Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR HUTCHINS On St. Patrick's Day, as the din of the parade passed fourteen floors below my office and continued for hours, I found concentrated work difficult until I turned to the March...
...A civil right is defined by law...
...New York City Frank Stanton President, CBS I was tremendously interested in Sidney Hook's remarkable article...
...I would have given my right arm to have written this...
...Thus it helps us to be on our guard against similarly misguided people...
...Bronx, N.Y...
...I hope this issue will receive wide circulation...
...Professor Hook's second example the "clear and present danger" of Justice Holmes was a statement not of when a right may be subverted but of when a right does not exist...
...Please send me 10 copies of your March 19 issue...
...Patrick's Day, as the din of the parade passed fourteen floors below my office and continued for hours, I found concentrated work difficult until I turned to the March 19 issue of The New Leader...
...I think, incidentally, that I am only repeating what Dr...
...Professor Hook then turns to traffic regulations and tells us that no driver has a right to do what the law declares he has no right to do...
...Professor Hook argues this way: The Constitution itself provides for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus when the Republic is endangered, therefore . . . But if such a suspension is Constitutional, whose Constitutional rights are subverted when it is legitimately invoked...
...He was saying, "You have no right to cry 'Fire!' in a crowded theater...
...Everything else was drowned out...
...They may not be subverted under any circumstances, least of all in the name of safeguarding the Republic...
...New York City Leo Cherne Sidney Hook's "Six Fallacies of Robert Hutchins" is surely a masterpiece of clear, incisive and much-needed thinking and writing...
...We need both of them, for the confrontation of their extreme positions enables other Americans to choose realistic, undogmatic middle course...
...In enumerating the six fallacies of Robert Hutchins, Professor Hook teaches us how to recognize when the Communists and fellow-travelers try to destroy our civil liberties and freedom, even though they pose as defenders of same...
...Holmes was not saying, "I'm taking away your right to cry 'Fire!' in a crowded meater...
...I am sure that Professor Hook would be the first to cry out...
...Still he finds Dr...
...In this case at least, Dr...
...New York City David M. Liberson Enclosed is my check for $2...
...Suppose we were to read: "The rights of the individual are not always sacred...
...My congratulations and gratitude...
...I have for months wanted to write an article on Hutchins, but I'm happy I didn't because I couldn't have come within hailing distance of Professor Hook's...
...Under such circumstances, the writ of habeas corpus is not a right...
...Los Angeles James F. Bullock The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...The state was not organized to protect these rights...
...Hutchins said in a few precise words and Professor Hook did not succeed in demolishing with his many examples...
...He then moves to "subversion," "treason," "sabotage," and "inciting a mob to lynch Negroes," and triumphantly justifies steps taken to prevent the exercise of these "rights...
...I began reading Sidney Hook's "Six Fallacies of Robert Hutchins...
...They may be subverted [Dr...
...But I am "aghast" that Professor Hook was left "aghast" by Dr...
...Certainly I have not for a long time read anything so devastating or that appeared to do away so completely with an intellectual adversary...
...It does seem to me that he administers to Hutchins the coup de grace...
...John Cogley Editor, "Commonweal" Sidney Hook's article is a most challenging and thought-provoking piece...
...I am glad that you called it to my attention...
...When the law declares that no such right exists, no right is there to be subverted...
...Hutchins's statement "extreme...
...Hutchins did not say "abrogated"] when the security of the state is in question...
...I don't think I have ever read an essay as persuasive, compelling, logical and useful...
...Brooklyn Nathan D. Shapiro I read Professor Hook's article with great interest and pleasure...
...Washington, D. C. Charles W. Lowry Chairman, Foundation for Religious Action The health of American society is insured by the fact that it contains both Sidney Hook and Robert Hutchins...
...To tell the truth, Professor Hook has had quite a few pieces of this kind, confounding the masters of obfuscation...
...It describes the fallacies of a man who pretends to defend our liberties and in reality undermines them...
...It seems to me that the essence of democracy is found in these three sentences and in their opposite the essence of totalitarianism...
...Hutchins's simple statement that "the rights of the individual remain perpetually sacrosanct...
...The preservation of these rights is the purpose of the state...
...As long as the law determines that such a right in fact exists, it remains sacrosanct and cannot be subverted...
...My wife and I we both had the pleasure of being in Professor Hook's classes some 20-odd years ago want to congratulate him and The New Leader on this contribution to practical logic...
...I am not here concerned with the differences between Robert Hutchins and Sidney Hook...
...Hutchins may have presumed his readers would know that when he was talking about an "individual right," he was speaking of an actual existing right, not of a mythical or abrogated right...
...I hope to express both in the only meaningful way that I know ?by giving copies of the article to a number of my friends who cannot help but profit as I did...
...Sidney Hook's article is most informative, timely and constructive...
...J. Minkin, M.D...
...Baldwin, N.Y...
...Let us hope this type of sane synthesis is soon expressed in your pages and at the Fund for the Republic...
Vol. 39 • April 1956 • No. 14
