Dear Editor
Dear Editor Marx and Utopia I found Dennis Wrong's review of Melvin Lasky's Utopia and Revolution ("Illuminating Two Ideas That Shook the World," NL, July 4) highly perceptive and thorough. Having...
...Period...
...I think, however, that to the extent liberalism and conservatism mean anything anymore, Senator Moynihan has engaged in some faulty labeling...
...Consequently, one day we throw roses in the President's path and the next day banana peels...
...For example, the English Queen has no real power...
...Having read Lasky's book, I was amazed how much of its argument Wrong was able to squeeze into a scant two pages of print...
...Thus the universally schizophrenic attitude toward the Ruler is embodied there in two separate figures: the Monarch and The Political Head...
...The sentence should have read: "My objection, of course, is not to the exceptions themselves—if on practical grounds they can be shown to do more harm than good ta our democratic way of life...
...But the case is really more complex...
...For what really distinguished this greatest of all political scientists from the heads-in-the-clouds rabble he attacked in the Communist Manifesto was his belief that the new society —the Communist Utopia—exists in the womb of the old order, though in a perverted form...
...Brooks...
...television coverage of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee should have come to no surprise to Marvin Kitman ("The Royal Treatment," NL, July 4...
...In effect, then, Marx's contribution to the idea of Utopia was to strip away its connotations of "unreality," to give it meaning within the everyday affairs of men...
...Does he have any sense of humor at all...
...For what are the points he stresses (the "durability of the American system," the desirability of spending a smaller proportion of the GNP on the public sector, the failure of this country to "structure things so that public goods become private incentives," and, above all, the need to limit the power of the government) if not classically conservative themes...
...From the very first days of our country, when some of our Founding Fathers lobbied to have George Washington appointed Margrave of the U.S.A., to Richard Nixon's comically caparisoned White House guards, we've shown a readiness to curtsy, a willingness to have someone lord it over us...
...That Moynihan's proposals are conservative does not, of course, necessarily make them any less valid...
...And if the challenge to liberalism is to adopt conservative ideas, then the traditional political division really has lost all meaning, and liberalism has become a word that signifies nothing more than some vague notion of goodness...
...That anyone would call Marx "antiutoiJian" is baffling...
...It has been maintained—most convincingly by George Steiner—that Marxism is yet another flowering of the search for a secular mil-lenium, a search that has its roots in the Jewish historical consciousness...
...Asahina demands that Allen be new on every count in order to tickle the funny bone...
...Perhaps comic films shouldn't be reviewed...
...they deify the first, villify the second...
...Garden City, N.Y...
...Asahina, apparently believing himself to be no mere critic, but a psychoreviewer, informs us that underlying Allen's failure to amuse is his envy of intellectuals, his insecurity among contributors to the New Republic and the New Yorker...
...This bit of reasoning, one must admit, is truly hilarious...
...Whatever the case, he doesn't like Allen—a fact that says absolutely nothing about the Allen's artistic success or failure...
...I wonder where Asahina got the idea that a split screen, animation, subtitles, and old comedy formulas cannot be used to create a film that is both funny and original...
...she is merely its symbol...
...But I do feel that they could be better dealt with if the Senator would resist parading them as something else...
...The Britons who do wield any clout wear good grey suits like everyone else, and hurl insults on the floor of the Commons...
...Robert Wexler Truth in Packaging I read with interest Daniel P. Moynihan's "The Challenge to Liberalism" (NL, June 6...
...Noel Coward...
...Docs Asnhina like his jokes A la Mel The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, bnt letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Nelson S. Dearmont Authority Figures The unctuousness of U.S...
...Duluth, Minn...
...Howard Caparelli Woody Allen Robert Asahina's hatchet job on Woody Allen's Annie Hall ("Don't Play It Again, Woody," NL, June 6) proves how subjective humor can be, how vulnerable the humorist is to criticism from one angle or another...
...Like your reviewer, I also thought Lasky's classification of Marx was erroneous...
...Daniel Fay Correction In Norman Jacobs' "Morality and the National Interest" (NL, June 20), a critical two-letter word was dropped from the first sentence of the final paragraph...
...Boston, Mass...
...The U.S., by contrast, has just one person to fill both roles...
...For example, he not only regards Allen's jokes as old-hat, appealing solely to teenagers and neurotics (a pretty large audience), but he also considers his film techniques to be hackneyed...
...Berkeley, Cal...
...The critique seems vastly strained, even for a Woody-hater...
Vol. 60 • July 1977 • No. 15
