The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Common and Uncommon

7.14.04 @ 12:01AM

SOWELL SEARCHER
Re: Tom Bethell's The Economist:

In your column on Tom Sowell, you clearly (much as he does) stated what I have enjoyed since discovering him in Forbes. Whenever I read his work, I remember the quote from Voltaire, "common sense is not so common." He is indeed an uncommon man.
-- Matt Levine

TOLERATING RON
Re: George Neumayr's Ron Reagan's Stem Sell:

The last time we inquired it appeared that entry level qualifications for stem cell research included, among others, a Ph.D. degree or equivalent in the area of cell and molecular biology, as well as a minimum of 6 years of post-graduate experience in the area of adult and embryonic stem cell biology. Experience in the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries is also customarily required.

It is most reassuring to note that Mr. Reagan has done his family -- especially his late father -- proud by having mastered the prerequisites to delivering a "prime-time" dissertation to the American public covering the issues involved in such a delicate, professionally demanding, empirical field of scientific endeavor. The course of the history of science is about to be altered with the same verve as was evident when Dr. Jonas Salk succeeded in defeating polio meningitis with his vaccine.
-- Seamus Muldoon, Jr.
Richland, Washington

George Neumayr could also have pointed out that in contrast to the pirouetter-turned-pundit, Michael Reagan recently wrote in his nationally-syndicated column: "I'm getting a little tired of the media's insistence on reporting that the Reagan 'family' is in favor of stem cell research, when the truth is that two members of the family have been long time foes of this process of manufacturing human beings -- my dad, Ronald Reagan during his lifetime, and me."

Note that Michael Reagan was referring strictly to embryronic stem cells, which not only raise serious moral issues but are purely experimental, and not the adult stem cells from our own bodies and umbilical cords that have been used to cure fatal diseases like leukemia since the 1980s. But my guess is Ron Reagan Jr. wouldn't know an adult stem cell if it danced past him in a bright pink tutu.
-- Michael Fumento
Senior Fellow
Hudson Institute
Author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World

Reasonable people drew a sigh of relief when Ron Reagan was announced as a convention speaker for the Democrats.

Ever since Ron dropped out of Yale to take up ballet, we knew he was off. But, out of respect for his father we never really brought it up. Unfortunately for Ron, it is clear that both his father's greatness and the love the nation has for Ronald Reagan has eluded him.

As a result he will not be perceived as an influential man but a daft son who allowed his father's enemies to manipulate him into distorting his Dad's record and memory.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan openly expressed his hope that his son would take up a "more dignified" line of work. Twenty years later we are again saying how right Ronald Reagan was all along.
-- Mrs. John B. Jackson III (Janet )
Grosse Pointe, Michigan

CLASSICAL GAS
Re: Eric Peters' Picking on Greenhouse Gassers:

Eric Peters has picked up on something so obvious that I have yet to see it stated until now -- those "evil" automotive engineers around the world have improved internal combustion engines (and catalytic converters) to the point where almost nothing but carbon dioxide and water come out the tailpipe. Thirty-five years ago, when as a child I remember the odor of organic fumes thick and heavy wherever there was substantial traffic, this achievement would have been considered a godsend. But not today! Environmental intellectuals, panicked at the thought that the evil automotive and oil industries were no longer poisoning our children, suddenly declared carbon dioxide (the same gas that even the high-minded environmentalists exhale -- perhaps even more so than others) as a serious pollutant. So the incredible achievement is combustion technology, and the impact it has had on breathing in the larger cities goes unheralded.

The idea that carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the earth's atmosphere have been properly balanced and controlled for hundreds of millions of years by the very animal and plant life that depend upon both to survive seems to have eluded the environmental "scientists." In fact, I remember a Science journal article from 1992 in which carbon dioxide levels were measured and dated in entrapped air bubbles in amber. It concluded that the carbon dioxide levels in the past have ranged from half of today's levels to over twenty times today's current concentrations. And yet somehow, life not only survived, but flourished. Any engineer worth is salt can understand the equilibrium process that takes place -- as carbon dioxide levels go up, world-wide plant growth increases (and it has), which consumes the excess carbon dioxide levels until they level off and drop again. There are others factors at work in this great control scheme, but without a robust control system, life as we know it would have extinguished long ago. This control scheme will continue to support life on this great planet long past the last carbon dioxide-laden breaths of today's Chicken Littles, and as an SUV-sized hearse takes them to their final resting place, my they finally rest in peace.
-- Mike Spencer
Midland, Michigan

ROBERTS RULES
Re: Paul M. Weyrich's Persistence Pays Off:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Business, Environment, Iraq, NATO, Conservatism, Nuclear Weapons, Oil