Correspondence

...Elsewhere in his writings this pragmatist states that only Karma seemed, for him, to explain the many inequities of human destiny...

...I suspect the undersecretary equates patriotism with blind obedience, reverence for the military, and always "supporting the troops" without questioning the policy where their unrivalled power enables them to kill other parents' children with near impunity...

...Dick: He was a very fine gentleman, but he was a revisionist...

...at which point my wife usually responds with something on the order of: "If others heard you, they would say you are crazy...

...Price not home that evening, Booth went on to Mudd's house...

...PRICE...

...As Loconte says, James did ignore creeds and doctrines, but for me one of the most revealing passages in The Varieties of Religious Experience concerning his own religious affiliation is as follows: "I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correction in order the better to describe my point of view...

...ANDREW FERGUSON'S well-written article "The Last Battle of the Civil War" (Dec...

...I assure you no one defines for me what patriotism is and whether it is even always desirable, as those of us on the pacifist, antiwar left strive for a more peaceful, integrated global environment that eschews nationalism and undimin-ished state sovereignty...

...NANCY ANN HOLTZ Beverly, MA SWEARING IN EACH TIME I SEE AND HEAR Adel al-Jubeir on television I end up screaming, "You lying sonofabitch...

...J. MITCHELL KEARNEY Owings Mills, MD I WAS SURPRISED by Andrew Ferguson's fairly accurate description of events and sympathies in Maryland during the Civil War (Dec...

...We claim our Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and new-fangled evil weaponry are "smart," with unprecedented precision, as if the decision to kill people in distant lands is not the most immoral and indefensible human activity...

...I disagreed only with Ferguson's contention that "Maryland was with the union in the Civil War...

...He could not acknowledge that his grandfather was a patriotic southerner who bit off more than he could chew, who was no murderer but who in all likelihood had dealings of some kind with Booth...

...This week the offender is Alvey s. Felzenberg ("A Cabinet at War," Dec...

...You don't just call someone like Mr...

...30/Jan...

...The story has it that, finding Dr...

...We cravenly refuse to publish KIA or WIA estimates of "enemy" troop or civilian deaths, for fear the public would become disenchanted that America's wars are not so honorable as they generate untold numbers of orphans, widows, and quadriplegic children...

...As a realist I am deeply concerned with America's loss of prestige in the world and the growing resentment of its power, unilateralism, and contempt for international law and comity...

...Ferguson's choice of words implies a willingness on the part of the state to submit to the despot Lincoln's tyranny...

...30/Jan...

...Price had been home...

...While he labeled the inflammatory email as "barely literate," he might have been more favorably impressed by my anti-military expertise had he quoted it correctly...

...We fight zero-casualty wars for American troops that invariably lead to excessive noncombat-ant deaths among the innocent...

...For such an "unremarkable" little state (as Matt Labash calls it in "The Next Kennedy," Aug...

...JOYCE BENNETT Leonardtown, MD PET PEEVE FOR SOME REASON, THE WEEKLY STANDARD seems incapable of referring to the 26th president as anything other than "Teddy" Roosevelt, and not the name by which he was known to his family, friends, colleagues, and contemporaries, and to all historians and biographers: Theodore...

...The idea that judgment and execution go together was to James what weakened most traditional faiths...

...i wrote, "No war, no air force cowards who bomb countries without AAA," not "with AAA...

...Revising history to his own ends, he always insisted that his grandfather could not have been a Confederate sympathizer because Maryland was a union state...

...That and my suspension I wear as a "Red Badge of Courage...

...I am grateful to Undersecretary Babbin for one thing...

...He certainly lived up to that characterization in the December 2 issue of The Weekly Standard with his denunciation of my e-mail misadventure with Air Force Academy cadet Robert Kurpiel ("When Professors Attack...

...Interesting, isn't it...

...When historian James O. Hall's acquaintance gently confronted Dr...

