Special Correspondence/Peregrine Worsthorne Meets His Critics
great pains evidently having been taken to balance John Ferrugia's sober mustache and red suspenders against Bob Sirott's curly hair and apple cheeks, with the pretty, forgettable faces and...
...They know that alliances tend to operate around a soft, leastcommon-denominator policy...
...But given the stong likelihood that the patient will die if nothing is done, there remains little choice but to operate...
...efforts to promote democracy in far off places like Grenada, since support for such policies might in their view drag Europe into war...
...Both the local bishop and Father Hesburgh were embarrassed, and both were hoping that the whole thing would go away before anyone noticed...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick's wounding comment at the American ambassador's luncheon...
...Critics claim it can't be done...
...not to assert, as your correspondents seem to want to believe, that Europe is so alive as no longer to need American protection...
...Daniel O. Graham joins WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial writer Greg Fossedal to present a hard hitting informative roadmap for a sweeping reversal in U.S...
...from people like Sir Geoffrey Howe...
...Well, a lot of water has flowed down the $t_ Joseph River since Knute Rockne: All American...
...Pulling the troops out of Europe may be a little like having surgery to excise a cancerous growth...
...On these and other issues, which arguably constitute the major policy issues of the decade, the Tories have disagreed strongly and publicly with U.S...
...The British proved their values meant more to them than many expected when, in 1982, they fought a war with Argentina to recover the Falkland Islands...
...does not spring [on Europe's part] from any sympathy for Communism...
...El THE FINAL HOURS • Amex, MasterCard, Visa or check...
...Moreover, the defeat of the major terrorist organizations in Italy and West Germany indicates that some Europeans, at least, are willing to fightand die-for their values when need be The Italians went so far as to point an accusatory finger at the Soviet Union as the ultimate conspirator in the plot to kill Pope John Paul II-which was considerably more than the Sovietbashing Reagan Administration dared do...
...Our Tory friends would be foolish to advocate massive increases in British defense spending, which would cost them much but add only marginally to the total NATO defense pie...
...But being a cool and sophisticated man, he, like his fellow Europeans, also no doubt responds to incentives...
...Throughout '_.i,1 article, Mr...
...Sometimes they make mistakes, as for example, when they voted at the United Nations to create the state of Israel...
...I agree with Worsthorne, but he might logically have expressed annoyance with Eden for so deferentially subordinating the British interest to the American will...
...Unquestionably Western Europe continues to need American protection...
...But that does not mean that there can only be one perception about the gravity or urgency of the Soviet danger, or about the purposes of American foreign policy...
...But let us unbundle actual arguments from Mr...
...It's surprising, in a way, that "West 57th" doesn't go even farther than it currently does in its attempt to make diverting pap out of the news...
...In the view of many Tories on this side of the Atlantic, the Soviet challenge today is not so overwhelming and immediate as to require the kind of frantic response advocated by American neoconservatives...
...HIGH FRONTIER A STRATEGY FOR NATIONAL SURVIVAL HIGH FRONTIER NEWSLETTER $17.50 $ 7.95 $25.00/yr $12.00/student and senior citizen rate NAME ADDRESS CITY, STATE, ZIP BILL MY MASTERCARD # Expires TOTAL: 35 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985 in spite of politics...
...nuclear intervention, and are subsidized in weak conventional defense postures, Mr...
...Of all the people who signed the manifesto only two were teaching at Catholic institutions, and both of them were at Notre Dame...
...Moreover, no amount of jawboning from this side of the Atlantic is likely to dislodge Europe from its present policies-as Worsthorne's illtempered critique makes abundantly clear, the European equilibrium is supported as much by Europe's right wing as it is by its left...
...The truth, as always, is somewhat less simple...
...My answer is that we should not assume the Soviets are infallible in their geostrategic maneuvering...
...It is possible, however, to doubt his judgment about the nature and scale of what he demurely calls "the Soviet challenge...
...Worsthorne describes trenchantly as left-wing idiots...
...While most would appreciate slightly more diplomatic support on Central America than the United States has been receiving from Western Euro peans, truth to tell they do not expect our government to wait around for it...
