Correspondence

...It should be remembered and honored as a classic male excuse for avoiding marriage...

...Like its southern neighbor, France, Germany was once the hegemon of continental Europe...

...Since it held that position in the past it assumes it ought to hold that position today...

...Robert Louis Wilken Professor, History of Christianity University of Virginia Washington, DC Ron Kirk: Exposed I was truly disappointed to find that Fred Barnes's "The Emerging Democratic Texas...

...7) repeated as truth some of the uncritical analysis others in the media have offered on Ron Kirk's views on national issues...

...German nationalism has been oppo-sitional in nature since Bismarck...

...What Germans resent most of all is the arrogance of Americans who regard themselves as the All Time Hit on Humanity's Hit Parade...

...Readers can find rehashed versions of the Kirk campaign's press releases from writers at publications like the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time, and the New Yorker...

...In the early 1900s against Britain, and in the 1930s against the Soviet Union and, of course, "world Jewry...

...America is acting like an adolescent trying to prove who's the toughest on the global playground...

...Only the most cosmopolitan of Germans, or the most abjectly dependent on American forces, did not share it, at least to some extent...

...From the end of the fourth century to the Muslim conquest in the seventh century, Jerusalem was a Christian city, and even after the establishment of a Muslim kingdom in the region (whose capital was not Jerusalem), Christians remained the majority in the city for centuries...

...But I wonder at exactly what age Epstein believes we should no longer try to learn things which might not be "put to good use...

...They remind me of the class clowns who could be so funny and subversive in junior high...

...Bill Kelly Dundas, MN Christians in Jerusalem David Gelernter should know that the Christian entitlement to "butt in" on matters relating to Jerusalem rests on more than the events related in the Gospels of the New Testament ("A New Synagogue in the old City," oct...

...In addition, the philosophers who did the most to shape national thought preached a form of socialism and rejected "the voice of the mob" or—as we know it—democracy...

...It would be a mistake, however, to thoughtlessly knock German social welfare policies...

...That would speak in a language that all Europeans understand...

...I've watched and listened to Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore go on about all the things that are wrong with America, and I often agree...

...I don't want to be hemmed into a box...

...AP described him as "sidestepping" questions on the tax cuts...

...It is a disgrace that so many millions have no health insurance at all in the richest country on earth...

...John Sepehri Dallas, TX Democrats in the Fog There are quite a few once-loyal Democrats like myself who just can't imagine what happened to the party or so many of its erstwhile allies...

...I give kudos to Burns for successfully pulling off the great escape with some good old Irish wit...

...Christians have lived continuously in Jerusalem since the first century...

...The criticisms Schama offered in the Guardian article Brooks dissects aren't without merit, but so what...

...But they're utterly useless in offering any positive, realistic alternatives either at home or abroad...

...His claim to suffer from fear of flying ranks up there with John Belushi's citing "locusts" as the reason he left his fiancee waiting at the altar in the movie Blues Brothers...

...In fact, many of Kirk's statements during the primaries suggest he is critical of the president's tax relief agenda...

...Americans' insolent rejection of all the initiatives Europeans have painfully contrived on the environment, international crime, and mollifying the crudest effects of nonstop globalization is unac-ceptably juvenile...

...Much of the violence which troubles Americans derives rather directly from the chaotic economic and social lives our lower classes endure...

...For example, Barnes flatly states that Kirk has endorsed President Bush's tax cuts...

...As for those others...

...Caldwell accurately identifies a resurgence of German nationalism disguised as pacifist internationalism...

...Patrick D. Hazard Weimar, Germany Christopher Caldwell's article on "Europe's adolescent" made me ponder why almost everyone seemed surprised at the recent behavior of the Schroder government...

...Terry Mulgannon Benicia, CA Pearls Before Swine It is a good thing Joseph Epstein declined the invitation to teach an adult education class ( "An Offer I Could Refuse," Oct...

...Though political events in the twentieth century have brought about a precipitous decline in the Christian population of Jerusalem, Christians who are natives of Jerusalem and still inhabit the city (and other Christians both because of the community in Jerusalem as well as the city's spiritual and historical significance for Christianity) have a stake in its future...

...They expect and deserve something more from The Weekly Standard...

