DEAR EDITOR
Dear Editor Preservation Barry Gewen is entitled to his view that architectural preservation should be guided by esthetics ("Taking Art Public," NL, October 19), but given present...
...Life and liberty anil the pursuit of happiThe New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Wrong Celebration As happens to all of us as we grow older, Publius' memory has played tricks on him (NL, October 5, 1987...
...Chappaqua, N. Y. George P. Brock way Publius replies: My split personality is showing...
...Pi actually all these people died in gulags...
...Here is an excerpted translation of his text: "The Special Joint Archives of the Military College and of the Supreme Court of the USSR were the last relatively accessible archives preserving cases of Soviet citizens who were falsely charged, sentenced and, for the most part, died in the period 1930-50...
...Yurasov recently contributed a news piece to the Soviet uno fficial-but-not-sumizdot publication Glasnosl on the same subject...
...But if they are to be places of human habitation (for all classes), then it seems to me that our standards for preservation must be esthetic, not historical...
...1 f cities can establish endless museums in old mansions to illustrate the life-styles of Founding Fathers, Boston Brahmins and robber barons, why not at least a couple of museums in 18th- and 19th-century tenements to show how we packed the poor in during those centuries...
...In my second paragraph I note that "pursuit of happiness" is a "phrase in the Declaration of Independence...
...Brockway is more than a sharp editor, however...
...As for Yurasov, since last April he has been interrogated three times by the KGB...
...Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University Barry Gewen replies: If our cities are to be museums, then Professor Gans has a point...
...The original draft of the document whose Bicentennial Year we are now celebrating stated that among our 'inalienable rights' were 'life, liberty, and property.'" The Constitution, of course, has no such phrase...
...There is more to the story...
...and since no one of him was among its signers, he may be forgiven for being misled by one of the canards of our history...
...On the other hand, confirming what Publius says of the meaning of "happiness," Locke did write (in another connection), "The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness...
...ness are thus inalienable, but property is alienable...
...Destroying the Evidence In "The Ghost of Stalin" (NL, November 2) Kurt M. Campbell mentions a "dramatic exposition on Stalin's purges" delivered by Dmitrii G. Yurasov, a student at the Moscow Institute of Historical Archives...
...My only explanation for the gaffe is that since as Publius I am three separate persons, one of my beings, assigned to write the third paragraph, did not read the second paragraph—a not uncommon schizoidal problem...
...In the next paragraph I referto the document "whose Bicentennial Year we are now celebrating"—which, as Brockway properly notes, is not the Declaration...
...New York City \\\Hesarska...
...Dear Editor Preservation Barry Gewen is entitled to his view that architectural preservation should be guided by esthetics ("Taking Art Public," NL, October 19), but given present esthetic standards, that means preserving mainly the homes and public buildings of the upper class...
...now (because there was too much smoke in the city center) they are being taken somewhere outside ol town...
...The sad faci is that Publius, who in his youth was a clear and exact writer, and who still has valuable things to say, has been corrupted by our con temporary vice of using words for the impression Ihey give rather than the meaning 1 hey carry...
...The fuss he and our historians have made over "the pursuit of happiness" would never have occurred except for iheir misunderstanding of "inalienable" (Jefferson spelled it "unalienable") as meaning somel hing like "so important that I'm using this strange word lo make you pay attention...
...This is not "gaga" preservation but equitable history...
...Cases ol' individuals who were sentenced for being laic to work and for petty theft, as well as ol relatives of 'enemies of the people' and ol' those 'suspected of not reporting a crime' arc being burned...
...He is thinking hazily of the Declaration of 11 years earlier...
...Many writers (carelessly following each other) have attributed the imagined phrase to John Locke, who merely says something somewhat like it...
...The rest are being burned...
...I don't foresee the same problems with this that he does, but then I don't share his notion about our "present esthetic standards...
...As for historical preservation, unless Gewen intends it to be a further memorial to that class, it must include buddings that offer "a reminder of how ordinary people used to live...
...Al first they were burned in a furnace in the yard of the Supreme Court of the USSR...
...He has greatly enriched the discussion with Locke's quotation that "the pursuit of happiness" may well require that we "suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases...
...He writes...
...Currently archivists are destroying Military College files from 1940 and SupremeCourt files from 1948-49...
...See "The Pursuit of Happiness," NL, July 11-25, 1983...
...Some files (especially of people who wereshot under Article 58) are being taken to the KGB archives...
...New York City HerbertJ.Gans Roberts...
...As to whether or not the original draft of the Declaration referred to "property," I thought it best to accept the "myth" of popular parlance, rather than correct it, especially since the common belief seems almost designed by Providence to help me make my points about why the use of "property" as an "inalienable right" was unacceptable...
...It is foreseen that by 1992 the entire archives will be 'cleaned...
...the more we are...
...Inalienable," then as now, meant "not transferable from one person lo another by sale or even by gift...
...But Jefferson was a careful draftsman...
...I could not have said it better myself— nor could Aristotle...
...No draft of the Declaration contains the phrase he puts in inverted commas...
...obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases...
...It is as simple as that...
Vol. 70 • November 1987 • No. 17
