to mention literate) alternatives to usual cat-box filler passed off as a campus paper, queries with which we are pleased to assist...
...So it is perfectly legal for the Dartmouth ReviewEor anyone elseEto secure alumni addresses from this book...
...Some months later---on October 30, 1775, the United States Navy was born...
...Hurt Distinguished Professor of Economics University of Dallas 40 THE AMERICAN SPEcTATOR JANUARY 1983...
...It may help to explain that when a nonmaterial objective is sought, to the extent to which its achievement involves a cost, i.e., the sacrifice of some other o b j e c t i v e , . . , it is a product of the same economic status as say, butter, or books, or a house, or an insurance policy...
...It is true that any individual seeking his own material, aesthetic, altruistic, or self-regarding objectives, may cause harm to others in the sense that the ends he tries to achieve may conflict with the ends others try to achieve...
...The United States Army is the senior service, with its "birthday" generally recognized as having oc(continued on page 40) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1983 3! May 1982 conference in Moscow "Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe...
...it was not until November that the Marine Corps arrived on the scene...
...Indeed, "competition" may be defined as "the process of substituting lowercost methods of achieving any human objective, including the production and marketing of any product, or the substitution of a preferred product...
...we are not in the works, but instead have come through them...
...Indeed, the only meaning which can be given to the word "needs" here involves an understanding that investment is made in the services of men and the services of assets in any particular activity or occupation, up to the point at which marginal prospective yields are equated with the tea...
...Our attorneys tell us that copyright violation, which Dartmouth hints we are guilty of, entails publishing another Alumni Guide, not using the one made available by Dartmouth...
...Today, when economists refer to "competition," it is this process that they envisage in operation...
...Furthermore, contrary to unreflective usage, "selfish" objectives are not necessarily material objectives, and "altruistic" ends are not always nonmaterial in nature...
...I was sent by the Nation...
...Good Writer Norman My glass is raised to Geoffrey Norman ("Seasick," TAS, November 1982...
...Further, Stephen Miller's question which follows is surely misphrased, although his point is well-taken...
...Indeed, the Institute's own Campus Report, which for many years has been the only nationally distributed forum for conservative campus reporting, is being supplemented this fall by the new Western Reporter...
...He asks, "When will writers stop making a bogeyman out of self-interest, assuming that anyone who pursues his self-interest always pursues it--that he is never capable of sacrifice or altruism...
...Edward N. Peters, Esq...
...I imagine, though, that the boys at The American Spectator are rather proud of young Dinesh's ingenuity...
...My purpose in this letter is to examine the often misunderstood relation between "self-interested" action and action aimed at improving one's "material condition," in the light of modern economists' understanding of the incentives to economic activity...
...Jack R. Harnes, M.D...
...Let them sue," he chortled...
...While William McGurn's tribute to the Marine Corps ("Semper Fidelis," TAS, November 1982) is stirring, and while the Marines are certainly an illustrious fighting force, they are hardly the oldest in the country...
...We could, moreover, point to the rise of academically supported publications aimed at both campus and community: Chronicles of Culture from Illinois, The Conservative Historians'Forum in Philadelphia, The Dawson Newsletter of St...
...It was good to sit with Hrubys' friends and hear unsung heroes serenaded...
...On the other hand, one working to provide food for the starving in Asia has an objective which is both altruistic and material...
...Miller quotes Christopher Lasch, who wants to construct "a new form of society in which collective needs rather than private profit determine the form and content of production...
...legal interpretations to the contrary may be introduced in court...
...I am the "mole" mentioned in your apologia for conservative college newspapers in the October issue...
...Articles like D'Souza's do more than merely relate the fact of a revival in conservative campus publishing...
...It portrays love, hate, virtue, crime, intrigue, race relations, religion, animals, comedy, attempted suicide, and even a touch of f0ul weather...
...But the term "objectives" here covers aesthetic and altruistically motivated objectives also...
...At that point people in their consumer capacity are predicted to prefer other kinds of output from the scarce resources (men and assets) available...
...Mike Lewyn Associate Editor The Wesleyan Review Middletown, Connecticut Next time, please get your facts fight...
...Guadalajara, Mexico The Army Is Older I am not ordinarily one to take issue with the learned figures who contribute to your magazine, but this time--as a loyal soldier, and one who is stuck on the facts--I must...
...Miller, in fact, contradicts himself: "[Adam Smith] took it for granted that some [people] are not [animated by self-interest], that their selfinterest can take the form of a desire for fame as a legislator rather than a desire for a better material condition...
...David Corn New York, New York Dinesh D "Souza replies: Like the phone book, Dartmouth's Alumni Guide is a list of addresses and phone numbers...
...They can't prove anything.'" Well, if D'Souza's intellectual rigor and journalistic ethics are in the same league as his contempt for the law (as well as the notion of private property), then I don't think the Left has much to worry about...
...It was the Hrubys who persuaded Senator Carl Levin to introduce the bill now pending in Congress to give these families permanent resident status, making them eligible for U.S...
...McGurn on his commendable fidelity to the Corps...
...Army actuallydates authorities because of the watchful RCDA and from those in the persecuted church, ranging from the Gleb Yakunins to the Chmykhalov and Vashchenko families, in the basement of the U.S...
...Officially, the Review denied the charges...
...If you had contacted me, I would have been happy to straighten this out for you...
...D'Souza, in his October 1982 article about "A Conservotive Paper Chase," makes one less-than-slight inaccuracy...
...Western Director Intercollegiate Studies Institute Claremont, California Mr...
...Louis, or Common Faith from Virginia...
...In fact, they are relative newcomers...
...Still, if anything, I would suggest that the battle-proved D'Souza was a bit restrained in his description of this welcome development...
