Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Count Me Out In his "AIDS: A British View," which appears on page 29 of this issue, Christopher Monckton writes: "Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month...
...In other words, he is fully aware that a proposal as radical as his is essentially unthinkable...
...What disgusting rag would stoop to publishing such mindless drivel...
...He evinces childish traits in commenting on the voices and accents of a number of people, and that seems pretty petty to me...
...Reubin Askew spoke out immediately, repeatedly, and vigorously in support of President Reagan's actions in Grenada...
...There is much, much more in indirect cash allocations from the Congress, and judicial and state sources...
...Finally, Secretary of State Shultz's speech was a gem...
...And if the leader of French conservatism, touted by Mr...
...Barnes had irunind in his mention of Senator Bradley...
...Among Reaganites born after 1960, there is a different agenda...
...50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987...
...How Supreme the Court...
...He seems to be a very unhappy and jaded individual, sad to say...
...Askew an apology...
...Voyeurs and dope fiends—like the proverbial poor—we will always have with us...
...Yet the guilty publication is noneother than The American Spectator and the author no less a personage than Professor Jeffrey Hart (see "Two More Years: A Final Reagan Agenda," TAS, October 1986...
...Marshall's was not an outrageous choice...
...It is more likely that this is a baseless, loony conceit...
...Nevertheless, I urge Barnes this time to meet with and give equal treatment to all the candidates...
...In any situation, it can deal with the Congress, or the Reagan Administration and its appointees, as it might wish...
...economic deprivation knowingly inflicted upon the poor...
...LSC is a political-corporate giant...
...It had 2,000 lawyers more than the entire Department of Justice...
...but they have done so, and therein lies an insult and an embarrassment to all associated with The American Spectator...
...It appears to have asserted influence in some Protestant and Catholic Church programs...
...But what if Barnes and other prominent journalists had given Askew the attention and the coverage that his record and his views deserved...
...But there cannot be any practical difference between what the Constitution says, and what the court says it says...
...Have we not seen this kind of madness before...
...Indeed, in a republic where the authority to govern that legitimates all law is based on the consent of the governed, any different jurisprudence does violence to a tradition significantly predating the doctrine of judicial review...
...Oppenheimer as an exemplar of pro-American moderation, espouses lunatic beliefs, tinged with a very old and very nasty form of hatred, what does that tell us about the country he represents...
...The line about softball was a gratuitous barb...
...Alas, they would be wrong...
...So, with notable exceptions, the Reagan appointments have ranged from mediocre to seriously damaging...
...Senate races across the country...
...Andrew Ferguson Assistant Managing Editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski replies: So far as I can make out, Andy Ferguson is greatly upset by the coldheartedness displayed by Christopher Monckton in his search for a solution to the AIDS crisis...
...It is true that some of us at "the feverish fringes" believe that the natural operations of neither the marketplace nor the reproductive system ought to be regulated by artificial means...
...The last is a deadly serious matter...
...Monckton was quite straight-faced in writing up his modest proposal, and the editors are quite serious in publishing it...
...In fact, he was roundly booed for doing so at the state convention of the New Hampshire Democratic Party shortly after the rescue mission occurred...
...D'Souza is one—that Lincoln, in his debates with Stephen Douglas over the Dred Scott case, rejected the idea that a Supreme Court decision is something other than a judicial interpretation of the Constitution...
...It is a political scandal because the Administration fails to protect the natural American political system from this massive injection of federal cash and federal political networking...
...We have that sort here, too, of course, but they are usually to be found either with the Liberty Lobby or the Spartacist Youth Revolutionary League...
...Unfortunately, Mr...
...May The American Spectator progress and flourish...
...Yet, despite the protestations of liberals and libertarians, pandering to their vices is not a victimless crime...
...But civil law would never work under this principle, where each citizen and each branch of government simply followed the tenets of the Constitution as they saw fit...
...Would the results have differed then...
...It is not that Mr...
...Abortion, like slavery, violates one of the inalienable rights explicitly enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, a document whose author was neither a fundamentalist preacher nor an agent of the Pope...
...Perhaps this is what Mr...
