Correspondence

...can't all be blamed on the 'little despots' of neoconservatism" (TAS, June 1984)--misrepresented both the argument and the tone of my article...

...But this startling and logically correct proposal unravels into a hopeless tangle the instant you examine it closely...

...What intolerance is to be found in America, it seems it can well be found in Texas...

...McCarthyism Redivivus...

...While Bradford sits at a comfortable desk, fuming about "eighteenthcentury weeping comedy," Beowulf, Vergil's Dido and Spartan hosts, Menelaus, etc., ad nauseam, there are some five millions of poor human beings who have very justly fled, as refugees, from oppressive sociopolitical conditions, as in Mexico, to come to our country, work very hard, raise their children, pay our taxes, and conduct themselves as kind-hearted, genial people...

...W. Dickson Franck Belvidere, Illinois M.E...

...Bradford's article, "Sentiment and U.S...

...However, he makes two comments which I've heard so often that I want to take the opportunity to reply...

...and Soviet R & D establishments...

...For instance: The Chinese, Europeans, and Third World would not like the prospect of U.S.Soviet global hegemony and would try to sabotage it...

...Yet he urges immediately starting a BMD program that he acknowledges as likely to provoke a preemptive nuclear attack by the Soviets...

...The spirit of the killing of Kennedy is alive and well...

...They won't believe it, and they will respond accordingly, Some blind Tarzans plainly enjoy yanking the bear's tail...

...Or is he suggesting some intermediate approach, say a merger of the U.S...

...O'Lessker seems not to be one of these...

...Or at the opposite extreme, is he suggesting we simply deliver to them a completed BMD, batteries included, with instructions for turning it on...

...unilaterally launches a BMD program, while swearing a desire to share it with the disbelieving Soviets, the result will be nuclear security for all under a joint BMD...

...Bradford's presentation is so involved in the cute little arabesques typical o f "English-professor" productions, that by becoming ludicrous he defeats his own purpose...

...Ernest van den Haag New York, New York Jeremy Rabkin replies: I thank Ernest van den Haag for his compliment, but I do not think my objections any less valid for having been voiced by others in the past...

...One last complaint...

...As to the first, I am well aware, as are President Reagan, former President Nixon, General Dan Graham, and others, that technology-sharing carries with it the risk that the Soviets would gain knowledge they could then use in other weapons systems...

...He analyzes and endorses the Administration's plans to replace Mutual Assured Destruction with a technically effective Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD...

...On the other hand, moral arguments gain in credibility the more they are shown to be consistent with prior moral intuitions and lose credibility in proportion to the conflicts they generate with other moral beliefs...

...Therefore, he vigorously approves an idea that seemed almost a casual afterthought when President Reagan first presented it: We must, O'Lessker argues, share our superior BMD technology with the Soviets so both sides would acquire the defensive systems simultaneously...

...The second--that our doing so would be seen by the rest of the world as establishing a U.S.-Soviet dual hegemony over the earth--seems to me almost totally devoid of merit...

...He thinks that my view would have gained force if I had presented the feeling that the death penalty is deserved as more than just that--as, I suppose, a moral judgment objectively grounded...

...The voices, South and North American" which I mention are not by me equated with the illegal Mexican immigrants...

...I grant that the moral arguments for capital punishment are not so unanswerable as demonstrations in geometry...

...Nor is Mr...

...Is O'Lessker suggesting that we hand the Russians the blueprints and manufacturing techniques that constitute our technical advantage over their manpower advantage and then trust them to use this bonanza solely for their own BMD program...

...A splendid article--all that is left now is to reprint it, and let the masses of American people attempt to chew on, and regurgitate, that d o t of self-satisfied dregs of a decaying mind...

...RET C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Debating the Death Penalty I'm grateful to Jeremy Rabkin for a fair and penetrating review of The Death Penalty: A Debate (TAS, May 1984...

...Fat Bishop Found I think I have a clear winner for you in the "Find the Fattest Bishop" event ("The Continuing Crisis," TAS, April 1984...

