Bullying China
Bullying China You write of the human-rights resolution that eventually passed the Senate by a vote of 95-5 ("DiFi Returns," Scrapbook, March 9). I was one of the five dissenters. The resolution...
...How about getting the whole country behind the idea of truth-in-advertising for government ads...
...He should have mentioned the one-sided weapon in the government's arsenal: It is not subject to truth-in-advertising laws for either its paid ads or its "public-service announcements...
...Finally, let us remember that Brock's and the Los Angeles Times's Troopergate pieces were not the only exposes of Clinton's abuse of power attested to by Arkansas state troopers...
...Katherine S. Spaht Baton Rouge, LA A Bit of Charity for Lewis Ithought David Frum's editing of Anthony Lewis's columns on Watergate was hilarious ("Anthony Lewis: The President Must Go," March 9...
...Covenant marriage requires "missionaries" to change the culture, one heart at a time...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr...
...However, the reality is that this was not a productive way to pursue human-rights violations...
...What they wrought is evident on virtually every major American campus today...
...Rod Grams Washington, DC No Crock with Brock Eric Felten's piece on my former employee and admirer David Brock was very intelligent, but I would like to file several caveats regarding Felten's explication of the gaudiest self-immolation since the last Buddhist priest put flame to skirt in Saigon ("Clinton's Apologist," March 23...
...After all, Lewis was a cub reporter, so to speak, and (though in his late 40s) more inexperienced then...
...The legislation requires its proponents to change the culture, because covenant marriage is a choice that couples must be persuaded to adopt—even though consent to covenant marriage constitutes what most Americans would consider a selfless act...
...He correctly cites their First Amendment freedom-of-association right in support of their membership policies...
...What country was the sponsor of such atrocities...
...In fact, the resolution had little to do with human rights, and a lot to do with American politics...
...Witness the ads we have all seen in magazines for prescription drugs...
...Making Puerto Rico a state makes about as much sense as statehood for the Philippines, also acquired in the 1898 war with Spain...
...He had just come back from Haiphong Harbor, where he gleefully reported in the New York Times that Soviet and Chinese ships were crossing the U.S...
...But he only alludes to another, even more widely understood right that supports them: free exercise of religion...
...There is no doubt that James was a first-rate thinker...
...Eric V Field Golden, CO The Great Santayana Your Books & Arts section is a must-read, and J. Bottum's piece on the American philosopher William James ("The Autumn of American Liberalism," March 30) was as thought-provoking and stimulating as anything the magazine has published in the last few months...
...Warren C. Fisher Blue Bell, PA Defending Scouts' Honor Thank you for Larry P Arnn's excellent article in defense of the Boy Scouts of America ("Scouts' Honor," March 30...
...A referendum in 1993 found 46.3 percent wanting statehood...
...That no major error has been discovered after four years of inspection by the Clintonites and their usual efforts at manipulation merely fortifies my point that its reportage was accurate...
...Tim Goeglein Washington, DC J. Bottum Responds: In the real intellectual history of America, Charles Sanders Peirce is without much doubt the most brilliant philosopher, John Dewey the most influential, and William James the most sane...
...A few months after those pieces appeared, we published a Troopergate piece by Danny Wattenberg revealing Gov...
...mines dropped by air in the harbor...
...I'd like to see the disclaimer for the absurd assertion that secondhand smoke kills 50,000 Americans every year...
...But Insull's great achievements are responsible for the way we generate, transmit, buy, and regulate electricity...
...A great scoop had it been true...
...Barb Mulvey Fulton, NY We'll Hold at 50 As Matthew Rees notes, if Puerto Rico "became a state, Mississippi would no longer bear the dubious distinction of being the poorest state in the nation" ("And Puerto Rico Makes 51?," March 16...
...However, Frum might have been more charitable...
...Court orders to suppress the Boy Scouts' religious and moral beliefs, purposes, and requirements in considering applicants would seem to be direct and egregious violations of the free-exercise clause...
...Senate single out one nation to bully...
...Lawrence F. Kaplan's "No One's a Keynesian Now" (March 23) focuses only on Insull's declining years and his failures as a financier...
...this is surely wrong-headed...
...It was, however, not "sloppy...
...It could have been Laos...
...There is no debate, as Bottum suggests, that James is considered the greatest philosopher by most American liberals and those who write books about American philosophers...
...But not a few conservatives would take exception with Bottum's assertion that James was "America's best philosopher...
