Exchange: Robin Shrugged Exchange: Robin Shrugged
Robin Shrugged New York City Corey Robin, in "Garbage and Gravitas" [June 7], quotes some important Ayn Rand passages, but his critique raises ad hominem to a new level: Rand favored some classical composers over others and preferred operetta to opera, so her ideas are invalid. More shocking is this argument: Ayn Rand held that whether you live or die is of fundamental importance to you, and Adolf Hitler held that whether the state "lives" or "dies" is of fundamental importance to you, so Rand and Hitler are the same. We are asked to equate Hitler with the modern era's greatest defender of the individual's right to his own life. Rand, the creator of a morality based on one's life as one's ultimate value and reason as one's only guide is equated with the anti-individual, obedience-demanding, death-worshiping Nazi ideology. How about responding to Rand's arguments, for key Objectivist tenets, notably: reason is man's only means of knowledge, reason is man's means of survival, the choice to think or not is the locus of man's free will, rational thought cannot be coerced, man's life as a rational being is the standard of morality, rationality is man's primary virtue, individual rights are moral principles of social interaction following from the preceding. Robin quotes criticism by Sidney Hook that mistakes Rationalism for Objectivism. Objectivism holds that all knowledge is based, directly or indirectly, on sensory observation. The role of axioms, such as A is A, is not to provide premises for some Rationalist deduction but rather to ground methods of inference and norms of cognition. "Axiomatic concepts are epistemological guidelines" (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology). Because A is A, modus ponens is valid. Because contradictions can't exist, we must check our conclusions for consistency: "No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge" (Atlas Shrugged). Rather than rely on dubious anecdotes about Rand's personal life, a serious intellectual would investigate her nonfiction and consult the best of the secondary literature by philosophy professionals. HARRY BINSWANGER Seattle "Far from needing explanation, Rand's success explains itself." So why does Corey Robin, through five pages of sneering vitriol, feel the need to "explain" her to us? This is trying too hard, which makes one wonder what he's trying to hide from us, or himself. I'll pass over the patently silly insinuations of a connection between Rand and fascism; that kind of smear was perfected by Whittaker Chambers (and discredited) long ago. Instead, on to the real issues: Rand's philosophical significance? Notwithstanding the cluelessness of Sidney Hook and Robert Nozick, her importance sure seems evident to the Ayn Rand Society, an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association. Rand's grasp of Aristotle or her place in the Aristotelian tradition? With Aristotle, Rand holds that: (1) there's a knowable, objective reality; (2) life is sustained by constant internally generated action (an idea the reviewer seems to resent); (3) it is possible to live, flourish and be happy by discovering a moral code of rationally selfish values. She improves on Aristotle by explicitly validating an objective standard of value, "man's life qua man," whereas Aristotle begged the question by looking at qualities displayed in his prior-designated "great-souled" men. Thereupon Rand discusses why the primary virtues are: rationality, honesty, integrity, independence, productiveness and pride. All this is what Robin wants to ridicule? Really? Perhaps it's Rand's worship of achievement that most upsets him, and her agreement with Spinoza that "all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." Or her sui generis status. In ethics alone, how then to explain why she provides the only fundamental account opposing Kant's ethics of duty and self-sacrifice on the one hand, and Nietzsche's blatantly irrational, predatory, cynical egoism on the other? Is Robin seriously objecting to Rand's holding out the possibility that individuals can live together in a mutually beneficial, nonsacrificial social arrangement, i.e., where the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness is consistently upheld? This isn't a worthy inquiry? One other point: Robin has Rand's literary method wrong. Her primary concern is not "the conflict between the creative individual and the hostile mass": she sees the masses (insofar as they are unreflecting) as inconsequential "ballast." In The Fountainhead she portrays what it means to be a first-handed valuer, as in the character of her hero, Howard Roark. Nor is Rand's primary literary concern the conflict between producers and moochers, good or bad: she saw evil moochers as powerless on their own. In Atlas Shrugged the drama centers on how the conflicted premises of heroes like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden unwittingly aid their would-be destroyers, and how that is resolved. Rather than rely on the soul of malice who penned this screed, or take at face value "biographers" who neither understand nor care to understand her philosophy, readers should read Ayn Rand and decide for themselves what she's all about. TYM PARSONS Robin Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. I'm afraid Harry Binswanger and Tym Parsons haven't read me—or Rand, for that matter—very carefully. I did not claim that Rand's belief in Rachmaninoff's superiority called her ideas into question; I suggested that it called her taste into question. I did not claim or suggest that "Rand and Hitler are the same." I said that there are "similarities between the moral syntax of Randianism and of fascism," which is quite a different point. I did not claim that Rand saw A is A as the premise "for some Rationalist deduction." But Binswanger errs even further when he says that Rand believed A is A was merely one of several "methods of inference and norms of cognition." As Rand wrote in For the New Intellectual: "That there is only one reality, the one which man perceives—that it exists as an objective absolute (which means: independently of the consciousness, the wishes or the feelings of any perceiver)—that the task of man's consciousness is to perceive, not to create, reality—that abstractions are man's method of integrating his sensory material—that man's mind is his only tool of knowledge—that A is A." More than a statement of epistemological best practices, A is A was meant to be taken as the summation, the climax, of Rand's metaphysical credo. As for consulting "the best" literature on Rand, I did read Tara Smith's enormously helpful Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics, which brings me to Parsons. He says Rand is philosophically significant because the Ayn Rand Society, on whose steering committee Smith sits, is an affiliate of the American Philosophical Association. Yet the APA explicitly disavows any such affiliation on its website. Were Parsons to attend a meeting of the APA, however, he would learn of a great many philosophers—Philippa Foot, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis and Rosalind Hursthouse, to name a few—who offer an alternative to Kant and Nietzsche. Parsons also wonders why, if I believe that "Rand's success explains itself," I seek to explain "her to us." The answer, of course, is that there is a difference between Rand's success and her arguments, even if her followers conflate the two. As for Parsons's claim that Rand's concern is not "the conflict between the creative individual and the hostile mass" (a statement I actually challenge in my article), here is Rand herself: "All achievement and progress has been accomplished, not just by men of ability and certainly not by groups of men, but by a struggle between man and mob." Since Parsons seems so interested in my psyche, let me close with a confession. If there is one reaction I have to Rand and her followers, it is a sense of embarrassment for men and women who peddle so much ignorance with such great confidence. COREY ROBIN
Jun 23, 2010 / Our Readers and Corey Robin
Exchange: The Editors and Eric Alterman on the Flotilla Attack Exchange: The Editors and Eric Alterman on the Flotilla Attack
Should The Nation's editorial about the IDF attack on the Gaza relief flotilla have condemned Hamas?