...He selects a phrase from the American Convention of 1787--"foreigners resident in the United States, deserving our citizenship but not yet one with us in spirit...

...However explained, the claim that a moral argument draws strength from a supporting context o f moral arguments should not be controversial...

...And to forestall this, he proposes a BMD partnership with them, which assumes a magnitude of mutual trust that clearly doesn't exist...

...Philosophers from Aristotle to Kant to Gewirth have not, in my opinion, succeeded in doing what Rabkin (and I) would like...

...This hardly justifies van den Haag's exclusive reliance on statistical arguments about the death penalty's deterrent value, however, when--as he himself concedes--these arguments are also "inconclusive...

...For one thing, it would be a peculiar kind of hegemony, consisting solely of an agreement not to wage an all-out nuclear war against each other, while doing nothing to reduce the possibility of many other sorts of conflicts, from guerrilla insurgencies in Central America to World War III in Europe...

...Underhill does strikes me as betraying a certain naivete about Soviet technological prowess...

...The BMD--especiaily its spacebased components--would necessarily incorporate many of our most advanced high-tech achievements...

...But it is useful sometimes to isolate a topic for discussion without trying to explain the whole universe...

...O'Lessker estimates that creation of a reliable BMD would consume 15 years and $100 billion...

...That will be the basis for some real ugly polarization in our country...

...Very few blacks resident in the United States are not citizens...

...Anyone able to believe the two nuclear megapowers can trust each other enough to conduct in concert a huge Star Wars military hardware project, which will hatch functioning twin BMD systems at the same moment many years hence, cannot logically argue that any BMD system is necessary at all...

...If all the people of the world who would like to enjoy our standard of living and our social services were to define their geographic distance from our borders as a form of oppression, then we might expect that half the population of the world that is not under Communist control would soon pack its knapsack and head in our direction...

...The infinite maze of nuclear doctrine has claimed many before him who dared to enter it and never emerged-or else hobbled back with their logical faculties fractured ("High Frontiers of Strategic Defense," TAS, April 1984...

...It is distressing to have attempted a (continued on page 44) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984 7 . ~ . . . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 7) vigorous but serious critique of people to whom i pay due respect, only to be misrepresented as offering a debunking expose...

...Franck's response to my essay on the question of illegal immigration is an example of the officially benevolent passions against which my remarks were intended as a warning...

...I cannot pretend that they have, even if it would improve my case for the death penalty...

...The BMDers seek either the ultimate American dominion over the Russians or a dual hegemony with them...

...But if the two powers do not share enough trust to do this, then an American decision to proceed apace with our technically superior BMD development will severely rattle the Soviets, no matter how often we declare an intention to make them our full BMD partners, eventually...

...In our case I think the gains exceeded the losses...

...I wonder what they could be...

...Perhaps a brass pirozhok . . . --A Tokyo Spectator Tokyo, Japan Bad Title The title and kicker supplied by the editors of The American Spectator - - "Literary Lies of Respectable Liberals: The problems faced by Irving Howe & Co...

...is a daily dream," and then thrusts in, "the flood of undocumented Mexican workers," etc., and somehow supposes that we are going to agree with his dark hint that there is some sort of connection between the two...

...Underhill raises two major points against the proposal to build a BMD and share its technology with the Soviet Union...

...Their collective personality is an astonishing contrast to Bradford's Puritan-Texan model for another painting by Grant Wood, for Bradford makes of himself a symbol of the wooden elements in Texan Anglo-American society...

...The Soviets won't like it, since the BMD would render us invulnerable to nuclear attack...

...A bad sulk, perhaps...

...And, more important, technological advantage as between the two superpowers is as fleeting as young love and altogether too evanescent, in my judgment, to be a determinant of long-term global strategy...

...For Mr...

...As 1 tried to show in my article, there will be no option for either of us other than cooperation or annihilation once we begin to make demonstrable progress on a BMD...

