The American Spectator

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Friendly Overtures

1.27.03 @ 12:01AM

FRIENDS FOR LIFE
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s Peace Had Its Chance:

Emmett Tyrrell hits it. I am British. I would love to live in America. I do not qualify for admission. For conservatives like me stuck in socialist wastelands, America still symbolizes all that can be good about government, even if from time to time you unwittingly elect hardened snakes and liars like the 42nd President, and incompetents like the 39th. America still possesses the fabulous, mythical qualities of "a land of opportunity," somewhere better, somewhere where a citizen can be a citizen and not a subject, where one can get by on one's own merits and not be handicapped by birth, education or class and where the dignity and worth of labor is still recognized. I hate to see American citizens playing at peace activism, showing disdain for the system that actively nurtures and protects their ability to act like misguided holy fools. If they think the government they live under is unjust and unfair, they should try living in Europe. The lack of humility shown by peace activists is staggering. There is one war on which, of course, they're all very keen -- when it's Palestinians waging war on Israelis.

It sounds cheesy coming from a Scot, but God Bless America. Some Europeans still understand.
-- Martin Kelly
Glasgow, Scotland

The article by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. mentions that the peaceniks carried signs saying "Hands Off Iraq." Isn't this a rip-off of Lee Harvey Oswald's "Hands Off Cuba" fliers? I believe it is. These guys are REALLY living in the (early) 60's.
--- Paul Higdon

FJORD EVERY STREAM
Re: Enemy Central's Weasel Worlds:

I'm off for a 7-day cruise aboard SS Norway to the Virgin Islands, certain that I'm leaving our country in good hands especially after reading Enemy Central. Should you dispose of Sod Him Insane this week, how about a new project like: "United Nations delenda est"! Warm regards (pun intended).
--Dick Lambert
Eagle Rock, VA

Regarding Friday's "Enemy Central," did Hillary Clinton actually say, "If we don't take race as part of our character, then we are kidding ourselves"? If so, where? [Right here. -- Ed.] I would like to gaze upon the source with my own eyes. It is appallingly clear that the paradigm of decades past has shifted, and "progressives" like Mrs. Clinton are on the reactionary defensive, defending a race-based status-quo against true progress.

Also, I am intrigued by this "Axis of Weasels" concept. The only question is -- who else? Everyone knows that any axis must have three member countries. The French, the Germans, and who? The Chinese and Russians, despite their opposition to war in Iraq, don't quite fit. Might I suggest the Swedish? They were the ones who gave the Nobel Prize to Carter ...
-- John Wilson
Hebron, CT

In the Second paragraph of "Weasel Worlds," you use the word "accentiture." This word is not in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition) and the closest I could find in Larousse's French-English Dictionary is the verb "accentuer." Please advise.
-- Dennis J. Flanagan
Levittown, PA

UNBORKING THACKER
Re: George Neumayr's Thacker Wacked:

I appreciated reading Mr. Neumayr's article. As it happens, Jerry Thacker is a friend and colleague of mine. I believe that the gay "thought police" have "borked" Jerry most unfairly. It's ironic that those folks don't like someone like Jerry who has AIDS and is also opposed to the lifestyle which produces that terrible and deadly disease. So there it is. Abstinence will never be acceptable to those who insist on sacrificing their own health for the sake of their own selfish political agenda. Only in America do we have such contradictions.
-- David McGuire
Owatonna, MN

George Neumayr's commentary about Jerry Thacker and his shortlived appointment to the HIV and AIDS panel was a welcome antidote to the politically correct reporting on the matter. The San Francisco Chronicle reprinted (with added comments) the Washington Post story on Jerry Thacker and refused to report even one pro-Thacker person. Within that article each solicited quote was negative to anything but the gay agenda. One of the comments claimed abstinence only was a failed practice. Another said that reparative therapy doesn't work and that the psychiatric community was of one mind. Since reporting these days is so difficult what with the Internet and all, I feel called to instruct reporters to enter Google and type in Dr. Robert Spitzer. That should put to rest any notion that reparative therapy has no supporters among prominent psychiatrists. Wonder what psychiatrists have to say about news organizations that resist knowledge?
-- Robert Holmgren
Menlo Park, CA

George Neumayr's defiance of the p.c. gods is admirable, but it's a shame that he (or his editor) felt obliged to bow to those gods with the wording of this sentence: "When someone is hurtling toward hell in this life and the next, don't stop the person. Cheer them on. Call the person's vice virtue and you will win praise for having a big heart." Surely the standard English version of that mush would be: "When someone is hurtling toward hell in this life and the next, don't stop him. Cheer him on. Call his vice virtue and you will win praise for having a big heart."

The refusal to let masculine pronouns stand for people of either sex is surely an idea whose time has gone. And it's especially pointless in the context in which Neumayr was writing, and the perspective from which he was writing.

The Scriptures' original Hebrew and Greek writers applied masculine pronouns to people in general from beginning to end. If you're going to invoke God's word on an issue, why disdain the usage embraced by His writers? And if the topic is homosexuals and AIDS, you might as well use masculine pronouns even under feminist usage. For the "gay plague," which depends on sexual promiscuity for its transmission, went through the male homosexual community like a hot knife through butter, while leaving the relatively monogamous lesbian community largely untouched.
-- Karl Spence
San Antonio, TX

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Russia, Israel