...Brent Hall Belleview, FL Geraldo's Haloes When I saw Geraldo Rivera on TV trashing Kenneth Starr, I had an instant flashback to his role in the movie Bonfire of the Vanities (Danielle Crittenden, "Geraldo's America," March 23...
...Insull deserves to be remembered for what he achieved, and not as a cartoon-like capitalist in a game of Monopoly...
...Or North Korea...
...Daniel John Sobieski Chicago, IL Better Habits of the Heart As the drafter of Louisiana's covenant marriage legislation, I was pleased to read Pia Nordlinger's "The Anti-Divorce Revolution" (March 2...
...The resolution condemned a country for violating human rights...
...Seems he's playing this role again...
...The Great Insull Samuel Insull may have been a failed capitalist, but he also was the key innovator in creating the electric-utility industry we enjoy today...
...Or maybe an African country like Angola or Kenya...
...In fact, it could have been any number of countries, but instead it was limited to just one: China...
...Hawaiian statehood had 94 percent...
...Alaska became a state with the support of 83 percent of its population...
...Brock's Troopergate piece might strike Felten as "meandering...
...One by one they raved about how awful this particular country's record was on human rights over the years...
...He made electric service not a luxury but a necessity...
...Gingrich frets that Johnson's treatment of the Left for its actions over the past 35 years is too harsh and should be saved for separate publication...
...Why did the U.S...
...Editors at this magazine verified his reporting with the utmost care...
...It could have been Cambodia, Syria, or Libya, or Burundi, or Colombia, or Vietnam...
...It seems to me that the current radical ideology that reigns in American higher learning finds many of its taproots in the philosophy of James, Dewey, Peirce, and their brethren...
...Clinton in even more obvious abuses of power...
...Perhaps it was an easy vote cast in an effort to score a few political points with the folks back home...
...The facts and the horrors were made clear to all those who listened...
...Actually, the poorest state is the state in which the GOP leadership finds itself, bypassing winning electoral issues such as school choice, partial-birth abortion, and privatization of Social Security in favor of deluding themselves that Mexican gangs in South Central Los Angeles are going to rush to register as Republicans because Newt Gingrich supports statehood for Puerto Rico...
...But Santayana is underrated and underappreciated largely because his conservative ideas are out of vogue among those who have created James's "current fame...
...Morton Lurie Raleigh, NC Secondhand Truths Fred Barnes was exactly right regarding the tyranny of the government in its war on smokers ("The Most Despised Vice," March 23...
...Carl Olson Woodland Hills, CA...
...In the movie, Geraldo plays a TV reporter who is trying to beatify a thug...
...Or perhaps because it was a large enough target that senators and their supporters felt they could not miss the opportunity to attack it...
...If the Republican leadership had Johnson's courage and insight in linking past to present, the United States would not be the rudderless dreadnought it is today...
...Nothing was accomplished, and meaningless rhetoric prevailed...
...The American Spectator Arlington, VA Elect Paul Johnson Speaker Newt Gingrich's review of Paul Johnson's latest book, A History of the American People, reveals the core weakness of the Republican party's leadership ("Unafraid of Greatness," March 16...
...Medical claims have to be backed up with complete disclosure...
...I am now thoroughly convinced that the covenant-marriage legislation, which focuses on making the marriage vow a commitment through the practical tools of mandatory pre-marital and pre-divorce counseling (and doesn't simply make divorce more difficult), is preferable to other solutions to the break-up of families...
...Furthermore, contrary to Brock's insinuation in his famously unreliable Esquire piece, I never told Brock I would pay the troopers for information...
...It will give a boost to pending covenant-marriage legislation in Georgia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Virginia...
...If the Senate were serious about human rights, it would have had a more complete list of human-rights violators, recognizing that abuses are far more widespread than one nation...
...The cultured, wry, eccentric, and half-foreign George Santayana is unfortunately nowhere...
...Senators marched in near lockstep down to the Senate floor, with special interests and editorial boards throwing them candies of support...
...And the fact is, Puerto Ricans haven't exactly been clamoring for it...
...There were stories of babies and women abused by the government of a certain country...
...But his colleague George Santayana was, on the whole, the greater and more profound thinker, whose work extends far beyond the time in which he lived...
...Perhaps because the United States engages China whenever possible to ensure that we can improve human-rights conditions...
...My only offer of support was the possible organization of a legaldefense fund...
Vol. 3 • April 1998 • No. 30
