CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Surrendering Title Sir Martin Gilbert wrote the following sentence in a recent article in the Spectator on the myth of Hitler's Pope ("Hitler's Pope?" TAS, July/August 2006)....
...Activist judges have wrought almost all the changes the left sought...
...And to say that we compare favorably with the nations of Europe in our freedom and economic vitality is about as useful as saying that a man afflicted with syphilis compares favorably, health-wise, to one with Ebola Zaire...
...As a result America's inner cities have been devastated...
...Second, they're New Yorkers...
...Over the last 40 years there've been over one million murders and 10 million forcible rapes...
...I certainly rehearse the available evidence for the alleged silence of Pius XII, and I try to be as fair as I can to my subject...
...In this sense, in my view, he was an ideal Pope for Hitler...
...Mencken had it right when he quipped around 80 years ago that "[t]he typical American of today has lost all of the love of liberty that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance...
...He's damaged goods...
...When the liberals couldn't advance their agenda through legislation in the 1960s they turned to the courts and media...
...Sixty percent of Americans say that children should be taught the value of hard work...
...Since Hochhuth's play, this theme has become commonplace...
...ROD GALLAGHER Seattle, Washington ORIGINAL THOUGHT FROM CONTINUUM BOOKS A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Arguments for Conservotism Roger Scruton In this book, Scruton writes o defense of social order, beginning with philosophical first principles, which will be a systematic answer to liberal egalitarianism, to a defense of the Western social, religious, cultural and political inheritance...
...Such is the NSA wiretap law case...
...He described Barry Goldwater as an "incompetent, confused and some- times idiotic man:' None of this is surprising...
...And for V.P...
...I do not think that any serious historian could possibly have written this sentence having actually read Hitler's Pope with any care...
...Perhaps he could slip b y - heaven forbid-as the V.P...
...No, Rudy cannot be sold to GOP primary voters...
...What are the actual results...
...JOHN CORNWELL Author of Hitler's Pope Jesus College Cambridge, England Operation Giuliani What three things do columnist Deroy Murdock and historian Fred Siegel have in common...
...No, Mr...
...The Weekly Standard $ 29.95 / 0-8264- 8036-5 / Cloth / 2S6 pages SUICIDE OF THE WEST Richard Koch and Chris Smith "An urgent and eloquent shock to the system...
...I do not by any stretch of the imagination come near to suggesting that Pacelli was in active collaboration with the Nazi regime...
...And last but not least, they are both dead wrong...
...I should be interested to learn where in the book I come even near to suggesting such an absurd claim...
...The rest of the world just caught up...
...A learned, wi~, wide-ranging, prolific and often-dazzling writer...
...The result, I argue, was a weakening of the Catholic Church in Germany, and the voluntary demise of the Center Party, the last democratic entity in the Reich...
...It is enormous...
...Wilson states, "Catholics here were Americans first and Catholics second...
...And what does Rudy think about the man who laid the groundwork for the Reagan Revolution...
...After all, Giulianiwas a McGovern Democrat before changing parties-some say opportunistically-during the Reagan era...
...We have to win in 2008...
...At the same time, I certainly argue that the terms of Pacelli's 1942 Christmas broadcast appeared paltry when considering the realities of the Holocaust in progress in Germany at the time and what Pacelli knew about it...
...First, both are touting the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani for the GOP nomination in 2008...
...PETER SKURKISS Stow, Ohio I'm sending Murdock's article "Ready for Rudy" to my Republican friends who don't subscribe to TAS...
...he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word-mongers, uplifters...
...The center of gravity of the book is not at all the wartime years, but the attempt to renegotiate concordats in Germany to bring them into line with the 1917 code of canon law: a strategy to exert great power over German Catholicism...
...A media that is almost completely liberal has successfully hidden the horror and damage those court rulings created...
...The damage created by a failed criminal justice system cannot be measured...
...If Rudy says "Yes" and if he stays healthy, no Democrat can beat him...
...While I wasn't alive when Mencken made this observation, I suspect and fear that it is even truer now than it was then...
...The American people have had democracyvetoed by activist judges...
...candidate, but never at the top of the ticket...
