Correspondence
Selling Out to China Iwas very glad to see "Selling Out to China" (Editorial, Dec. 23). I wonder where some of my fellow conservatives have stored their principles regarding human rights, human...
...It is neither a "cost of living index" nor a "purchasing power index...
...This may still sound strict, but anyone who remembers '70s fashion can imagine the outlandish costumes that such a dress code permitted...
...Then, please let us know how you plan to cut off China's economic, cultural, and security ties with the rest of the world so that we can squeeze it until it collapses...
...I would guess that, to you, "restoring honor to American foreign policy" means that not only should the United States stop engaging in trade and mutually beneficial relations with the PRC, it should do everything in its power to bring the regime down and replace it with a democratically elected one...
...Scott Kennedy Washington, DC Not So Parochial John J. Dilulio, Jr.'s description of the now defunct West Catholic High School for Boys brought back fond memories ("Parochial School Days, Golden Rule Days," Dec...
...What is most galling about your editorial is that while you criticize the conventional wisdom, you do not provide any alternative...
...Many of the Christian Brothers who ran West Catholic High School were themselves young, progressive baby-boomers looking to change the face of education...
...The Weekly Standard welcomes letters to the editor...
...The classifications used by OMB under Federal Directive 15 are precisely the ones that govern affirmative-action allocations...
...census, Dinesh D'Souza refers—briefly but incorrectly—to an initiative by the Arab American Institute about ethnic measurement...
...We stated that for some immigrant populations, racial categories were inadequate and confusing...
...There could be a maximum of only six racial categories for each sex...
...But I fear one of the proposed cures may worsen the disease...
...This thesis cannot be disputed...
...When the federal government started keeping labor statistics by racial category in the early 1960s, the information was stored on computer punch cards...
...It should be to switch to an index that shows both private- and public-sector costs...
...Christopher Wolfe Milwaukee, WI Classification Woes In "My Color 'Tis of Thee" (Dec...
...You may also fax letters: (202) 2934901...
...About halfway through the article, Stelzer asserts, "If the Boskin commission is right, and it most certainly is . . ." Whoa...
...16), Dinesh D'Souza expresses bewilderment at the Census Bureau's division of all humanity into six and only six racial classifications...
...The Arab American Institute is fighting to keep ethnic measurement, regardless of racial classification, a part of the U.S...
...If that's what you think, by all means come out of the closet and say so...
...The single most important argument for judicial self-restraint has always been the clearly undemocratic structure of the judiciary: It is not elected, and judges serve for life...
...Not so fast...
...This was because some of the instructors employed by the school in the early to mid '70s were baby-boomer radicals fresh from '60s college campuses and Vietnam...
...Had D'Souza known the reason for this bureaucratic inanity, his bewilderment would have increased exponentially...
...Squeezing China until it cries "Uncle" may make you feel good, but it won't bring the desired result...
...The market economy not only has raised the standard of living for the vast majority of Chinese, it has left people with greater room in their lives to pursue their own private interests and thoughts...
...The alternative is not so easy, but it is the only real answer: As The Weekly Standard so often says, conservatives must eschew pusillanimity...
...Modernization of the curriculum took place as well...
...That is why we see the contradiction between climbing stock prices and "low inflation...
...16) contained The Weekly Standard's usual good sense in recognizing the extraordinary scope of judicial usurpation...
...By 1975, however, the year I graduated from West Catholic, the school was experiencing more '60s fallout than DiIulio's sources seem to remember...
...Tom Masciantonio Philadelphia, PA Debating the CPI In "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" (Dec...
...The worst of this was drug abuse, but gun-toting students were also making their first appearance around this time...
...It was in this context, and assuming that the race categories would remain mandated by law and federal program requirements, that we proposed a way to collect more accurate data—and only data—on our community...
...The explanation is computer punch cards...
...In the early 1980s Republicans quailed before accusations that they were using Roe v. Wade as a litmus test for judicial appointments and consistently (and, as the results showed, apparently sincerely) denied this...
...Republican presidents and Republican senators should use cases like Roe v. Wade and Romer v. Evans for a litmus test...
...If current policy, which is far from perfect, is "constructed of faulty logic and gangrenous morality," your editorial is the product of ignorance and dogmatism...
...I will always remember a senior level English course called "The Other Sex in Literature" taught by this new breed of instructor...
...Many courses in traditional disciplines had become elec-tives (foreign languages and math were not required after sophomore year...
...John Sullivan Baltimore, MD In his commentary about racial classification and the U.S...
