Correspondence
Correspondence BLACK GOLD IRWIN M. STELZER'S REMEDY for the spike in world crude-oil prices is perplexing, to say the least ("OPEC Rides Again," March 20). Oil prices are too high, so . . . raise...
...But alas, as before, nothing will come of it...
...But "pro-choice Catholic" is a contradiction in terms...
...He then gives two options...
...Robert Thurston's statement that "Stalin was not guilty of mass first-degree murder," whatever that means, nearly mirrors British historian David Irving's repeated assertion that no documentary evidence directly implicates Hitler as a mass murderer...
...In their efforts to minimize both the scope and the number of victims of the Stalinist terror, contemporary American academic apologists for Stalin employ methods remarkably similar to those European academics who acknowledge Hitler's "crimes" against European Jews, but deny the Holocaust...
...However, its practitioners are the Buchanans and Stelzers of the world, not the Reaganite freetraders...
...Perhaps the same is true of their apologists...
...I appreciate that Stelzer only suggests raising taxes (tariffs) on imported oil, but unless he knows of an overlooked spigot somewhere, higher tariffs on imports would still mean even higher market prices for crude and, hence, higher energy costs for U.S...
...I don't think so, but there is a third way that is very workable...
...Similarly, Stelzer proposes to punish Mexico for joining OPEC production cuts by closing our borders to Mexican exports and immigration...
...But Bush's problem, stemming from a onetime appearance at an eccentric and obscure regional university, pales beside the "Catholic problem" of Vice President Gore and the Democrats...
...consumers and industry than even OPEC would have us pay...
...The press will have a field day, and the Democratic campaign will degenerate into a circus...
...If we do, anti-abortion Catholics (that is, real Catholics) will be outraged and will demonstrate at every campaign stop, while one or two bishops will suggest that the candidate ought to be excommunicated...
...The average drilling well involves, directly and indirectly, over 200 people...
...Bob Torricelli, with an ear for the vox populi, calls for a six-month hiatus on the diesel fuel tax...
...Clearly, there is such a thing as voodoo economics...
...Sure, if we can boost gasoline to a par with European prices of 3 to 4 dollars a gallon, then we will really be hurting OPEC...
...Here we go again" would have been a more descriptive title...
...Boy, that'll show 'em...
...One of them calls for Al Gore's election...
...Additional wildcat drilling probably could not meet all our needs, but it would go a long way towards relieving the need for foreign oil...
...At least Senator Bob understands the problem for what it is, high prices, and not a scarcity of the product...
...These potential oil areas carry a higher risk than exploration in the past, and investors need an incentive for the increased cost...
...ROBERT B. ROBINSON San Antonio, TX STALIN'S FRIENDS I WISH TO COMMEND Jacob Heilbrunn for his excellent article, "Stalin's New American Apologists" (March 13...
...JOHN TREACY Evanston, IL LOVE YOUR WORK I WISH I'D WRITTEN John Podhoretz's piece about Walter Matthau ("The Unlikeliest Star," Feb...
...In labeling as "extremists" all those opposed to the for-profit industrial-scale killing of the unborn, the vice president exiles beyond the political pale all Catholics faithful to a central tenet of Catholic theology: the sanctity of innocent human life...
...DAVID R. CARLIN Newport, RI DEM CATHOLICS (II) FRED BARNES MAY BE CORRECT in his analysis of "George W. Bush's Catholic Problem" (March 13...
...Gore and company may attempt to rebut criticisms of anti-Catholicism by pointing out the "pro-choice Catholics" prominent in the Democratic party...
...ROBERT CONQUEST Hoover Institution Stanford, CA DEM CATHOLICS (I) MATTHEW REES LISTS Sen...
...How—by giving it to Standard Oil...
...Utilize the federal oil reserve now being held ostensibly for national military emergency...
...We can't nominate a pro-life Catholic, of course, because of the stranglehold the pro-choice folks have on our party...
...Why is it every time energy prices spike upwards we go through the same machinations and ruminations, and suggest the same tired old bromides as a solution, ignoring the core problems...
...Also, offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has been greatly reduced by federal red tape...
...Finally, the notion that much of the Stalinist terror was neither ordered nor countenanced by Stalin, but instead was committed by rogue underlings or local officials, is paralleled by the claim often made by Nazi apologists—most notably Irving—that Hitler either did not know, or was unaware of the scope, of the violence being committed against Jews...
...Nor can we nominate a pro-choice Catholic, such as Kerry...
...But it is gravely marred by a serious error that could not conceivably have been made by anyone in the field itself...
...This proposal is paradoxically made after Stelzer has claimed, perhaps too expansively, that Mexican immigration is an important check on inflationary pressures here...