...Only if you are The Weekly Standard, and God bless you for having the courage to do so ("The sultan of Spin," Dec...

...Our national security depends not merely upon wars against terrorism, wars against Islam, and wars against the next imaginary enemy, but a redirection of our foreign policy away from power maximizing and imperial hegemony toward treating other peoples and cultures who dare diverge from our own with respect and patience...

...We exclude the press from combat photography and frontline reporting for fear that DoD propaganda and disinformation might be exposed by a David Halberstam or a Seymour Hersh...

...Perhaps his diatribe contributed to my receiving the andrewsullivan.com Sontag Award (Honorable Mention...

...JOHN N. THOMAS Altus, OK...

...Having lived too long in the cold, snowy northwoods, he was ashamed of his southern heritage...

...I suspect that the undersecretary was not primarily enraged with the obvious lack of decorum and respect in my missive with the cadet, but that I would so harshly and passionately attack the sacrosanct military establishment that has brought so much devastation and misery for so many peoples throughout the world...

...Concerning the late Dr...

...5), it seems that everyone wishes to rewrite her history these days...

...but as I apprehend the Buddistic doctrine of Karma, I agree in principle with that...

...PETER N. KIRSTEIN Chicago, IL YOUR NAME IS...

...The Mudds might be embarrassed by the facts and their family might have suffered through the years because of the harsh treatment of Mudd by a malignant military regime, but they have no right to take liberties with Maryland's past to ease their pain...

...6) but it might just as easily be Davey Brooks or Billy Kristol or Bobby Kagan...

...PHILIP "PHIL" TERZIAN Oakton, VA WILLIAM JAMES ON KARMA I TOOK GREAT PLEASURE IN LEARNING in"The Book of James" by Joseph Loconte (Dec...

...Can't let a My Lai and No Gun Ri become public knowledge...

...To the contrary, Maryland was invaded and occupied in the spring of 1861 by Yankee troops and remained under brutal occupation until the early 1870s...

...6) that "numerous reflections on William James's work have appeared this year...

...Dick with the truth, he was unable to respond...

...Babbin and thousands of others have tried to silence me and remove me from the classroom for being patriotically incorrect...

...Do you...

...James has long been my favorite philosopher/psychologist...

...30/Jan...

...It seems clear from just about anyone's perspective that Booth was known to Mudd and that Booth knew exactly where he was going the night of the murder of President Lincoln...

...My grandfather liked to tell a story about how his grandfather, who was a Charles County, Maryland, physician named Price, lived quite near to Dr...

...30/Jan...

...Perhaps I may appeal to The Weekly Standard's sensibilities by suggesting that its modern equivalent would be to refer habitually to another president as Ronnie Reagan, or "the B-movie actor who succeeded Jimmy Carter...

...it would be rather difficult to bomb a nation with AAA since anti-aircraft artillery is a defensive weapon that i presume a former undersecretary of defense would be familiar with...

...6) debunks an old myth surrounding my family...

...The childish nickname was meant to deflate his abundant ego, or better yet, transform him into the buffoonish character in Arsenic and Old Lace...

...i was referring to the indiscriminate use of high-altitude bombing and the incapacity of our so-called enemies to seriously challenge our airpower...

...Mudd, but closer to Washington...

...al-Jubeir 'a lying sonofabitch,' do you...

...My grandfather was fond of saying that the old saying "your name is Mudd" would have been "your name is Price" (which just doesn't work in any case) if Dr...

...God knows the origins of this annoying editorial tic, but in Roosevelt's lifetime, "Teddy" was what his detractors tended to call him...

...It might create a recrudescence of protest against the armies of the night...

...As a son of an army captain who served in the Aleutians with bravery and honor in World War ii and as a veteran of the United States Army Reserves during the Vietnam era, I am not quite the stereotypical leftist professor that Babbin so obviously loathes...

...We show videos of smart bombs and missiles destroying bridges, cars, barracks, and other vital infrastructures...