Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism 0:1 any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. BUCKLEY In your "Between Issues" column of November 10, you go to...
...Many Asian countries have blindly copied the European parliamentary system, which is not suited to their realities...
...DEAR EDITOR THE NEW LEADER welcomes comment and criticism 0:1 any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...The Chinese Communist dictatorship is one example...
...because unlike a Writer, I am merely an agent of the Right Wing—America's counterpart (your second point) of the Communist party of the Soviet Union...
...I am sure, too, that many Asians who untiringly are building democracy in Asia also found them distressing...
...the sociological pio neering of the Supreme Court as revolutionary prevailing philosophical, cultural and educa tional trends as secularist, gross and frivolous...
...National Review has been consistently critical of the policies of the Republican administration, and fears worse from Demo cratic administration...
...Dulles as erratic and defensive the domestic policies of both parties as col leotivist and inflationary ; the centripetal po litical and economic forces of the day as anti libertarian and fascistic...
...And if I may say more, the magazine I edit—political differences between us aside—(makes ever so much more music than yours does...
...The choice which must be made in Asia is not between Communist dictatorship and nonCommunist dictatorship, but between democratic reconstruction and totalitarian reconstruction of any kind (Communist, fascist, military, etc...
...AjSIA I did not have the opportunity to read John Scott's article in the November 3 NEW LEADER ("Whose Dictators in A s i a ? " ) . But his main conclusions, as published by the United Press, deeply distress me...
...I agree...
...F. BUCKLEY, JR...
...Your second point is the principal one...
...For example, the American Presidential system would assure a stable government during a certain period, while at the same time democratic rights might be exercised by the people through the legislative assemblies...
...It is that I, and presumably National Review, are keepers of the National Orthodoxy...
...I am obliged to report that you succeeded...
...I am referring, of course, to the telegram of April 7, 1917, sent to the German Ambassador in Switzerland by von Huckster of the Madisonstrasse: "Let's put him on the train and see if he gets off at the Finland Station...
...dare I suggest it?—read National Review...
...Controlling the central apparatus of the Writers Union, Surkov . ." (etc...
...Let us face it, for all its usefulness, which I have never denied, THE NEW LEADER is hardly a belletristic break-through...
...scene...
...Jakarta MOCHTAR LUBIS KAISER'S MILLIONS In David Shub's perceptive review of Germany and the Revolution in Russia, 1915-1918 (NL, December 1), he cites such revealing documents as von Jagow's note to the Treasury, von Kuhlmann's telegram to the Foreign Office liaison officer at General Headquarters, and Grunau's wire to the Wilhelmstrasse...
...Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer and Whittaker Chambers on the conservative order, and you'll get the idea...
...While there are some Asian leaders who have despaired with democratic methods, there are enough other Asians who believe that democratic methods are the only good methods for any people, whether Asian or not...
...We view the anti-Coim munism of Mr...
...Where, for instance, is the document which triggered that fateful chain reaction of events...
...National Review has friends in high places, but to believe that our point of view is the official point of view, that we are in harmony with, let alone at the disposal of, the central apparatus of American power, is to quarantine yourself in » ward we had come to think of as reserved for Upton Sinclair, C. Wright Mills and the Daily Worker...
...The first is to read me out of the literary community...
...There is no guarantee whatsoever that a dictatorship in any Asian country would work more efficiently to fill the increasing needs of the people...
...BUCKLEY In your "Between Issues" column of November 10, you go to considerable pains to provoke me...
...What do we want...
...New York City WM...
...What the new Asian countries really need are stable governments to carry out democratic reconstruction...
...a non-Communist dictatorship would not be better...
...Now you are making two points here, one minor, the other major...
...If an American Writers Union representative of the reigning order were given the power to impose its monolithic way, they'd wake us up at two in the morning, to smash our presses: and worry about you skirmishers late in the afternoon of their serenity...
...Shub points out, however, that "some very important documents are missing from this book...
...You write: "The head of the Soviet Writers Union is a [Communist] Party doctrinaire who occupies about the same place in Soviet letters that William F. Buckley Jr...
...As to your first point : If I may say so, I can write whoever writes NEW LEADER house notes under the table, even though I never had a voluble affair with the proletariat, or wrote a social history of the schism in the rightwhig faction of the left-wing division of the Labor-Socialist party in 1928...
...How to create and maintain stable governments without depriving the people of their democratic rights is the real problem...
...does on the U.S...
...I beg you to come back to earth...
...Read James Burnham and Gerhart Niemeyeron foreign policy, John Chamberlin and Brent Bozell on, domestic affairs...
...Under the present situation in many Asian countries, where most of the popu lation still does not realize its rights and responsibilities as a free people, dictatorshipsform the greatest menace to* the emancipation of the people...
...But there are other forms of democratic government which might be adjusted to the realities of Asia...
Vol. 41 • December 1958 • No. 46