...Typically, Democratic administrations understand this function as legitimate and important, and i approach it professionally and withoutapology, however partisan...
...One is tempted to round up the usual suspects: New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, New Republic, Nation, Mother Jones, and Ms...
...They gave approval to the potentially direct injection of millions of "LSC dollars" into the November 1986 U.S...
...Yet today we hardly need fear that the power of the courts will be given too short a shrift...
...Furthermore, the writer makes a burlesque out of the conservative agenda on the so-called "social issues...
...It can directly affect every local election...
...In that case, this symbol of the resurgence of an intellectually respectable French right is guilty of espousing lunatic beliefs passed on to him by the highest ministers of the German government...
...This bit of disinformation perpetuates the liberal myths that President Reagan's popularity is due exclusively to "pocketbook issues" and that all of his youthful supporters are materialistic yuppies who have sold their souls for thirty pieces of silver...
...I hope his children (if he has any) enjoy a better education, a higher appreciation of the finer things in life, possess a decent sense of humor, and are more understanding of the values of a venerable institution...
...To be sure, the courts must resolve differences of constitutional interpretation when they arise in discrete conflicts between private or governmental parties, a role having great significance beyond the realm of merely "legal" issues...
...Venerable Harvard This letter is about an article by P. J. O'Rourke in the November issue ("Crimson Cerebrations...
...In 1982, the net income of CBS . . . was less than half of LSC's net income...
...The conservatives, such as Bill Buckley, Walter Williams, Joe Sobran, and many others, told them...
...Oppenheimer to an article that appeared in the Washington Times on November 7, 1986...
...Appalled It has been my custom for some time to send a copy of every bizarre, outrageous, or downright stupid item I find in print to the editors of my favorite features in The American Spectator, namely "The Continuing Crisis" and "Current Wisdom...
...It may be that Askew challenged too many entrenched party interest groups on too many issues...
...One of the big secrets of Washington is that Republican Presidents could, if they tried, find appointees who are at once well qualified and prepared to give real support to responsible conservative goals...
...Still, candidates the press ignores sometimes surge anyway...
...There were nine regional offices in 1981...
...In 1982, its net income was larger than every bank in the United States, except five...
...And the American people seem comfortable with the rule, if not with all its particular applications...
...However, in fairness to Mr...
...Department of Justice Washington, D.C...
...Monckton (and to our readers), it will not do to quote him out of context...
...D'Souza commented that Robertson's remarks to the effect that a Supreme Court ruling is not the law, and that "the framers did not intend to give the Supreme Court final authority over the Constitution," is in conflict with the whole tradition of judicial review kicked off by Chief Justice Marshall in 1803...
...Any presidential administration has the opportunity, and obligation, to use its appointment powers to run the ex- = ecutive branch...
...In my judgment, its political side operates the strongest political network in the U.S...
...Dinesh D'Souza replies: In any system that operates by rule of law, it seems obvious that, in the event of disputed interpretations, somebody must be in charge of telling us what the THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 49 laws mean...
...In these circumstances, innocently accepting the premises of extreme judicial power can encourage the continued erosion of constitutional government...
...Reagan's wise advisers, or "informed-Hill people," and the Republicans, did not know...
...How wondrous a thing is faith...
...In plain language, this is exactly what Mr...
...They want lower taxes...
...Every President has reconciled himself to it...
...Stan Langland Belmont, California Lunacy Franz M. Oppenheimer wishes readers to share his belief that France's recent firm rejection of socialism proves the "soundness" at her "core" ("The Paradoxes of French Politics," TAS, October 1986...
...So, if Israeli intelligence had wanted to create the impression of a terrorist plot, they also saw to it that the plot could not be carried out...
...I don't want to make too much of one interview...
...The record of events in LSC permits the suggestion that it should be nominated as the ugliest and dirtiest private corporation in twentieth-century America...
...There is, of course, no such thing as a Republican "bank of political operatives," to the detriment of conservative interests...
...In reading this some of our more charitable readers might think they are being treated to a brilliant flash of Swiftian satire, or maybe a bit of outrageous leg-pulling from a budding Auberon Waugh...
