Correspondenc
Correspondence To the Editor: Paul Gottfried's otherwise perceptive review of E.J. Hobsbawm's self-serving biography carelessly accepts its Communist author's characterization of Zionism as Jewish...
...Charles Gallagher New London, Connecticut 30 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974...
...Very few murderers are caught in the act...
...Rather, I think we should listen to the wisdom of our last great president, Harry Truman...
...Suppose a parent purchases more insurance on his home than on his child...
...I am not surprised at Hobsbawm's choice of words...
...A grand jury found enough evidence to recommend a trial...
...Tyrrell, but in my book, you are a turkey...
...But it would be much more practical and convincing if problems of national security, of diplomacy and military power, were either exempted or dealt with specifically...
...Mencken tinkling the ivories and the bass fiddler playing the Beer Barrel Polka, as I read the article, and of course I had a stein of fine brew in my hand...
...Most convictions come from the weight of circumstantial evidence...
...But the Current Wisdom section in your latest issue (November 1974) convinces me otherwise: you really must be throwbacks to the Neanderthals...
...Maurice Friedberg Bloomington, Indiana To the Editor: I always thought your magazine came straight out of the Dark Ages...
...Friedman attacks the status quo in these areas and many others while McTiernan ignores not only Friedman's solution but the existence of any problems in our society at all...
...Of course not...
...This particular dilemma bothered the Founding Fathers and their predecessors clear back to Thucydides and Plato...
...The policemen who had made the arrest were sure they had caught the perpetrator...
...All of us on the jury were resident New Yorkers who longed for a safer city...
...October 1974) His analysis combines philosophical sensibility with an acute awareness of human emotions...
...However, they argued, their client was innocent...
...The attorneys for the defense agreed that a murder had taken place...
...The Machinery of Freedom deserves a rational review and criticism which McTiernan is unable to provide...
...The "sage of Cherry Hill" was right...
...Pasour should face the problems which the application of his principles would entail for national security...
...Susan Katz Teaneck, New Jersey To the Editor: E.C...
...Events that followed have, alas, proved the Zionists to have been more correct in their prognoses than they would have wanted to be...
...Dignified drinking is an art form, and like all art forms it is partly the result of instinct, but it is also partly the result of long training...
...if magazines like The Alternative are still around, we've still got an awful long way to go...
...John W. Bowling Troy, Alabama To the Editor: No matter what one's doubts about David Friedman's political philosophy, think it is very uncharitable to ignore (as McTiernan did in your October issue) that his is a clear voice in defense of freedom, and that it carries beyond the world of obscure conservative publications...
...But, it is so much easier to pounce on straw men than to analyze 1) What is wrong with current society as seen from a radical capitalist perspective and 2) the suggested remedies...
...Youngsters, and students especially, have no sense of dignity in drinking—their raucousness is not the same thing as robust good spirits, and their sloppiness is not what Siegfried Weisberger meant when he said you must guzzle beer and not sip it...
...Andrew Hacker New York, New York To the Editor: A yammerhead writing for The Alternative...
...The situation at our saloons is so awful now that I have been driven to drinking at home...
...He was arrested afterward, at another location, and identified by witnesses who might well have been lying...
...Immediately, bars were jammed with even more college students and sailors than before...
...must be turning in his grave...
...I think Mr...
...Outrageous...
...He argues not only for justice but to preserve that condition we call civilization...
...Beer-drinking has truly fallen from a great art form to a joyless ritual, and you gentlemen are performing a great service in trying to protect our great saloons and to restore them to their rightful station...
...Karl E. Peterjohn Sacramento, California To the Editor: I look forward to every issue of your magazine, but especially to your Great American Saloon Series, and Siegfried Weisberger's latest installment (November 1974) warmed the cockles of my heart...
...Drinking takes practice, and in my opinion, the unpracticed should not be permitted any further to soil our saloons—the brightest spots of our civilization...
...I have never seen so much unenlightened and sexist mistreatment of women...
...Accordingly, I write not to criticize but to inquire...
...Hobsbawm's self-serving biography carelessly accepts its Communist author's characterization of Zionism as Jewish "bloodand-soil nationalism...
...A fellow citizen had had his life wiped out, brutally and without warning...
...McTiernan in his incisive analysis states "Suppose a parent values his automobile so much more than his child that he arranges with his protection agency to have a car thief followed and captured but not a kidnapper...
...The concept of collective choice and the free play of self-interested groups, without the interposition of well-meaning though perhaps mistaken practitioners of the common cause, would lead us, for example, to support Greece rather than Turkey on Cyprus just because more Greeks than Turks happen to have migrated to the United States...
...A responsible reviewer, however, might be expected to know that in conditions of prewar Europe, Zionism's "blood-and-soil" was in reality the desire for a plot of land which would avert the spilling of Jewish blood...
...At a time when this country may be going the way of 'England we should be thankful that Friedman is heard...
...In my state, the drinking age recently dropped from twenty-one to eighteen, and what followed was a disaster almost as grave as Prohibition...
...McTiernan defends the status quo even though airline rates are kept artificially high by FAA edict ands while drugs used in Europe to treat heart patients are banned by the FDA in this country...
...I have no objection to letting these youngsters drink—on the contrary, I encourage them—but please, not in public places...
...I could almost hear H.L...
...it edifies and amuses...
...We had to vote on whether the police had brought in the right person...
...None of us had a kind word for the muggers and murderers who maraud our streets...
...Any valid criticisms McTiernan tries to make are lost in a morass of ad hominems...
...Other straw men and Halloween boogiemen (after all, it was the October issue) are foisted on your readers to frighten them from that dread philosophical affliction known as libertarianism...
...It was true that the accused had not been apprehended standing over his victim, holding the proverbial smoking gun...
...Does that mean the parent values the home more than the child...
...We had, facing us in the courtroom, the alleged killer...
...So was the district attorney's office, which asked for an indictment...
...Yet that is the only conclusion I can reach after reading Robert McTiernan's review of David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom...
...In order to assist in the protection and celebration of great saloons, I have a suggestion which I would like you and your readers to consider...
...It is all the rage and fashion to lower the drinking age to eighteen across the nation, and I think that doing so is only accelerating the decline of our watering holes...
...Not so long ago I served on the jury at a murder trial in my city...
...Is this argument related to the viability of an anarchocapitalist society...
...Pasour's "The Illusion of Common Cause" (October 1974) is up to the high standards of your journal...
...But that was not the issue before us...
...we have by now all grown accustomed to Soviet propaganda's treatment of Zionism as synonymous with Nazism...
...You might call me a "dumpling," Mr...
...Their stench is quite familiar...
...The real killer, they insisted, was still at large...
...Do we want to electrocute even a convicted defendant when there remains that slight possibility that the authorities may have arrested the wrong man...
...Ralph Nader has depicted the malfeasance involved in government regulation of industry (even though Nader's solution is more regulation...
...McTiernan's review assumes that unless the government were there to regulate every cook, farmer, and sausage maker in the economy, in the public interest, all food would be adulterated (instead of only our politicians) and snake oil would replace aspirin on pharmacy shelves...
...This wisdom applies even more to the drinking age, at least in saloons...
...When asked what he thought of proposals to lower the voting age to eighteen, Harry snapped back facetiously—but not so facetiously when you really think about it—that the voting age should be raised instead to thirty...
...Elliott Banfield New York, New York To the Editor: Walter Berns makes a persuasive case for capital punishment...
Vol. 8 • December 1974 • No. 3