Jun 17, 2010 / The Nation
Exchange: Spinoza and Vultures and Gnats, Oh My! Exchange: Spinoza and Vultures and Gnats, Oh My!
Princeton, N.J. Samuel Moyn, in "Mind the Enlightenment" [May 31], finds my "monomaniacal Spinoza worship" both "amusing and exasperating." Well, he is not half so exasperated as I am by his unbelievably inaccurate account of my argument. He begins by saying that I have no "story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins" other than Spinoza's genius. This is utter nonsense. Both main volumes published so far give a lengthy account of the Enlightenment's origins, setting out various social and cultural factors but pivoting on the philosophical revolution of the late seventeenth century with no fewer than six great philosophers extensively contributing to laying the intellectual foundations—Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle and Leibniz. All helped shape the moderate and radical wings of the Enlightenment. Bayle's contribution takes thirty pages (in "Enlightenment Contested") to explain. Spinoza is held to have surpassed the others in contributing to the Radical Enlightenment essentially because he goes further in undermining belief in Revelation, divine providence and miracles, and hence ecclesiastical authority, and because he was the first great democratic philosopher. But all contributed, as did dozens of other writers and controversies. Moyn next pontificates that it is a "faulty premise" to "think that a philosophy of naturalism and liberal-democratic politics are inextricably linked." He cites the example of Hobbes, which he thinks proves his point. Here, his objection is wrong both philosophically and historically. The official Enlightenment presided over by Frederick the Great and other leading rulers vigorously upheld aristocracy, ecclesiastical authority and strict censorship, maintaining that subjects had no right to question the commands of their sovereigns or the divinely given status of the social order they upheld. The only way to break the ancien régime system conceptually—and deliver comprehensive freedom of thought and a democratic politics—was to destroy the notion that the existing order was divinely authorized, directed by divine providence and legitimately presided over by the clergy and monarchy. Hobbes got around this but only by introducing the unwieldy construction of a once and for all, indissoluble political contract canceling out men's natural rights, the force of which in terms of naturalism is hard to discern. Here, Hobbes was an inconsistent naturalist and Spinoza merely ironing out his inconsistency. Still more inaccurate, Moyn complains that "Israel ends up with no explanation for why his package of emancipatory values succeeded except that they are true," that my only explanation is that Spinoza was such a surpassing genius that his ideas caused a revolution. I say nothing of the kind. First, the emancipatory values propagated by the Radical Enlightenment did not succeed. They partially succeeded briefly with the advent of the French Revolution, but from 1793 their achievement was derailed by the Terror and later by Napoleon. The nineteenth century then involved further setbacks for democratic, enlightened values. As for radical ideas succeeding better than the moderate Enlightenment of Montesquieu, Voltaire and Hume in the 1780s, this is explained by a highly complex historical argument: in a nutshell, the moderate Enlightenment suffered from failure to deliver the toleration, law reforms, emancipation of oppressed groups, or reductions in aristocratic and ecclesiastical privilege that many wanted and also from intellectual difficulties in balancing reason with tradition and faith. It was weakened further by the rise of the Counter-Enlightenment, which claimed that faith and authority, not reason, are the true guides of men. Particularly important in explaining the process, in my account, is the fact that the mechanics of late eighteenth-century revolutions (there were revolutions in several other countries as well as America and France) between 1780 and 1800 demonstrate that mostly (albeit not in America) they were led by tiny groups of unrepresentative intellectuals who became spokesmen by using radical ideology as an effective catch-all for expressing the burgeoning discontent of the era. Finally, and again absurdly wrong, Moyn thinks the phase of the French Revolution dominated by the Jacobins was ideologically closer to the "philosophique" revolution of reason I am describing than the Revolution of 1788–92 and was less Rousseauist. Well, first, the evidence shows that the Robespierre phase was far more Rousseauist. Second, it was incontestably less philosophique. Looking back later, Tom Paine, one of the giants of radical ideology, expressed it well: with the Jacobins the "principles of the Revolution, which philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from [and] philosophy rejected. The intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the guillotine of the stake.'' The freedoms of 1789 were explicitly rejected by Robespierre in several speeches. There are bad reviews and bad reviews; but the worst are surely those that fail to give even the faintest clue what the book under review is arguing. Moyn speaks derisively of my being attacked by "so many gnats" that might seem more like vultures. I leave it to the reader to decide whether Moyn counts as a vulture or a gnat. JONATHAN ISRAEL Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Moyn Replies New York City Jonathan Israel answers my demand for an account of non-Spinozist origins simply with a list of other philosophers, which surely misses the point. And then, as his letter reveals, he is tempted to measure their thought against the singular yardstick that Spinoza provided (Israel's books go much further in the same direction). Israel complains that I don't address his new volume. Unfortunately, his invidious classification of the Enlightenment's different factions is his core preoccupation. As for his approach to the causes of the French Revolution, his letter—like his new book—mostly leaves room for improvement. Most troubling of all, Israel still does not seem able to fathom that the goal is not simply to congratulate past thinkers as "consistent" or dispense with them as useless—which would, in any case, be a philosophical judgment that Israel is not terribly qualified to make. Instead, these philosophers always provide funds of jostling contentions that did and could serve a wide variety of purposes, including ones that they did not imagine. And while he rages against some criticisms I collected from others in my review, Israel