Correspondence
Correspondence DOCTOR OF OUR DREAMS I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY with both Max Boot's depiction of Henry Kissinger's central arguments concerning U.S. foreign policy and his more principled alternative...
...Franks lacks any persuasive central message and cannot play victim to the dollar advantage Corzine exercised in his victory last year...
...On the other hand, perhaps Hamilton, Madison, and Jay expected too much of their contemporaries...
...it's whether the offense rate is high enough within a certain population to make profiling within that population justifiable...
...DANIEL A. SIMON New York, NY WHAT ABOUT BOB...
...Those who seem prepared to do so should be monitored closely...
...Once we allow them to see whole groups or categories of people as "suspected criminals," we expose everyone in these groups to unacceptable risk...
...The one name he summons is Richard Holbrooke's...
...Individuals or groups of individuals who engage in criminal conduct should be apprehended...
...Try it, Mr...
...You would think, therefore, that true cold-eyed, cold-hearted practitioners of realpolitik would recommend that we reinforce our military presence in the Pacific, bolster our strategic partnerships with Japan and South Korea, and develop a new one with India—all in order to stymie Beijing's ambitions...
...Once such behavior is accepted by a society, can anyone in any group or even profession be considered safe from this kind of assault...
...You might like it...
...So you're wrong on three counts...
...We must prevent the sanctioning of this manner of profiling, for it inevitably affects the minds of our law enforcement officials...
...Yet their reluctance has nothing to do with concerns about the Asian balance of power or some sly masterful plan to "keep our friends close and our enemies closer...
...P.S...
...Nowhere does Tucker address stopping potential suspects on the basis of race, which is what I thought we meant by racial profiling...
...The entire concept runs contrary to the presumption of innocence we espouse...
...While Caldwell emphasizes so-called moderate strength in a primary, he fails to mention that only two Republicans since 1981 have been elected to statewide office, and two of the three races were decided by fewer than 50,000 votes...
...Ferguson, about my being a genius...
...Perhaps he fails to address this issue because disproportionate racial representation of criminal wrongdoers does not of itself justify the use of profiling on the basis of race...
...Though the statistics behind racial profiling may have shown some crime-lowering benefits, the price our society pays is too high...
...Instead, what these alleged heirs of Bismarck give us are soft words about the need to avoid confrontation with the Chinese, hand-wringing about the possible disruption of trade, and dismissals of those who urge a harder line with Beijing...
...It's a kinder, gentler way of life and may even inspire someone to say something nice about you when it's over...
...We should increase police presence...
...However, to sanction the practice of preemptive stops, searches, and detentions of any group of people in the name of acting on the odds threatens the foundation of the freedom we cherish in this nation...
...NICHOLAS J. ANTONICELLO JR Marina del Rey, CA THE TIMES THEY AIN'T WHEN THE SCRAPBOOK advised those who must have their texts in "modern language" to stick to the newspapers (June 18), it forgot to mention that if you are reading The Federalist Papers, you are reading what were originally newspaper columns...
...is George Kennan...
...As an African-American male and a political conservative, this is a topic that I find very perplexing...
...If the rate is that low and the police profile for murderers purely on a racial basis, then the police would have to stop a phenomenal number of innocent blacks to catch the few guilty ones...
...This would be a tremendous waste of law enforcement resources, not to mention the negative effect it would have of antagonizing a community whose cooperation one would prefer to have...
...Instead, although they would be loath to admit it, Henry Kissinger and others like him can't bear the thought that the United States might throw on the ash heap of history what has become known as their greatest accomplishment: Nixon's opening to China...
...For the sake of argument, let's say that the Nixon-Kissinger policy toward China was a brilliant geostrategic move that drove the Kremlin to distraction...
...If one is seen as a crime risk, there's a higher chance this individual will be stopped, detained, confronted, assaulted, and exposed to deadly force...
...Franks is to the left of most GOP primary voters and offers no compelling message on any issue that will ensure victory come November...
...The logic is very simple...
...That is as it should be...
...Instead, the number of wrongdoers within a certain group has to be high enough to make profiling useful...
...The fact that the primary process was hijacked by DiFrancesco and his legislative cronies to create the Franks candidacy after the filing deadline speaks volumes to the status-quo, rudderless Republican leadership that has controlled all three branches of New Jersey's state government since 1994...
...I suspect that it is similarly so for any other crime Tucker wishes to name...
...I think, however, that Boot stopped short of what seems to me an obvious conclusion one can draw about Kissinger and his ilk in the foreign policy establishment on the issue of China...
...Ignoring possible constitutional questions, the important statistic is not whether perpetrators are disproportionately of a certain race...
...The power to stop and detain is the power to punish— a power our legal system does not confer upon the police...
...Using Tucker's own numbers for murder, the answer is clearly "no...
