Category: Polemics & Exchanges

Regarding my thesis that the 1929 stock market crash was caused by the imminence of passage of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, William Hawkins (Polemics & Exchanges, June 1989) dismisses my findings as the work of a mere “journalist, not an economist.” It was precisely my expertise as a political journalist, not an...

I must commend Jacob Neusner for his review of Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (June 1989). I should like to note two important scams that Sykes does not address. Sykes would have us believe that professors are, generally, extremely well paid and cites average salaries from prestigious institutions as evidence. But the...

On ‘Letter From Washington’ In his June 1989 column (“Our Nation, Your Money“), Samuel Francis claims that Carl Hagen’s Progress Party in Norway is one of the right-wing European parties that are nationalist and socialist. In fact, the Progress Party grew out of the Norwegian tax revolt; its platform combines immigrant-bashing with a healthy distaste...

On ‘The Cost of Revolution’ George Watson, in his article “The Cost of Revolution: England and 1789” (June 1989), goes to extensive lengths to distinguish between “revolutions.” Given the “preservative” nature of the pre-1789 experience, one wonders whether the term “rebellion” may be more apposite. Discarding the common dictionary distinction, which hinges on the issue...

From the May Chronicles, top of the first column on page 31: ” . . . General Vo Nguyen Giap . . . apologized publicly for torture excesses. . . . The Vietcong were ‘forbidden to execute the accused savagely’. . . . “ Russ Braley seems to give the ‘Cong name to all the...

Albert Einstein once noted that a thing should be made as simple as possible—but no simpler. I am afraid that E. Christian Kopff (Cultural Revolutions, May 1989) has reduced my ideas below an acceptable minimum and distorted them in the process. I have said that teaching is undervalued in today’s university, that we do not...

Although I enjoyed Sally S. Wright’s “Writing in the Tolstoy Tradition” in the April 1989 issue of Chronicles, I must point out at least one error. The caption underneath the photograph of Nikolai Tolstoy states, “the Macmillan government participated in atrocities in Austria in 1945,” implying that Harold Macmillan was the British prime minister then....

A correction on Arthur Eckstein’s excellent essay “Caution: Historical Revisionism at Work.” Eckstein says that Noam Chomsky never visited North Vietnam. That is not the case. The following are excerpts from a speech Chomsky made in Hanoi on April 14, 1970 welcoming the 1970 “spring offensive” of the American antiwar movement. (The speech was monitored...

In an otherwise interesting—and occasionally amusing—reminiscence (April 1989) Geoffrey Wagner included one statement that was indisputably tainted. Writing of the “exotic world” of Oxford’s dons following World War II’s conclusion, Mr. Wagner said of them that “nearly all had involved themselves in some sort of fictional fantasy life on the side, perhaps to compensate for...

In his Cultural Revolutions piece in the March issue, William Hawkins claims that the assertion the Smoot-Hawley Tariff caused the Great Depression has “no grounding in fact or logic.” He attributes this assertion solely to a campaign speech made by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Hawkins is mistaken. In his book The Way the World Works,...

Thomas Fleming’s theme in “Life and Death in a House Divided” (April 1989) appears to be support for federalism as a “due-process” means of effecting political change—federalism defined as “every institution that protects individuals from the brute power of the state.” The greatness of the United States of America has resided not in democracy, and...

Professor Lee Congdon merits applause for a thoughtful review of two books on Francisco Franco (October 1988). I might raise the point of a number of significant omissions, but this would be unfair. I do, however, take exception to one commission, namely the assertion that Federico Garcia Lorca was shot by the Nationalists in 1936....

I would like to express how much I enjoy reading Chronicles, and particularly the “Letter From the Heartland” that Jane Greer writes. But “Eastern Montana: a gigantic plate of congealed gravy”? Harsh words from Greer (December 1988), one of the unfortunate residents of North Dakota—the state where the interstate curves so that a driver won’t...

The comments in your December issue about the anomaly of the laws, as now constituted, that affirm both the woman’s sole right to decide on abortion and the father’s duty to financially support the child once born were very well taken. The fact is that abortion is always justified on the basis of the tacit...

Having served as a pastor and naval chaplain under the authority of the United Methodist Church, I can truly appreciate Robert Nisbet’s comments concerning “Christian millennialism” (December 1988). Methodism and the National Council of Churches have stuffed that concept into the ears of their adherents at every opportunity. I wish Mr. Nisbet had commented on...

In response to Lee Congdon’s review of The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (Chronicles, July 1986), I would like to make the following points. Allard Lowenstein’s affiliation with the CIA is well-documented in the book. My sources in military intelligence and the CIA, while wishing to remain anonymous, are well-in formed....

Thomas Fleming’s article, “Old Adam, New Eve” (Perspective, June 1986) failed to mention the women in the line of fire between feminists and traditionalists. Sure, we all decry militant feminists who want to turn science, the sexes, art and, indeed, all society into a progressive’s hodgepodge of leftist doctrine and Marxist utopia. But what about...