completely omits the main worry I added for myself. Even were the evil of the Counter-Enlightenment extirpated, and a "moderate" Enlightenment successfully called out as treason in disguise, it would leave the most exciting reason to study the whole era still there: the Enlightenment's multiple possible versions, and therefore its continually problematic character, now and in the future. It is this central feature of Enlightenment—however radical—that means that there are many issues on which the Enlightenment gives no clear answers. As my review stated, I admire Tom Paine too. But—like Spinoza—he is no messiah inspiring blind faith. As for a rhetorical inquisition, it won't help either. SAMUEL MOYN Clarification: It's a Book World In "The Death and Life of the Book Review" (June 21), John Palattella writes that "The Los Angeles Times Book Review was launched as a twelve-page Sunday tabloid section in 1975. The Washington Post Book World debuted as a Sunday tabloid section in the 1960s; it was folded into the paper in the mid-1970s, only to be resurrected as a stand-alone publication in the early 1980s. (Neither exists today.)" Although Book World no longer exists as a Sunday tabloid section, the Post prints daily book reviews under the Book World rubric, and produces themed tabloid books issues four times a year.
Jun 16, 2010 / Jonathan Israel and Samuel Moyn
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Seize the Radical Moment Brandon, Fla. Re Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John McMillian's "America's Radical Roots" [May 31]: I understand that progressive social programs had their roots in radicalism. However, it is difficult to be overly enthusiastic about what this means in today's America. In the 1930s we had the New Deal and a strong feeling of radicalism and class identity among the working class. The influence of unions and their effect on government was much different. "Socialism" was not a bad word. In the '60s Jim Crow was viewed (at least by the sane) as a system so outdated that radical change had to come. Fast-forward to today. Any radicalism is pre-empted by right-wing media, particularly Fox, corporate-backed network news and AM talk-radio. There is virtually no advocacy or reporting of anything radical or progressive. Combine this with the disproportionate coverage of Tea Party rantings at "town hall" meetings, and public opinion has been swayed rightward. The authors say they wish to "bring about a more charitable perception of radicalism." They provide past examples: the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, public education. But it is difficult for this longtime Nation reader to feel their optimism or to hope that we, as a nation, will be radicalized again anytime soon. Only a monumental event could spark radical action. The "radicalism" of today is this new wave of right-wing Tea Partyers financed by Astroturfers—the wealthy and corporations. They had their monumental event—the election of an African-American president. That rallied their masses. Unfortunately we on the left have not rallied our masses to push this president to take up progressive causes, as radicals did in FDR's time, when they made him promote their agenda. Will we progressives have our monumental event? And will it be enough to rally our masses? I hope our country survives until then. BILL FALCONE Coming Soon to a Shelter Near You Cincinnati Katha Pollitt asks "What Ever Happened to Welfare Mothers?" [May 31]. Nearly uncountable numbers of poor families double or triple up with friends or relatives or are stranded in shelters for homeless families. If the "welfare mothers" have not lost their children to foster care (so are no longer "families"), and if they have "maxed out" the lifetime PRWORA [Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996] benefits that accompanied the low-paid jobs that enabled them to meet the work requirement, homeless shelters are lifesaving. These families are now joined in the shelters by those whose landlords' mortgages have been foreclosed. Tenants typically don't know of the foreclosure until a utility company arrives to cut off service or a bank rep comes to "secure" the property. The low-paid jobs "welfare mothers" may have found in the early days of PRWORA have vanished, many to unemployed workers who move back to parents' basements when their unemployment benefits are exhausted. If things proceed as they did in the 1980s, when the masses of Ronald Reagan's "new poor" exploded, we can next expect the "basement dwellers," followed by people from suburbia with foreclosures of their own. They will compete for precious shelter beds with the post-PRWORA families stranded for lack of affordable housing. The Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing programs funded by the Recovery Act bring promise if—a big if—rents can match the very low wages of post-PRWORA families. ALICE SKIRTZ, casework supervisor Family Shelter Partnership 'Race' to the Top? Chicago I was amused by the letters in the May 31 issue praising Obama for labeling himself "black" on the Census form. I don't care what color he chooses to call himself. What I do care about is that we now have so-called healthcare reform without a public option and, thus, no way to control insurance premiums; financial reform that lacks any means to rein in the "too big to fail" banks and other institutions, like Goldman Sachs; and increasing numbers of troops in Afghanistan. And until the BP oil spill, Obama favored offshore drilling. I don't care what race a president "chooses," but he or she must bring about sorely needed progressive change. CAROL HILLMAN 'Get Over It: Write White' New York City In "Not-Black by Default" [May 10] Patricia J. Williams describes the baroque maneuvers of white colleagues in naming their race on questionnaires. When sophisticated white people use the fact that "racial categories are socially constructed" to avoid listing themselves as "white" on Census and other forms, when they play games with Crayola "buff-beige" self-designations, they are sabotaging the remedies designed to counter our very real privileges as white people. The social construction of race is not an illusion: it is how racism works. Denial does not make it go away. When Williams's colleague explains his refusal to write "white," saying, "We're never going to get past all this, unless we resist the usual categories," he is substituting his wishful good intentions for actions that facilitate change. Liberals and leftists may reject being in the same racial category as the purveyors of slavery and worldwide white supremacy, but we need not identify with white oppressors to recognize