...plus a year's subscription (12 issues) to Fidelity...
...Mark Falcoff Resident Fellow American Enterprise Institute Washington, D.C Imagine that the US...
...Fidelity tells the stories that you won't read anywhere else...
...There may be nuances and points of philo sophical exegesis, but to imply that there is any difficulty in making a clear distinction between freedom and democracy on the one hand and totalitarian oppression on the other is to engage in the most perverse form of disputation...
...37 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985 do to change European behavior is change the incentives that have produced free-riding allies who take the billions of dollars (estimated by Earl Ravenal at $134 billion this year alone) we spend on their defense, do the Soviets bidding for them by opposing U.S...
...It is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to know what went wrong with Catholic education in this country and what we can expect %khen the pope and bishops act to implement the new code of canon law...
...And then there is this great new wave of confidence in Western Europe, apparently...
...It is made up of a number of disparate elements, including a belief in a substantial spectrum of informed American opinion that the principal geopolitical threat to the United States has shifted from the European Atlantic area...
...There's no question they're after the old guard," said one veteran staffer still with the network...
...It's Time For 'FDfLITY I D $15 for a free copy of "Is Notre Dame Still Catholic...
...They should do just this if they believe our policies are mistaken...
...Indeed, the whole enterprise smacks of nothing quite so much as Jim Aubrey's legendary (and serious) proposal that CBS replace Walter Cronkite with Paul Newman...
...Today, for example, most neoconservatives would probably concede that the United States made a serious error at Suez, and all of them sympathized with the West German government during its peculiar trials with the Carter Administration...
...For he writes later of "the case of the Strategic Defense Initiative, which Sir Geoffrey Howe tactlessly-but altogether justifiably-compared to France's pre-war attempt to gain total defensive invulnerability through building the Maginot Line...
...Worsthorne may supply his own list of names...
...My intention was to counter the American neoconservative contention that "Europe is dead...
...If left alone, they argue, they could reach their own accommodation with the Soviets, and much to their benefit in trade and international relations...
...We should not leave because that is exactly what the Soviets want...
...I can appreciate his point of view without sharing it...
...I'm glad to hear it...
...Here it is Mr...
...Worsthorne's hitherto impeccable credentials points to the Gemiitlichkeit of the Viennese tourist trade as a sign of FastWest rapprochement...
...Not close enough, apparently, to prevent his classifying me as an Englishman, a description which may well have been intended to alleviate my natural Welsh sense of inferiority...
...What is it, apart from an instinctive taste for iconoclasm, that has provoked Mr...
...and no amount of fine writing will make them good or kind or beautiful...
...would choose to launch an attack on Western Europe...
...If indeed Howe does stand at the right of the British political spectrum, then that country has declined rather more seriously than I had thought...
...Worsthorne himself raises...
...We ship immediately, anywhere in the world...
...Johannes Steinhoff foreword by Sen...
...She knew quite well who Peregrine was...
...Father Richard McBrien had been brought in three years before to re-Catholicize what was clearly becoming an interdenominational department...
...Worsthorne sees "encouraging signs at present that the peoples of Western and Eastern Europe are beginning to grow together," an assertion he supports by noting that East and West Europeans actually sip tea together in Vienna now and then...
...Daniel O. Graham Let's start now to deploy a strategic defense system in space, argues Graham in this brilliant and dynamic book which presents a new strategic plan for the U.S...
...Thus, when Mr...
...from any reluctance in principle to envisage the use of force...
...It gives a truly Catholic perspective on the most intimate and critical issues of our time - the battle for the family (of which the abortion issue is just one skirmish) and the battle for the Catholic Church in the United States...
...Is Notre Dame Still Catholic...
...If "West 57th" is any indication, even Jesse Helms may now be wondering if he might have been a little too quick on the draw...
...Reprints of this important article are available for $1.50...
...I mention this not to attempt some deep psychological analysis of the phenomenon (indeed it probably has no profound significance at all) but merely to observe that this compulsive idiosyncrasy is often extended into more general areas of behavior...
...The problem, however, arises from the larger questions which Mr...
...Worsthorne to be unreliable...
...Well up to a point, Lord Copper...
...Bad incentives given by bad policies are much easier to correct than a decline in values...
...It does not follow from most of what he claims...
...By the end of 1983-54 academic year, tenured theology professor Elizabeth Schuessler Fiarenza had lent her name to a manifesto issued by the notorious proabortion front group Catholics for Free Choice...
...Only a mad Soviet leader...
...Lord Chalfont London, UK (Lord Chalfont is a former minister of state in the British foreign office...
...We do not believe Europe is too weak, too timid, or too stupid to defend herself with a vigorous foreign policy and military establishment...
...Gorbachev has many headaches...
...When I was writing for the Times of London in the early 1960s, I once heard a leader writer, suffering from a mild attack of moral equivalence, taken severely to task...
...Peregrine Worsthorne, a gifted and perceptive political journalist, clearly has this mechanism of defense against the tedium of predictability...
...Even allowing for a certain legitimate measure of polemical hyperbole, this really is a little over the top...
...My suspicion is that Worsthorne thinks that Americans are okay-just so long as they know their place and stay in it: under, let's say, the command of Old Etonians...
...The incentives argument is a more convincing explanation for Europe's minimizing the Soviet threat...
...By the spring semester of 1984 it was clear that the theology department at Notre Dame was in serious trouble...
...is Notre Dame Still Catholic...
...troops from Europe This was presumably not his intent...
...He pronounced the word as if it were of sacred origin...
...This team examined the estimated cost, effectiveness and benefits of a space-based missile defense system...
...In stories like these, "West 57th" shows a remarkably acute sense of its true audience: the cocaine conservatives of the post Vietnam era...
...begins to pull out of NATO is the day Mr...
...Worsthorne in this...
...neoconservatives complain about their policies...
...Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what we have now with the dubious Lord Carrington (Anthony Lewis's friend) in charge of NATO...
...4. "The new phenomenon to which [the neoconservatives] really object is criticism of American foreign policy...
...The key to his quarrel with the "neoconservatives" lies, I think, in the question which he poses early in his article: "Is the Soviet Union, we ask, not having difficulties enough holding down Eastern Europe without trying to extend its faltering imperial sway even further into Western Europe, where the ideological lure of Communism is now at an all time low...
...Kirkpatrick and many other conservatives-the fallacy of "moral equivalence...
...Those who do not want to take America out of Europe focus too much on the risks of the operation and not enough on what is happening to Europe-and what in all likelihood will continue to happen if the problem is ignored...
...So it's interesting to read this item from a recent issue of TV Guide: Despite management reassurances to the contrary, insiders fear that the firing at CBS News two weeks ago of some of the network's most experienced correspondents and producers is only the beginning...
...It's Catholic enough to make a difference in a person's life...
...whose only sin is to disagree, quietly and discreetly, with American perceptions of the gravity of the Soviet menace...
...A "profoundly moving spectacle," he writes...
...Exactly...
...The current European "equilibrium" of under-investment in defense and overinvestment in detente may be good for Europe, but it is dangerous for the United States...
...great pains evidently having been taken to balance John Ferrugia's sober mustache and red suspenders against Bob Sirott's curly hair and apple cheeks, with the pretty, forgettable faces and stylishly informal attire of Meredith Vieira and Jane Wallace serving as pastel contrast elements...
...Melvyn Krauss New York University New York, New York (Mr...
...Not even, I would add, twenty-five years later, writing as fine as that of Peregrine Worsthorne...
...As one Dutchman explained it to me, "After all, the United States is very, very far away from Europe, and when all is said and done, the Russians are Europeans...
...Thus, the real case for withdrawal: NATO weakens the foreign policy of both America and its European allies...
...I do not want to see the West do anything unnecessary to provoke the Soviet Union into bloodymindedly putting a stop to it...
...Clearly there are risks: The patient might die during the operation, or it will be discovered that the cancer has spread too far...
...For example, the recent severe decline in the influence and popularity of the Communist party in several West European countries, most notably in France and Italy, makes it more difficult to argue convincingly that Europe has gone "soft on Communism...
