Forbes's Chords of Liberty
Forbes's Chords of Liberty In his otherwise useful survey of Steve Forbes's nascent presidential efforts, Fred Barnes gratuitously adds to The Weekly Standard's litany of attacks on libertarianism...
...Intrigued by Bailey's use of a "quote" that didn't resemble anything I'd ever heard Gore say on the subject, I called the good professor to ask the source of this so-called quote...
...On March 4, the New York Times reported that "Vice President Al Gore acknowledged today that 'on a few occasions' he had made telephone calls from his White House office...
...Here our most extreme revisionism is painfully laid out by Tucker Carlson for all to see...
...Without the freedom to choose, morality is a meaningless concept, in any case...
...We would prefer the former but could acknowledge the moral integrity of the latter...
...For a series of books similar in tone to The Adventures ofTom Sawyer, try the Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald...
...Things aren't so bad...
...That "sliver" was large enough to generate victories in the Arizona and Delaware primaries and at one point had Forbes second in Iowa...
...Thomas's self-contradictory assaults are prime evidence that it is needed...
...Best of all, many of these books were actually assigned by teachers in the Fairfax County, Va., public schools...
...I may have made a few calls...
...Dean Emeritus Trinity Episcopal Seminary Ambridge, PA Gore's Premature Senility Duane W. Bailey suggests a national memory test to measure alleged memory problems at the Clinton White House ("You Must Remember This," Oct...
...Documents obtained today . . . indicate a number about twice as high...
...The Gospel of God is given for us to evangelize the world, yet it would appear that in significant measure the world is evangelizing the Episcopal church...
...It is obvious to all that the present divisions in the Episcopal Church cannot long be tolerated by its members...
...While the editors of The Weekly Standard may view national greatness as requiring the construction of a tunnel between New York and London or some such project, Steve Forbes is touching a responsive chord in Americans who find a nation's greatness in its ability to secure human liberty...
...Gee, I guess he's right: There is nothing new in all that...
...Factions contradict and denounce the most sacred convictions of each other...
...Christine Hall Silver Spring, MD Boys with Chests In praising G. A. Henty and other Victorian novelists, David Frum paints too gloomy a picture of recent literature for elementary-school boys ("When Boys Were Boys," Oct...
...His worst distortion is to imply that I see the patterns of discrimination and exclusion that I detail as "simply a reflection of Anglo-Saxon culture" or "inherently 'American.'" The central theme of my book is that such patterns are made likely by the politics of nation-building, everywhere and always...
...As 1776 closes, the Liberty Bell is sounded to mark each congressman's signing of the Declaration of Independence...
...But when we recognize that income gaps between blacks and whites and women and men remain substantial, that in real terms the economic condition of poor blacks has worsened in recent years, that the nation's education system is sharply segregated and rapidly getting more so, that new forms of scientific racism have been gaining respectability inside and outside the academy—then what Thomas is really saying becomes clear...
...13), Andrew Peyton Thomas criticizes me for not writing a second volume on 20th-century citizenship laws...
...I applaud Forbes's decision to include a call for moral leadership along with his libertarian policy proposals, ranging from the flat tax to school choice to Social Security privatization...
...Rogers M. Smith New Haven, CT Adrenal Patriotism Ienjoyed John Podhoretz's words of praise for the musical 1776 ("Watching, Seeing, Reading," Oct...
...Edward H. Crane President The Cato Institute Washington, DC More Conflicting Visions In his review of my book Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S...
...The problem with Forbes's 1996 campaign, we're told, is that because "he talked obsessively about a 17 percent flat tax, he appealed chiefly to a narrow sliver of voters, mostly supply-siders and libertarians...
...It is possible of course that Gore made all 86 calls on one or two marathon occasions, but I think most listeners took his original statement to mean that the number of calls had been minimal, as well as the number of occasions...
...Ronald Reagan's ability to ally social conservatives with free-market libertarians was not done through sleight of hand, but rather because the desirability of reducing government's role in our society was evident to both groups...
...Nevertheless, I don't believe that I did Gore a serious disservice...
...His collapse in that state was due primarily to a massive push poll paid for by Bob Dole that distorted Forbes's views on abortion and cited a fictitious study that claimed the flat tax would damage farm values...
...The brilliance of 1776 is that it first engages the audience with humor and then, as the plot progresses, draws them into the very serious ideas and events that constituted the American Revolution...
...I too experienced that wonderful and arresting feeling when I first saw the musical seven years ago...
...Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien, Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, Shiloh by Phyllis Naylor, and The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare...
...There is nothing inconsistent in his doing so...
...John H. Rogers Jr...
...I also note, as he does not, that though Dred Scott did strike down a congressional law, candidates endorsing it won 61 percent of the presidential vote in 1860...