that we are daily privileged by the structure of racism. Try flipping Williams's description of the ways that "to be visibly black in this culture is to feel race every day," because "social constructions have walls." We too are labeled every day as white, but we can be blissfully unaware of the process because for us it is benign. As a white Jew I emphatically do not identify with the white Europeans who perpetuate worldwide anti-Semitism and racism, but I recognize that in the world of government forms, racial categories are not a matter of psychological self-identification or individual creativity; they are categories with social consequences. We need to get over it: write "white," and then make sure that the data are used to undermine the privileges that we yearn so deeply to deny. SHERRY GORELICK Sales Alert! Not Chic, St. Francis de Portland, Ore. I don't begrudge puzzlers their fun with the Chic Sale potty humor ["Letters," June 21], but I submit the following as a more probable explanation of the first part of clue 9, Puzzle 1588, "Sales decoration of old." Frank Lewis used "Sales," not "Sale," and "decoration of old" is accounted for more clearly. The heraldic emblem ("decoration of old") of St. Francis de Sales contains a prominent crescent moon, like those used on the classic outhouse door. MARY PRIEM Correction In "Central Europe's Right-Wing Populism," by Paul Hockenos (May 24), a typo gave the Fidesz party's years in power as 1982–2002 rather than 1998–2002. Our apologies to the author.
Jun 9, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Goodbye Oil, Hello Molten Salt Palo Alto, Calif. Your May 24 editorial, "There Will Be Blood," is right: we need a moratorium on new offshore drilling and an end to subsidies for oil, coal and conventional nuclear power. Alternative energy is available: the thorium-based molten salt reactor, which generates the same power as a uranium or coal plant but creates less than 5 percent of the waste, and that waste becomes benign in 500 years. Other advantages: a thorium plant can burn our stockpile of nuclear waste/weapons; it cannot melt down/explode; thorium is four times as abundant as uranium; and the process was tested and proven practical in the 1950s and '60s at Oak Ridge (see thoriumenergyalliance.com and tinyurl.com/25mgqkd).We operated this safe nuclear system more than forty years ago but defunded it because it could not make bomb materials. Now we need it. HERSHEY JULIEN Defuse the Population Bomb Swannanoa, N.C. Can humanity save its climate before climate chaos destroys humanity? Juliet Schor's "Beyond Business as Usual" [May 24] observes, "But New Deal 2.0—expanded federal spending—still relies on climate destabilizing growth...addressing unemployment by unleashing even more climate chaos." Sadly, that's a convincing prophesy. And how can we find the solution until we reverse the rate of world population growth? Catastrophe may be only a matter of how soon climate chaos directly reverses that growth. Forget persuading humans to accept self-restraint to save our climate. We are all deniers. ALLAN DEAN Story Time for Progressives Deering, N.H. Amitai Etzioni, in "Needed: A Progressive Story" [May 24], rightly calls on progressives to formulate a convincing narrative as a counterforce to the Republican story that America was on the right path until Roosevelt, Johnson and the '60s counterculture undermined our traditional values. To me the most convincing narrative would be "recovering community." Such a narrative can plumb the wellsprings of our yearning for community in an increasingly alienating world. But recovering community must move beyond our loyalties to ethnic, class and local groups to the larger American community. We must focus on what is best for all rather than what's in it for me. Community loyalty is quintessentially American and has a long and honorable history. Recovering community would offer an umbrella narrative that can draw on our finest moments of history, our deeply felt concerns and our heartfelt need to invest ourselves in causes that transcend our smaller selves. DONALD JOHNSON South Portland, Me. Amitai Etzioni's essay echoes Bill Moyers's prescription that progressives need "a new story." Stories' roots are in myth (hence Moyers's fascination with mythologist Joseph Campbell), whose purpose is to tell us how to live. Progressives would do well to tap the American creation myth: the tale of those whose opportunity was foreclosed elsewhere—for ill fortune or lack of title or privileged birth—and who found opportunity through shared contribution and/or sacrifice in a community of equals. The story's power lies in the truth that community makes us strong. Stories must explain—but to be compelling, they must inspire. Inspiration is the antithesis of and antidote to fear. And since fear is elemental to most neoconservative platforms, rising above fear must be an inspirational foundation of any progressive story. FRANK O. SMITH Taking The Nation to the Chic Sale We were stumped by "Sales decoration" as "lunette," the answer to clue 9, Puzzle 1588 [June 7]. We turned to our readers—and were not disappointed. —The Puzzle Editors Wellesley, Mass. A down-home, chaw-bacon early (and earthy) twentieth-century humorist known as Chic Sale had quite a following of rustic thigh-slappers for his outhouse humor, syndicated in small-town papers. His book about Lem Putt, a "specialist" in the design and construction of outhouses, claimed he invented the crescent-shaped cutout (a rural "lunette") that was a fixture on their doors. GEORGE BOND Somewhere in Cyberspace Chic Sale was a humorist who wrote a book featuring an outhouse builder. "Chic Sale" or "Chick Sales" was an old euphemism for "outhouse." A lunette is a moon-shaped decorative inset, such as was used on outhouse doors. The moon on the outhouse door has an interesting history. When stagecoach routes were established in England, inns began to provide facilities for travelers. The ladies' privy was marked with a moon; the men's with a sun. But the men preferred the woods, so the inns ended up offering only ladies' facilities. JANET MARTELL Clarification—for the Irony-Impaired In Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John McMillian's "America's Radical Roots" (May 31), the authors refer to Barack Obama's opponents calling attention to his "tenuous associations with an angry black minister, un-American education professor and foreign-born Muslims." The sentence should have read "anti-American" and had quotes around that word as well as around "angry" and "foreign-born" to make clear that these labels are not the authors' but are part of the right-wing smear campaign.
Jun 2, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Love the Smell of Apartheid in the Morning! Germantown, Md. Oh, how I miss those sweet, lovable days of apartheid rule during the terrifying reign of the Afrikaners! Oh, how I miss the days when I was forced to carry an ID book that I had to produce on demand by a white, less-educated policeman! Oh, how I miss Verwoerd, Vorster, Koornhof, Botha and the jackbooted Broederbond! Oh, I miss them so! But never fear, we now have our own version of apartheid, in Arizona, in the land of the free ["Arizona Burning," May 17]. The volk of apartheid South Africa are proud of you, Arizona. You keep the torch burning for all God-fearing whites. You know, the Afrikaners also believed in the superiority of white, a God-given right. VARSI PADAYACHEE Phoenix We Arizonans are frustrated that so many political figures and pundits are reacting to incomplete or misinformation. Read the bill (racial profiling is expressly forbidden). Approved or new citizens should be carrying documentation, just as any driver should carry a license. And attend to the burdens on our medical, educational, welfare and criminal justice systems from dealing with illegal immigrants here. I agree that our law has motivated the federal government to address immigration and border issues. And yes, we need a policy that simplifies and hastens the process for obtaining work visas, then citizenship. MITCH BOYKAN Temple, Tex. This new law is appalling. I am seeing a terrible trend in this country. Groups are being selected—first it was Muslims and now (again) Hispanics—as being "other," not American, not fully human. I know there has always been racism in America. On that I have no illusions. I had hoped that with Obama's election, America could be turning an important corner. But alas, the opposite seems to be happening. Racism has been given credence by the law passed in Arizona. Already other states, including my own, are voicing interest in enacting similar legislation. What's next—people forced to wear a symbol on their clothing to indicate their ethnicity? I strongly urge all Americans to take a stand against this law. Boycott Arizona and its businesses until this law is repealed. BARBARA LOCKWOOD Bethpage, N.Y. If you want to get this awful SB 1070 repealed, boycott Arizona businesses until the legislature and the governor repeal the law. Send the Arizona Chamber of Commerce a letter at democratz.org. Don't get mad, get active! DEN BAER IBGYBG—FYI Douglasville, Ga. Re Christopher Hayes's "Goners" [May 17]: IBGYBG has been around for some time. Business leaders make promises too good to be true, seal the deal and waltz out of the company with their cash, stock options and bonuses before the roughage hits the fan. It's business as usual. KYLE FRENCH Shenandoah, Tex. Regarding IBGYBG: this is similar to a remark made by George W. Bush in the late 1990s as governor of Texas. Told by wiser souls that his tax cuts would be devastating to Texans, he responded, "I'll be gone by then." Not soon enough or far enough. Sign me One Sad Texas Democrat. BARBARA PHILLIPS OMG—NDOP! Flushing, N.Y. Just as Judge Barbara Crabb deserves three cheers for her ruling against a National Day of Prayer, so does Katha Pollitt for her May 17 "Let Us (Not) Pray." She shows how this is purely a Christian ceremony (clue: NDOP may be held "any day but Sunday"). Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and other non-Christians need not pray—this would only confuse God! G.M. CHANDU Brentwood, Tenn. Opposition to a National Day of Prayer is worth considering. Statements concerning the being, or nonbeing, of a deity are at best philosophical speculation and at worst culturally conditioned arrogance. However, it is beneficial for individuals and corporate entities to articulate their most important concerns and objectives. How about a National Day of Attention to That Which Is of Utmost Concern? KEITH DAVIS Our Cosmic Healthcare Bill Somewhere in Cyberspace Some people are way ahead on "Learning to Love the Healthcare Bill" [Katherine S. Newman and Steven Attewell, May 17]. I wrote the following letter to President Obama after the Sunday vote in the Senate: "Dear Mr. President: As it is written, Jesus Christ cured a paralytic on a Sabbath and was denounced by the Pharisees. As we heard in the media recently, Barack Obama enabled the curing of 30 million Americans by a vote on a Sunday and was roundly criticized by the Republicans. I am suggesting that Plutarch, if he were alive today, would welcome the opportunity to write another chapter of Parallel Lives to compare the two.... God has been waiting patiently for 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang for you to accomplish this vote for the American people, and there is joy in Heaven over the victory. What you have done has cosmic import that goes beyond just finishing the work of T.R., F.D.R., H.S.T. and L.B.J." I am 75. I knew the WPA, with its steam shovels and Mack chain-drive trucks, and I worked for FDR on the 1944 election. We need more of the same. Healthcare for all is the crown jewel. If enough people could be convinced of this, Obama could increase his dominance in