Correspondence
Correspondence Thoughts on Civil Society As part of the “civil society” movement, I agree with Gertrude Himmelfarb’s suspicions (“Second Thoughts on Civil Society,” Sept. 9). Many...
...how better to relive the Spirit of ’68 than by giving a musical finger to the “system,” the “man,” and the “sellout...
...No longer do we need reason and argument in our political discourse...
...Many civil-society proponents want to opt out of the public square, retreating within privatized walled towns and home schools...
...Democratic institutions will not be preserved if individual citizens separate their personal happiness from the common good...
...Citizenship requires us to enlarge our sense of selfhood to include our fellow citizens...
...John Hagelin Natural Law Party Candidate for President Fairfield, IA...
...They knew that if our unique experiment in self-government failed, history would charge all Americans with the vices of slavishness instead of honoring our virtues as free men...
...Christopher-Michael DiGrazia Lawrence, MA No More Touchy-feelyism Bravo on your editorial “The Dick Morris Democrats” (Sept...
...Without a modicum of prior knowledge, they trivialized a thoroughly researched, scientifically based platform that is far more extensive and comprehensive than either the Republicans’ or the Democrats’, citing instead specious statements I never made, statements that are a fabrication of the editors’ imaginations...
...It’s not surprising that Democrats would embrace this malodorous hodge-podge of a show...
...I sat in Count Basie’s saxophone section for 11 years during the “April In Paris,” “One More Time” era (19531964), so I knew very well what it was to swing hard for crowds of happy dancing feet...
...I just want to make people happy with swinging music, either at a dance or a concert...
...As a bandleader, I’m perfectly willing to let my listeners participate in the music, as Felten says, “letting them ‘give to the beat’ by dancing to it...
...Frank Foster Scarsdale, NY Democrats for Rent Congratulations on John Podhoretz’s dissection of Rent (“The Mike Douglas Democrats,” Sept...
...Efforts like assistance for the unemployed or tough enforcement of alimony and child-support laws assure us that the sweatshops and child workers of the early 1900s remain relics of America’s past...
...If this means that philanthropic acts, like those of Carnegie, Mellon, and Rockefeller, shall also remain relics, so be it...
...One thing I won’t do is limit my band to tired old selections like “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “In The Mood,” “String of Pearls,” “Song of India,” “Marie,” and other ? la 1940s Miller and Dorsey...
...Dennis Teti Washington, DC Gertrude Himmelfarb brings to light the necessary difficulties of reforming American democratic society...
...She fails to mention that the philanthropy of the “great Victorian entrepreneurs” was made possible by the thousand broken backs and lost limbs of the industrialists’ wage-slaves...
...then came the concerts and jazz festivals, where we performed the very same music and had ’em popping their fingers and tapping their feet...
...We can only hope Rent is the ’90s Hair...
...9) won’t receive much disagreement from me, a discouraged but determined bandleader of the 1990s...
...Further, I don’t feel that I need much more than that 1 or 2 percent of the listening public who dig jazz, since that small fragment seems to comprise some of the only ones who haven’t allowed their tastes to be tarnished by all the musical garbage out there...
...It seems he’s placed me and others like me between that proverbial rock and a hard place...
...And his report of Clinton’s stand on drugs (“I hate them”) had my husband and me grappling for your magazine so we could both read it on the train to work...
...Believe me, that was not the case in the Savoy Ballroom of the ’40s and early ’50s...
...Strong families, sound education in moral virtue, and secure cities must be restored...
...Judging from some of the tearjerking scenes at the Republican gathering in San Diego, the GOP is not beyond criticism either...
...If the Republican party is truly the party of ideas, it must not only argue why the policies of the Left—policies that empower the government instead of the people—are wrong for America...
...The fact is, the Natural Law party platform promotes conservative, wellfounded ideas—like the flat tax and school choice—that THE WEEKLY STANDARD would support and that Dole has been unable or unwilling to adopt...
...It brought attention to the slow deterioration of our political system...
...I’d like to have a dance band and a concert jazz orchestra, but it looks as though I’ll be relegated to the latter...
...Let us not be too quick to celebrate dubious egoists like the early industrialists nor to condemn compassionate measures like unemployment assistance and child-support laws...
...Joseph D. Kenner Elmsford, NY Home Alone and Smoking The Scrapbook item “Al Gore and His Woes” (Sept...
...Irene D. Knight Covington, LA Bridges and Laughs Once again your writers had me laughing out loud...
...This time it was Andrew Ferguson’s “A Bridge Too Far” (Sept...