...Bruce Crawford Fountain Valley, CA No Term Limits for Judges The editorial "It's Time to Take on the Judges" (Dec...
...They represent lousy constitutional law, and Republicans should be committed to intellectually defensible constitutional law...
...23), Irwin M. Stelzer recounts the Consumer Price Index debate as provoked by Michael Boskin...
...Although it fits nicely into his argument of "racial scams" that proliferate around the issue of classification, we do not—and never did—support a separate affirmative-action category for persons of Arab or other Middle Eastern descent...
...In many cases, persons from the Middle East/North Africa region do not understand their racial classification or disagree with it, but most agree that the classifications relate more to ethnicity than to race...
...Dilulio contends that the discipline enforced by the likes of Brother Greg (as DiIulio calls him) in the 1970s is desperately needed in today's public schools...
...Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, address, and phone number...
...Our primary text was an anthology of Ms...
...Reducing the CPI figures to make it easier to balance the budget is in no one's interest...
...An effective approach requires nuance, endurance, and a willingness to accept—and recog-nize—incremental progress...
...The CPI may say that we do not have much inflation, but the players in the capital markets know better...
...Stock prices are tracking real inflation, he claims, when one accounts for the growth in the cost of the government and debt service...
...Neither jobs nor benefits nor even anthropological sophistry are at play here: simply a way to improve the system as it is currently operating...
...Helen Hatab Samhan Arab American Institute Washington, DC Dinesh D'Souza responds: I am willing to take Helen Samhan at her word, but I am still unclear about what her letter actually means...
...census...
...Total federal spending has been rising at 4.5 percent per annum and is set to explode in 1997...
...Martin A. Armstrong, head of the Princeton Economics Institute, makes a powerful argument that inflation is actually much higher than the CPI...
...All letters should be addressed: Correspondence Editor The Weekly Standard 1150 17th St., NW Washington, DC 20036...
...While China is obviously still authoritarian, it is far from totalitarian...
...As it turns out, there will be no new categories—racial, ethnic, or otherwise—in the 2000 census...
...Armstrong's figures show that the annual cost of the federal government has increased by an average of 20 percent since 1988...
...Apparently we are not alone: A network of organizations representing most American ethnic constituencies— Italian, Irish, German, Hungarian, Armenian, Chinese, Greek, Polish, and French—is ready to go to bat to keep ancestry measurement a part of the census...
...But government is the highest growth sector of our economy, and neglecting its impact distorts true inflation...
...I wonder where some of my fellow conservatives have stored their principles regarding human rights, human freedom, and personal liberty when it comes to writing and speaking about the totalitarian regime of mainland China...
...China is unlikely to democratize any time soon, but there are changes within its system that we can continue to encourage that are consistent with more humane governance domestically and more peaceful ties internationally...
...Writing assignments often concentrated on how we, as 17-year-old males, were coming to terms with feminism and female sexuality...
...The corrective action should not be to ratchet down the CPI figures...
...The school uniform no longer included a blazer and a tie, but was downgraded to dress pants, dress shirt with collar, and dress shoes...
...Introduction of a market economy may have preserved the Communist party's rule, but the preponderance of the evidence points to the erosion of the CCP's Leninist system and to the greater importance of bargaining and negotiating in the policy process...
...Judicial term limits will allow activists to argue (1) that there is, in fact, a turnover of judges, (2) that there are always new appointments when political alignments change, and (3) that judicial activism is not so bad after all...
...Term limits may rein in the courts to some extent, but judicial term limits will actually end up justifying judicial activism...
...Even though computer punch cards have been obsolete for decades, their technological limitations continue to shape public policy...
...So if the status of Arab Americans is changed, possibly by giving Americans of Middle Eastern descent a new category of their own, obviously race-based privileges will be affected...
...We did respond to the OMB's request for comment on Federal Directive 15, the government's guidelines for measuring race and ethnicity...
...magazine articles, many of which advocated gay rights and abortion...
...True, they enforced the Golden Rule, but they were not so very parochial...
...This is because the CPI does not include the cost of government or its debt...
...Democrats like Bill Clinton, of course, proclaim that Roe v. Wade is a litmus test and get a free ride...
...The cards were 12 holes wide...
...Elizabeth Whitaker Bethune, SC The Clinton administration's shift in strategy on China policy, from public pressure and confrontation to engagement and cooperation, has all the appearances of a cave-in, but the choice should be welcomed—and not just by the business community...
...Current policy is not based on "anti-anti-communism," but on a recognition of such change...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 17
