Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.natrev From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Letters Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 12:17:28 EST Message-ID: Lines: 124 Letters Abortion Wars Mark Cunningham's ''The Abortion War'' [Nov. 2] is a welcome and realis- tic evaluation of the pro-life political situation. But while Mr. Cunningham is also correct that ''the abortion war . . . cannot be won by simply asserting that abortion is immoral,'' I can't help but question the suggestion that the immediate alternative strategy should be to show where abortion laws have ''gone wild.'' Case in point: On November 3, Maryland voters decided on an abortion referendum dealing with parental consent. Advertisements featured women emphasizing their pro-choice position, but supporting parental consent. The proposition is that abortion is okay if the child's maternal grandparents say so. Yes, statistics indicate that parental-consent laws do reduce the number of abortions, but given the continuing slide into moral relativism, how long will this last? Mr. Cunningham probably comes closer with the argument that ''a moral life is a happy life,'' if among the definitions of happy we include the concept of personal safety. In a secular, post-Christian society, it may be more effective to suggest a connection between the willful killing of children in the womb and the sort of social pathology that has turned the streets of many large cities into murderous jungles (with apologies to the denizens of real jungles). The late Leopold Tyrmand discussed this phenomenon in the pages of NATIONAL REVIEW as early as 1980, but my experience is that for some reason pro-lifers seem to overlook this argument. John Finerty Alexandria, Va. Unmanning the Schools Regna Lee Wood has a valid and timely argument against the ''look-say'' method of teaching reading [''That's Right -- They're Wrong,'' Sept. 14]. Yet I believe the horrendous pedagogical techniques described in her arti- cle are but one symptom of an epistemological problem with roots deeper than even she imagines. The real problem lies in an unchecked educa- tional utopianism that first prospered under the ostensibly benevolent guidance of Horace Mann, and has been watered and manured faithfully by five or six generations of progressive educators. As Mrs. Wood suggests, the Pandora's box of educational maladies we now see around us is chained open by a profound ignorance on the part of those who control our schools. It is time for a new look at some old ideas. Significant victories will not be won in American education without profound re-evaluation of the ideologies that shaped it in the first place. Kenneth L. Smith Wyoming, Mich. Full Election Press In post-mortem response to Lorrin Anderson's question, ''What happens when the umpire picks up bat and glove?'' you get a new, media-preferred President [''Here Now the News,'' Nov. 16]. Who can any longer deny that the fourth estate is the most influential and hence powerful force in our country? Like Mr. Anderson, I have made the odyssey from McGovern to Reagan even as I remain a registered Democrat. It was with a ''shred of fair- mindedness'' that I was initially repelled by a prejudicial media that was telling me everything that I wanted to hear except the truth, and took my first faltering steps toward conservatism. As a young liberal, I thought I was for the underdog. I was wrong. Whoever the liberal press is for, it is, by the nature of their support, not the underdog. In an age where ''stupid- ity has begun to think'' and doublespeak comes from the Left rather than as predicted from the Right, I have never felt so vulnerable, so much the underdog, so conservative. Jan Boggs Meridian, Miss. PC Sheriff In his fine-tooth search for PC in Unforgiven [Sept. 14], John Simon skirts an important point. Little Bill Daggett may be intended to personify the conservative police state, but he is imbued with all the worst traits of lib- erals. Consider: 1) He is always talking, loves to dwell on technicalities, and relishes a captive (literally) audience; 2) he cannot resist gratuitously rewriting history, in the guise of revealing the ''truth'' behind English Bob's memoirs; 3) he takes if-looks-could-kill offense at even jocular criti- cism of his handiwork (a leaky roof); and 4) most significantly for a law- man, he fails to judge people by their actions. He takes a classic neo-lib- eral ''good people may do bad things'' approach to the movie's central crime, yet he engages in the worst tokenism regarding firearms -- folks who carry guns are automatically ''people of low character.'' What more do you need? This guy is Bob Beckel with a gun. Little Bill is proof of Joseph Sobran's observation that people are quickest to accuse others of the very traits they dread finding in themselves. Joe Skilton Portland, Ore. Corrigenda My piece ''The Poetry of Brand Names'' [''The Gimlet Eye,'' Nov. 16] con- tains two typographical errors. In Baudelaire's ''Sed Non Satiata'' the word ''constance'' unaccountably underwent a sex-change operation when it was fit to print: ''au constance'' became ''a la constance.'' Le constance is a South African wine, which enjoyed a certain vogue in France in the nineteenth century (Baudelaire might have first tasted it when he stopped at the Cape on his way back from the island of Mauritius); it balances the better-known French wine (''nuits'') at the end of that Baudelairean line. Both meaning and meter demand the masculine. Second, the Russian for typewriter is not ''pishushchaya mashina'' but ''pishushchaya mashinka''; a diminutive ''k'' (but not hypocoristically so) should be slipped epenthetically into the penultimate place. Vive le pedant! Peter Lubin Cambridge, Mass. This article is copyright 1992 National Review. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM