The American Spectator

Reader Mail

A Delicate Phase

4.14.04 @ 12:01AM

COLLECTOR BILL
Re: Tom Bethell's The Living Hell of Bill Moyers:

I am so thankful there are people who are able to watch (and report on) the depressing, mind-numbing, and endlessly pessimistic drivel that comes out of PBS and Bill Moyers, so that I do not have to become depressed, mind-numbed and pessimistic.
-- Anne Linehan
Spring, Texas

Just wanted to compliment Tom Bethell for an insightful article about Bill Moyers. Behind his spectacles and quiet demeanor, Moyers has an insidious political agenda that is excellently summarized. With so many great insights and quotes, it's hard to choose just one, but my favorite has to be, "but the socialist dream didn't work out and he knows that".

Now if we can just convince Hillary and the others that socialism doesn't work, we can turn our energies toward what someone in these pages once said is the "real debate," libertarianism vs. conservatism. Unfortunately, the modern-day liberal and other socialists never really go away. Hence, a free society is forced to expend its social and political capital in fighting off its constant assaults (i.e., environmental activism, multiculturalism, etc.). Great article exposing this PBS icon for who he really is.
-- Regis Dansdill

Your article about Bill Moyers was right on the mark. His focus on the miserable is endemic.

Moyers brings back memories of a psychology professor who taught us his own brand of diagnostics. One of the symptoms of mental disorder, he maintained, is "Injustice Collecting." Some people collect injustices the way others collect baseball cards. According to my instructor, those folks are mentally disordered.

People like Moyers, Ron Kuby and Al Franken seem to be programmed to counter every defense of the good in America with a denunciation (often based on twisted reasoning) of America.

And they appear to be unable to react in any other way.

I wonder often about their mental health.
-- Leonard A, Schneider

Bill Moyers may have started out a Baptist, but he is now a Unitarian Universalist.
-- Bob Curlee
Virginia Beach, Virginia

TREATY TRICKS
Re: William J. Watkins, Jr.'s Keep U.N. Justice Out of the U.S.:

I would offer that Americans have not had any real view of the treaties that its government has been signing around the world. The number is enormous, and their impact grave and expansive. Especially in the area of copyright and patent law.

But one thing is clear, if we were to opt out of the international community and fail to conform our laws and comply our courts to the treaties our government has signed, particularly those that deal with or impact on human rights of foreign nationals within our borders, then we should expect Americans to be similarly treated abroad.

No way can I support trumping international treaty law with domestic law, by constitutional amendment or by congressionally generated statute. Change the treaty, or don't sign it, but do not change the American Constitution to block out the impact of treaties our nation has signed.

The problem here is agreeing to treaties, without first putting them to the scrutiny of the people in America. Congressional review of treaties is very limited most of the time, and public review in the media is even more limited, in fact constitutional treaty activities are many times confined to the executive until time to sign or approve them.

Letter to the Editor

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