...It would also be fair to say that Sheila Fitzpatrick, though of revisionist tendencies, is far from being on the same low level as others that Heilbrunn so effectively quotes...
...LEIGHTON ANDERSON Whittier, CA I READ IRWIN M. STELZER'S dissertation on rising oil prices with great alarm...
...He confusingly argues that higher oil prices are "more of a threat" in the currently good economic climate than they would be otherwise, while also claiming that an increase in oil prices through tariffs would have "no negative effect on economic growth...
...Will they find articulate and informed Republican Catholic laypersons to exploit it...
...John Kerry of Massachusetts as one of the four leading contenders for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination ("The Veep's Veep," March 20...
...But Church teaching on the core issue of abortion is clear: Those who advance abortion, whether they be physicians who wield the knives or officials who promote the practice in public policy, have in fact left the Church and cut themselves off from the sacraments until such time as they repent and mend their ways...
...Without every military truck in the United States buying fuel at the roadside, and every government vehicle suddenly stopping to use its GSA credit card to deplete the existing supplies, the benefits treble...
...Gradually the Democratic party is driving Catholics out of its ranks...
...It'll never happen, since we Democrats can't afford to nominate a Catholic (which Kerry is...
...Stelzer is right about one thing, though: The present conditions for using our federal strategic reserve of fuel oil will never be met, and so it will never be used, ever...
...It is accurate to refer to the Cuomos, the Daleys, and the Kennedys as persons who are "former Catholics," or who were "born Catholics...
...Use the federal reserve of uselessly stockpiled oil to truly drive oil prices down...
...CHARLES H. FARLEY Greenville, NC IN HIS ARTICLE on rising oil prices, Irwin M. Stelzer bemoans our vulnerability to OPEC rapacity, but not once in his article did he even hint of increasing domestic oil production...
...A pro-choice Catholic vice-presidential nominee in 2000 would accelerate the process...
...The Church is a big tent with room for widely disparate political and social views...
...It was not Republican politicians and judges who defended the preposterous notion that money extorted from Catholic taxpayers must be used to defile a picture of the Virgin Mary with pornographic images and excrement...
...Likewise, J. Arch Getty's statement that Stalinist slave-labor camps were not death camps is not far removed from French professor Robert Faurisson's proclamation of the "good news" that Nazi concentration camps were labor camps, not places designed for extermination, and certainly not equipped with gas chambers...
...Heilbrunn nominates Stephen Cohen as the original revisionist, though shown as disappointed by his disciples...
...It is inaccurate to suggest that they remain Catholics in full communion with their Church...
...Cohen, though one may disagree with his views, has never (a) palliated Stalinism or (b) distorted the evidence—and never had anything to say in favor of those that do...
...Will they have the courage to seize it...
...More fuel is available for civilian needs, less citizen tax money is spent on energy by government agencies, and the OPEC cartel will see that we truly can organize and react instead of fumbling around in the same old loop like last time...
...Yes indeed, and shooting your foot off obviates the need to buy two shoes as often...
...Oil prices are too high, so . . . raise oil taxes...
...The real answer to cartel behavior is the one Stelzer fails to mention, despite its prominence in the standard economics texts that he purports to cite: Give the cartel time to fall apart on its own, as incentives to covertly raise production levels overcome the benefits of sticking to the restrictive production quotas...
...TERRY TEACHOUT New York, NY...
...Why not test the fuel distribution system now...
...New Brunswick, NJ THERE IS SOME GOOD STUFF in Jacob Heilbrunn's article on "revisionist" writings on Stalinism...
...There are vast oil-potential areas that have had little or no exploration—the Columbia Plateau, Snake River, Down Warp, Nevada, and offshore California, to name a few...
...It is not Republicans, but Democratic bigots in the media, the arts, Hollywood, and the television sitcoms who trumpet the sneering contempt for Church teachings, rituals, and leaders that is ubiquitous in popular culture...
...The Republicans have an opportunity here...
...These parallels suggest that there might be merit to the old idea that socialism, communism, and fascism— while taking different forms—belong indeed to one genus...
...Yes, this would require a change of policy, but is it not high time we started to think "out of the box" and start acting like the great nation we are...
...the other, as I've detailed, is clearly not an option...
...GEORGE H. SHOCKEY JR...
...Stelzer's suggestion that the cure for the current situation is an energy/import tax is the same old "higher taxes will solve everything" mantra that we know to have been discredited in the 1970s...
...Beyond the abortion issue, Democrats have a cultural "Catholic problem...
...Why not a third choice...
Vol. 5 • April 2000 • No. 28