Congress in November. EMMANUEL P. PAPADAKIS Daddy, Where Do Morals Come From? Appleton, Wis. Interviewer Christine Smallwood, in "Talking With Tony Judt" [May 17], suggests that "people on the left are so embarrassed about the language of morality." As a person on the left, I speak eagerly and confidently about morality, in the language of human rights, civil rights, environmentalism and other ways that the actions of individuals affect other individuals. What embarrasses me are arguments from authority, those uncompromising, pope-like dictums about what God wants, that yield neither to evidence nor reason. I have read too many comments from absolutists who state that without God, my morality must be relative and arbitrary. Morality comes from people learning to live together. An omnipotent God could easily have said, "Thou shalt steal." How arbitrary is that? JAMES OLSKI Indeed... Albany, N.Y. Kai Bird and Victor Navasky's December 1981 special issue of The Nation, which Bird deemed important enough to summarize for readers thirty years later in "The Hebrew Republic" [May 10], is thankfully mistaken on one vital point. He writes, "It made no sense to offer automatic citizenship to any Jew anywhere." He is wrong. The Law of Return provided needed sanctuary to Jews living in the Soviet Union, oppressed under the anti-Semitic yoke of a murderous dictatorship. In the twenty years since Russia opened its doors to mass emigration in 1989, more than 1 million Russians have immigrated to Israel. For those who escaped, it made sense indeed. EDWARD HOROWITZ
May 26, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Shill, Baby, Shill Clinton, Ohio I suspect the irony was not lost on your readers: the cover of the May 10 issue is dripping with oil and headlined with words such as "Oil" and "Corruption." A full-page ad on the back cover shows BP ("beyond petroleum"), posturing as "green," as its oil gushes into the Gulf of Mexico at a record rate. ERICA GREER Mt. Tabor, N.J. Can we not consider that running a full back-cover ad from BP is a conflict of your interests and ours? Isn't killing eleven workers and the unprecedented environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico reason enough to yank BP's claim of "opening new offshore areas to oil and gas production"? And shame on you for permitting this unscrupulous corporate giant to hide under a green sunflower. MICHAEL SPECTOR,chair Green Party of New Jersey The Editors Reply We appreciate those who have taken the time to write us about the BP ad. As Nation readers, you are no doubt aware that small journals of opinion like ours are struggling financially. But even when times were better, censoring ads was never in keeping with our advertising policy (see TheNation.com/node/33589), which states: "We accept [advertising] not to further the views of The Nation but to help pay the costs of publishing." Indeed, we often run ads whose values do not match those of our editors or our readers. Our advertisers have included Fox News, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Department of Homeland Security and others. Our publication of the BP ad in no way reflects an endorsement of its content. Running these ads does not inhibit us from publishing articles highly critical of corporate-owned mainstream media, unjust and ineffective drug policies, the Patriot Act—or oil companies. In fact, as readers have pointed out, Johann Hari's hard-hitting critique of the corrupting influence of oil-industry cash on mainstream environmental groups in "The Wrong Kind of Green" [March 22] appeared in the same issue as another BP ad. As longtime readers are aware, a wall between advertising and editorial content has always been a key part of The Nation's tradition of independence—which advertising, regardless of its subject, helps to keep alive. —The Editors Nil, Baby, Nil Blacksburg, Va. Re Jerry A. Coyne's "The Improbability Pump" [May 10]: the germ theory of disease is widely accepted, not only because it is true but because it is rather simple and good for people. The situation is different with the theory of evolution. It is complex, and most people don't have a clear understanding of it. But they are smart enough to know that it robs their lives of meaning—I am no more important than a flea or a tapeworm. Dostoyevsky understood this when he preferred Christianity (although not necessarily true) to nihilism—if there is no God, everything is permitted. If evolution had been accepted centuries ago, would we now have something better than what remains of Christendom and Western civilization? GORDON CARTER Alexandria, Va. There have been advances in physics since Darwin's time, including the concept of block time and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Time is an illusion, and everything that can possibly exist does and always has. We never even built anything. We found the absurdly improbable universe in which the desired objects always existed. Infinite parallel universes explain the absurd improbability of life better than natural selection. MARK SCOTT OLLER
May 19, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Letters published in the May 31, 2010, issue of The Nation.
