Capitol Ideas/A Stroll with Sidney Hook
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS A STROLL WITH SIDNEY HOOK by Tom Bethell FT he phrase "sweet reason" took on 1 new meaning for me when I became acquainted with Sidney Hook at the Hoover Institution. He rejoices in...
...It seems that Sidney would get the last word...
...The family settled in Brooklyn where Isaac worked in the garment industry, dawn to dusk (but with protracted layoffs...
...And many merchants -- fearful of attack by Chinese warlords or bandits -- buried their Silver coins in secret caches...
...In his autobiography he describes a "Dialogue Between Catholics and Humanists" at a Catholic retreat in New York City...
...then I let fly at him...
...As we walked past the Eucalyptus trees near the Green Library, I mentioned the episode narrated in St...
...He said that this tendency on the part of the professoriat was a recent thing...
...But he does deny that secular humanism is a religion...
...Occasionally, his mother would ask, "How could God have permitted it...
...He taught himself to read and write in two languages, but never went to school...
...Why would a good God punish that child...
...coins: Our Silver Dollar weighed a little less than the Mexican Piece of Eight, so thrifty Chinese merchants were giving their business to countries that used the Mexican coin...
...Evidently thinking of the church as personified by Father Coughlin, he was "shocked to discover a change in the quality of thought and behavior of the Jesuits...
...I don't expect the tyrant to be struck by a thunderbolt...
...His father, Isaac Hook, came to America in 1882, an immigrant from Austria near the Bohemian border...
...One Jesuit defended the Chinese Communists, then still worshiping Mao...
...The coin's mint date is located at the bottom center...
...The Washington Mint, one of America's foremost private mints, fully guarantees satisfaction with a 30-day, money-back policy...
...A limit of ten coins per order will be strictly enforced, and all orders are subject to acceptance by The Washington Mint...
...Why would blindness make the works of God manifest rather than extraordinary vision...
...Although I did not say it, I felt he was a disgrace to his cloth, which was a strange emotion for an unbeliever...
...About once a week I hear Sidney out in the corridor buttonholing Hoover fellows and staff, to take issue with the 'Harper & Row, $29.95...
...One evening he was wearing his navy-blue beret and was carefully buttoning THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 11 (although Sidney noticed that he sometimes smoked when he was not supposed to) and he prayed in the morning...
...He said he wasn't afraid of the operation...
...SALE PRICES: Each Silver Trade Dollar in this release is priced at $175.00 plus $5.00 for postage, handling and insurance...
...If he had had my opportunities . . ." Sidney mused, a cold wind blowing as we walked along...
...But our traders were severely handicapped by the Silver content of U.S...
...One of the pleasures of being at the Hoover Institution in recent months has been the opportunity to discuss these age-old philosophical problems with someone as eminent as Sidney Hook, the 1985 winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, who for many years taught philosophy at New York University...
...It was of course the universalism of socialism that had appealed to him...
...A puzzle with Sidney Hook is to understand why he has consistently been so uninterested in Israel...
...To be confronted by a Jesuit priest who criticized me for protesting the ruthless persecutions of Catholic and other missionaries on the ground that the Communists were trying to help the exploited Chinese was an extraordinary experience...
...But I would expect, if there is a God, that he would not die comfortably in his bed...
...The disciples asked: "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind...
...So I was never a Zionist...
...T was eager to explore further Sidney 1 Hook's beliefs, or lack of them, and so had several discussions with him...
...The reverse bears a heraldic American Eagle, the weight and purity of the Silver content, and the legend: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TRADE DOLLAR...
...Without my asking he told me that once a friend had asked him what he would say if he woke up in the presence of God...
...100 Year Old United States Government Silver Trade Dollars In Accordance with its Established Policy, The Washington Mint Hereby Announces the Limited Release of 1,200 U.S...
...He replied that St...
...Then, after the state of Israel was created by the U.N., I had to accept it...
...that every step, every event in history be balanced in the scales of justice...
...The coins in this special release have been hidden in China for 100 years...
...I have always been partial Tom Bethel' is a visiting media fellow at the Hoover Institution and The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Eventually he surrendered to his parents' argument that he would disgrace them in the eyes of the Jewish community, and went through with the ceremony...
...I said that he was insisting that the ways of God be scrutable to man: that the "books" of justice be balanced with each succeeding entry...
...But we didn't," he said simply...
...But he speculates that it shook her faith...
...Sidney told me that his mother had lost her first-born child when he was two years old—something he doesn't mention in his autobiography...
...Sidney countered, again with a touch of indignation in his voice...