...Lincoln fully embraced the notion that all branches of government have a responsibility to interpret the Constitution faithfully, and indeed private citizens have the liberty, the right, to do so...
...There were eight candidates, and I was one reporter for the Baltimore Sun...
...My profound disappointment is too deep for tears...
...His principal thesis that Moslem fundamentalism sponsored by Iran constitutes the overwhelming threat to the West may be debatable, but it is a thesis shared by many well-informed Americans, and so is his belief that mere barking at Syria and Libya is counterproductive...
...He takes a cheap shot at a great university and at fabulous programming...
...As you might expect, several candidates got short shrift from me, and poor Reubin Askew was one of them...
...In attributing to me the belief "that France's recent . . . rejection of socialism proves the 'soundness' at her `core,' " Diane Ezer stands my article on its head...
...Barnes owes Mr...
...Second, even if we accept solely for the sake of argument the admittedly far-out hypothesis of an Israeli plot, the charge of would-be murder would fail, for it was Israeli security that discovered the explosive matter after the suitcase containing it had been cleared by airport security procedures and before it could be put on the plane...
...Kevin G. Long Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights Milwaukee, Wisconsin Legal Services Scandals Congratulations to Rael Jean Isaac on her LSC article ("Legal Services and the Farmer," TAS, November 1986), although for one who has supported the idea of legal assistance to the poor, it causes almost overwhelming sadness...
...They knew and in 1986 they said about LSC what they have said every year since 1980: "We cannot be bothered, this small thing is not part of our large thoughts, so to hell with it...
...Now the court is far from infallible, and has admitted as much in its historic reversals of precedent...
...Judges do not have the authority to make law, but they do have the role of defining it...
...If Mr...
...It's coming again in 1988...
...For the record, far from coddling the "liberal, isolationist wing" of the Democratic Party, Askew challenged the left again and again—with his opposition to the nuclear freeze, with his opposition to abortion, with his support for merit pay for teachers, with his support for limits on middle-class entitlements spending, with his support for capital punishment, with his support for right-to-work laws and free trade, and so on...
...CORRESPONDENCE Count Me Out In his "AIDS: A British View," which appears on page 29 of this issue, Christopher Monckton writes: "Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month to detect the presence of antibodies against [AIDS], and all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently...
...Give Fred Barnes a break...
...Marbury v. Madison may have established the court as constitutional referee, but not as constitutional law-giver...
...Now they cannot give that response to 55 Democrats in the Senate, although perhaps they might wonder how they got there, and why so many razor-thin Senate races went against them...
...In that piece ("Pat Robertson's World"), Mr...
...His exchange with Tim W. Ferguson (Correspondence, TAS, November 1986) leaves an important issue in need of further comment...
...Actually, Bacchus has a good point...
...The source for this charge was the testimony of Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, whose "conclusions" were cited as the sole evidence upon which Mr...
...O'Rourke needs some "attitude readjustment pills...
...While many pro-lifers quote Scripture, as did many abolitionists, the evil of abortion was known even to the pagan Hippocrates...
...Why the editors have seen fit to open their pages to it remains a deep mystery...
...an institutional structure designed to deprive the poor of assistance, and the brutal use of state power to intimidate creative workers and persons...
...This is very much the way many Protestant churches approach Scripture—to each his own interpretation—and that is precisely the reason there are so many Protestant sects...
...Bacchus assures me I am wrong, that Askew's support for the policy was unqualified...
...The reason for his concern is what he regards as the nature of AIDS: a disease that continues to spread at a frightening rate and for which a cure is neither in sight nor likely...
...In an interview with Arnaud de Borchgrave, Mr...
...In this, the Reagan Administration failed to support its LSC Board members (and I was one of those), which was a scandalous abuse of its own personnel...
...A recent example is the case of Mr...
...But here again, the process in essence seeks the consent of those who will be governed by a proposed amendment before it is adopted...
...So they select people sharing the same mentality, often taking an adversarial posture with respect to the very organizations they set out to administer...
...Hamilton in The Federalist simply assumes this is so...
...That they so blissfully scorn this potential is curious indeed...
