Time to Get Beyond 1917
Time to Get Beyond 1917 Iread David Frum's "1917 and All That" (April 28) with great interest. While I agree with many of his premises, I was greatly disappointed that he failed to highlight...
...While I agree with many of his premises, I was greatly disappointed that he failed to highlight another event in 1917 that contributed as much, if not more, to cynicism and fashionable anarchism in the West: the Russian Revolution...
...It is itself the highest political end...
...Abraham Lincoln, defender non pareil of the constitutional Union, never doubted that reality...
...But I suspect it reflects a long-term liberal "reverse racism" rather than a short-term effort to pressure the Likud government...
...Who could explain the contrary position to Lincoln...
...Angela J. Grover Woodburn, OR Consider, for the moment, that a libertarian is one who holds (with Lord Acton) that "Liberty is not the means to a higher political end...
...As Justice Iredell pointed out, 199 years ago in Calder v. Bull, "The ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard: the ablest and the purest of men have differed upon the subject...
...He's just wearing out his eyes and making museum visits dreadful experiences...
...Correspondence There is no escaping the fact that when you free the courts not merely from politics but from the law itself, judicial activism ensues...
...It means that one man can't be forced to conduct his private affairs according to another man's personal preference...
...John Hepp Fairfield, CT What Would Lincoln Say...
...When Jaffa cites Jefferson for the proposition that majorities must be reasonable and Madison that they must act "rightfully," he is saying that judges have the power—indeed, the obligation—to take into account extra-constitutional principles, derived from inescapably vague notions of natural law, in making their decisions...
...Third, the idea that a person should be allowed to do something of his own choosing, even if it may be bad for him, is not the same as condoning it...
...Rather than use the brute force method of spending many hours at a time in a museum to appreciate art, Epstein needs to try a different strategy...
...But his article includes three inaccurate points...
...Obversely, conservatives aim at preserving civilization...
...There would be no schizophrenic government waging "war" on the drug user while forcing non-drug users to pay for addictions as we do now through welfare and SSI payments...
...Libertarians think that drugs should be legal, which does not mean that they condone drug use...
...Judith a. Klinghoffer Cherry Hill, NJ Conservative Alliances II Thank you for David Frum's excellent article "The Libertarian Temptation" (April 21...
...That view encompasses the fundamental premise of libertarianism and forms the basis for consensus on economic and political matters...
...They and their votaries, when acting against the expressions of legislatures and the people in the name of constitutional rights, are only doing what is right and reasonable in their minds, according to their private notions of natural law and justice...
...Jaffa seeks to transmute the Declaration, a document with no standing in law, into our super-Constitution...
...A concern for civilization, however, does not provide cohesion when it comes to political matters...
...The intelligent citizen unsophisticated in the arcana of present-day constitutional law," for whom Jaffa professes concern, should be clear as to what Jaffa is suggesting when he says that "the natural and God-given rights of human persons" "do not originate in those powers [established by the Constitution], nor are they dependent on them for their existence as rights...
...How many in academe and the press are disappointed that downsizing did not lead to government-sponsored job-preservation schemes...
...Due to my job-related time constraints, I can spend no more than twenty minutes per visit at the National Gallery of Art...
...They envision the civilization they wish to achieve, without recognizing that the use of state coercion tends to counter their vision...
...That their policy preferences are not actually written in the Constitution is of little concern...
...For liberals, consequently, any Israeli government that asks Arafat and the Palestinians to live up to their commitments, to end the vicious anti-Israeli propaganda, or to refrain from violence, is a government that seeks to undermine the peace process by asking the impossible...
...Many of those attitudes can be traced to 1917, but not to the battlefields of Western Europe...
...Peter Parker Alexandria, VA Double standard for Bibi Ishare Fred Barnes's irritation with the double standard demonstrated in the administration's attitude towards Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat ("Bibi Gets the Bum's Rush," April 21...
...As a result, we may have forgotten how to appreciate or even recognize progress, prosperity, and security...
...They can be traced to a mindset that disparages the culture and institutions of the United States...
...Judges are free to read the Constitution's ringing phrases and divine whatever policies they prefer, so long as they have some relationship to the capacious proclamations of the Declaration...
...Their concerns go beyond the political arena and include national survival...
...Conservatives err by legislating morality and imposing virtue...
...How many are secretly disappointed that predictions of environmental and demographic disaster have not come to pass...
...That pledge is easily identifiable for conservative and libertarian alike in criminal matters...