...How can you reconcile God's goodness and infinite power with the suffering of the innocent and the success of the infamous...
...Ever since then, he feels, fear of war has undermined traditional values in the West...
...his father would say...
...How do you know there is a God...
...He said that he would have to have an operation soon because the doctors had told him he had "the same thing the President has...
...2 (It is a rich and rewarding work, but it contains nothing about his family background...
...Certification of Authenticity will accompany each Silver Dollar in this release...
...Is it not a form of pride to insist that our understanding be on the divine level...
...Think of the suffering of those close to him, his family and his friends...
...I asked him if he still called himself a socialist...
...Professors are supposed to be "the guardians of the Western tradition," he said, but today increasingly "they capitulate—they are afraid of the women and the blacks, especially the blacks...
...He rejoices in reasoned discourse, and will engage you with a kindly open-mindedness that is rare among intellectuals, not to mention intellectuals in their 80s...
...You can't ask that question," Isaac would say...
...But he avoided the latter term because it also confusingly suggests the hedonistic consumer of luxury goods...
...As young socialists we had illusions," he told me...
...He picked up his briefcase and we set off for the fifteen-minute walk across the Stanford campus...
...They act as though they want to promote socialism," he told me one day...
...Socialism without freedom is slavery...
...There was a time when the professoriat was if anything hostile to the mildest kind of social reform," he said, thinking of the time in the 1920s when he first joined the academic world...
...The heavens proclaim the handiwork of the Lord.' All right, I can accept that...
...I was touched to find him solicitous of the faith of others, suggesting when we started to discuss the problem of evil that I might want to consult a theologian rather than be exposed to the perils of doubt...
...Here he pondered and repeated the belief once held by his friend Bertrand Russell...
...If you let me define it as a belief in democracy as a way of life," he said...
...But I do expect him to be vindicated before he goes to the scaffold...
...The high Silver content made the Trade Dollar popular with the chinese...
...He must be one of the very few secular humanists both clearheaded enough to know that that is what he is and courageous enough not to reject the label...
...Orders will be filled on a strict FIRST-COME, FIRST-SERVED basis according to the POSTMARK date of mail orders and the TIME AND DATE of telephone orders...
...It was the First World War, an unnecessary war, which could-have been settled amicably but which produced such a terrible holocaust...
...Some would say the erosion of religion," he replied...
...Not so, Sidney believes...
...Each coin measures 38.1mm in diameter, the same as the famed Morgan Silver Dollar that it predates...
...up his raincoat as he prepared to walk home...
...I don't expect the innocent man to be vindicated tomorrow...
...Because of evil done by his grandfather...
...NW Washington, DC 20009 5© 1986 The Washington Mint Vt...
...Nothing could be more misleading in Hook's case...
...So Congress authorized the minting of an extraordinary Silver Coin - the United States Trade Dollar, a magnificent coin with more Silver than either our standard dollar or the famed Piece of Eight...
...to the golden reasoning of Aquinas and his inspired common sense derived from Aristotle," Sidney Hook writes in his just-published autobiography, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century.' "I find myself intellectually more comfortable in disagreeing with the clearly enunciated propositions of Catholic Thomists than puzzling over the fuzzy confusions of some modernist Catholics, who have been infected with Protestant and pantheist heresies and lack the courage to avow it...
...TOTAL: $180.00) SPECIAL DISCOUNTS: The following discount prices apply for customers placing quantity orders: THREE Silver Dollars for $490.00 plus $5.00 (TOTAL: $495.00) FIVE Silver Dollars for $770.00 plus $5.00 (TOTAL: $775.00) TEN Silver Dollars for $1420.00 plus $5.00 (TOTAL: $1425.00) ORDER INSTRUCTIONS: All mail orders must be accompanied by a check or money order for the full amount...
...In addition to Sidney Hook's, the book includes interesting contributions by Edward Teller, Edward 0. Wilson, Benjamin Spock, Mario Cuomo, Jane Goodall, and others...
...Not every step," Sidney said...
...He said that he learned of the tragedy when he was about five years old...
...ftisp 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 At some point a parent just has to say to the demanding child, "Because I say so...
...Jesus answered: "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him...
...But young Sidney would reply: "Who made God...
...A slight, almost a frail figure, he will frequently clamp his eyes shut and grimace as though in pain while making an argument...
...732, 1718 Connecticut Ave...
...At the age of 12 I discovered the problem of evil," he told me...
...Check and money order customers should send their orders directly to: The Washington Mint Dept...