...Allowing the constabulary to routinely stop individuals they believe represent a high-risk criminal element puts too much power in their hands...
...But Tucker states that even for blacks it was a mere 25.5 out of 100,000, or less than 3/100 of a percent...
...Let us assume that Tucker is correct about crime rates and his conclusion that certain minorities commit disproportionately more crimes...
...Now, having read it, I would appreciate your allowing me to say publicly that I have no problem with Ferguson or any other reviewer putting on paper whatever it is he thinks about anything anybody else has put on paper...
...The notion that Franks would even consider calling himself an "outsider" confirms how detached from political reality this myopic odyssey has become...
...Former New Jersey representative Bob Franks became the darling of the Republican center and state media because of their obsession with Jon Corzine's wealth in the 2000 campaign, but that does not translate into a GOP victory in 2001...
...China, our former partner in triangulation, now criticizes the American presence in East Asia, sternly warns us against putting on any hegemonic airs, and feverishly works to improve its military and space capabilities, improvements plainly directed at countering American military power...
...Senate, only to be vanquished by a more left-leaning Democrat...
...For instance, Tucker cites that in 1999, the murder rate for black offenders was seven times that for whites...
...Call that ego, or nostalgia, but don't call it realpolitik...
...You're also wrong, Mr...
...Schundler presents voters with a live option and not a "Democrat lite" approach to governing New Jersey...
...SCOTT E. BELLIVEAU Lexington, VAA MAX BOOT WRITES of his subject that "It is hard to think of any other major living American foreign policy figure who writes so elegantly or with such erudition...
...Despite its retention of large numbers of nuclear weapons, Russia is not a credible near-term military threat in Europe or anywhere else...
...it's about how crime rates for minorities are higher than for whites...
...CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL misses the mark in his analysis of the Schundler/Franks primary battle ("The Jersey GOP's Family Feud," June 18) by not properly explaining the genesis of the Franks candidacy...
...Some might assert that there are legitimate reasons that these Metternichian wannabes counsel caution on China...
...DON HEWITT Executive Producer, 60 Minutes New York, NY STOPPING JUSTICE I APPRECIATED THE PERSPECTIVE that William Tucker provided in his article "The Tragedy of Racial Profiling" (June 18...
...foreign policy and his more principled alternative to Kissinger's realpoli-tik ("The Unrealistic Realism of Henry Kissinger," June 18...
...But I do wonder why a man I have never met, whose prose, more often than not, I admire, felt compelled to use the pages of a magazine I read every week to label me "a boor and a vulgarian...
...But the circumstances in Asia and elsewhere that dictated that policy have changed drastically...
...Let them be omnipresent and vigilant, but profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity, income, religion, age, gender, or sexual preference cannot, and must not, be tolerated in a nation which purports to be free...
...New Jersey Republicans have nominated moderate after moderate for the U.S...
...Ferguson...
...Still very much alive and a writer superior to both, as well as a diplomat far more significant than Holbrooke (and perhaps even Kissinger...
...I can only conclude that what distinguishes people like him from people like me is that, as I stated in my book, "I don't hold in disdain the people I disagree with...
...Bret Schun-dler's candidacy is not only in touch with GOP voters, but it reaches out to Independents and Reagan Democrats in a state starved for fiscal responsibility, lower property taxes, and quality public schools...
...Franks, like his predecessor and lame duck colleague Donald DiFrancesco, would rather support liberal Democrat Jim McGreevey than see a Schundler victory...
...WALT SEARS Pleasanton, CA DESPITE THE TITLE "The Tragedy of Racial Profiling," William Tucker's piece is not about racial profiling at all...
...But unless the crime rate among minorities is absurdly high, making searches or arrests purely on racial grounds will have only a minuscule effect on law enforcement efforts...
...I merely disagree with them...
...At least we don't make that mistake anymore...
...Tucker inadvertently shows us it is not...
...So much for progress in education: Language understandable to the average reader two hundred years ago is now considered "complex...
...THOMAS SPENCE MITCHELL MUNCY Spence Publishing Company Dallas, TX...
...I believe in the rule of law and want to see our law enforcement officials armed with the procedures necessary to preserve life and welfare within our society...
...Basically, they are sentimentalists...
...I wonder how William Tucker would feel if his local police suddenly decided journalists needed to become the target of routine criminal profiling...
...The concept of a police force singling out members of targeted groups conjures up visions of totalitarian regimes like Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Third Reich...
...MARK FEENEY Cambridge, MA DON'T CALL ME A BOOR BECAUSE I WAS OUT OF TOWN, I missed Andrew Ferguson's taking me apart limb by limb, chewing me up, and spitting me out piece by piece in a review of my book Tell Me a Story ("Television Journalism as Oxymoron," June 4...
Vol. 6 • July 2001 • No. 40
