Correspondence
Correspondence Contradictions of the Family Wage William Tucker's "A Return to the 'Family Wage'" (May 13) is one of the best pieces I have seen on the real reason people are unhappy with the...
...People bid up the price of homes in expectation that the prices would rise...
...The voice is that of Jacob, but the hands are those of Esau...
...George L. O'Brien San Francisco, CA Whenever I see the phrase "serving the greater good," I reach for my wallet...
...To the contrary, this challenge first invokes heroic memories of America's role in World War II and the Cold War, then belittles what the Clinton administration has done from every conceivable point of view...
...When it takes two breadwinners to support a family as well as one breadwinner could a generation ago, people feel that their standard of living has gone down...
...First, it feverishly seeks to export "politically correct multiculturalism, feminism, relativism, and globalism...
...It is an example of the law of unintended consequences...
...I doubt that any of the proponents of government housing policy intended to destroy the family-wage system...
...Roosevelt's distaste, but Chambers's offenses against her did not include religion...
...Another point worth considering is that since 1992 teen use of alcohol and cigarettes also rose quite sharply, strongly suggesting that Clinton's drug policy has nothing at all to do with rising consumption of illicit substances...
...Kim Hall Washington, DC Mark Gauvreau Judge Responds: Professor Hall refers to me as "misdirected" and my article as "fiction," yet she doesn't do much to refute the facts of my piece...
...Penn Kemble Deputy Director, USIA Washington, DC Harlan Not Color-Blind Although Justice John Marshall Harlan's Constitution may have been color-blind, apparently Harlan was not...
...Students view the film in its larger cultural context, and we discuss how the mainstream media's treatment of the film revealed deep-seated anxieties about women, violence, and representation...
...But one major factor is the government subsidy of home ownership...
...he will be what he has been, namely, a thoughtless, aimless, lazy, and possibly vicious boy...
...They would hand to us their hagiography of authors and have us teach little else...
...Tucker's argument for paying each according to his family's needs hasn't worked even when coupled with its socialist corollary...
...As an associate professor of English at Georgetown, I teach Shakespeare and Renaissance literature...
...Countless government programs have done little to wipe out poverty in America, and, as Tucker states, have consequences usually in conflict with intended goals...
...Roosevelt disliked "lower class, fat, ostentatiously Catholic [Whittaker] Chambers" ("Mrs...
...Correspondence Contradictions of the Family Wage William Tucker's "A Return to the 'Family Wage'" (May 13) is one of the best pieces I have seen on the real reason people are unhappy with the economy in spite of the relatively good economic indicators...
...No matter what shine William Tucker tries to put on it, family wage, living wage, and minimum wage add up to an attempt to artificially manipulate the market in labor...
...I mean, aren't we supposed to be "devolving" power to the states...
...Doesn't that other conservative magazine think drugs should be legalized...
...These two propositions are contradictory...
...She states that the number of Shakespeare courses has increased...
...therefore a policy which gives him liberty is impracticable...
...Or (horrible thought) could it be that Republicans want a less intrusive government only when it plays to-and benefits-their constituencies...
...Far from disappearing from the curriculum, Shakespeare courses have tripled in the last 20 years from three in 1977 to the nine sections offered this year...
...Their view of students, as Charles Eliot of Harvard University said more than 100 years ago, is equally unenlightened: "The conservative argument is: A college must deal with the student as he is...
...It's a little inconsistent for a conservative journal to attack the administration for doing what conservatives claim they want to have done-cutting the budget and downsizing government...
...At Georgetown, we disagree with the "conservative argument...
...May 6), I predict this misdirected young man has a promising future not as a journalist but as a fiction writer...
...Workers must make themselves and their skills valuable to employers but can gain no experience if priced out of the "job training" wage market...
...They also read Toni Morrison, Freud, and the Bible...
...I am also one of the professors who teach "Cultural Representations of Women," where students do indeed view the film Thelma and Louise...
...Also, as Tucker pointed out in his book The Excluded Americans, local governments took steps to ensure rising housing prices through land-use laws, zoning, and add-on costs to builders...
...Duffey has argued that, even though we won the contest with communism, there are still some limits to what we can accomplish in the world-and that we can fail at what is important if we strive to do too much...
...Do you have any evidence that the interdiction efforts you commend can prevent, or ever have prevented, more than 10 percent of the flow of illicit drugs into this country...
...But what is meticulously avoided is any acknowledgment of what has been happening on Capitol Hill to America's capacities to influence international affairs...