In light of your criticisms of education, higher and lower, the question arises, why should Chronicles writer Jane Greer (February issue) and Joseph Sobran of the National Review be taken in by the anti-Shakespearean nonsense? Are they untaught? Badly taught? Or are their views a relatively harmless manifestation of the paranoia of the times? Once...

I read with great interest Bryce Christensen’s “Before the Big Bang” in the March 1986 issue. In what is other wise an excellent review, I must bring your attention to a most grievous error. Mr. Christensen writes: After all, before then no one except Christians had believed that the physical universe appeared suddenly from nothing. ...

Please allow me to comment on your column in the Cultural Revolutions section of the January 1986 issue wherein someone states: “During the 60’s and 70′ s, while other universities were committing academic suicide by eliminating all merely ‘academic’ requirements, Fordham held firm.” My dear sir, if Fordham held firm, then Idi Amin is a...

Regarding “Still in Saigon—in My Mind” (Chronicles, December 1985) anyone who is standing up to cheer Rambo deserves to be taken for another ride; perhaps to Central America. Stallone is a multimillionaire who avoided the draft and thinks of American Foreign Policy in comic-book terms; similar to the President, who also avoided any real military...

The elite (as you say in your “Perspective,” October 1985) may, as you properly put it, “fall in with the first Utopian movement that presents itself,” because of their hatred for the United States. I think, however, that you didn’t carry your argument out far enough. Utopians spring forth all over the world, each proclaiming...

Betsy Clarke’s informative and readable review of In Search of Love and Beauty by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Chronicles, Nov. 1985) raised the question of how we ought to regard homosexuality. Talking of the homosexuals on parade in Jhabvala’s novel, Clarke writes, “By stressing the fact that fathers were absent from the early homes of these...

Rather than answer Thomas Ashton point-by-point, I prefer to wear his critique (Chronicles, November 1985) as a badge of honor. I am struck, in the history of people and ideas, by the frequency of the distinction between personalities and their thoughts. The Rousseau of The Confessions and the Rousseau of The Discourse on Inequality being...

In his review of recent books by Bernard Rollin and Mary Midgley (Chronicles, August 1985), Jay Mechling astutely presents some of the strengths and weaknesses in the current debate over animal rights. Thus Mary Midgley’s case for kinship and moral community in preference to the. inbuilt limitations of the utilitarian standpoint presents as not merely...

The article by Momcilo Selic on Milovan Djilas (Chronicles, September 1985) is a piece of rare quality. The language has the descriptive power of poetry while still obeying the discipline of knowledge. The author can convey the Montenegrin atmosphere to us outsiders and thus throw light on the enigmatic figure of Djilas. My chief praise,...

I read with interest your essay “Leave the Kids Alone” in the September issue of Chronicles. Concerning prayer in public schools, I wonder whether the dispute might be less a question of “religious liberty” than of “thought control.” I have therefore devised an inexpensive experiment which might clarify the issues. The problem is that many...

Right off, let me say that I agree with 85 percent of what you say, and that I for one applaud your willingness to shoot from the hip: the so-called 11th Commandment of conservatism, “Thou shalt speak no ill of a fellow conservative,” has done nothing but retard the intellectual and moral maturity of the...

When I was 17 years of age I was invited by my church to serve at my own expense as a missionary. The assignment was to teach people, especially young people, how to be good Christians. My assignment was to go to England and, at first, everything went fine. The English countryside was beautiful and...

On Weapons of Despair by Brian Murray   In his February review of Kosta Tsipis’s Arsenal and Freeman Dyson’s Weapons and Hope, Professor William Hawkins rightly reminds us that both geopolitical rubes and hard-core leftists are well represented in the “no­ nukes” movement that has in recent years received considerable, not unfavorable, attention in the Western...

On Seeing Red, by Roy Traband Red Dawn is not a particularly good flick, as we used to call motion pic­tures in my day. But your reviewer misses some of the underlying reasons for its immense success.  To resist Afghanistani style is also unfathomable to the New Elite Red Guard in Media. Eric Hoffer, the...

Ideologues in Search of a Faith by Louis Dupré I was distressed to read about myself in Lee Congdon’s review of my book Marx’s Social Critique of Culture: “He is typical too in his substitution of secular utopianism for Christian hope” (CC, October 1984, p. 7). My work intends to show the ultimate failure of Marx’s theory of...

Reading the September comment, “The Conservative Humanitarian, “brought to mind the old quip about “the bland leading the bland.” A pastiche of unexceptional platitudes, felicitous quotes, and pious laments, Professor Steensma’s essay depicts a “conservatism” that will offend no one—and help just as many. This is lap-dog conservatism: pet it and it wags its tail....