...So he then says, as he logically must, that this prospect will gravely tempt the Soviets to do "'whatever they could to prevent i t . . . includ[ing] a preemptive nuclear strike...

...Anyway, nearly everything in this world is indeed connected or can be so perceived...

...While we are certainly ahead of them in many respects, they are surely ahead of us in others--beam weaponry, for example...

...Stating this frankly and deriving consistent policy from it would at least help to avoid careening into nuclear war through misunderstanding and miscalculat i o n - b y antagonists and allies alike...

...Franck to insist on his own definition of "refugee" is to beg the question...

...Immigration Policy," in their April issue...

...would blink first...

...How else could both sides get the finished product simultaneously...

...One can explain this by reference to the "coherence theory" in modern philosophy, by the findings of psychologists regarding "cognitive dissonance," or indeed by the method and example of Aristotle's Rhetoric...

...Here again the key is dire necessity...

...If detente returns, then various joint efforts could follow--including BMD, since it would shield both powers from third party missiles, particularly from Chinese ones, which are a special Soviet anxiety as O'Lessker notes...

...The first is properly a matter of serious concern: that the Soviets might profit from being granted access to the highest of our high technology...

...Otherwise, any survivors in the southern hemisphere, Asia, and European fringes will emerge from their fallout pits and bid good riddance to the arch blunderers from the continental craters that were the Soviet Union and the United States...

...1 don't mean to be smart-alecky about this but I find it hard to conceive of any important sanctions the Europeans and Chinese could impose upon the superpowers for the crime of ridding the world of the threat of nuclear war...

...Underhili's second point, that the rest of the world would regard so robust an expression of Soviet-American d~tente as constituting a de facto dual hegemony over the earth, may be correct but is also not very compelling...

...The editors have shown a failure to distinguish between literary disagreement and crude denunciation...

...But to view this prospect as balefully as Mr...

...That mistake is made more frequently in Illinois...

...The related question as to whether there could ever be a sufficient degree of trust between us to permit joint development of a BMD is crucial here...

...Maybe these advocates can cross their fingers and pray that our existing deterrent forces will hold the Soviets precariously at bay until the ultimatum is ready for delivery...

...They belong instead to people who would make use of such immigration in effecting a political and social t r a n s f o r m a t i o n o f the Southwestern United States...

...Furthermore, I discussed the views of a few prominent individuals, not "Irving Howe & Co...

...I never understood wherein the execution of convicted murderers could be thought inconsistent with preserving the intrauterine--therefore certainly innocent--life of babies...

...Immigration Arabesque I congratulate the editors of The American Spectator on Mr...

...2. Advocates of BMD realize that current levels of suspicion and antagonism between the powers prevent cooperative BMD development, but they hope the mere proposal will signal a desire to revive detente...

...If this is what the BMD advocates really seek, they should say so, since greater clarity would help them discern and prepare for the consequences of what they seek...

...With their present strategic nhclear superiority, the Soviets have little or no incentive to negotiate any sort of arms-control agreement that would reduce their advantage over us...

...and then expect they will trust us enough to believe that if they ever need to push the "Go" button, the whole thing will actually work, rather than going "Kapoof...

...It is, appropriately, Patriarch Pimen of Moscow . . . Enclosed photos only begin to give an idea of the fellow's bulk since he is also very tail...

...Bradford replies: Mr...

...Southerners do not like to be called Puritans with a capital " P . " We have never embraced that spirit which would erect among our countrymen a New Jerusalem and have never claimed a special intimacy with the will of the Deity on political questions...

...F...

...Bradford compounds two opposites: "voices, South and North American, for whom.., the desire for destruction of the U.S...

...So I still wish Professor van den Haag had given us more moral argument and context for it...

...The phrase quoted from the Fathers had nothing to do with free Negroes...

...This article shows it...

...Would not Patriarch Pimen, for his part, be as pleased with a modest trophy...

...Steve Garman, whose entry was: "The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Hick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my strong steel through your last meal.' " Grand and gaudy stuff that, but it is time for Professor Rice to come up with an award for political oratory...

