Web Letters | The Nation

Cashing In On Breast Cancer Awareness

The difficulty of thinking through statistics is nowhere better demonstrated than the oft-quoted canard about flying being safer than driving. As was demonstrated long ago, while flying is statistically safer than driving when measured in miles traveled, it is not safer when measured in time spent on the activity. That is, when I fly across country I cover thousands of miles; driving that same distance, my chances of having an accident are greater. But I spend a paltry few hours in the air, where the drive might take me days. Add to that the statistic that most car crashes are minor, while plane crashes … well, you get the idea. Add it up and an airplane is a safer way to cover distance, but a far more dangerous way to spend a few hours.

As for the profits made by drug companies, this is vintage Nation stuff. Are we supposed to ignore our health until economic and legal justice become reality? How about focusing on realistic solutions? How about a tax on actual healthcare expenses to pay for those who can’t afford them? That might also undermine the profit motive for those who charge such outrageous fees. Speaking of those, I hate to say it, but my favorite opinion journal was utterly scooped by the cover story in Time about the fictitious nature of those fees. Opinions are easy… where are your facts?

Abolition in Maryland

Now that eighteen states have abolished the death penalty, we need just eight more to do so, before a constitutional challenge to it is ripe. Once a majority of the states have abolished it, then a renewal of the 1972 challenge that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual punishment,” as well as applied in a racist, discriminatory manner will be worth bringing.

The campaigns against the death penalty need to focus its efforts on the eight states that are most likely to abolish their death penalties. Since it’s home to over 10 percent of the US population, I hope that California will be the first.

Nietzsche’s Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek

The implicit claim in the article is that freedom of economic activity leads to unequal outcomes. This is presumed to be bad. Why? The postulate of the primacy of egalitarianism and the rejection of all moral narratives outside of social—which is to say abstract, unreal, intellectualized—moral growth is unexamined. It is stipulated.

And nowhere does Corey Robin examine in a serious way what Nietzsche meant by an Übermensch. He intended someone who recognized the freedom that complete acceptance of our finite existence enabled, and who grew beyond the need for moral narratives.

Hayek’s project depends entirely on the distribution of individual moral narratives that are largely shared and congruent among differing economic constituencies. His ideas both build and depend on common-sense notions of moral reciprocity, honesty and diligence.

Hayek’s ideas build communities. Socialists build lifeless shells quacking at the back door of the government, pleading daily for scraps.

A New Progressive Voice From New Mexico Joins the Senate

Your article narrowly grazes the truth about the junior senator from New Mexico, missing some critical observations.

Mr. Heinrich does have some impressive environmental creeds, but that predates his tenure as a congressman. He cannot, without equivocation, support the development, maintenance and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and retain his status as an environmentalist; it creates a multiple oxymoron.

Since he began sleeping on the floor of his DC office, he has been, as all members of the New Mexico delegation apparently are, a wholly owned subsidiary of the national labs, two of which are in New Mexico.

Even facing an apparent no-brainer for a progressive, declining to extend subsidies for nuclear power, and armed with reams of data to support a more fiscally sound position, Mr. Heinrich could not stand up top the nuclearists.

His unwavering support for a huge new plutonium laboratory at Los Alamos, the CMRR_NF (see the website of the Los Alamos Study Group), the cost of which had ballooned by a factor of least ten since it was first pitched to Congress was an outrage.

Lost in Mr. Heinrich’s analysis of New Mexico’s economy, like that of Mr. Udall, is that New Mexico looms at the bottom of nearly every indicator of social well-being not in spite of but because of the disproportionate dependence New Mexico has on defense spending.

Like his colleague Mr. Udall, Mr. Heinrich repeats the standard tripe about how the labs are a national treasure, never accounting for the opportunity costs of having engines of destruction at the hub of out state’s economy.

If this is progressive politics in the twenty-first century, I wish I had a time machine.

I Got Shot in New Orleans

In support of Mark Hertsgaard’s article re New Orleans: What do I have to say about living in New Orleans ? Here it is:

I left for San Francisco in 1970. I returned here in 1992. Here is the difference between the two places: San Francisco didn’t need my help. New Orleans desperately needs all the help it can get. Mostly because of the problems in the black community. But, it needs people who want to commit to making things better here—against the odds. 

San Francisco and Silicon Valley were so rich, if they wanted an aquarium in Monterey, they just got David Packard’s daughter to write a check for $22 million dollars. It was hard to say anyone made a difference in San Francisco. You don’t make a difference. You don’t matter. You’re just one of millions drawn to it, and you wait and stand in line to enjoy its many venues and pleasures. I knew people on waiting lists to be docents at museums in San Francisco! A job that pays nothing. 

Here, everyone can make a difference. Just putting down stakes makes a difference. You can see and feel that you are giving to your community. That part is a wonderful feeling. To give back something to society—to a place that nurtured me, to my home. It’s very fulfilling in a way that a native San Franciscan or Seattleite can never feel. They don’t own their city any more—corporations do—and people from everywhere else.

But, here, I regard it something akin to doing service in Zimbabwe. It needs so much help that just taking part in the community is an act of love. I cherish New Orleans. And it’s a good thing that some of us still do.

Pop, Charts: On Paul Krugman

Regarding the self-destructive qualities of capitalism: Marx does offer insight, but so do both Keynes and Schumpeter, while, IMHO, Galbraith presented some of the most comprehensive perspectives… but sadly, as noted in the piece, people have a dastardly tendency to choose sides in absolutism.

As in so many things, what we need is an amalgam of all the useful ideas, a holistic approach, and clear-eyed sense of propriety to allow the timely application of each and every idea in its appropriate situation.

Call it “silo integration” or pragmatism, managing complexity to bring divergent responsibilities and perspectives into convergence on achieving societal goals and building the common good is indeed difficult at best.

I, for one, am at least as appreciative of Krugman’s writing as I am of Clover’s.

Nietzsche’s Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek

Corey Robin’s piece on the relation between Nietzsche and contemporary American conservatism does not take into account passages such as the following:

1. “Under the charm of the Dionysian…the union between man and man is affirmed.… the slave is a free man; all rigid hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or impudent convention have fixed between man and man are broken.” (Birth of Tragedy, sect. 1)

2. “the pathological estrangement which the insanity of nationalism has induced” (Beyond Good and Evil, #256)

3. “the individual…is an error” (“Expeditions of an Untimely Man,” #33, Twilight of the Idols)

4. “order of rank …the development of more comprehensive states … enhancement of the type ‘man’ ” (Beyond Good and Evil, #257, beginning of chapter titled “What is Noble”)

These do not imply that Nietzsche was a socialist, only that the conservative interpretation of Nietzsche is as fictional as is the “invisible hand of the market,” an Idol that he did not have the foresight to reckon with.

Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free

Excelent article. If Big Greens of conservation working on natural hot spots do that, what are the new “urban Big Greens“ doing/thinking on transportation mobility, carbon-free cities, etc.?

How Wall Street Defanged Dodd-Frank

By drafting it.

The Case for Ethical Fashion

Is there a way to find out any specific information about the manufacturers of a particular brand of clothing? I purchased a large number of hats from Port Authority for use as promotional items for a nonprofit to resell, not realizing they had been made in Bangladesh. Are all the manufacturers there working in unsafe conditions? How can we find out more about the circumstances in this case? What would you do with the hats, which we don’t want to just destroy? Any advice or information would be appreciated. We sent in a query on the Port Authority website, to which we have had no reply.