Dear Editor

...Might not Moynihan s memo have been an attempt to put aside any suspicion the Ad ministration might have had that there was a liberal in the White House...

...Though as katechism it is certainly krazy She rightly points up the resultant paradoxes of EE Cummings' sociologizing the comic strip, notably the casting of Offissa Pupp as Liberalism " However, theologizing the funnies brings lunacies of its own, such as the Kristian Krazy and Ignatz acting out their Miltonic, battle in Yiddish-inspired speech Miss Pettingell has selected her examples well—but not, I suspect, with scholarly disinterest She seems to have chosen what suited hei thesis, and ignored that which would puncture her parable New ark, NJ George Baczewski Racism and the New Left Although I share George Gilder's disaffection with the New Left cult of experience and its smug sell-righteousness ("The Unmaking ot an American," NL Apnl 13), I cannot sympathize with his repudiation of Paul Cowans assigning bigotry to the 'wasp establishment ' Cowan's encounter with racism at Choate is dismissed because it fails to correspond with Gilder's experience at Exeter or with that of some Choate contemporaries Well it we are to accept or reject on the basis ot an empirical scorecard, let me add my prep-school experience to Cowan's side A description of the racism at my genteel institution as rampant would not seem to me in the least "preposterous " What I do regard as preposterous is Gilder's notion that a New Leftist who listens to the Rolling Stones rather than Chuck Berry is as much a racist as a 50-year-old wasp who lives in a segregated suburban community, resists integration of his children's neighborhood school and belongs to a racially exclusive country club This sort of equation is more than naive and silly it is pernicious Appleton, Wn Howard J Newman In the days when the thoughts of intellectuals were fixed upon the world rather than the revolution to come there was a heresy called antinomianism which may shed light upon the hypocrisy of contemporary American radicals It developed out of Calvinism with its notion that the elect are chosen before birth by God, aibitranly and without regard whatever for persona] worthiness The antinomians adduced from this that the saved may indulge in every species of evil, without in the least having to fear divine wrath Salvation was made to serve as an excuse not only for antisocial behavior, but for positive immorality Oddly enough, antinomianism was a logical extension of the strictest sort oi Protestantism The bourgeois revolutionists George Gilder has attempted to analyze in his review ot Paul Cowan's The Making of an Un-American exhibit a similarly self-indulgent conception of their duties as radicals I was rather amused by Gilder's article, but I think he dealt with these exasperating people in the wrong way He has indicted them by the standards of the very rational, reformist world they claim to reject I would judge them by their own standard, for what it may be worth Cowan and those like him profess to abhor racism, yet they are prepared to tolerate the nth degree of racism if it originates with their "allies" on the black Left They profess to champion the interests of the working class, yet appear determined to be as unattractive as possible to actual workers, such as policemen and trade unionists (At Columbia, where I often see them, since I live in the neighborhood, the radicals periodically deface the campus, which must be cleaned up by the very same university employes alleged by them to be so terribly exploited I should not be surprised if the Columbia custodial staft regards the SDS as a class enemy ) The radicals denounce conventional society as manipulative, while they themselves pontificate in the name of groups whose opinions they have not in the least solicited, and whom they in no sense represent...

...Mitchell and his wife, you'll recall, don't exactly cater to such 'impudent snobbery") And might not Moy The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...

...Mao and his clique have used anti-Amencanism as the chief means of national unification, and of appeasing their compatriots' sense of outrage over the years during which China was at the mercy of its several foreign enemies Will any future regime show a more reasonable attitude...

...This is an incomplete catalogue I should guess that any enterprising journalist with a taste for the paradoxical could easily demonstrate that the New Left is among the chief perpetrators of the suns it attributes to its enemies But these people no doubt possess an infallible consciousness of their revolutionary mission, and the elect, of course are permitted all New York City S H Barrington Benign Neglect Walter Goodman's analysis of "The Moym-han Strategy" (NL, March 30) might better have been labeled "Walter Goodman's Strategy" Goodman s approach seems to be to explain away an illiberal, memorandum by a appointee of an illiberal President, and "leaked out" under liberal circumstances To argue as Goodman does, that the thesis of the memo (lay off the Panthers) appears as "a comment to an afterthought to an aside" is to become a full-fledged caid-carrymg apologist' Of course it is good sociology to tell the President that Mitchell's repression of the Panthers aids—rather than squelches—the Black Panther party But might not another explanation of "the Moynihan strategy" be that his "aside" was just that—an aside...

...The answer is far from clear The technocrats may not be able to do more with China's economic and industrial situation than the ideologues can now In that event, Maoist paranoia may once again seem useful, since it is easier to unify a conn-Cry with hatted than with actual achievement In short, granting certain assumptions, China's present policy may be essentially rational, and simple goodwill is not likely to encourage the current and future leaders of Communist East Asia to reexamine those assumptions Chicago III Thomas Clive Roche Theie is a rather odd contradiction in John P Roche's otherwise very effective criticism of the Vietnam "instant historians" ("Johnson, Vietnam and Instant History " NL, April 13) Roche is certainly correct m suggesting that Phil Goulding Townsend Hoopes and others of their ilk have entered the debate with a very conscious eye upon the preservation of their historical reputations What I find peculiar, chough, is his belief that he himself has "no personal stake m the outcome of the argument" Surely, the whole premise upon which his article rests is that statesmen are not disinterested parties in their after-the-fact revelations And that obviously applies to Roche quite as much as to those he now attacks San Francisco, Calif George simeon...

...Mr Goodman face it recent evidence (read carefully Moynihan's letter to Bayard Rustin m "Black Education and White Liber ahsm," NL December 22, 1969) reveals that Moynihan is something well below "a master of the interoffice communication " Detroit, Mich Louie Patler Department of Sociology Wayne State University China Policy Like so many of those who urge change in this nation s China policy...

...Senator Jacob K Javits ("Cooling It in Asia " NL, April 13) is all pious hopes and no concrete suggestions The Vietnam war gives no evidence of ending, indeed it seems likely to spread into Cambodia Laos and Thailand Given the mentality of the Nixon Administration, there Vi absolutely no reason why the war, m some sense ox other, should not go on forever One would imagine therefore, that replacing the current Administration is a major prerequisite fox peace m Asia Evidently the Senator does not think so for this does not appear among his recommendations The problem, unfortunately is not all in Washington The present Chinese leaders seem immovably disinclined to end their holy war against American Imperialism, or whatever one choses to call it Any policy, however enlightened or subtle, will surely be wasted upon them And what of their successors...

...mhan's real thesis be that the "cause" of the "Negro problem" is not, say, a racist society but rather the black 'riffraff* which, if ignored will fade away and/or be overcome by nothing less than Hie Great Black Silent Majority of the Negro Minority...