Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Re-elect the President With his usual clarity, astuteness, and objectivity, Richard Nixon brings common sense and historical perspective to the present day Communist/free world...
...The Soviets are unlikely to accept Western dictation as to the resources they may direct to the military, or to anything else, which is just as important...
...Many Republicans have ducked hard choices, overlooked anti-abortion rhetoric that seemed more wind than substance, to avoid voting for anti-conservatives...
...City State: ZipDate of change: They cannot match us, and cannot produce themselves the quality and level of technology across the board that we do...
...While I certainly understand that economic incentives are powerful motivators, I also realize that for poor Americans who feel trapped in perpetual welfare, the chance to take control of their own community and possibly own their own home is a powerful motivator, in and of itself...
...I hope he gave it another read...
...2. Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR Circulation Department P.O...
...The political pressure in the West to "do something" may become irresistible, and the prospects for driving the stake through the political heart of Communism may slip away...
...I just wanted you to know the circumstances for my subscription lapse, and not to take it personally...
...The issues are well described by Mr...
...I've yet to read Simon's book (libraries are slow in ordering and I'm not wealthy) so I can hardly dispute his arguments...
...Though Mr...
...In the very next paragraph, he says "do not sell them the advanced technology . . . which would strengthen their military establishment and shore up their weakening industrial base...
...Let me first say that as a Member of Congress, I fought vigorously against resale constraints...
...Poschmann, that enforceable controls on such technology is "unlikely...
...Unfortunately, Bethell's caricature of the "limited equity" approach advocated by resident leaders like Kimi Gray, Bertha Gilkey, and others belittles the importance of the gains we're making in changing public housing from a system which has hitherto created only dependency and despair into one which can lead to self-sufficiency and opportunity for needy Americans...
...There were just too many Kennans and Lattimores around to harken to a dilettante, and one working in a despised genre at that...
...This gloomy outlook, I am sorry to say, gets worse...
...W. Mason New York, New York Nothing Personal I was introduced to The American Spectator by my boyfriend, Bill, as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins...
...Nonetheless, I think he's missed two fairly important points: (1) All technology is not the same...
...He added, however, that the one thing which would hasten the collapse of Communism would be the withdrawal of Western support: "We have been propping them up whenever they have been in real trouble (frequently...
...It is most unfortunate that few journalists, oreven economists for that matter, have identified this bit of U.S...
...the first being—guess what?—"lifting price controls...
...The economic improvement, as Mr...
...He more than anyone else I have heard or read of (with the possible exception of George Kennan), has impressed me as being extraordinarily acute about the place of our country in the world and in foreign affairs generally...
...Poschmann aren't aware of what has been done, and its devastating effect...
...When each issue would arrive, Bill would devour it in one sitting and then pass it along to his roommate, Steve Steve took a little longer to get through the issue, but would subsequently pass it along to me...
...It's about time amidst all the "Man of the Decade" fever that somebody gave credit where it's due...
...Ledeen recommends in the first half of his article...
...Bethell only pays lip service to this considerable factor, but Stuart Butler of Heritage was closer to the truth when he called it "the real quantum leap...
...While you can avoid selling a Stealth bomber or two, it remains that any tools you do provide are going to improve industrial efficiency...
...But when it comes down to siding with either critics or first-time authors, Saul David, sure, I'll go with the authors, "monotone, dripping-faucet cadences" or not...
...This is not assistance...
...Presumably, Bethell would have pooh-poohed the Homestead Act because pioneers had to wait five years before selling their land, and no one in their right mind would pick up and move West under those conditions, right...
...a lot of good they'll do someone else...
...Box 10448 Arlington, VA 22210-1448 (Please attach address label here...
...Many Republicans will sit home, or even worse, vote against anti-abortion candidates...
...Republicans can only hope the Democrats have equally divisive problems to face...
...And why should this be a surprise...
...It's worse when purportedly literary critics help...
...Until that stake is driven home, tremendous caution is the only reasonable course...