...Yet this is far from clear...

...Moreover, Barnes failed to note important instances where Kirk has unequivocally sided with the hard left...

...The surprise ought to be that the Bush administration continues to staff an embassy in Germany as well as maintain a number of troops there...

...For instance, he did not mention that Kirk opposed Priscilla Owen's now dead nomination to the Fifth U.S...

...There was a nice bit of latent anti-Semitism, too...

...The mature parts of American heritage reveal this is not only unworthy of us but extremely counterproductive for our own continued hegemony...

...The recent victory of Schroder, the newest of Germany's fuhrers, ought to be no surprise at all and might have been expected if we Americans learned from history...

...All this evinces a Daschle-esque inclination to revisit the Bush tax cuts, not an endorsement of them...

...It is opaque statements on taxes and concrete positions such as opposition to Priscilla Owen, and not the Cornyn camp's attempt to label Kirk a liberal, that will cause Kirk's defeat if publicized...

...Joan D. Levin Chicago, IL Cold Feet at 20,O0O Feet Come on Scrapbook, take it easy on my man Ed Burns for telling his fiancee he wouldn't go to Europe to marry her because he was "scared to fly" (Sept...

...Like Brooks says, they're blinded by the fog of peace...

...In the 1860s and 1870s against Austria and France, respectively...

...What a downer for people eager to enjoy the pleasures of the mind to have a teacher who apparently believes it would be casting pearls before swine to have anyone other than bright young college students reading the world's great literature...

...I want to know, because when I visit him in some nursing home in the not-so-distant future I most assuredly don't want to bring him a good book in violation of his premise that a box of candy would be so much more appropriate...

...More recently, Kirk was quoted in the Dallas Morning News as saying that we have to make sure the tax cuts "don't go into effect" until we have "the resources" to pay for them...

...I don't mind that President Bush's favorite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, just so long as he can keep his gaze focused on those who wish to destroy us...

...American policymakers are too glib about the superiority of their fire-and-hire license to the German safety net...

...In early September, he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying of the Bush tax cut agenda: "It is confusing...

...Perhaps now that the middle and even upper-middle classes have experienced the painful results of Enron-type buccaneers, we will begin to see the value of a generous safety net...

...We can only shake our heads in disbelief at the antics so well described by David Brooks in his insightful "The Fog of Peace" (Sept...

...So the actions and words of the Schroder administration in Berlin should be no surprise at all...

...Circuit Court of Appeals...

...There simply ought not be a United States embassy in either Germany or France and neither country should house a single member of the American armed forces...

...They turn out to be vested interests threatened by the king's liberalizing policies, the proliferation of scorning humor at the government's expense, and careerism masked as selfless humanitarianism...

...Those enemies are no doubt heartened by the condemnation of Schama and his ilk, all so prone to endless, self-contradictory sniping...

...Now married to an Ossie (the local slang for an East Berliner), I have had a close-up view of how her relatives adjusted to life before and after unification...

...They may be dead-on in their criticisms or hilarious in their mocking contempt, but they're ultimately good for nothing but disruption...

...Thomas J. Rooney West Point, NY...

...It was only a matter of time before the political class tapped it openly...

...Jonathan F. Keiler Bowie, MD As a retired professor of American literature from Philadelphia who has been living in the former East Germany since 1998, I find Christopher Caldwell's gloss on the present situation in Germany the most cogent I have read since I got here...

...Simon Schama's book about the French Revolution, Citizens, is most chilling for revealing how ultimately petty were the causes of the bloodletting and terror that resulted...

...Popular anti-American resentment has been manifest in Germany for decades, and certainly predates unification...

...We still need to crush a series of vile enemies who are trying to destroy America specifically and Western civilization generally...

...They have nothing constructive to say, but they say it well and often...

...Their routine prescriptions always demand some version of national suicide occasioned by our irremediable evil...

...During my tour in the 1980s, in Fulda no less, you had only to scratch the surface (if you were German-speaking and lived "on the economy") to detect a broad grass-roots and mostly irrational anti-Americanism that crossed all class and political lines...

...It was inevitable that it would resurface as an oppositional movement against a world power seen as threatening German prerogatives...