Correspondence
Correspondence NEW GOP PHILOSOPHY? DAVID BROOKS PRAISES George W. Bush and John McCain for "creating a new Republican philosophy" ("One Nation Conservatism," Sept. 13). In it, one candidate...
...Social engineering has wreaked havoc for many decades...
...Republicans once believed in the inalienable rights of the individual, and that the function of government was strictly to protect those rights...
...PATRICK M. LEONARD New York, NY NEVADA'S STATE OF MIND AS A LONGTIME SUBSCRIBER, I was surprised and disappointed when you chose Wyoming writer Bill Croke to review David Thomson's new book on Nevada ("Jackpot," Sept...
...Yet the litany of losses due to coercion are but its material consequences...
...Both "believe in conservative governance" extending the power of government...
...without regulating an economy, it expands...
...The practical difficulty is that it is popular to employ force...
...Rather than confining government to the protection of individual liberties, they wish to employ force to make the world a better place...
...The theory of employing force solely as a defense provides clear bounds as to what to do and, more important, what not to do, whereas the belief in coercion as a method of development has no natural bounds...
...Attempts at cultural engineering have been similarly disastrous...
...More devastating is the theory that underlies them, for morality cannot be coerced, but can only be spread by example and suasion...
...And he goes on from there to repeat all of the old clichés about legal gambling and the Las Vegas Strip...
...Finally, Croke writes, "what we're really waiting for is not a writer who can show us how the pieces of Nevada don't fit together, but a writer who can show us how they do...
...To adopt a purist view, that we lack the virtue and the understanding to tell one another how to live, remains an uphill battle...
...Hasn't he ever heard of Robert Laxalt, the son of a Basque sheep-herder and brother of former senator paul Laxalt, who has spent a distinguished 40-year writing career describing the fascinating and disparate people and lifestyles of "our peculiar state...
...After all, how is the world going to improve, unless we do something positive...
...Employing force, rather than suasion, to handle issues like drugs and abortion has been divisive rather than inspiring...
...ALLEN WEINGARTEN Morristown, NJ IN "ONE NATION CONSERVATISM," David Brooks writes that "liberalism is no longer dominant...
...Croke reveals his anti-Nevada bias right away when he declares, "It's Nevada and may God have mercy on our souls...
...The "new philosophy" that Brooks has discovered is a mere exaggeration of the perennially flawed reliance on force to further virtue...
...GUY W FARMER Carson City, NV...
...Without tying a baby in a straightjacket, it grows...
...Have we become so savvy and politicized that we no longer even remember the principle of non-intervention...
...Conservatives and religionists seem to have forgotten the blessings of liberty, where man's God-given free will is the source of the greatest growth...
...people love the sanctimony, self-righteousness, and pretense associated with telling others what to do and how to do it...
...since this is the case, is that why Bill Clinton vetoed the ban on partial-birth abortion...
...Why he's vetoing the $800 billion tax cut passed by the Republican Congress...
...In foreign affairs, employing force to be an influential power, rather than for defense, has similarly backfired, and undermined our antipathy toward tyranny...
...This illustrates the fundamental flaw shared by conservatives and religionists alike—a desire to impose virtue...
...without a National Academy of the Arts, an inspired poem is written...
...Apparently not, and that tells me a lot about Croke's knowledge of Nevada and Nevadans...
...Of course, Croke rehashes the well-known stories of mobster Bugsy Siegel and mob "wannabe" Frank Sinatra, without mentioning that the Nevada Gaming Commission revoked Sinatra's gambling licenses in 1963 for catering to Chicago godfather Sam Giancana...
...Conservatives should return to (or conserve) the vision of the Founders that would minimize coercion and foreign entanglements...
...I shudder to think what life would be like if liberalism was still dominant...
...The conceptual difficulty is raised by Brooks when he writes, "No party is worth supporting if its goals are wholly negative...
...Why he granted clemency to hard-core terrorists to win votes for his favorite carpetbagger...
...While writers like Croke are still worrying about Nevada gambling, a far more serious threat to the American public— unregulated Indian gambling—is proliferating in neighboring California, and elsewhere...
...But the seeds of growth are omnipresent...
...In it, one candidate represents domestic intervention, while the other stands for foreign intervention...
...Yet, even if we concede that their values and objectives are correct, we cannot fail to note that their methods are interventionist...
Vol. 5 • September 1999 • No. 2