...They are able to do it because even thoughtful and well-informed observers like Mr...
...The Vision Thing I read with pleasure RET's column "Let Us Give Thanks" in the January issue...
...Good luck to all who need it...
...The venality of economic justification alone of immigration is apparent in many of the writings of those such as Fossedal, in that even illegal immigrants should be allowed into the U.S...
...government over the previous twenty years...
...for about half a century...
...Foolish people in the Commerce and State Departments are now busily caving in on export controls, which is the great sin of the current period...
...I particularly like that "driving the stake through the political heart of Communism...
...And if you doubt their efficacy, why is it that Gorbachev and Shevardnadze never fail to lambaste COCOM in their speeches to Western Europe...
...Anonymous (postmark: North Jersey, New Jersey) Fred Barnes's advice to Republicans missed a very important problem...
...Where to Begin (cont...
...The problem, I think, ought to be summarized by asking: How do you ensure the political destruction of the Soviet leadership and the overhaul of their economies without tremendous physical destruction and human suffering (both of which normally accompany revolution...
...Nixon's prescription to Gorbachev that he decontrol is, of course, 100 percent correct, it would be more becoming if he were to relate it to his own experience with controls, throwing in an apology to the American people for good measure...
...The world of books becomes a closed system, totalitarian, a concept '50s diner for fun and profit...
...What's worse is that this problem remains even if you have enforceable controls on the technology, which is unlikely anyway...
...Have these authors (generally conservative) given a moment's thought to what they're advocating...
...Bethell's overriding criticism is that the current program imposes severe restrictions on a person's ability to realize a profit on the resale of a public housing unit converted to resident ownership...
...Nixon suggests that Gorbachev can only prove perestroika is a truly liberating program if he takes more radical measures...
...Finn Poschmann Ottawa, OntarioMichael Ledeen repliesMr...
...What I fear is the dwindling of these elements when the media, and a public, exhibit more interest in author lifestyles, publishing mechanism, and self-infatuation than in the content of a book...
...I hope Tom Bethell will stay tuned as we move closer and closer to a democratically controlled, marketoriented system of providing public housing assistance for those in need...
...What incentive, then, will they have to buy in the first place...
...The situation is changing...
...Reney Myers Delray Beach, Florida Next year will mark the twentieth anniversary of Richard Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls in August 1971, an action much celebrated at the time by everyone from the UAW to the Business Roundtable...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...Anyone who visits one of these communities and talks with the residents quickly realizes that the pride, dignity, and sense of opportunity that goes along with management and ownership is not exclusively an economic consideration...
...The last dire ripples of oil price controls are only now disappearing, almost ten years after their lifting...
...That's all there is to it...
...I am not sure that it is at all possible, though I hope it is...
...Jack Kemp Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Washington, D.C...
...It is interesting and paradoxical that in his article on Gorbachev in TAS, Mr...
...Thank you...
...Obviously, it is going to be difficult to give someone the tools to develop wealth without at the same time invigorating their extant industrial base...
...The result of that foolish step was that hundreds of billions of dollars were needlessly transferred to Third World oil producers, the U.S...
...Schwartz's guilt before proving it...
...Bill's solitary subscription to TAS blossomed into four when we all graduated in 1986 and went on to separate graduate schools...
...Unlike money, technology is not fungible...
...Quite a contrast to the muddle-headed tunnel vision and prejudicial pontificating of assorted news media moguls and Pishposhers, isn't it ("Pishposh of the 1980s," same issue...
...In 1950 Heinlein published an article titled "Where To...
...He assumed Mr...
...Even efforts to stem illegal immigration are decried, thus encouraging a sort of civil disobedience...
...Critics are the duplicitous bishops...
...Where can an economic conservative find a political refuge free of religious or secular bigotry and authoritarianism...
...It's bad enough that books are marketed like household products, that writers have to be mandatorily celebritized to assist in the sell, and that readers, before they even open a cover, are drowned in advertising...
...From the unusual intensity of fund-raising mail we are receiving in this off-year, I suspect donations are feeling "abortion stress...
