Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR The New Leader welcomes comment und criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words. GIDEON OF THE RIGHT Somebody must be playing tricks with John Roche's...
...In any event I am curious to know how a piece which purports to be a consideration of the effects of the Goldwater candidacy can so easily dismiss such factors as the so-called white backlash movement, or how it can argue that this is a form of political impotence whsn the Goldwaterites have managed to secure a major party's nominaticn and will be presenting themselves to the American public this fall not as a band of disaffected radicals but as the mainstream of the party...
...Holbach's anti-Semitism was only one component of his opposition to religion in general...
...And someday somebody will probably invent a cure for cancer...
...The Troublemaker scatters its shots so widely that it makes its point—the defeat of innocence by experience—only after jack-rabbiting around a bushel of irrelevancies...
...I wonder what Roche would have thought if, in 1948, the Progressive faction had taken over Democratic party machinery, read the Truman Democrats out of the party, nominated Wallace on the regular party ticket, and then —after rewriting party history to suit their current ideological requirements—made an alliance with the Dixiecrat Southerners...
...Baron Holbach," is something of an exaggeration...
...And anyway, this is so old a theme that only an idea of peculiar brilliance could justify its re-use...
...If Litvinoff was criticizing Holbach's atheism he should have said so...
...The differences between the Goldwater people and the Wallace people are both frightening and significant...
...So much American satire is, as Simon says, "over-stuffed with ambition and undernourished in technique...
...If he was criticizing his anti-Semitism, he should have noted the distinction...
...He was no less anti-Christian than anti-Semitic, as anyone who takes the trouble to read his essays can easily discover...
...anti-Semitic...
...New York City Gene Smalley...
...I doubt if, as an active member of ADA...
...Roche found Goldwater and Wallace similarly afflicted with impotence, irrelevance, and moralistic thunderousness...
...In the August 3 New Leader ("Gideon of the Right") he rather smugly and sloppily compared 1964 Goldwater conservatism with 1948 Wallace progressivism...
...I wonder how Roche missed the point...
...New York City Richard M. Elman SOVIET JEWS After reading Emanuel Litvinoff's article "Addenda on Soviet Anti-Semitism" (NL, June 22), I feel that a word ought to be said on behalf of poor, old, maligned Baron Holbach...
...There really seemed to be unanimity at San Francisco, despite the Romney-Rockefeller-Scranton amateur hour...
...GIDEON OF THE RIGHT Somebody must be playing tricks with John Roche's memory...
...Perhaps so...
...Holbach was among the important French Encyclopaedists, many of whom were, in a sense...
...West Allis, Wisconsin Edmund Falke RIDICULOUS AND SUBLIME John Simon's review of The Troublemaker ("Ridiculous and Sublime," NL, July 6) hit the nail deftly on the head...
...Roche could then have argued that the Wallacites had only "captured themselves...
...Shall we ignore Voltaire because he too was anti-Semitic...
...The fact remains that there is nothing to be so complacent about...
...The Troublemaker, with its device of urban corruption, another old-timer, hardly succeeds...
...Wishing just won't make an elephant look like a paper tiger...
...It strikes me that Roche's "secret police memory" should go over some of its old dosiers a little more carefully...
...Although it is perfectly apt to point out that our national parties are only 51 different state parties, I was struck from my television viewing of the Republican convention by the enormous cohesion among the various state parties which the Goldwater candidacy seemed to provoke...
...Although it is true that Holbach's writings on the "Jewish Question" can easily be distorted, Litvinoff's term, "the notorious 18th-century essays of the French freethinker...
...Or Byron...
...Perhaps it is also possible, even probable, that Goldwater—like Wallace—will be trounced at the polls...
Vol. 47 • August 1964 • No. 16
