Correspondence

...I don't expect all conservatives (libertarian or otherwise) to be as groundbreaking in their attitudes as Massachusetts Governor William Weld, but you might try to see the difference between opposing liberal nostrums and denigrating the dignity of fellow conservatives of whatever persuasion...

...Sykes concludes by calling for "a moratorium on the politics of blame" and for the gradual creation of "a culture of character...

...For more than a generation now, we have been witnessing the cumulative political and social consequences of this ethos: a frantic emphasis of rights over responsibilities, a shallow reluctance to hold individuals accountable for their behavior, and "a national industry" for "the manufacture and elaboration of grievances," where the language of litigation is substituted for "the grammar of moral appeal...

...But he ends in misperception...

...These ships had nothing to prevent flame in a burst turret from reaching the magazines deep within the hulls...

...Robert C. Whitten Cupertino, California The American Spectator December 1992 73...

...And, one may add, a way of excusing such revolting trends as racial preferences in the market and political correctness in the academy...

...Kang Hee Seo Berkeley, California Right Thinking Most of Tom Bethell's observations ("Better Dukakis," TAS, October 1992) about George Bush are accurate and well stated...

...Most of A Nation of Victims explores the origins and present character of American victimism, concentrating on the past half century...

...legitimate protests against the abuse of women and the mistreatment of homosexuals exploded into a cacophony of witless demands for androgynous social policies...

...The religious tradition had demanded a surrender of self among pre-modern Americans, who instinctively grasped a paradox that came to be incomprehensible to modern generations...

...The therapeutic culture, with its array of "helping professionals," rose in hostility to the religious impulse and asserted a "right to be happy...

...The statement is only partially true...

...Needless to say, horizons diminished quickly in such a culture, which actively discouraged transcendent reflection and reduced honest metaphysical anxiety to categories of emotional illness...

...In the therapeutic ethos, "compassion" became the chief Value, understood "not as a sacred duty owed to God or man but as a way of refining one's sense of self-identity and self-awareness...

...And while Kultursmog is a real problem now, under a Clinton presidency it will speed through our national veins like a galloping poison, beyond the reasonable expectation of treatment...

...Paul Woodward New York, New York Body by Fisher In his review of Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (TAS, September 1992), R. J. Stove argues that "the speed and firepower of [Sir John Fisher's] ships encouraged complacency about their thin armor, with disastrous results at Jutland...

...This is no place for one whose political leanings have been described as substantially to the right of Attila the Hun...

...Allow me to defend myself...

...They felt betrayed because they were not adequately protected...

...Speaking as a politically incorrect working wife and mother (and proud of it), I'm sick to death of these whimpering, spoiled brats like Ms...

...riots, with regard to the Korean community, well...

...As described in the article, many Koreans were traumatized by the riots...

...Rioters should be castigated for losing their self-control and disrespecting human life and private properties...

...Such a mentality would only worsen racial tensions...

...Koreans should not let their self-pity cloud their judgment...

...Alas, my humor was too subtle for the editors of The American Spectator, who unwittingly ensconced me in its jackass hall of shame...

...Conservatives may chortle over the leftish tint of the sample entries in the foregoing catalogue, but they should notice the common denominator: what we're dealing with here is the downside of American individualism—in Sykes's phrase, "an ideology of the ego...

...My letter to the Post attempted to undermine the pro-condom credo by dryly reciting the facts (can't appear to be trying to impose one's politically incorrect morality on others, you know...

...Consigned to O'Rourke's Enemies List...

...The Germans learned earlier in the war from the Dogger Bank battle that anti-flash systems were absolutely essential to battle cruiser survival...

...Berkeley student newspaper who suggest that they should unite with other nonwhites in a so-called struggle againstwhites...

...At the letter's end, I could not resist poking fun at the veneration of condoms by advising that "when recourse is made to condoms for the prevention of HIV infection, at least two should be worn during sexual activity...

...He has the right diagnosis but an awful cure...

...The battle cruisers, which, strictly speaking, were not dreadnoughts, did indeed have thin belt and turret armor...

...However, getting a letter critical of condoms published in the Washington Post was problematical...

...Stan Langland Belmont, California In Your Infinite Wisdom A more unwelcome fate is hard to imagine...

...Some of them blamed themselves and society for the riots...

...That notion of a silver lining is often bandied about, but amounts only to wishful thinking...

...But if, as in the October issue's Continuing Crisis, you refer to "the American poofter" (I (continued on page 73) 10 The American Spectator December 1992 citing and garbled by misreferences...

...The British learned the lesson only at Jutland...

...The basic disease is what Mr...

...Called to public court as a character witness for Ted Kennedy...

...For all that, A Nation of Victims draws together an extremely useful compendium of insights into the American character...

...The current campaign to distribute condoms in the public schools has nothing to do with AIDS prevention, and everything to do with population control and the promotion of promiscuity...

...They should instead blame the rioters, unlike most of the media who mostly preach for so-called understanding of the rioters' "rage...

...Koreans can be successful in America without joining those who only blame the society and demand ever more special treatment from government...

...Under its ministrations, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and early 1960s degenerated into Black Power follies and de facto quotas...

...Koreans should not blame themselves or whites, living in neighborhoods unaffected by riots, for the L.A...