...While I never agreed with his views when he was President, I have found since then that I have done him an injustice...
...What likelier candidates for government aid, in the eyes of liberals, than newly arrived immigrants...
...that's what it's all about, after all...
...But they exist...
...Poschmann has written an exceptionally useful letter, for which I am most grateful...
...Two of the subscriptions have since merged into one when Steve and Rachel tied the knot last summer...
...This is because of the program of restricting militarily useful high tech to the USSR and the bloc, most of which has been conducted through an institution called COCOM...
...Authors are pawns in the game...
...President Bush and I are currently considering proposals to allow residents to increase their profit the longer they live in their home, i.e., 10 percent after one year, 20 percentafter two, up to 100 percent after ten years, as part of our HOPE initiative...
...Ledeen does say indirectly, will slow the complete acceptance of failure...
...he asks...
...While the human injury of totalitarianism will be lessened, the drive to eliminate Communism altogether will be correspondingly dissipated...
...It is reassuring to hear that he seems to be respected by President Bush, and that they have been in contact...
...For the past nine years, thanks to the unsung heroes of the Reagan years (Richard Perle, Steven Bryan, Roger Robinson, and William Clark being the primary figures in this happy story), the gap between Soviet military technology and Western military technology has grown steadily...
...government intervention and the melancholy role it has played these past two decades...
...There is, however, growing evidence against many of the earlier pro-immigration economic arguments that have been offered, not all of which are racist (or "racialist," as Fossedal puts it, unless he merely means "having to do with race...
...David is no longer editorial director at Bantam...
...Even assuming Simon to be right for the moment, it doesn't follow that this will always be the case, as witness Fossedal's concern in his review that American welfarism may envelope immigrants too...
...However, there is in fact one writer who did: Robert A. Heinlein...
...His route was peripheral because it supported his contrived "Brat Pack II" angle best...
...When this happens, and when writers are forced to or on their own consider their work a "product," anything good about a book—its vision, the dialogue it may engender, its offerings to art and life—hasn't much of a chance to exist, to grow, to challenge or change anything...
...In a further revision in 1980 he hedged a bit, mostly out of disgust with the policies of the U.S...
...I support writers, their disparate voices and forms, and criticism of their work which aspiresto be sincere and insightful...
...Samuel H. Husbands San Francisco, California Abortion and the GOP Thought Fred Barnes's article "Republicans Miscarry Abortion" (TAS, January 1990) outstanding...
...What I am implying then is that any assistance, of any sort other than advice about democracy and the like, will delay or prevent the achievement of the very goals at which we aim...
...Ames's and Mr...
...Those who have not looked closely at this matter invariably say, with Mr...
...For in Simon and his adepts we have the justification of immigration—even the illegal variety—basically on the ground that the practice yields more taxes than the immigrants will absorb...
...There are economic costs in the way of crime control and the like, not to mention the pervasive effect crime has on the economic community...
...The Urban Homesteading initiative as it currently stands is a giant leap forward from the days when public housing was looked upon as warehousing for the poor...
...When I read Gregory A. Fossedal's praise of Julian L. Simon's latest book on immigration (review of The Economic Consequences of Immigration, TAS, February 1990), I was reminded of Edmund Burke's lament about the arrival of "sophisters, economists, and calculators...
...On revising the article fifteen years later Heinlein wrote, "I stand flatly behind [this] prediction...
...And yet .. . —J R. Dunn New Brunswick, New Jersey Go Away...
...IMPORTANT Allow six weeks for address change ^ Renew my subscription for one year (twelve issues—$30) 111 Payment enclosed ^ Bill me later Name...
...automobile industry was close to mortally wounded due to the forced and abrupt downsizing, and more billions were misdirected into alternative fuel programs, none of which were priced competitively and few of which are still operating...
...I enjoyed reading Michael Ledeen's article ("The Beginning of the Beginning," TAS, February 1990) and agreed entirely with many of his points...
