Correspondence
Liberal Gentry, Behold History David Brooks's "The Liberal Gentry" (Dec. 30/Jan. 6) was enormously entertaining reading. The piece was a brilliant mixture of Veblen-ian analysis and acidulous...
...16) presents an insightful personal and political profile of San Francisco's chief U.S...
...William a Weinrich Tulsa, OK Mixing Fact and Fiction Iwould like to commend Daniel Wat-tenberg for his reprimand of John Berendt's blatant disregard for the truth ("Midnight Fact and Fiction," Dec30/Jan...
...It is in this vein that he finds the chutzpah to say he "envies" other people's faith...
...Donne Paine Long Beach, CA Claudia Winkler's piece appears to show how a few steps away from the Left does not a conservative (neo or otherwise) make...
...Frank T. Pimentel Rochester, NY Let the Gender War Begin Christopher Caldwell's "The Feminization of America" (Dec...
...I trusted his clear and concise answers, and it is clear that plenty of others did too, despite his politics...
...Regarding the Ornelas case, Thomas writes that the defendants "consented" to a search of their car...
...The piece was a brilliant mixture of Veblen-ian analysis and acidulous description comparable to Tom Wolfe...
...Abuse is a one-way street...
...For many crimes, men will receive years in jail, but women get a slap on the wrist or are not even prosecuted...
...We began avidly searching for appropriate books on the subject...
...Therefore, if the defendants truly had consented to a search, then no legal issue should remain to discuss...
...Come on...
...Isn't the egregious bad taste of plutocrats—those who have more money than sense—as old as civilization itself...
...Thus he fails to grasp the weakness of his wishy-washy teachings...
...Likewise, when a man is expected to face a woman in court, all kinds of special courtroom privileges are given to the woman, and age-old rights are taken away from the man...
...I do hope Brooks does not want to consign the liberal gentry to the same, sad fate that befell Marie Antoinette, another devotee of rusticity, who played the role of milkmaid at her play farm on the grounds of Versailles with her ladies-in-waiting...
...One could even make the case that the Liberal Gentry are actually moving in a healthy direction...
...The feminists, and the general population, are not coming to believe in traditional gender roles...
...Spock can also inspire new parents to help reverse the slide toward a chaotic and uncivilized society...
...I suspect that Thomas would agree with the maxim that the ends do not justify the means—except, it seems, when prosecuting suspected criminals...
...I have to believe that only a former employee of the Wall Street Journal could romanticize a stock trading company in one of America's current Bosch-like urban pestholes...
...As far as I'm concerned, there are two feminist parties...
...In the same way, his concern for children is at the fore of Baby and Child Care...
...Spock speak in 1970 at the University of Miami's Earth Day celebration...
...I hope that Wattenberg's article wakes up American viewers and readers...
...Consent, as Thomas is well aware, is an exception to the warrant requirement...
...He displayed what today we would call a real concern about the environment...
...Without ever thoroughly denouncing the teachings of his earlier books, Dr...
...Upon the birth of our son, we discovered that babies, unlike cars and cameras, do not come with owner's manuals...
...Women have built powerful political groups, most liberal, some conservative, while men refuse to do the same...
...If, on the other hand, they did not actually consent to the search, as must have been the case, then what transpired by Thomas's own description was the dismantling of a vehicle based on suspicion...
...Certainly the liberal gentry's communing with nature beats the vulgarity of our Mauve Decade tycoons with their horseback banquets in the old Waldorf ballroom...
...Those who would further 'feminize' society make the same arguments as those who would de-feminize it—that women and men are different and that those differences need to be respected...
...Caldwell writes, "Cultural ideas about female priorities are coming to a remarkable convergence...
...I wish Caldwell had added a section about how women are the first sex under the law...
...Society is becoming feminized because men won't fight, so women win the battle by default...
...23) is a disappointing exception...
...Neoconservative...
...The differences feminists believe in are the ones necessary to make women win and men lose...
...Men don't get involved because politicians fail to give them reasons to do so...
...Thomas M. Edwards San Francisco, CA...
...Spock...
...Russell Van Zandt Northbrook, IL Anathema to Democracy Matthew Rees's "The Judge Who Hates CCRI" (Dec...
...And for what...
...Judge Henderson—obviously a man for whom the democratically expressed will of the people is an anathema—represents the apex of judicial activism...
...Spools Got the Scoop My wife and I enjoyed Claudia Winkler's "Dr...
...That sounds as much like police-state work as it does good police work...
...He was soft-spoken and didn't talk about child-rearing, but did specify that we should take care of our world for our children...
...The cornerstone of feminist law is abuse...
...For making films like Born on the Fourth of July and Nixon, which were supposedly true stories and yet were full of stretched truth...
...That aside, I was particularly appalled by Brooks's vision of the good life, as he describes it in the last sentence of the piece...