...Instead, now that this country can no longer dictate the law to its erstwhile allies, it threatens to pack up and go home, leaving, as he says, the Europeans "in the lurch...
...This would certainly be news to the Cubans, the Nicaraguans, the peasement, but a springtime of European self-confidence (!) which the United States should welcome rather than resent...
...Gift wrapping available...
...On the contrary, we pay tribute to Europe's resiliency...
...For example, Mr...
...For over 20 years, America has remained completely defenseless against the most awesome threat the world has ever witnessed-the Soviet long-range nuclear ballistic missile...
...Worsthorne's "perception" of the Soviet menace will improve, possibly to the point of being as "frantic" as is the response of American neoconservatives...
...Let me start off by saying that I am not insensitive to the many stressescultural as well as political-that afflict the Atlantic alliance, nor do I believe that on specific issues the United States is invariably right and the Europeans invariably wrong...
...Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) to Mutual Assured Security (MAS) with High Frontier...
...But the underlying point of view is generally right on the mark...
...It is Worsthorne's desire to have it both ways that provokes the response-not just of "neoconservatives," but of a rather larger spectrum of the American political community...
...How would Peregrine Worsthorne have reacted...
...applauds Soviet restraint in the Middle East as "exemplary...
...Communism hasn't turned out so badly after all, he writes...
...The tipper...
...He has done so most provocatively in his "Tory Critique of Neoconservatives" [in the October 1985 issue of The American Spectator...
...some argue it shouldn't be done...
...Now we have Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary, likening SDI to the Maginot Line---!justifiably," according to Worsthorne...
...Consequently, what the other half thinks is completely irrelevant...
...indeed, it would be rather like asking the Pope to identify himself at the door of Westminster Cathedral...
...For, in advancing this proposition, Mr...
...But they then should not complain if US...
...This is precisely the kind of softcentrism which understandably exasperates American conservatives, whose attitudes are conditioned more by the demonstrably expansionist nature of Soviet foreign policy and the massive military apparatus which lies behind it, than by some vague premonition that "Communism is not the wave of the future...
...The prognosis for Europe would not be nearly so bleak if incentives rather than values were at the root of its difficulties...
...interests in Central America and strategic defense, and then try to squelch criticism of their outrageous behavior by arguing that neoconservatives demand "the rest of the world slavishly follow America's lead...
...His aim seemed to be to heap scorn on Irving Kristol, Melvyn Krauss, Tom Bethell, and others who advocate just such a withdrawal...
...But only half of these visitors can vote...
...The Europeans will do much better without American welfare...
...All this tends to be exacerbated by the manifestations of disarray to which Mr...
...21201 Peregrine Worsthorne makes several good arguments for a gradual withdrawal of U.S...
...Thus, as long as the Tories feel backed by the (phony anyway) guarantee of U.S...
...Ppbk...
...One would think that these self-confident Europeans would be able to get along perfectly well without the Yanks after so many years...
...As Worsthorne notes, "Concerted action in present circumstances is often the equivalent of no action, or at any rate, delayed and possibly half-hearted action...
...Worsthorne's article...
...It is more than coincidental that European reliance on a "detente as defense" strategy increased as the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee diminished...
...brings the full story of what has happened at Catholic universities out in the open...
...De Gaulle may have been the first foreign policy "supply-sider...
...Worsthorne has nothing on the young defendant who, after admitting to murdering his mother and father, begs mercy from the judge on the grounds that he is but an orphan...
...As for Lord Chalfont, while no more illuminating about the subject of my article, he is at least amusing, and even perceptive, about its author...
...Fidelity 206 Marquette Ave...
...Does Mr...
...One final point Worsthorne doesn't mention but is often heard in the NATO debate...
...By the time one gets to assertions of fact, one has the Krauss-Kristol-Bethell case for withdrawal in a nutshell: 1...
...and finds Soviet foreign policy in Africa neither sinister nor alarming...
...Worsthorne who contradicts himself...
...We have more to fear than just the advent of Kinnock and the Labourites, and I for one am no longer sure (if indeed I ever was) that it would not be better-strictly from the point of view of clarity-to have at the head of the British government someone who plainly loathes the United States, and says so outright, rather than false friends...