...Sidney said that he was surprised to find professors in the humanities "yielding to the political demands of those who are not familiar with the classical-liberal traditions of the West...
...But I told him that no one should fear reason...
...Thomas Aquinas would certainly have agreed with that...
...zBut it is mentioned in The Courage of Conviction (Dodd, Mead, 1985), edited with an introduction by Phillip L. Berman, in which "thirty-two of the world's best-known men and women intimately and honestly address the questions, What do I believe...
...a time when they still didn't have it...
...The coins in this special release remain in extraordinary condition, and our experts have graded them Choice Very Fine/Extremely Fine...
...I never thought I'd live to see it...
...Take a suffering child, Sidney said, returning to the problem of suffering...
...But "she didn't abandon her religious practice," Sidney said...
...Isaac would reply, "How do you ex-plain the existence of the world if it was not made by God...
...She remained a conforming member of the Jewish community...
...Of course it's unreasonable to expect justice at once...
...Small children cannot understand why things happen the way they do, I said...
...And their parents know it is impossible to explain everything to them...
...One day he said he hoped I wouldn't be disappointed to learn that he was a "naturalist," which meant the same thing as materialist, phi,losophically speaking, he said...
...Credit card customers are advised to place their orders by calling: Toll Free 1-800-228-2323 (24 Hours a Day) No lottery mechanisms will be utilized for this sale...
...Lord," he would say, "you didn't give me enough evidence...
...ut then, as we walked on farther, I) he pushed the topic aside and said that the struggle with totalitarianism in the Soviet Union was a much more urgent concern...
...coin...
...John's Gospel, when Jesus saw a man "blind from his birth...
...The change in values didn't begin until Franklin D. Roosevelt's time, he said...
...Who am I to tell you any different...
...Silver Trade Dollars Minted between 1873-1878...
...and How have I put my beliefs into practice in daily life...
...To a Jew, was this not the great miracle of the twentieth century...
...COIN DESCRIPTION: The obverse of each coin features the seated figure of Miss Liberty extending an olive branch...
...Perhaps that is our relationship with God...
...RESTRICTIONS: This special release of United States Silver Trade Dollars is restricted to private citizens only -- NO dealer orders will be accepted...
...Sidney will be 85 in December...
...And of the Biblical promise that ancestral sins are visited on later generations, Sidney said, his voice rising with a touch of indignation: "What kind of justice is that...
...That fear has really eaten into the vitals...
...Each coin was minted between 18731878 at United States Mint facilities in Philadelphia, San Francisco, or Carson City, Nevada...
...But the puppy upset a pot on the stove, scalding the child to death...
...the future chairman of the NYU Philosophy Department and friend and correspondent of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein would ask his father...
...I asked him to what he would attribute the weakness of the West in recent decades...
...For a moment it reduced me to a stuttering inarticulateness...
...We didn't want to be nationalistic...
...In which case, Sidney would riposte, ' his father couldn't ask who made the world...
...He was about to be "Bar Mitzvah'd," or confirmed, when he put up some resistance because of this "bone of evil which has been choking theologians through the ages...
...and includes the study of such well-known ingrates as Franz Fanon and Herbert Marcuse...
...3)1 A recently rediscovered private cache of 100 year-old Silver Trade Dollars -- one of our nation's most beautiful, yet little known, coins -- has now been authenticated and certified by The Washington Mint...
...I wish they were more interested in religion...
...His mother had bought a puppy for the child to play with...
...But gratuitous suffering...
...But on the whole...
...But that doesn't explain why religious belief eroded...
...By now we were approaching his home near Mayfield Avenue...
...Some suffering can't be accepted...
...He observed the Sabbath day latter-day Catholic bishops...
...The specifications for the special public sale of these historic coins is as follows: HISTORICAL DATA: In 1873, the United States was fighting for a share of the newly-opened China trade...
...We could have used the bomb skillfully against the Soviet Union" at THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 13...
...Sidney commented that many traditional conservatives believe the French Revolution was "the second Fall of Man...
...Hook had some critical things to say about the new Western Culture course offered at Stanford—one that is designed (in the words of the syllabus) "to emphasize the contributions of women and minorities to Western culture" (not that these have been neglected, you can be sure...
...METAL CONTENT: Each one of these Silver Dollars contains 420 grains (27.22 grams) of .900 Fine Silver -- the most Silver of any U.S...
...And my answer to that is: Is it expecting too much to ask that at some point as adults we would be blessed with the understanding to see the justice, if it exists, in the succession of events over which He rules so that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father knowing...
Vol. 20 • May 1987 • No. 5
