Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR CHURCH AND CLERICS Permit me to protest the gratuitously anticlerical tone of "William E. Bohn's Christmas sermonette (NL, December 26). Perhaps one of the reasons why preachers...
...A one-party South could hurl a block of electoral votes at the presumably evenly divided two-party states...
...These states are poorly under-represented in Congress...
...A shift of a key minority (e.g., the Negroes) would cause a net shift of three or four electoral votes...
...Our party system could easily become factionalized and fractionalized into different party entities, and contrary to Chamberlin's expectations the new system would not prevent vote "stealing...
...Francis Episcopal Church HESS AND JUDAISM As a long-ago student of Sidney Hook, I need bit of daring to take issue with him, particularly on a philosophical point...
...My understanding is that when Hess was young, and before he was known as the Communist rabbi, he was not a professing Jew...
...if this is humility, then I'll take salami...
...Hess' Judaism was ethnocentric, strongly influenced by the nationalism of the period...
...After all, the church is made up of the people who go to it, and the pulpit, to some degree, voices the conscience of the congregation...
...This proposal would weaken our two-party system, obfuscate the election victory mandate and penalize the most populous states...
...Like so many other Jewish figures of the mid-19th century, Hess is thought tohave been a prototype of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda...
...Third parties would receive electoral votes under the proportional plan...
...Under the reformed system the Republicans would have received 21.285 electoral votes and the Democrats 23.625 votes in New York...
...When I was a boy I was bored at a Tom Mix movie, but does that make the whole amusement industry rotten...
...The new system provides incentives for one-party slates to maintain their positions...
...After the failure of 1848, he had to leave Germany...
...To take issue on this point is not pilpul...
...The proposed reform would therefore confuse our Presidential election system and penalize the populous metropolitan states...
...Under the present system the Negro vote can award 45 New York electoral votes...
...As a mature man, having won the sobriquet, he returned to Judaism...
...When he was boy, he heard an old preacher who lit into the parishioners and denounced sin...
...In his book, Rome and Jerusalem—he was a great admirer of Mazzini—he calls upon the Jewsto "march forward, ye sons of martyrs" so that they may "bring again to Israel the splendor of the Davidic days...
...Wandering from country to country—a refugee—Hess returned to the Jews...
...Under the proportional system the elections of 1880, 1892, 1896, 1900, 1908, 1912, 1924 and 1948 would have been thrown into the House of Representatives for disposal...
...It worked throughout the 20th century...
...Meanwhile Bohn smirks and quotes some oversimplified church history to prove that everybody except himself has been untrue to Jesus and that the church represents human pride instead of Christian love...
...Thus, in Illinois, the Socialist Labor party would have held the balance of power...
...Perhaps one of the reasons why preachers are sometimes ineffectual and do not speak out to their rich parishioners (if this is so) is that they are given so little support by smug individuals who rest their distaste of organized religion upon childhood and adolescent impressions...
...Furthermore, it is usually the metropolitan areas that determine the outcome of Presidential elections, more specifically the Negroes, the labor vote, the religious minorities and Chamberlin's euphemistic "whatnots...
...The electoral votes of these 12 states can elect the President...
...Hess' relationship to the Jewish community, and his internal reaction to Judaism, bear significantly on his philosophical development, Moses Hess reacted rather violently against his Orthodox upbringing, particularly after marrying a Christian girl while attending the University of Bonn...
...Our 12 largest states contain well over onehalf of our population...
...Levittown, N. Y. The Rev...
...vote was in 1876 and 1888...
...An appeal to the Negro vote would hardly be worth the candidates' efforts when a greater plum is available from a one-party state...
...Speaking as a grown-up clergyman attempting with thousands of other clerical brethren of many denominations to do a constructive job in the community, I recommend that the adult Bohn drop around to church sometime and see what it's like these days...
...Therefore, the Presidential candidates must "woo" the voters of those states...
...Thus 1888 was the only year our present system failed...
...Newark, N. J. Marvin Maurer...
...Marion L. Matics St...
...So what...
...Instead of causing the demise of one-party states (which is happening under the present system) his proposal would tempt states to eliminate second parties...
...The two halves of the statement do not tie together...
...Professor Hook says, "Hess was known to his friends as the 'Communist rabbi' although he was not a professing Jew...
...This would mean that in close races the two large parties would have to bargain with extreme right and left groups...
...In our latest election Vice President Richard Nixon would have received more electoral votes than his opponent but not a majority...
...It often happens that the tip-off to the depth of this kind of thinking is the glib reference to the juvenile impression...
...As of now, he reminds me of a prejudiced, opinionated, know-it-all, self-satisfied, pontifical type of sanctimonious liberal whom I used to know when I was a boy...
...If the pulpit is too far in advance, then there is no congregation, and there immediately ensues the liberal charge that the clergyman is dictatorial and disregards democratic opinion...
...The only times our present system failed to reflect the popular The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Thereafter, he refused to· have anything to do with the Jewish community, or with Jews as individuals—if he could avoid them...
...However, a line in his piece on Moses Hess (NL, December 12) should be corrected...
...Tuckahoe, N. Y. Harry Gersh ELECTORAL VOTES William Henry Chamberlin ("Where The News Ends," NL, December 19) proposes that the electoral vote be divided on the basis of the proportion received in each state...
...The Hayes-Tilden campaign was embroiled in corruption and under any system we would not have known the "real" victor...
...Astute politicians would be tempted to husband a few electoral votes at the expense of party unity...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 2