...THE WEEKLY STANDARD would do well to leave mush-headed "compassion politics" to the many leftist publications to which it is a welcome alternative...
...Steve Hulett Burbank, CA Still Teaching Shakespeare After reading Mark Gauvreau Judge's "The Hoya...
...Joe Duffey has defended USIA, international broadcasting, and public diplomacy against determined efforts to eliminate them...
...His parents were non-practicing Episcopalians, and after his Communist years, Chambers gravitated towards the Quakers...
...Instead they can graduate having pondered "Cultural Representations of Women," "AIDS and Representation," and "International Culture and the New World Order...
...The issue isn't really about Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton, but rather about the nature of knowledge and the nature of students...
...The cogency of his legal reasoning notwithstanding, I should think Harlan's embarrassing editorial flourish would undermine any interest that conservatives might have in setting up the opinion as a model for modern-day affirmative-action jurisprudence...
...He justifiably has warned that post-Cold War religious and nationalist awakenings sometimes require appropriate tone in the American argument...
...Second, its USIA director, Joe Duffey, believes that the United States has "no business telling others how to behave...
...By your analysis, here is a man who has cut federal funding for drug enforcement at a time when Republicans of all stripes are demanding cuts in an intrusive, overreaching federal government, and yet you pillory Clinton for his budget-cutting efforts...
...Richard Weinfeld Boston, MA In Duffey's Defense Jeffrey Gedmin finds two great faults with the Clinton administration's foreign policy ("Clinton's Touchy-Feely Foreign Policy," May 13...
...But the point is that English majors are no longer required to take Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and other cornerstones of English literature...
...For a university of its size, Georgetown offers more than three times the national average of Shakespeare courses...
...Under Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac guidelines, lenders look at taxable household income in order to determine qualifications for loans...
...So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty...
...Even as nostalgic publicists recount the glories of olden times, our foreign-affairs budgets are being hacked up and "consolidation" measures are being advanced that throw the agencies that serve as our instruments of international influence into turmoil...
...Before we join Ralph A. Rossum in extolling Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson ("Justice Harlan's Constitution," May 13), it is well to note the ugly personal sentiment expressed by Harlan in the passage immediately preceding his oft-quoted statement that "Our constitution is color-blind": "The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country...
...Even if there is no net cash-flow benefit from having the lower-income spouse working, the income of the second wage earner is a necessity to qualify...
...As an ostentatious Catholic myself, I don't doubt Mrs...
...But incoherence does not diminish this article's value as an illustration of an election-year challenge taking shape to this administration's foreign policy...
...They felt compelled to send a second wage earner into the work force...
...The explosion of two-income households corresponds with the pattern of rising housing prices...
...And why do you ignore the many reasonable voices that are publicly asking whether turf-war homicides and other drug-law-induced violent crimes ravaging our urban areas are worth what we gain from prohibition...
...TA McKinney New York, NY A Hero's Religion Iwas astonished to read in Noemie Emery's article on Eleanor Roosevelt that Mrs...
...Just where in the Constitution is the federal government granted police power to dictate what substances the citizenry may ingest, inhale, or inject...
...Price fixing is wrong when cartels try to keep a floor under prices and is equally wrong in the mandating of so-called fair wages...
...Our critics would tell us that knowledge is fixed and absolute and, indeed, eternal...
...And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power...
...Rarely are readers treated to such a caricature of the facts as in Judge's description of the changes in requirements for English majors at Georgetown University...
...Mona Walsh Holland Niles, MI Iwas a trifle confused by your editorial attack on the president...
...Judge's fictional portrait-based on his three-month stint as an office assistant in the English department-of the 60s radicals nailing shut the coffin on Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer just doesn't stand up to scrutiny...
...Roosevelt, Liberal Icon," May 13...
...This benefited high-income and established home owners, but hurt low- and middle-income people...
...No public policy, no matter how noble its intentions, can substitute for the private contracts between businesses and workers in setting a fair and appropriate value to the myriad jobs in our economy...
...The Hoya...
...Ellen Fielding Davidsonville, MD Forget the War on Drugs Your editorial decries that under Clinton the federal government's efforts to wage a war on drugs have slowed some ("General Clinton, Losing the Drug War," May 13).You also note that since 1992, drug use-especially among teens-is up...
...I could suggest a number of reasons why middle-income wives have entered the work force in exchange for a relatively small increase in net household purchasing power...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 36