...Barry Goldwater The Final Hours: A jet fighter ace recalls the last days of WWII, his disillusionment with Goering's leadership, and the direction of the war...
...It is a matter for much more serious concern when a conservative of Mr...
...The principal threat to the free world is not, as Mr...
...One might as well have Kate and Allie as correspondents...
...Individuals associated with the MurrowCronkite era, rather than those with higher salaries, seem to be the targets of the cutbacks...
...What the U.S...
...Precisely because these Tories reject our "perception" of the Soviet threat, we feel people like Mr...
...Some things," said the editor coldly, "are evil and cruel and ugly...
...But he seeks to reassure us: This Howe is "very Thatcherite," a man whose criticisms come "from the right...
...Street City / State 1 Zip It's Time For A Change...
...Worsthorne and company would be foolish to weigh the Soviet threat as carefully and seriously as do the Americans, who now bear the primary economic and political burden of meeting that threat...
...Daniel O. Graham and Gregory Fossedal Former U.S...
...Graham and Fossedal show how with immediate off-the-shelf technology...
...Worsthorne refers, somewhat dismissively, in his article-differences over Grenada, the Soviet pipeline, the neutron bomb, cruise missiles, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Middle East, international terrorism, and Nicaragua...
...If I put some other country first, I would live there...
...What he, and others, describe as neoconservatism, might have been expected to find a sympathetic echo in Mr...
...If all this is so, then surely Europe, with an economy larger than that of the Soviet bloc, is capable of defending itself against this paper tiger...
...PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE MEETS HIS CRITICS Most of us know at least one person who habitually wears some accessory or item of clothing by which he can easily be recognized and with which he eventually comes to be associated-it may be a bow tie of some distinctive pattern, colored socks, or a flower in the buttonhole...
...must IS Notre Dame Still Catholic...
...One recent segment dealt with the Grateful Dead, the aging rock band whose drug-sodden fans travel endlessly from concert to concert, driving gaudily painted vans and subsisting on tofu and marijuana...
...Along with this perception goes the suspicion that the European partners in the Western alliance are interested only in the European Atlantic area, and that threats to free political institutions elsewhere are none of their concern...
...If the world situation is as Peregrine Worsthorne thinks, then I am frankly perplexed as to why we need an Atlantic alliance at all...
...based on interviews with students, seminarians, theology professors, and Father McBrien, the department chairman, shows that the apostasy had gone deeper than anyone suspected...
...questionable in the sense of [being contradictory...
...301) 659-0220 Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America L 101 W. Read St., Suite 224 Baltimore, Md...
...The fact that he is a conservative-large C and small-raises the utility of his observations still further: He gives us a rare glimpse of just how fragile is the superficially cordial relationship between the Reagan Administration and the British government...
...The issue is not, actually, whether we and our transatlantic allies can agree on all issues, but whether, as Henry Kissinger has said, our partnership can survive if we do not agree on any of the important questions of the present day...
...Now, a defense is available to render this weapon of terror obsolete...
...In that way I am afraid that there is a definite limit to the possibilities of Austrian tourism, unless one believes (as Mr...
...Peregrine Worsthorne's claim to be a lifelong conservative is incontestable, as is his detestation of Communism...
...From time to time he turns upon some personality or policy associated with the High Tory ideology which he usually wears with such elegance, and defiantly displays his colored socks...
...but he does inadvertently make several good arguments for a phased withdrawal of American troops from Europe...
...1.800.255-2665 In CT or Worldwide 12031 966-5470 b % % % \ 1 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985...
...And since, as our allies argue, the U.S...
...These differences, however, arise not out of weakness, fear, or a penchant for ap THE SO VIE TS FEAR THESE BOOKS...
...They would be foolish to back U.S...
...Nationalism is the wave of the future...
...Worsthorne argues that the "difference in perception between the two sides of the Atlantic about the magnitude and urgency of the Soviet menace...
...Please send me copies The Final Hours $18 95 (plus $3 00 nandling) Enclosed 's Visa MC Accowa No Dalerexp Srgnalure Name Address Call us for a free catalog...