...How many consider the events of one night at the Tailhook convention more significant than hundreds of combat flights in service of democracy...
...Nathaniel T. Trelease Cheyenne, WY Small Doses Are Better Ienjoyed reading Joseph Epstein's "My Detested Fellow Pilgrims" (April 28...
...CCRI is constitutional not because the Declaration or Abraham Lincoln may be cited in support, but because nothing in the Constitution as written contravenes it...
...The pessimistic and cynical messages continue to go out long after the collapse of the society that encouraged them...
...Rand developed the Objectivist philosophy and deplored what she considered its prostitution in the Libertarian party...
...similarly, conservatives could acknowledge their weakness when it comes to the methods by which they improve the world...
...Jaffa's take is not better than Brennan's...
...The press and education have been significantly influenced in this process...
...Allen Weingarten Morristown, NJ...
...This is no different from the judicial philosophies of, say, Chief Justice Warren or Justice Brennan...
...But in fact it is a peculiar "conservative" justification for the judicial activism we see everywhere today...
...The proposition that where the Constitution is silent, the courts must not speak, is turned on its head in the Orwellian fashion Jaffa claims to disdain...
...The 8.5 million horrible deaths from World War I are insignificant next to the number of Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Central Europeans, Cambodians, and Americans killed by the ideas of 1917...
...This may sound unobjectionable and perfectly consistent with "judicial restraint...
...With a touch of modesty, libertarians could acknowledge their weakness when it comes to the purposes for which man exercises his liberty...
...Second, Frum concludes that "without a shared understanding of what is right, what is moral, no political movement can long survive...
...Libertarians generally err in such subjects as foreign policy, since they see the need to protect the freedom of the individual, and not the need to maintain American and Western civilization...
...Now, they may arrive at opinions different from those Professor Jaffa would prefer, but the methodology they employ is in essence the same as his...
...This kind of societal response worked before drugs were made illegal just as it worked for illegitimate births...
...Most conservatives can also agree with it as it is applied to government functions, i.e., regulation of business, confiscatory taxation, affirmative action, etc...
...At Gettysburg, in November 1863, he recalled the creation of "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...
...That is the political essence of the Declaration and the Constitution...
...Gordon M. Seely Belmont, CA With respect to California's decision to approve CCRI, Professor Jaffa writes that it is a "great error" to believe that they are "the ultimate arbiter of questions of this magnitude...
...In a libertarian society, we could fire a drug user, expel him from school, not allow our children to associate with him, not rent to him, and in all other ways shun him when he engaged in that behavior...
...Unfortunately, it does not provide cohesion on subjects that transcend those areas...
...Where they part company with libertarians is with social or individual issues...
...First, Ayn Rand was never a libertarian and probably squirms mightily in her grave every time she hears a conservative call her one...
...He is undoubtedly correct as evidenced by the conservative Republican "revolution" that is dying on the vine for lack of unifying principles...
...This subtle form of racism was brought to my attention by none other than Dean Rusk during a discussion of the anti-war movement...
...Thomas Aquinas...
...On February 22, 1861, en route to his first inauguration, he declared, "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence...
...Could one enjoy six consecutive hours of Beethoven...
...The ultimate difference between libertarians and conservatives is that the conservative still believes that there are certain areas in the realm of human conduct where government force is appropriate...
...According to Jaffa, the Constitution isn't so much made up of fixed rules, hammered out in imperfect "compromises" during the drafting convention, as it is the bearer of principles antecedent to all written law, principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence...
...CCRI states, "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or natural origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting...
...It could be said that conservatives are clear about the why, while libertarians are clear about the how...
...It implies that non-Westerners are essentially immature and therefore cannot and should not be held to the same standards as Westerners...
...When jurists are routinely unfaithful to the Constitution, as its provisions were understood by the founders, it is not reasonable to expect of them the wisdom of St...
...That's to my advantage...
...In "Why CCRI is Constitutional" (April 21), Harry Jaffa correctly argues that the Constitution came into being to protect human rights proclaimed as God-given by the Declaration of Independence...
...one that seeks often to weaken democracy and hasten the arrival of a totalitarian utopia...
...For seven decades after 1917, advocates of international revolution obtained encouragement and support for anything that would delegitimize the institutions and culture of the West, including the military, religion, and the family...
...The Libertarian party's understanding of morality is simple: No one can belong to the party without signing a pledge saying that force and coercion are wrong...
Vol. 2 • May 1997 • No. 34