...Disgusted by big government, they follow in the footsteps of the 1960s flower-child dropouts...
...The moral character of each individual—our habits of self-restraint, justice, prudence, courage, responsibility, and others that relate our selves to other persons—must grow and thrive in order to perpetuate freedom...
...His dead-on analysis jerked Clinton’s metaphor and agenda right to the edge of Owl Creek where they belong...
...Although other articles have exposed his hypocrisy, your item was concise and to the point...
...The 1996 Democratic convention proved that a mature and in-depth debate on the real-life consequences of public policy will now take a back seat to emotionalism and bleeding-heart imagery...
...In so doing, the editors do a disservice to the millions of Americans who signed petitions to put me and 700 other Natural Law party candidates on the ballot in 48 states and the District of Columbia...
...But if they refuse, then I’ll just be another modern jazz composer with “grand visions,” indulging my own excesses...
...Those folks danced to anything that swung, familiar or not...
...Am I somebody, or should I take up plumbing...
...We’ll see what happens...
...In this editorial, I was used as a foil to bolster the argument that Ross Perot should not be admitted to the debates...
...Adam J. Singer Washington, DC Gertrude Himmelfarb discusses her concern about “an inordinate individualism and an overweening state...
...In describing my candidacy, the editors obviously did not make even a cursory effort to familiarize themselves with my campaign or platform, the latter of which appeared in its complete form in USA Today on August 23...
...But Americans needn’t defend big government...
...But moral reformation is impossible without renewing civic virtue...
...The great Americans who signed the Declaration of Independence connected their individual interests with those of the whole nation...
...It would have been more useful had she addressed the fact that a society dominated by those sinister people, judges and lawyers, can never be civil...
...As leader of the Basie Orchestra from 1986 to 1995, I experienced a variety of reactions to our attempts to please dancers...
...James D. Higgins White Plains, NY Molten Swing Eric Felten’s intelligently written and historically perceptive article “Why The Big Bands Died” (Sept...
...After all, it has served their ends to turn us into the most lawsuit-happy country in the whole wide world...
...Indeed we must use our power of citizenship to restore limited constitutional government...
...were dances...
...I heartily agree that serious social reform must begin with a careful examination of difficult moral issues, but Himmelfarb’s article lacks perspective when she gives undue praise to Victorian philanthropists and undue scorn to government welfare programs...
...Until around 1956, 90 percent of the band’s engagements in the U.S...
...Just Say No” (Sept...
...The politics of “we care-ism” are on the rise in America...
...9) was most interesting...
...Then, once we’ve suffered through the copycat musicals that will inevitably trail in its wake, it will close and Broadway will find a place for the struggling composers and lyricists who have worthwhile, intelligent things to say...
...I was impressed with her candid debunking of political groups that turn civil society into a mere buzzword and political catchall...
...Today, as then, civil society will never be revived until we take seriously our moral obligation to defend and love constitutional republicanism...
...So now I’ve just about given up on the dance-band idea...
...Sure, they may be able to afford a pair of $60 orchestra seats now, but, by God, their hearts are still with the people struggling to be true to themselves—though not, it seems, true to a work ethic or a sense of moderation...
...Yet during the same period, hundreds of people from Sacramento to Stockholm happily told us our music made them want to dance...
...The most disheartening thing was dealing with complaints from folks who were unable to dance to our music because it wasn’t familiar to them...
...I suppose it was the magic of the Basie name that got us over, because I can’t buy a dance gig for a big band now...
...The GOP and this country cannot afford to engage in today’s political fad of touchy-feely debate...
...Heather Philbin Lake Zurich, IL A Candidate Replies Naturally, I was quite disappointed to read “Perot in the Debates...
...There is one question that is never asked and perhaps you can answer it for me: Where were the parents of this 13year-old Nancy Gore when she started smoking...
...I’ve got tunes in my book that swing twice as hard as any of these, but people can’t dance to them because they aren’t familiar...
...It must bring reason back to political discussion and reverse the current trend towards sappy anti-intellectual discourse...
...Tell me, what’s up, Eric...
...What is surprising (and ultimately depressing) is that Rent won the Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as “best new musical” and that Stephen Sondheim—who not only reinvented the musical theater but gave us two of its greatest works (Sweeney Todd and Assassins)—was a mentor and supporter of Jonathan Larson, creator of Rent...
...After reading the article, however, I’m left with a very serious question: Does a composer/ arranger who wishes to exercise his creative urges now have the right to do so within a big-band context, given the negatives contained in Felten’s comments about modern jazz writers...
Vol. 2 • September 1996 • No. 2