...He left NBC in irons...
...To reduce the entire antinuclear movement to its most muddleheaded, ignorant, and pacifist elements seems to me an arrogant failure to take seriously the opinions 0f those with whom one disagrees...
...He was quite jolly and quite proud of the fact that the blacks and women on the Dartmouth campus were so enraged at his paper...
...But at the lunch, D'Souza took delight in revealing that his paper had indeed made illegal use of the mailing list...
...they send an encouraging "Yes, it can be done" to those others still waiting in the wings...
...each, if fulfilled, gives me satisfaction...
...Eventually, he'll get caught with his fingers in the wrong cookie jar...
...Trepagnier, M.D...
...It is published and publicly circulated by the Dartmouth administration for the purpose of facilitating communication with and among alumni...
...it is, and has always been, largely other-regarding...
...citizenship this June, when they will have been five years in the embassy...
...W.H...
...If one wishes to insult the memory of any musical genius by such a comparison, I suggest that Mozartian would be more appropriate--and cite The Magic Flute...
...If we use their terminology, then self-interested economic activity is not solely selfregarding...
...all striving vigorously, and successfully, to restore some sense and order to the print media...
...mT.B...
...rate of interest...
...Of course, men have to satisfy their material needs...
...It is my case, and was that of Adam Smith, that when the composition9 of the stock of assets and the supplies of effort and skill are a response to the "profit motive" in the free market, "collective needs r (covering all human ends) are served, not ignored...
...It should benoticed that, in this definition, there is no confinement to material objectives...
...But after having been made privy to the workings of the conservative mind, I walked away with so many delicious tidbits that I just had to write my own story, which I sold to In These Times...
...This definition serves irrespective of the institutional setup necessary to release or protect the "loss-avoidance profit-seeking incentives" which activate the system, and irrespective of whether people are greedy or generous...
...o~.~176176176176176 C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C E Qo~iI00060I00BIgOI00DQQ0O0O0QI09OQo0jQQ0i00Qi~000I0OI00QoQOI9QgOQQD0QQ0DQ00QDQ00QOIQQO0Q~0oiOQoOQ00OQo0QIa600QQQOg~6QIQQg06iB0QQQ0mI~B00g00DgQQa00000U00IIoI Campus Conservatism Kudos, yet again, to Dinesh D'Souza, this time for "A Conservative Paper Chase" (TAS, October 1982), that lively and accurate (e.g., "John Kenneth Galbraith, the local pest") account of the resurgence in conserv'ative campus publishing...
...Plainly, then, the common equating of "selfish" with "materialistic" and of "altruistic" with "' spiritual" or "nonmaterial" ,ends .is erroneous...
...After all, it's all in good fun, isn't it...
...I hope this clears things up...
...Their fight has been lonely, but sustained by the appreciation that reaches them from behind the Iron Curtain, both from those in the "official" church who CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 31) curred on June 14, 1775...
...Rael Jean Isaac back to the formation of the 182nd Infantry Regiment and the 101st Engineer Battalion in 1636, both of which still exist as units in the United States Army...
...The fact of the matter is that I was not sent by the dreaded Institute for Policy Studies to spy on your conference...
...Neither Miller nor Maital seems fully to9u nderstand these distinctions...
...This man knows how to write...
...Major David G. Boyd U.S...
...David Turner Atlanta, Georgia Give us more of Geoffrey Norman...
...I myself did not participate in any of these demons9t rations, and I have no doubt that Bishop's characterization of many of the participants is accurate...
...Economically, if not morally, my "altruistic" desire to give has the same status as a "selfish" desire to get...
...I enjoy his column regularly in Esquire (which, incidentally, arrives on the same day of the month asthe Spectator) but had heretofore not appreciated his impish sense of humor...
...When l give voluntarily, it is because it is in my ~nterest to give...
...On this conception, all action--both "selfish" and "altruistic"-is properly regarded as selfinterested...
...Steven R. Gerber New York, New York Self Interest In an exceptionally interesting review of Shlomo Maital's Minds, Markets, and Money (TAS, November 1982), Stephen Miller refers to "a wide variety of thinkers," including Mandeville, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, David Hume, and the authors of the Federalist, who are said to have believed that ,'most people were driven by the engine of selfinterest," by which they meant that "most people want to improve their material condition...
...He claims that a paper is "in the works" at Wesleyan, In fact, the Wesleyan Review (published by the Wesleyan College Republicans) appeared three, times during the 1981-2 school year, and hopes to increase that output this year...
...But of course (something Maital fails to see) this is true of all, not simply material or "selfish" ones...
...I congratulate Mr...
...Speaking of ethics, what was David Corn doing masquerading as a conservative planning to start a student paper, and reporting (distorting really) private conversations, at the IEA Conference...
...Anyway, it seems that there was a bit of controversy and the Review was accused of illegally using alumni mailing lists...
...embassy in Moscow since June 1978...
...I infiltrated your delightful gathering in order to assist Fran Shumer, the freelance writer who took the conservative student papers to task in the pages of the Nation...
...Social psychologists have distinguished between self-regarding and otherregarding actions...
...Army, Fort Sheridan, Illinois Great Performances As a lover of his operas for many years, I take exception to your statement that TV news broadcasts are Wagnerian spectacles ("CBS Beholds the Noose,'-' TAS, November 1982...
...Nothing could be further from the truth...
...Nevertheless, I am convinced that there was at least a sizable minority of demonstrators understandably troubled by the policies of the Reagan Administration: its apparently cavalier attitude toward the prospect of nuclear 'war, its doubts about the possibility of successful arms negotiations, and its indifference to the threats of accidental war and nuclear proliferation...
Vol. 16 • January 1983 • No. 1