...The United States, he says, is an exception: It has done more "than perhaps any other nation to redeem its misdeeds," and so "ought to pat itself on the back...
...Clearly someone had forgotten something...
...Since it is the revisionists who are changing the central assertions of sacred Scripture, it would seem that the only honest thing for them to do would be either to recover their first love in the Gospel and to return to God's word as written, or to take their new show on the road...
...Rather, the campaign strategy of not organizing grass-roots forces and spending way too much money on media attacks was to blame...
...By dismissing the past as if it had no impact on the present and by smugly, complacently telling us to stand pat, he is urging us to perpetuate the injustices whose pervasive presence he cannot deny, and from which he benefits with apparent relish...
...He says it is wrong to focus on decisions of the judiciary because it is "the least democratic branch," without noting that most of the decisions I discuss simply add a judicial imprimatur to laws passed by Congress and signed by the president...
...Forbes's troubles in 1996 didn't stem just from Dole's dishonest and unethical tactics or the appeals to class envy on the part of virtually all of the GOP field...
...True, most of these books do not depict courage on the battlefield, but they do feature male characters who find the courage to triumph against terrible odds in a variety of situations...
...GOP partisans have widely misquoted Gore as saying that he made only "a few calls" from his office...
...Forbes's Chords of Liberty In his otherwise useful survey of Steve Forbes's nascent presidential efforts, Fred Barnes gratuitously adds to The Weekly Standard's litany of attacks on libertarianism ("The Forbes Factor," Oct...
...But such transgressions can be forgiven...
...It is simply absurd to deny that the exclusionary views I discuss were politically popular...
...I just don't remember.')" It is clear from the context that this is supposed to be a remark about fund-raising calls from the White House...
...One need not go back to the 19th century to find well-written, appealing fiction that depicts courageous male characters...
...Supreme Court...
...History ("Sins of Our Fathers— Again," Oct...
...By August 27 the Times was reporting that he "was asked by the Democratic National Committee to make 140 fund-raising telephone calls and made 86, all from his White House office...
...The most charitable interpretation is to assume that with the passage of time he had simply forgotten how many calls were made...
...It also reported, "Earlier this month, the White House put the number at 48...
...It had nothing to do with his free-market/libertarian views...
...Indeed, the free market/libertarian sentiment probably already makes up a plurality of Americans, not to mention an overwhelming majority of the rapidly growing netizen community that so troubles the neo-Luddite editors of The Weekly Standard...
...I simply insist that the United States has been no exception...
...Bailey writes that "Vice President Al Gore has a particularly weak memory for small numbers...
...Thomas cannot criticize a single fact in my book as erroneous, so he relies on snide distortions...
...Professor Bailey is the first writer I've seen who also tries to pretend that Gore somewhere said that he couldn't remember...
...Bob Somerby Baltimore, MD Duane W. Bailey responds: I do remember a conversation with Somerby, and I am grateful to him for correcting the inaccuracy of my "quote...
...Indeed, enlightened leaders of the religious Right such as Paul Weyrich and Ralph Reed, as well as their constituencies, are fully aware that government is not the proper vehicle for establishing and promoting moral and ethical standards in our society...
...The Very Rev Dr...
...I highly recommend the following books and authors: Hatchet and many other survival stories by Gary Paulsen, Save the Queen of Sheba by Louise Moeri, the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, the My Teacher is an Alien series by Bruce Cov-ille, Mrs...
...I dare say I wasn't the only one in the audience who felt shivers up and down her spine —as well as a profound respect for the vision and courage of our founding fathers...
...I learned, not surprisingly, that there was no source— that this was simply Bailey's account of "what I think he said on one of his appearances on TV...
...To be sure, 1776 takes some license, with John Adams expressing contempt for his antagonist John Dickinson's overriding concern for private-property rights, and James Wilson of Pennsylvania portrayed as a coward seeking obscurity, when in fact he remained a respected leader after the Revolution, even serving on the U.S...
...The United States has indeed made progress of which we can be proud, as I state...
...Susan Kristol McLean, VA Episcopal Road Show This reader has seldom read such a graphic expose of the divided condition of the Episcopal church ("The Episcopal Church in Crisis," Oct...
...If Thomas had read carefully, he would have learned that I am indeed writing that volume...
...From his sylvan aerie—with his own memory failing—Professor Bailey provides a revealing lesson in the way urban legends can grow...
...He snips out passages where I acknowledge exclusionary views in leaders I greatly admire, like Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, in order to make full assessments look one-sided...
...Meanwhile, Professor Bailey's article suggests his own crying need for remedial work in the use of quotation marks...
...Thomas claims that position is a "truism," and yet he ends up denying it...
...Cheer up...
Vol. 3 • October 1997 • No. 7