...PAUL E. LOUBRIS Revere, Pennsylvania Call me a "glass is half empty kind of guy," but it would seem that the figures Mr...
...As a result liberal courts have subverted our American democracy...
...Lamentable...
...And to make this latter point even worse, if that is possible, Rudy's 2002 divorce from Donna Hanover, wifey number-two, was as juicy a spectacle as the tabloids could want with Giuliani being charged with multiple adulteries while mayor...
...Wilson, American crime has not diminished significantly...
...Americans today are consumed with the twin pathologies of entitlement and victimology...
...Violent crime today, adjusted for population, is five times what it was in the mid-1950s...
...John Cornwell, a Roman Catholic, in his book Hitler's Pope (1999) blamed Pius XII not only for silence, but for active collaboration with the Nazi regime...
...As much as I long for that to be true, I'm afraid H.L...
...Oh, and lest I forget...
...Remember...
...This is horrifying...
...He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts...
...NANCY ANN HOLTZ Beverly, Massachusetts American Activism When reading James Q. Wilson's well-written article, "American Exceptionalism" in the September 2006 issue, I was taken with his obvious passion for our American judicial system...
...But my strongest argument for his culpability on the self-evident silence is that he had a moral obligation to explain his supine diplomatic language after the war...
...Which he never did...
...In "Ready for Rudy" (TAS, September 2006), Murdock does a good job in listing Rudy's achievements as mayor of New York...
...But like Siegel in his The Prince of the City, he severely understates Giuliani's liabilities when facing Republican primary voters...
...Forty percent don't believe this...
...The repeat offender commits 80 percent of all violent crime...
...SEAN SMITH Roseburg, Oregon Under the sub-topic Religion, Mr...
...Violent crime took off like wildfire...
...I am well aware that the title of my book is extremely provocative, but titles are not a book...
...Unfortunately, many in America do not share that optimistic viewpoint...
...John Thune, Condi Rice, or George Allen...
...In essence the title was intended to suggest not that Pacelli was Hitler's Pope by desire or intention, but that he was an ideal Pope for Hitler...
...We have become a Judicocracy where some minor federal judge can overturn the national security programs of the President of the United States...
...They are indoctrinated with leftist ideology beginning at the tenderest of ages in our deplorable public schools...
...Our cultural decline is very real, and exceedingly threatening to our future...
...Armed robberies are in the tens of 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 CORRESPONDENCE millions...
...Martin Kettle, The Guardian "You finish the book with the uncomfortable feeling that the authors ere asking the right question: is the future of our values and our civilization secure...
...By controlling the process of federal and state appointments, they co-opted the judicial branch of government...
...Not only is Giuliani strongly supportive of abortion, gay rights, gun control, affirmative action and soft on illegal immigration, but he's also on his third wife--a fact that Murdock failed to even mention in his article...
...They are not taught thrift, self-reliance, industriousness, or the value of individualism...
...Then continued on page 8 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2006 CORRESPONDENCE when running for mayor, Rudy was on the Liberal Party line as well as the GOP's...
...In 1994 Rudy endorsed liberal icon Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki for governor of New York State...
...Drug deals are openly conducted in known crack houses without police interference because our criminal code has become so convoluted and complex...
...Wilson cites in the early paragraphs of his September piece on American exceptionalism prove exactly the opposite point of the one he is attempting to establish...
...This is a choice neither Protestants nor Catholics have to make as long as we have separation of church and state as defined by our Constitution...
...Wilson concludes from figures such as these, and others only slightly less distressing from the Pew survey he credits, that, "What is remarkable today is that a vast nation of around 300 million people still share views once held by a few million crowded along the Eastern seaboard...
...Only a little over half of Americans think that economic competition is good because it stimulates hard work and develops ideas...
...Jesus was very explicit when he stated, "render unto Caesar...
...Pacelli achieved this within four months of Hitler coming to power, having failed to achieve it through 13 years as papal nuncio in Germany...
...Matthew Paris, The Times (London) $24.95 / 0-8264- 9023-9 / Cloth / 224 pages OCTOBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9...
Vol. 39 • October 2006 • No. 8