...Although perhaps most notable as a trencherman,,his "outbursts on behalf of the world's poor and against the capitalist vice" may be found in virtually any copy of the English edition o f the Journal o f the Moscow Patriarchate...

...Underhill sees unspecified but no doubt dark "consequences" flowing from the rest of the world's dislike for this putative dual hegemony...

...in their faces like a trick cigar...

...There you have it from the Daniel Webster of Campaign '84...

...But they hope that proposing cooperation on BMD will befuddle the domestic opposition enough for High Frontier to proceed toward the day when we can safely and credibly present the Soviets with an ultimatum: Capitulate or die...

...But in neither case should the BMD advocates beguile themselves (and the rest of us) with the dangerous delusion that if the U.S...

...I agree that would have added force to the widely shared intuition...

...Nowhere did I hint at literary or any other kind of lying...

...I, of course, deny that my discussion has anything to do with the entry of refugees as that term is used in our law...

...B., there is a real gap between those two elements you glibly juxtapose...

...Underhill thinks not...

...In other words, the BMD project is itself a severe goad to mutual ruin...

...In so harsh a strategic environment as that, the difficulties in working out an acceptable mode of cooperation must seem a good deal less formidable...

...If the two powers can plausibly embark on such a program, then they must already trust each other enough to move directly into phased, verifiable disarmament steps, a much cheaper and saner fruit of mutual trust than the immensely expensive and complex joint BMDs would be...

...To the editors of The American Spectator, I suggest: Following the words in your masthead, "Published remarkably without regard to sex, lifestyle, race, color . . . . or national origin," you may now add, "and indeed really without much regard to good sense...

...But a renewed detente, thorough and durable enough to sustain the mutual trust necessary for Soviet-American partnership on BMD and related projects, would actually constitute a dual hegemony over the earth...

...But confronted with the choice of either cooperating on a BMD project or launching a probably suicidal preemptive nuclear strike, they are likely to rediscover the "logic" of cooperation...

...44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1984...

...But the fault is not mine...

...Or, if the advocates really seek to get the BMD jump on the Soviets so we can eventually present the final ultimatum, they should say this clearly, because they must mobilize intrepid public support--beginning immediately...

...I, of course, say nothing against the motives of most illegal immigrants who have broken our laws to come and live among us...

...This muddle suggests two contradictory conclusions: I. Advocates of BMD and other High Frontier armaments don't really anticipate cooperation with the Soviets...

...The intervening years will be extremely tense and scary, as the Soviets threaten nuclear attack before we can complete our BMD and as we brandish our megatonnage, trying to frighten them into quavering indecision...

...Underhill's logic very compelling when he says that if there were enough mutual trust to collaborate on a BMD, it would be easier and better to move instead toward disarmamerrt...

...Although I suppose Patriarch Pimen the clear winner, I do not know his weight or see any practical way to get him on a NLGA certified s c a l e . . . And does Mr...

...David Underhill Mobile, Alabama Karl O'Lessker replies: Mr...

...But perhaps his "logic" (a word he badly overuses) is defective, because it ignores the implacable nature of the choice with which both sides will be confronted before long...

...2. Rabkin also blames both my co-author and me for not relating the death penalty to military science, health regulations, abortion, etc...

...People are not going to keep freezing in the wintertime in this country and remain malnourished without revolting...

...Burr really want to "accompany the winner" around Indianapolis...

...Nor is there any justification for suggesting that the article treats respectability with irony...

...And what do the BMDers think will befuddle the Soviets enough to refrain from a preemptive attack insuring that this day never arrives...

...Peter Shaw New York, New York Hegemony on the High Frontier Karl O'Lessker needn't be ashamed...

...Without public support, the U.S...

...Bradford, how many black people of your South do you include in that quote...

...Last month the famously eloquent Jesse Jackson, while prophesying the consequences of a Reagan re-election, averred this beauty: "When people begin to revolt he will try to use military means to suppress them, which will not work...