...Weld in '96 As one of a growing number of openly gay conservatives, I read The American Spectator and I am thrilled by the clearheaded analysis (yes, of course, they got that right—about the devastation wrought by liberal economic engineering, the social distortions bequeathed by affirmative action, etc...

...T he motto of victimism is "I DESERVE," and its national anthem is the Whine...

...Fisher's genius was to steal a march by constructing HMS Dreadnought in the remarkably short time of twelve months...

...Surely not even liberals could be witless enough to take this statement seriously...

...No, my infinitely worse calamity was to be counted among the Assorted Jackasses contributing to October's Current Wisdom...

...Has that left-wing rag even yet informed its readers of the Bulgarian connection to the papal assassination attempt...

...t71 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 10) think Mr...

...Faludi and her contemporaries' vituperative ravings spew forth from pathetic, jealous, lonely individuals who have no concept of loving another human being more than they love themselves...

...them mentality, which is embraced by some Asian-American students at U.C...

...In place of restraint and self-denial, the therapeutic clerisy proposed "a culture of fulfillment whose horizons knew no limit but the appetite and ambition of the self...

...The idea of the all–big gun battleship had been in the air for several years...

...What kind of trouble...

...M. Roland, Editor Rubber Chemistry and Technology Washington, D.C...

...Koreans should ignore people like an Asian-American columnist for the U.C...

...Without actually saying how he thinks the vote should go in November, he seems to be suggesting that a Clinton presidency would be the best bet for generating a definitive conservative triumph in 1996...

...honest movements to reform the legal system energized a generation of litigious buffoons with sophomoric excuses for the most vicious criminal behavior...

...and appalled by the gratuitous nastiness toward homosexuals...

...My true feelings on the subject were made evident in an earlier letter published in the Washington Times...

...They should not degrade themselves and join numerous groups in America that are busy proving how victimized they are by so-called racist American society...

...Believe me, I know one when I hear one because I used to be one back in my uneducated, uninspired, incredibly selfish youth...

...They should avoid the us vs...

...Accordingly, I have tried to discredit this pretext by publicizing the fact that latex rubber is filled with micron-sized voids and is thus a dubious means to prevent HIV transmission...

...Tyrrell has aptly identified as Kultursmog...

...riots...

...By 1996 any conservative effort to regain a measure of influence on political, social, and economic events will realistically be out of reach...

...In his 1985 essay, Wilson averred that the public interest is legitimately served when schools induce the very young, by good example as well as by precept, to act "virtuously"—that is, "with due restraint on one's impulses, due regard for the rights of others, and reasonable concern for distant consequences...

...When the advertising copy of business resonates with the claptrap of the New Age, or when the commentary of a prominent conservative like David Gergen starts buzzing with the language of "compassion" and "root causes," we've got trouble right here in River City...

...It described the aftermath of the L.A...

...Tyrrell really can do better than this) and acclaim as "superb" Pat Buchanan's call for religious and cultural war, you perpetuate the myopic bigotry that has for long tarred the right...

...Indeed, he has been criticized for having too much imagination...

...Have I been exposed as a former agent of the Stasi...

...Berkeley, where all whites are seen as enemies and all non-whites as allies...

...prudent concerns about industrial pollution were overtaken by the green bandwagon of tree-hugging fruitcakes and spongy opportunists...

...The British lost only one of these behemoths during the war, HMS Audacious, from mines off the Irish coast in late October 1914...

...Don't misunderstand me, I am as incensed by lame-brain political correctness as any other conservative, and believe with every libertarian-conservative impulse that individuals must be free to think and advocate whatever they so choose...

...If it is to have a fighting chance, the kind of culture Sykes envisions will need an education system with a moral ballast heftier than the therapeutic gab sessions of today's classrooms...

...What about the dreadnoughts themselves...

...It is, in Christopher Lasch's words, "the central paradox of religious faith: that the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy...

...However, the blowing up of HMS Queen Mary, Indefatigable, and Invincible and the near-destruction of HMS Lion resulted as much from carelessness about ammunition handling to attain a higher rate of fire as from thin armor...

...efforts to lend a helping hand to the downtrodden evolved into self-perpetuating bureaucracies doling out mandated entitlements to slackers and outright bums...

...As for Fisher, I have never before seen him referred to as unimaginative...

...George Bush is only the symptom of our national political disease, not the malady itself...

...Sykes is wise enough to be tentative about causes and effects, but it seems clear that during the prosperous years following World War II, religious faith and "the bourgeois culture of character and denial" went into decline,opening the way for what Philip Rieff has called "the triumph of the therapeutic...

...If you've been following names like Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, James Coleman, James Q. Wilson, Allen Matusow, and Shelby Steele for the past several years, you'll know that the whistle has already been blown on the culture that has produced victimism—and you won't be surprised to find those names prominent in Sykes's notes...

...Were I not so sick and disgusted by this country's outrageous liberalitis infecting all "gimme" groups from evil racists, the media, and morally bankrupt politicians to baby-aborting murderers, I could almost feel pity for these ugly creatures...

...Jo Bunney Spokane, Washington Right On I enjoyed Edward Norden's article ("South-Central Korea: Post-Riot L.A.," TAS, September 1992...