...The Supreme Court's interpretations of the Constitution are not equivalent to the provisions of the Constitution itself, and in this sense are not the supreme law of the land...
...The calibre of participant and attendee and the breadth and depth of the sessions were extraordinary...
...There is no comparison between the unspeakable evil of slaughtering innocent babies and the endemic vices of pornography and drug addiction...
...All this is a never-ending cycle...
...Brace yourself...
...The Congress will not control it...
...In 1984, Walter Mondale received $9 million in federal matching funds, for his presidential campaign...
...Certainly the results in Iowa and New Hampshiresupport such an argument...
...M. Chirac's rather bizarre remark, when read in the context of the entire interview, hardly makes him guilty of "lunatic beliefs...
...I recently came across yet another gem: Some conservatives want to curb abortion, pornography, drugs, and softball, and out at the feverish fringes, even birth control...
...They knew...
...Pat Robertson has said that, if he were elected President, he would adopt his own, and not the court's, interpretation of the Constitution...
...Republican administrations view the same role with discomfort: somewhat embarrassed and disdainful...
...This grotesque but recently voguish hysteria is ludicrous on its face, or anyway it should seem so to someone who prizes the principles on which this magazine is supposed to be based—limited government, prudence, and individual responsibility, to name a few...
...But the solution is not to deny their power of judicial review, but to persuade them of the error of their ways and, that failing, to replace them with people who will exercise their judicial role with greater responsibility and good sense...
...Anyone in attendance at that convention, or any journalist who paid any attention to Askew's campaign, will confirm this...
...It is a commonplace to those literate in constitutional history—of which Mr...
...I recalled that Askew was partially critical of Reagan's performance on Grenada, while endorsing the decision to invade...
...Of course, even the Constitution, the genuine supreme law of the land, was not intended to be immutable...
...James L. Bacchus Formerly, Press Secretary Askew for President Orlando, Florida Fred Barnes replies: I should have known I'd have to pay sooner or later for my sins in covering the 1984 Democratic presidential race...
...It is simply the latest version of the totalitarian flim-flam that is forever drawing believers from the ranks of the weak-minded and the perpetually alarmed...
...Elsewhere in the piece Mr...
...Over a period of more than two years, Barnes repeatedly rebuffed letters and telephone calls in which Askew's staff tried to arrange a meeting between the two men...
...The facts are much worse...
...Monckton's alarming proposal is nothing more than alarmism...
...He adds about John Glenn, Fritz Hollings, and Reubin Askew that "without complaint, these three knuckled under on Grenada in hopes of placating the liberal, isolationist wing of the party that dominates the presidential primaries and caucuses...
...Sumner Rodman Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Barnes Askew In your September issue, Fred Barnes [in "Conservatives and the Democratic 101 writes that, in the 1984 presidential campaign, "Every Democratic presidential candidate took himself out of contention for the conservative vote by a single act, criticizing the invasion of Grenada by American troops...
...When the Supreme Court's constitutional rulings are viewed as tantamount to provisions of our fundamental law, they are in effect amendments to the Constitution and are arrogations of legislative power by an unelected judiciary...
...Reagan became President in January 1981, one LSC regional office had $19 million in cash, which was to be used to oppose, it seems, every political initiative which the 1981 Reagan Administration might make in that region...
...In the case of the Catholic Church this is the Pope...
...continued on page 48) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1987 9 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 9) Appointment Botches Someone must rise to the defense of Fred Barnes who is the most perceptive and readable conservative around...
...Chirac deemed any evidence obtained by "all Western intelligence sources as worthless," although he did allow that he did not know "the real truth" about the attempted sabotage "because he had not seen the complete dossier of the case...
...Think of the consequence my lack of coverage had on the race...
...I said the exact opposite: France's core is sound because the present majority and the Socialist opposition share our commitment to the political and military defense of Western Europe against the Soviet menace...
...But this is a shocking charge, which if true would totally destroy the Israelis' moral position, force many sympathetic people to turn against them in utter disgust (including not a few Jews), and would reveal the British courts and intelligence community as retarded dupes...
...I tilted it away from Askew and toward the liberal isolationists...