...In attac~ing American neoconservatives, Peregrine Worsthorne does his argument a disservice by lumping together the views of Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol on the present problems of NATO and their possible solutions...
...Mail orders welcome...
...Steinhoff is former chairman of NATO's military committee and recently accompanied Chancellor Kohl to the meeting with President Reagan at Bitburg cemetery in Germany...
...Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Worsthorne is obviously annoyed with President Eisenhower for not going along with Sir Anthony Eden at the time of Suez...
...Other examples of allied backsliding," he continues, "are all too easy to enumerate: over the oil pipeline, over Middle East policy, over trading with the Soviet Union, over Grenada, and most recently and provocatively, over Central America...
...Soviet nuclear parity: They could either build up their own military forces, which would be expensive, or, through economic and political concessions give the Soviets a vested interest in not invading Western Europe...
...withdrawal from NATO would leave Europe freer to follow such inclinations, without the bright man's burden of defending America's inept initiatives...
...West 57th" has been doing poorly in the Nielsens, largely because the older and less video-fluent executives at CBS News, recognizing a threatening innovation when they see one, have apparently been trying their best to sink it through inept scheduling...
...It is true that there are not many luncheon tables among the gratin of London at which the appearance of Peregrine Worsthorne could legitimately evoke the question "Who the hell is this guy...
...In October 1949, six months after the North Atlantic 'Meaty was signed, Charles de Gaulle made a succinct statement of the incentives argument: "France must first count upon itself, independent of foreign aid, and NATO takes away the initiative to build our national defense...
...7.95 --------------------------------------------------------High Frontier, 1010 Vermont Ave., NW, Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20005...
...The mind boggles...
...contribution to NATO is not particularly large, its removal would be no great burden on the lively economies of Europe, or on their sensible and sophisticated elites...
...Mention Notre Dame to most people and what do they think of...
...Indeed, Mr...
...the major difference is that Mr...
...It is of a much more subtle spread of the poisonous system which thrives on the prison camp, the psychiatric ward, and the subordination of the individual to the exigencies of the state...
...There is, on the other hand, much to be said for the view, not by any means a monopoly of the neoconservatives, that the difficulties which the Soviet Union is experiencing within its existing empire might be a catalyst for further expansion, rather than an inhibition against it...
...But just when things seemed to be quieting down, the article in Fidelity appeared...
...In the fall of 1983, the department hired former priest Daniel C. Maguire as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Moral Theology...
...policy...
...national defense policy...
...But rather than continue this exchange, which seems to have got into a rut before ever getting off the ground, let me just say how sad I am that an attempt to discuss these matters in an openminded fashion should have proved so instantly abortive...
...In the spring of 1983 a number of students had become so scandalized by their theology teachers that they took their own poll to find out which if any of them still believed that Christ rose from the dead, that Mary was a virgin, or that homosexuality and abortion were wrong...
...The Golden Dome...
...That is what alliances will do to you...
...or from the general malaise of defeatism which I take to be what American neoconservatives mean by describing Europe as dead," he is attacking Podhoretz's "values" explanation and implicitly endorsing Kristol's "incentives" arguments...
...In his first semester at Notre Dame, Maguire published a proabortion article in Christian Century...
...I think there is a good deal of evidence to support Mr...
...Phone:(202) 737-4979 A DEFENSE THAT DEFENDS Hdbk...
...If the allies disagree strongly about the nature and extent of the Soviet threat, which is the whole reason for the NATO alliance to begin with, then there is already, as Henry Kissinger puts it, "no alliance left...
...Worsthorne's philippic against the American neoconservatives...
...Bob Sirott's cool, amused commentary made it clear that while he didn't object to an occasional toot after work, such extravagantly nostalgic shenanigans were strictly for sixties rejects who hadn't yet discovered the joys of entry-level executive positions, raspberry vinegar, and Reebok tennis shoes...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985 Reagan seems to be...
...2. "Nor, judging by Soviet difficulties in Afghanistan, still unsubdued after five years, does the Red Army seem all that much of an invincible conquering force...