...But any resources which are hence freed may be diverted to the maintenance of the state...
...Further, a good many jobs immigrants create are for family and other ethnic members only...
...2) Helping the development of capitalism in Eastern Europe is not the same as giving money to the state and helping vestigial Communism survive...
...Regardless of syntax, tangled or not, my letter was not a vote for or against Brats, post-Brats, or any category of writer contrived by a media overanxious to generate controversy...
...To be sure, there aren't many capitalists in Eastern Europe nowadays, but insofar as we can help train them, we should...
...Kirby Atterbury Bethel Island, CaliforniaKeep HOPE Alive In recent columns, Tom Bethell raises several interesting points regarding the efforts by advocates of resident management and ownership of public housing, President Bush and Jack Kemp included, to help more low-income families realize the American Dream of homeownership...
...Needless to say, little attention was ever paid to this, mainly because the original article was published in a science fiction magazine and revised only for the author's own collections...
...For this reason I will not be renewing my subscription...
...Megan Moynahan Cleveland, Ohio 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1990...
...As the tension between the Gorbachev movement and true freedom mounts, human suffering will increase...
...He assumes that a large majority of Republicans are pro-life, an assumption as dangerous as appearing in print the day after the 1948 election with a prediction that Harry Truman had been securely retired back to Missouri...
...The world is a dangerous place, and the borderless flow of labor, while perhaps an ideal, is not yet to be safely practiced...
...But there is one point worth mentioning: I agree, having read widely in the literature myself, that no academic, historian, or Sovietologist foresaw what is happening today in the Eastern bloc...
...intended to give an outline of what the world might look like in the year 2000...
...I believed then, and still do, that it would be highly beneficial for a tenant to be able to sell his or her home for a profit and perhaps move up the housing ladder like other Americans, or maybe leave the home to their children...
...please print) Address...
...At the outset, I must say it's very encouraging that today's public housing debate has shifted toward the goal of homeownership for the poor, and away from massive government housing construction, as many liberals support, or eliminating the housing safety net altogether, as some on the right favor...
...The program of export controls has strangled them, and as much as anything else we have done, it has doomed the Soviet system...
...Remarkable that they should think a nation should be borderless, as if we were still in the Garden of Eden or some such...
...That improvement seems to be what Mr...
...3. Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...Ledeen, but he has perhaps understated the difficulties...
...TAS, March 1990...
...MOVING...
...Nonetheless, Communism will vanish from this planet...
...Irene Prater Dell Carl Junction, Missouri I have just read Richard Nixon's article in the March issue, and again, I'm struck by the brilliance and clarity with which he writes...
...David If anger was all that Saul David (Correspondence, TAS, March 1990) got out of my response to Alex Heard's "Brat" article it points either to (a) why I'm not a published writer or (b) why Mr...
...it gives them the tools to build democratic capitalism...
...Don't forget TAS Address Changes Made Easy 1. Please write your new address in the space provided...
...Among other predictions, one stands out: "We will not achieve a World State in the predictable future...
...Ross Nelson Milwaukee, Wisconsin Goliath vs...
...The point is that they will have better resources...
...In one paragraph he says "give them the tools to create new wealth," (continued on page 47) THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1990 9 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 9) referring to the assistance the West might provide the Soviet bloc countries...
...CORRESPONDENCE Re-elect the President With his usual clarity, astuteness, and objectivity, Richard Nixon brings common sense and historical perspective to the present day Communist/free world political scene ("Should We Help Gorbachev...
...Bill and I will be planning a similar "merger" when I finish my degree and move to his place in Philadelphia this winter...
...Unfortunately, this is true whether we are speaking of "high" or "low" technology...
...If anything, Alex Heard's article, disguised in trenchancy, simply advanced the lightweight-and-disposable ethic attending contemporary literature...
...He didn't go into the books with anything resembling a light...
...After I read it from cover to cover, the now dog-eared copy would make its way to Rachel, Steve's girlfriend (notice the hierarchy here...
Vol. 23 • May 1990 • No. 5