...Until then, he will not have convinced us that Mr...
...Four successive Republican administrations have demonstrated this sad phenomenon for all to see, yet one looks in vain for any sign that the message gets through...
...Ferguson writes, " . . . the election of any Democrat . . . would lead to the filling of countless mid- to upper-level posts with appointees drawn from the Democratic party's bank of political operatives...
...Robert J Cynkar Deputy Assistant Attorney General Civil Division U.S...
...It approves and expands it...
...They show political projects imposed upon captive poor persons...
...It may be that the candidate and his campaign were not as slick or as shrewd as they needed to be to win the nomination...
...Monckton also writes that "it is unlikely that a society which has been habituated to freedom since its foundation would yet be willing to accept the alternative to widespread death which isolation would offer...
...Please excuse my sarcasm...
...If "soundness" means continuity with French political mistakes of the past, then I would agree...
...today...
...Barnes, for all his current longing for a mainstream Democratic candidate, never even took the time in the last campaign to meet with Askew, a mainstream Democrat who has been widely hailed as one of the finest of recent American governors...
...In an otherwise excellent article on Pat Robertson in the November TAS, Dinesh D'Souza is certainly permitted one lapse, but a lapse it remains...
...Yes, and this is unfortunate, but maybe less unfortunate than the alternative, which is a Republican administration which botches its own appointments so pathetically...
...The press, including me, dwells on the frontrunners and largely ignores the rest of the field...
...It is quite possible that the Administration and Senator Rudman approved and voted the money which substantially assisted in removing the Republican majority in the Senate...
...Real conservatives always insist on playing hardball, but we respect the rights and tolerate the alternative lifestyles of softball aficionados...
...There is reason for this...
...senators and congressmen in every state, or local city council members, local bond issues .. . and mayors and governors and aldermen...
...LSC's net income refers only to the dollars directly allocated to LSC in congressional cash...
...I do not think it is quibbling to note that the role of the Supreme Court as final arbiter of disputes over specific applications or interpretations of the Constitution in discrete cases does not make the Supreme Court the "final authority over the Constitution...
...I was there as one of the representatives of the Class of 1935 and was most thoroughly impressed and pleased with the entire celebration...
...All this may not cause many conservatives to vote Democratic, but it certainly gives pause and merits thoughtful attention...
...In October 1986, several [Administration] advisers . . . decided to support Senator Rudman and his successful drive to make the LSC political apparatus totally immune from every practical form of check and control (an immunity which the Democratic and Republican parties have never enjoyed...
...Jacques Chirac claimed that the notorious plot to blow up the El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv was in fact a scheme cooked up between Israel's Mossad and "renegade factions . . . in Assad's entourage," and not, as the British courts found, and as the Israelis contend (and as the rest of the world believes), a terrorist plan backed by the Syrian government todestroy a vulnerable Israeli target...
...Abortion, again like slavery, must eventually be eliminated, not merely "curbed...
...This is less than half of the political funds available in just one LSC regional office three years earlier...
...There is strong evidence . . . that LSC first organized the so-called "Sanctuary Movement" .. . A week before Mr...
...They know that the judiciary, while clearly the most independent branch of government, is indirectly responsive to the will of the people Citizens elect the President who appoints judges and the senators who confirm them, and they can amend the Constitution whose meaning the judges decipher...
...Only the belief (one is tempted to use the word faith) that the Israelis would be savage, cruel, and diabolical enough to sacrifice 376 people (the overwhelming majority of whom were certainly Jews of whatever nationality) in order to disgrace Assad and bring down his regime...
...First, he was careful not to embrace wholeheartedly the allegedly German hypothesis of the Hindawi terror plot's having been the work of the Israeli Mossad, saying "I don't go as far as they [Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscherj do...
...Chief Justice Marshall's understanding of judicial review—and until recently the "legal tradition" it spawned—did not take a different view...
...Under such a view, five of the nine Justices could determine or modify the fundamental political, economic, social, and cultural arrangements of the whole nation—an effect clearly repugnant to representative government—and do so for all time, or at least until five Justices decide to change the "supreme law" the court has created...