...Worsthorne apparently does, all historical evidence to the contrary) that there is some inner logic which is making Communism less dangerous, and the Soviet Union less expansionist...
...These views are plainly at variance with the facts as I see them...
...Worsthorne would prefer to hedge his bets, admitting that he may be wrong, but that in any case his views do not spring from any particular hostility to the United States, or from pacifism, leftism, etc...
...That "coachloads of visitors from both East and West Europe regularly intermingle" in Vienna...
...The result was the now historic decision by President Reagan to move away from...
...Worsthorne was coming perilously near to a flirtation with that intellectual heresy which so deeply offends Mrs...
...Those of us who live in Europe are bound to give greater emphasis to any hopeful sign of a coming together of the two parties than if one lives on the other side of the Atlantic...
...3. "Neoconservatives really should make a greater imaginative effort to understand how genuinely questionable is much of their foreign policy...
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...After all, they did not prevent the Red Army from invading Afghanistan and establishing a brutally oppressive military regime in a country where the "ideological lure of Communism" could scarcely be regarded as being at an all-time high...
...Worsthorne seems to suggest, one of a mad Soviet leader launching an attack on Western Europe...
...Krauss's book on NATO will be published this spring by Simon and Schuster...
...Worsthorne?-Gregory A. Fossedal Editorial Page Writer The Wall Street Journal New York, New York Peregrine Worsthorne replies: I don't find anything in the above letters to which I could usefully reply, since-with the exception of Lord Chalfont-they strike me as almost willfully obtuse...
...Send me $15, and I'll send you 12 issues of a magazine that is wonpologelically Catholic...
...Why do we persist in thinking that coun tries are like ships: safer in convoys...
...It is not altogether surprising that some Americans should get the impression that some Europeans are not quite as serious about the threat of totalitarian Communism as Mr...
...Tom Bethell Washington, D.C (Mr...
...As I understand his piece, he and Europeans like him have radically different views on the Soviet threat, the Third World, even the nature of Communism...
...Write or phone for free holiday gift catalog...
...Or you can get a copy free with a one year subscription to Fidelity, a new Catholic magazine that is as Catholic as the pope...
...Either he or Notre Dame or both were testing the waters to see whether it was now acceptable to be a proabortion moral theologian at a Catholic university...
...Defense Intelligence Chief Lt...
...Whatever else one may think of Peregrine Worsthorne's nasty outburst, he has added something of real value to the transatlantic debate, by saying in print what many of us have been hearing privately in the pubs, common rooms, and cocktail parties of his nation for some years now...
...At any rate, he is willing to pay the freight...
...Worsthorne condescendingly instructs us to "grow up," and apply to his prose for tutoring in "history" and "reality...
...Worsthorne's feelings, however, is his notion that "the peoples of Western and Eastern Europe are beginning to grow together, WTTS, 92 3 FM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WGTC, 1370 AM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA Afghans, the Ethiopians, and the Cambodians...
...Worsthorne's system of political ideas...
...by Gen...
...Of course, this is what the European left has been saying for some time now...
...If that is "America Firstism," as Worsthorne claims, then so be it...
...It is bad enough when these misunderstandings and failures of communication are aggravated by the rabid anti-Americanism of the "peace" movements and those whom Mr...
...The American nuclear guarantee of Europe is the most important plank of NATO, but the Europeans faced a dilemma when the credibility of that guarantee was undermined by the advent of US...
...Conversely, the day the U.S...
...I will not offend him by suggesting that it might have been Mrs...
...Pat O'Brien...
...Although one of those identified by him as having received the neoconservative seal of approval, I had always regarded myself as being close to him, not only as a friend, but as a political animal...
...The President says it must be done...
...Is the day coming when we'll all be pining for the likes of Dan Rather...
...Worsthorne writes, "opponents of the energetic use of American power are nowadays all for alliances...
...There is a feeling, too, in the United States that its allies are reluctant to make the unpopular political decisions which are needed if Western Europe is to assume a reasonable share of the burden of its own defense...
...The same kind of attitude is doubtless behind the failure of "Miami Vice" to pick up more than four of the fifteen Emmys for which it was nominated...