May 13, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Wounded in Combat, Denied Benefits Killeen, Tex. My thanks to Joshua Kors for his truthful reporting on these fraudulent "personality disorder" discharges ["Disposable Soldiers," April 26]. I am happy my story has been told. After the mortar blast, when I reached out and asked for help from my chain of command, I had no idea that my comrades would turn on me. I joined the military to serve like both my grandfathers, to do my part for America. I never thought that this could happen to me. This article triggered a huge outpouring of support, including e-mails and phone calls from other soldiers who said, "That happened to me." With the support of my family and friends, I have been able to pull myself up, and I will continue to fight for my brothers and sisters in arms. I will never forget the things that happened to me. To make sure it never happens to anyone else, I have founded Disposable Warriors. We provide support for other soldiers wounded then denied benefits. Since the article was published, we have had more than 200 e-mails and fifty phone calls. I encourage anyone who has had this problem to contact us and keep fighting, because there is hope. I have seen how widespread these personality disorder discharges are. They need to stop. Too many warriors have been wronged. SGT. CHUCK LUTHER California In 2001 they used the personality disorder discharge on me. I was 19, and my commander said the discharge was my sole way out. I was threatened that if I didn't take that discharge, he would have me thrown out with a dishonorable discharge. I was having physical medical problems. I should have been honorably discharged. I was verbally assaulted and humiliated. I received threats from fellow enlisted marines and began to fear for my safety. My commander attempted to put me in confinement "for my medical safety." Out of desperation, I tried to kill myself. After the attempt, I was offered the personality disorder discharge. I took the discharge and didn't look back, for a little while at least. I was just so happy to get out of there. Sometime later I began dealing with the experience. Doctors have since confirmed that I do not have a personality disorder. Even though I have been successful in the days since the discharge, the experience still haunts me. I have told very few people what really happened to me. I feel guilt and shame for the type of discharge I was given. Despite what I know, at some levels I feel that it's my fault. I am too afraid to apply for my dream career in law enforcement because I know they will see my discharge status. Now I wish I had just endured the suffering while I was in the Marines. It has made my life a living hell. VINCENT T. Simpsonville, S.C. I was shocked and saddened when I read Joshua Kors's article. I consider myself pretty well informed, but I had never heard of the disgraceful practice of discharging physically wounded soldiers without benefits by claiming they had a pre-existing personality disorder. I was amazed at how Chuck Luther was not only called a liar but treated as a prisoner of war by our own military. I felt that if people knew about this tragic practice they would demand that it be stopped. That night I started a group on Facebook called Stop Personality Disorder Discharges for Our Wounded Soldiers. The response has been overwhelming. I have been flooded with e-mails from soldiers and families who thought nobody knew or cared about them. Two weeks later, we had more than 2,300 members. We are organizing an e-mail and telephone campaign for Memorial Day, May 31, to let our government know how ashamed we are of this national disgrace. I encourage readers to join the group. I believe we can, and will, stop the use of personality disorder discharges for our wounded soldiers. CHARLES NICHOLSON Overland Park, Kan. "Disposable Soldiers" was absolutely heartbreaking. How could this man, wounded in combat, not only be misdiagnosed but treated in a manner unbefitting a human being? To hear that his superiors' careers "flourished" after this incident is unacceptable. I hope someone with more clout than me can help these soldiers. At least The Nation is listening. KATHLEEN MORALES Allen, Tex. These pre-existing personality disorder discharges: they did the exact same thing to me! I have all the documents to prove it but have not found any attorneys with the courage to help. PHILLIP POPE New York City There is no such diagnosis as an "adult onset personality disorder," as Army doctors have alleged in the case of Sgt. Chuck Luther. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders makes this clear. Sergeant Luther's symptoms are classic signs of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It's troubling to think that he, a decorated soldier who has proven himself in combat, would be deemed ineligible for benefits. ROBERT LICHTMAN, PhD Professor of psychology John Jay College of Criminal Justice Brooklyn, N.Y. As a clinical psychologist who trained in the Veterans Administration, I am particularly chagrined to read of the abuse of diagnostic practices that Joshua Kors describes. Personality disorder is not one diagnosis but rather a category of diagnoses, with extremely broad manifestations. The assertions of certitude by the doctors who labeled Sergeant Luther with "personality disorder" would be laughable were their consequences not so tragic. MARGARET HORNICK, PHD Danielson, Conn. If doctors found them fit for duty at enlistment time, then they were either lying at discharge or incompetent. The doctors should be dealt with accordingly—i.e., discharged with no benefits. WARREN E. SMITH Columbia, Mo. I was a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne, one of the first deployed to Iraq. When we were clearing out of the country, there was a lot of paperwork to fill out. Most of it was crap, and most of us were more than happy to sign anything just to get out of there. But there was one document that was very important. It asked, "Have you ever fired your weapon at a combatant? Have you ever taken fire? Did you at any time fear for your life?" Ninety-nine percent of us checked yes. Then, as they gathered up the forms, they gave us this gem of wisdom: "In case any of you want to change your answers, remember this: there is a two-month backlog to see the mental health providers. If you checked yes, you will be held here for two months before you are allowed to leave. But if you fill out a new form, I am sure we will be able to clear you out of here with no issues." Every single one of us filled out a new form and left the country. This comes back to bite you in the ass if you later seek help from the VA for PTSD. I'm thankful for reporters like Joshua Kors who get the word out. I hope we can get the government to own up to these shady, underhanded tactics. DANIEL A. CLARK
May 5, 2010 / Our Readers
Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor
