Dear Editor
Dear Editor Dual Justice Maybe the congressmen involved in Abscam were entrapped, as Joseph P. Fried implies ("Uneasy Thoughts About Abscam," NL, October 6). Still, 1 can't help but feel lhat...
...It would be a shame if the Constitution could not accomodate a conviction for a Myers without eroding the civil liberties of ordinary citizens in the process...
...David Kapp...
...he sounds like a man of the enlightenment as he deplores the clout of superstitious reactionaries, but his "pro-family" feelings peep coyly out from behind his stated views...
...November 4 is the day that all friends of Israel, not just Jews, get their chance to show they have good memories...
...Just wait until we have a Republican President and a yearly inflation rate into three digits...
...Not that his heart isn't in the right place...
...Security Council, or abstains on an obnoxious anti-Israel resolution that is should have vetoed, or plants background stories in the press on Begin's "intransigence" it gives warm comfort to the lynch-lsrael coalition growing around the world...
...Weintraub scores Carter for doing nothing to ease inflation...
...Doesn't Goodman know that some of the most trenchant critiques of the so-called "therapeutic ethic" have been made by feminists...
...Rachel Ziff Two Views of Carter It is useful to be reminded by Eliahu SaJpeter ("Europe's New Scapegoat," NL, September 22) of the malicious and increasingly successful campaign by the Arabs and the Soviets to turn Israel into a pariah-state, just as the Jews historically were depicted as the "pariah-people...
...Gordon Strachan Family Fracas Walter Goodman's hesitant thoughts on the family hover for a while and end by cancelling themselves out ("Fair Game," NL, October 6...
...Los Angeles, Calif...
...It is from Washington, too, lhat we now hear voices slyly implying that Israel is to blame for all the world's ills because it won't solve the Palestinian problem according to the formulas worked out by the Arabists in the State Department...
...Richard Greenfield Won't anyone give Jimmy Carter an even break...
...Surely most feminists can consider abortion a right—which Goodman regards as framing the matter in "the starkest terms"—without considering it anything other than an unhappy but necessary alternative to bearing an unwanted child...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...By seeing the conflict as one of "intrusive government" versus the hoary Reaganite pieties, Goodman has cast matters in too dualistic a way—there is more variety in both factions than he allows...
...Goodman's vision of the conflict is skewed, so thai liberal reforms seem more widespread and effective than they really are...
...Sidney Weintraub ("Carter's Economic Doodling," NL, September 22) complains about the President's economic proposals without once considering what a ghastly alternative a 20-mule team economy would be...
...But in his discussion of the various European governments* shameful complicity in this assault, Salpeter neglects the role played by the Carter Administration...
...At the root of his confusion, I suspect, is a queasy belief that the "anti-family" camp is a monolith...
...Given the character of convicted Representatives Michael J. Myers and John W. Jenrette Jr., this suggestion may seem like a throwback to the earnest idealism of a junior high school civics class, yet without such idealism we can only cynically acquiesce while other crooked pols continue to take bribes...
...Still, 1 can't help but feel lhat where the defendants are elected officials the courts ought to be allowed 10 put a looser construction on the concept of entrapment...
...Denver, Colo...
...Maybe then he will curse himself for carping at Jimmy Carter when he should have been helping to close ranks...
...Unions, minorities and small businesses would have their miniscule gains blown away with a stroke of Ronald Reagan's pen, and the corporations would wax fat and glossy with a Republican President to shove money their way...
...And pace Goodman, 1 would say that it is the "gross and muddy terms" of the reactionaries that have kept these issues from being discussed rationally all along...
...He says that no one likes to be told "they are ignorant and backward because they don't see abortion as a tribute to the human spirit," and further on he welcomes the airing of views on the family, even though the controversy will be "waged in gross and muddy terms, all mixed up with God, flag, and sandlot baseball...
...Chicago, III...
...To ignore this variety is to play into the Reaganites' hands...
...A congressman, for example, should be expected toculti-vate a little noblesse oblige...
...And every time this Administration makes a "mistake" at the U.N...
Vol. 63 • October 1980 • No. 19