...If they fought to keep the Falklands British, could the British dare do less for Great Britain itself...
...I was fascinated, by the way, by his view that nationalismnot Communism-is the "wave of the future...
...But what is the evidence for this happy fact...
...from any ideological anti-Americanism...
...In saying as much, one demonstrates neither "anti-European" ill will nor a belief that Worsthorne and the Europeans are "dead...
...Who wants to get bogged down with the bloody Americans in Central America...
...Nor, of course, did Jeane Kirkpatrick's question derive from any such lamentable obfuscation...
...But if everything is going so well, why keep GI's in Europe 40 years after World War II...
...Let's get out, I say...
...Well, no doubt...
...SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE...
...Well then: A U.S...
...THEY OFFER A S TRA TEG Y OF HOPE FOR FREE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE Available From High Frontier A DEFENSE THAT DEFENDS by Lt...
...Good...
...When will we learn that doling out dollars is the cause of antiAmericanism, not the antidote to it...
...What I cannot figure out is why Worsthorne is so eager for America to stay in NATO...
...for its defense-which give our West European allies powerful incentives to accommodate the Soviets and place themselves at some distance from the policies of the United States...
...Actually, for some time now the European pacifist-left in all of their extensions have been talking as if membership in NATO were some sort of favor their countries were doing for the United States, at prohibitively high cost...
...There are politicians, writers, and academics who are so alarmed at the possibility that they might be regarded as representing a shared body of opinion or school of thought, that they reach out for their distinctive intellectual haberdashery at the merest whiff of conformity...
...These people are not fools...
...His explanation for what he diagnoses as the antipathy of American neoconservatives to Europe is that they "are trying to blacken Europe's character so as to justify the United States leaving us in the lurch...
...Secretary of State in 1938 had expressed disapproval of the British development of radar, on the grounds that it was "Maginot Line" stuff (implying by that an exercise in futility...
...And there are some other people they would like to get, but their contracts aren't up yet...
...Worsthorne suggests that we do not, and if that is the case, we had best depart the European scene as expeditiously as possible, without rancor or recrimination...
...Worsthorne is clearly quite anti-Communist in principle...
...That is why, as Mr...
...Gen...
...Both distinguished neoconservatives clearly are concerned about Western Europe's minimalization of the Soviet threat-as evidenced by Europe's under-investment in defense, its economic subsidies to the Soviet Union, its open skepticism toward President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and its apparent indifference to the spread of Soviet influence in the Third World...
...It is possible, too, that Mr...
...Worsthr-:.c explicitly defends himself :5atnst a charge that to my knowledge neoconservatives have never made, either against him or Tories in general: namely, that they are somehow "soft on Communism...
...Worsthorne is probably correct in his insistence that Europe's minimalization of the Soviet threat does not indicate the old continent has gone "soft on Communism...
...Actually, my view is the opposite...
...what she was expressing was astonishment that anyone at that gathering could suggest that there was "no agreed sense in the West" as to what the terms freedom and democracy actually mean...
...Yet Podhoretz traces European appeasement to an alleged decline in Europe's attachment to Western values, while Kristol blames it SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB, CHANNEL 3, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE KTVN, CHANNEL 2, RENO, NEVADA WAJI, 95.1 FM, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA CORPORATE OFFICE, BOX 62, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47402 TELEPHONE 812 332 7251 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985 on systematic factors in the structure of the Western alliance-namely, European dependence on the U.S...
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...Coachloads from East and West kiss and make up in Vienna...
...There is, most assuredly, an agreed sense in the West about the concept of individual liberty...
...The real key to Mr...
...Regular viewers of MTV or "Miami Vice" are likely to find the show's camera work and conservative use of background music rather tame...
...Even if this is so, it is good reason Europe should be anxious to decouple from the U.S., or at least less eager to be linked to us by accepting our assistance...
...Everything Catholic and American...
...Worsthorne has seriously misunderstood the nature of the stresses and strains which are undermining the capacity of the free world to meet the "Soviet challenge...
...A host of scientists, engineers, and military strategists joined in 1981 to recommend Project High Frontier...
Vol. 18 • December 1985 • No. 12