Nuclear Arms and the Man Cincinnati Jonathan Schell, in "Reaching Zero" [April 19], describes very well the theoretical illogic of the arms race, but there are more practical, immediate reasons to oppose proliferation. During the past sixty years the United States has spent more than $7 trillion on nuclear weapons production, much of it without taxpayer or Congressional oversight. We have accumulated dangerous nuclear waste, which we don't know what to do with and which will be a threat for thousands of years. Those who worked at production plants and those who lived nearby have experienced high cancer rates. Any government that continues to build nuclear weapons, knowing their danger, is in effect using them against its own people and the planet itself. CAROL RAINEY Mary Jane Got a New Set of Laws Federal Prison Camp, Jesup, Ga. How legalization will affect small pot growers depends on the types of regulation states choose [Alexander Cockburn, "Marijuana, Boom and Bust," April 19]. For instance, under the medical marijuana law in Michigan a grower is limited to growing for himself and five patients—seventy-two plants (twelve per person). Clearly, legalization will take the big money out of small operations. Unlike the booze industry, however, I don't see the centralization. Even with much of the alcohol industry centralized, there remains a market for small wineries and beer microbrewers. Small growers who are good will always have a niche. Besides the ballot measure in California, legalization will be on the ballot in Oregon and Washington, if all works out. It's interesting to note that when Montanans legalized medical marijuana in 2004, George W. Bush received around 60 percent of their vote; but marijuana outpolled him. Flash-forward four years. Obama took Michigan with around 60 percent of the vote. Medical marijuana outpolled him as well! When are the politicians going to crunch the numbers on this one? HAROLD BARANOFF Desert Hot Springs, Calif. I disagree that legalization in California will drive down prices. I think demand will skyrocket. People who already buy for medical reasons will probably retain their current level of consumption. But many who ingest pharmaceuticals will test-drive cannabis and switch. People who sampled pot recreationally but turned to alcohol because of legality issues will get high instead of drunk. Pent-up demand plus first-in-the-market status will make California a destination for college educations, vacations and retirement. Who's worried? Probably the Mexican drug cartels. Who should worry? The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Homeland Security; and the Postal Service. The tax revenue will relieve much of the state's $25 billion budget deficit. And guess what Californians will be sending out for Christmas! EARL NISSEN Alexandria, Va. Marijuana is worse for the lungs, heart and brain than cigarettes. It is teeming with bacteria, viruses and fungi. Pure heroin—which the marijuana apostles demonize while portraying pot as a safe "soft" drug—just causes constipation and dizziness. MARK SCOTT OLLER Hilberg & Arendt: It's Complicated Clinton, N.Y. Nathaniel Popper's thorough, nuanced, intellectually brilliant and morally serious journalistic investigation of the complicated personal and historiographical relationship between Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews and Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem reminds me why I've been a loyal Nation reader for the past four decades and will (I hope) remain so for decades to come ["A Conscious Pariah," April 19]. MAURICE ISSERMAN Jerusalem Nathaniel Popper's essay on Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt is one of the most balanced accounts of these two complex personalities I have read. Given their common perceptions—or the genealogy of these perceptions from Hilberg to Arendt—and the fact that both were vilified in Jewish circles for their emphasis on the bureaucratic machinery of Nazism (for years you could hardly mention the name of Hilberg or Arendt at Yad Vashem), it is truly a shame that they were not allies. One minor correction: it is not true that Hilberg's 1974 course on Holocaust history was the first taught in the United States; I studied the subject with Erich Goldhagen (Daniel Goldhagen's father) at Brandeis in the late 1960s. Hilberg's book was, as I recall, the major resource for that course. SIDRA DeKOVEN EZRAHI Concord, Mass. Nathaniel Popper did a remarkable job restoring to Raul Hilberg scholarly credit attributed by history to Hannah Arendt. However, in the course of doing so, Popper gave credit to Hilberg for being the first to teach a college-level course on the Holocaust. He was not. In 1972, two years before Hilberg first did so, Hampshire College offered a course titled "Thinking About the Unthinkable: An Encounter With the Holocaust," designed in that first year by a group of students and facilitated by anthropologist Leonard Glick. In 1973, Glick created his own syllabus and taught the course for many years thereafter. Hampshire was honored, beginning in 1972, to welcome Hilberg as a guest lecturer for the course. SIGMUND J. ROOS, chair Board of trustees, Hampshire College Tulsa, Okla. As an undergraduate at the University of Vermont in the late 1970s I encountered Hilberg, by then a revered—and feared—faculty member. He was a stern man, distant, but a profoundly gifted lecturer and teacher. Years later, I was his host during a visit to the university where I was then a faculty member. I'd not seen him for decades; he didn't remember me (nor should he have). I found him courtly, friendly, funny, even in his distant way. The lecture was a powerful performance, but during the question-and-answer segment, he erupted when asked to discuss Holocaust survivors. "I don't want to talk about survivors," he shouted. "I want to talk about those who were murdered!" I think that statement reveals much about who he was. BRIAN HOSMER I Remember Mario San Diego I was in Mario Savio's Free Speech Movement/Children's Crusade and bachelor's degree program at UC Berkeley [Scott Saul, "A Body on the Gears," March 29]. It took me eighteen years to graduate because I told Mario I wouldn't take my degree until he got his (he called me when he graduated from San Francisco State). I spoke at his Manhattan memorial service. Did you know he starred in Brigadoon as a senior in high school? He was known as Bob then, as your reviewer notes. Once, a classmate wanted to shoot out a street light outside his window in Queens. Bob wouldn't advise him one way or the other. After the friend did shoot it out, Bob asked, "Did you clean up the glass?" RICHARD THOMPSON A Late, Great Muckraker Blairstown, N.J. As the son and daughter-in-law of Fred Cook, we found Richard Lingeman's "Redbaited by the FBI" [Jan. 11/18] most interesting. The FBI must have been very frustrated trying to find anything on Dad, as he was incorruptible. Dad wrote books on many controversial subjects—The Plot Against the Patient (healthcare), The Warfare State (military-industrial complex), The Great Energy Scam (oil industry) and The Secret Rulers (organized crime) among them. We have great memories of a wonderful man. Thank you for the article. FRED and CAROL COOK Throw Another Nation on the Barbie! Sofia, Bulgaria I am an Australian and an English teacher in Bulgaria. I just want to thank you for your articles. I use them to teach my students, and they greatly enjoy them. LEWIS ALBANIS
Apr 28, 2010 / Our Readers