...Spock no longer deserves the reputation of being a purveyor of permissiveness and laissez-faire morality...
...There is, however, one point I wish Brooks had made...
...Your article helps explain why...
...During the last election, both parties took turns trying to see who could pander to women the most...
...My wife, however, boldly began reading it...
...Winkler suggests Dr...
...While Dr...
...Perhaps, if his name still inspires new parents to seek guidance in raising children, Dr...
...Lance Beehler Bluffton, SC Crime-Soft courts Inormally enjoy Andrew Peyton Thomas's contributions, but "The Soft-On-Crime Rehnquist Court" (Dec...
...The book with some of the sharpest lessons on raising children is Rousseau's much-overlooked Emile...
...Ah, the bucolic life...
...They talk about inequality as a tool to become, as Caldwell wrote, "primus inter pares...
...But what else can we expect from Berendt...
...Neither side had anything to say to men, other than calling them deadbeat dads...
...His book was at my side while I raised two children...
...If this is his idea of the sum-mum bonum, he should take a break from his labors at The Weekly StanDARD and spend a few weeks in the country getting some fresh air...
...He didn't seem radical, just concerned...
...A friend recommended Dr...
...Victoria Staten Ducharme Hilton Head, SC Dr...
...Look also to divorce laws...
...William F. Connelly, Jr...
...A woman can be excused from any crime, including the murder of children, on account of abuse at any time in her life...
...Lexington, VA Iheard Dr...
...Also, Caldwell might have noted the most direct reason why politics has been feminized...
...district judge Thelton E. Henderson—a Carter appointee and the man who single-handedly "stole" the votes of 54 percent of Californians by imperiously blocking the implementation of Proposition 209...
...Spock, the romantic's teacher...
...Men have become second-class citizens, nominally equal, but subject to bigotry in the law...
...Perhaps he still deserves the label "permissive...
...23) began nicely by noting that women are "first among equals" and are the "dominant class...
...Unfortunately the article went on chauvinistic tangents and ended up avoiding the true meaning and cause of these facts...
...As Winkler points out, this took place around the same time that he joined arms with the antiwar movement, which did much to discredit strong families...
...This situation leaves men in the same predicament as blacks in the 1950s...
...We have made men like Oliver Stone famous and wealthy...
...Spock's book, thus drawing a knowing laugh from me given the man's politics and reputation...
...The very first lesson Rousseau thinks a baby should learn is that he is not the master of the universe and that his parents will not be slaves to his whims...
...Spock recommends "ideals" and examples to "inspire" the child, he neglects any hardheaded conception of human nature...
...Combine this with the sad fact that some few prosecutors will attempt to win at all costs, rather than seek justice, and the decisions that Thomas decries are warranted...
...Contrast this to the indulgent treatment of children today and one sees how Rousseau was perhaps the cynic and today's parent the romantic—and Dr...
...He bursts into song about the joys of slaving away "in a manic brokerage house, hunched over a trading terminal, in a glitzy city amidst all the frantic and kaleidoscopic activity of the real world...
...His article was most refreshing at a time when society applauds and rewards those who stretch the truth under the guise of artistic liberties...
...Spock's half-blind understanding of what keeps families strong is a typical way of excluding oneself from the rigor that makes other Correspondence people's lives moral...
...Compare them with their more recent predecessors who lavished sums of money that would have beggared Croesus on the daubings of Pollack, Warhol, and Lichtenstein...
...Spock's politics should take a second place to his common sense approach to one of life's most difficult endeavors...
...And who cannot but sympathize with Jilly Cooper's vivid description, in Class, of the old English gentry, who hunt, shoot, and fish around their ancient country houses replete with creaky stairs, dilapidated sofas, and primitive plumbing...
...Michael S. Burch Alexandria, VA Regarding David Brooks's piece: I get a real kick out of observing the exotic habits of each rising generation of nouveaux riches...
...Spock found religion and strong families—for others, that is...
...David Skinner Washington, DC As a child of baby-boomers, I was particularly interested in Claudia Winkler's article...
...I'm always delighted to hear about aging liberal icons' recognizing the follies of their youth...
...One can look to the unequal enforcement of the laws for evidence...
...We've found the book fairly useful, taken with a grain of salt...
...Winkler even helped settle a family dispute...
...In fact, when measured against the grossness of Imperial Rome, the suffocating preciosite of France under Louis XVI, or the hypertrophied consumption of Gilded Age America, the inanities of the Liberal Gentry seem harmless...
...Both political parties brag about hunting down "deadbeat dads" but ignore mothers who refuse to let the children see their fathers...
...As a conservative public defender, I simply see too many instances of elected judges' making cowardly, if politically safe, decisions that do not make the headlines but do deprive defendants of their rights...
Vol. 2 • January 1997 • No. 18