...The court simply is not to the Constitution what the Pope is to Catholic doctrine...
...Then, surprised reporters adjust instantly, treat them as front-runners, and ignore the fallen former frontrunners...
...But if we are supposed to buy the argument that France's political life has taken a turn for the saner, then I would direct Mr...
...Not a shred of hard evidence was advanced as far as I could read...
...In making its appointments the Reagan Administration went heavily to fund raisers and to cronies, without regard to useful experience, or competence, or in many cases to any genuine interest in the nature of the work at hand...
...Rael Isaac is entirely correct in saying that the major scandal of the Reagan years is permitting LSC to continue "its abusive course unchecked...
...They are not about to have their lives shaped by any fundamentalist preacher...
...Ferguson disagrees with Mr...
...Chirac is charging—that the Israelis are would-be murderers utterly callous to the loss of human life and that the British are too stupid to see what is staring him and his German buddies right in the face...
...Thus, Robertson's views, if I understand them correctly, represent an honorable legal tradition supported by some of the best minds in our legal heritage...
...For that reason, the Constitution sets out the process for its own amendment...
...As a result, I do indeed offer Askew an apology for suggesting otherwise...
...It can substantially affect the election of U.S...
...Mr...
...But this alone is not its distinction...
...The result overall is one of embarrassment to conservatives, to Republicans, and to the national interest...
...It calls for a "second opinion...
...it is an Administration social scandal because it fails to relieve American workers . . . from this social cancer now fully metastasized...
...What about Askew and Grenada...
...I do appreciate he enjoys the right of free speech and your magazine certainly exemplifies that principle...
...And it was the Supreme Court...
...Yet it is common knowledge that we represent a small segment of the conservative movement and are not likely to get a plank on the next Republican platform...
...Diane Ezer Queens Village, New York Franz M Oppenheimer replies: Diane Ezer's belief that Prime Minister Chirac accused the Israelis of being "would-be murderers . . . savage, cruel, and diabolical enough to sacrifice 376 people" is mistaken in two respects...
...In a tripartite system of checks and balances, the Supreme Court seems the logical arbiter of constitutional meaning...
...Chirac based his statements...
...In 1981 the net income of LSC was larger than General Motors Corporation...
...William F Harvey Carl M Gay Professor of Law Indiana University School of Law Indianapolis, Indiana (In 1982 the writer served as Chairman of the Board of the Legal Services Corporation...
...Monckton on the science of AIDS, he should let us know...
...Perhaps I should write off O'Rourke as being a confirmed cynic as well as possessing an inferiority complex (and rightly so...
...Chief Justice Marshall established what needed to be established—a governing authority...
...LSC is not just another instance of governmental destruction of a fine idea...
...There is the additional fact that it is owned and operated by the Congress of the United States, and that its abuse is congressionally derived, and legislatively and administratively accepted...
...Thus while it is legitimate to criticize court rulings and to try and persuade the court to reverse them at a later date, it would be a formula for lawlessness to say that Supreme Court rulings do not have the force of law, and that the executive branch should not feel bound to enforce such rulings when they are handed down...
...This is bound to have some impact on the race...
...What Marbury v. Madison did was solve the ambiguity in the original Constitution about just who says what exactly the law is when controversies arise...
...In the case of the Constitution it is the Supreme Court...
...Barnes seems already to have anointed a candidate for 1988—Senator Bradley (interestingly enough, Askew's choice for the vice presidency had he won the nomination...
...Little wonder that Barnes cannot recall Askew's positions on the issues...
...How many lives, families and neighborhoods have to be destroyed before we, as fellow citizens, exercise some fraternal correction...
...If he can't find the time in his busy schedule to do that, then I urge him, at the least, to be accurate in his reporting...
...Peter Voss, but the list is long...
...The de Borchgrave article stated that Mr...
...O'Rourke writes in a juvenile, mocking fashion and exhibits no understanding either of the general significance of the 350th Harvard Anniversary celebration or of the individual seminars and programs...
...There is no question that there are judges on the court who are distorting and perverting the Constitution, and are proud of the fact...
Vol. 20 • January 1987 • No. 1
