The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Freedom Flies

6.1.05 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 4)

We have noted of late, a tendency of various authors to utilize the 35 hour week canard. We recognize that such efforts by France in the past were part and parcel of a malaise symptomatic of their economic woes. (e.g. "They will fight to the death (just rhetorically, of course) to protect their legally mandated short work week,…")

But in the spirit of factual correctness, it is recommended that starting June 1, 2005 all Pundits should refrain from mandated references to being lazy on the part of the French. The 35-hour work rule was repealed back in March. Though it is noted that the French still prefer a two-hour lunch.

In consideration of the surfeit of material that can be used to bash the French in other venues it might be viewed by some that the 35-hour issue as "piling on." Permit me to recommend we channel our efforts into the snobbery, xenophobia, and "De Gaulle Syndrome" so symptomatic of the French elite.

-- John McGinnis
VP, External Affairs, Fact Checkers Anonymous
P.S. Kudos for the balance of the article, as spot on.

Jed Babbin, usually a sensible observer, seems to have lost his mind (or his memory) on the subject of Turkey:

"And why should Turkey, our sometimes recalcitrant Muslim ally, be left out? (Because they betrayed us when we asked not even their participation but only their cooperation in Operation Iraqi Freedom!) The Turks have much to offer, including access to the new million-barrel-a-day Caucasus pipeline (that oil sweet song!), that can benefit us enormously. Their current government is quasi-Islamist, but their westernized majority (Ha! Not much in evidence in polls or voting booths!) and very capable military (When was this capability last demonstrated in actual combat?) aren't. Most Turks harbor enormous resentment of France and other EU members that have -- on obviously racist grounds (not racist, but cultural, see Theo van Gogh obituaries. To call those who advocate caution with regard to inassimilable Muslim immigrants "racists" is the familiar Muslim propaganda line for knee-jerk American consumption) -- delayed Turkey's EU membership application. Why not give Turkey now what the EUnuchs promise and never deliver? (Because, hopefully, we are smarter than the EUnuchs.)"

Turkey has proven a faithless "ally," to be punished accordingly. Most analysts seem to believe that Turkish cooperation in OIF would have rendered the "insurgency" that has plagued the last two years much less troublesome, since many of its participants would have been killed when our northern column swept through the Sunni Triangle.
-- G.W. McKenna

Jed Babbin replies:
That I may have lost my mind is always a possibility. But the evidence you submit falls terribly short of proving that point. Who are the experts and analysts you cite? No one I know, and I fancy myself as pretty well-wired into the analyst community, believes the Turkish refusal to allow the landing of the 10th Armored to the north would have had any effect on the insurgency whatsoever. The insurgents -- as you might have read in my column of 4/1/03 -- were flowing into Iraq long before the proposed landing would have occurred. Since then, the insurgents have been reinforced, funded and armed from Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran. Kurdish areas bordering Turkey are not a problem. I reiterate: Turkey is a valuable ally, and one that must be courted and brought back into the action. To ignore them, or punish them as you propose, would indeed be insanity.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN
Re: Lawrence Henry's Shut Up!:

Have y'all never heard of a DVR? I record all my programs and while they are recording I am watching shows that were recorded earlier. Just pass right past the commercials. Thank you Dish Network for a DVR that lets me record two shows at the same time and watch already recorded ones.
-- Elaine Kyle
Cut & Shoot, Texas

MODERATELY SELF-ADORING
Re: George Neumayr's Tyranny of the Moderates:

You always stir the pot. Thanks.

Everyone is an absolutist. A moderate is an absolutist with a fence. There's no such thing as a superiority complex. Moderates are thirsty for human respect and the press gives it to them. Suffering for the good would never occur to them and the more meaningful the issue, the more subservient to relativism they become. They undercut anything they claim to sit for. If God only played a central role in their lives they would have something other than themselves to worship. It's so sad and maddening. They represent nothing.
-- Bob Levine

CALLING TORQUEMADA
Re: Ben Berry's letter (under "The Homosexuality Canard") in Reader Mail's Elite of All Evils:

Given its content, I will let pass the adulation given by Mr. Ben Berry in his gushing defense of The Cato Institute's economic prescience, but I cannot do the same about his second missive, which deals with a topic about which our productive letter writer knows very, very little. Why is it, I ask, that contributors to this webzine, without the slightest -- other than its prurient side - interest in and information about Catholic beliefs, write such drivel? What is, pray tell, "a Catholic urban legend?" Did the "legend" attenuate or disappear as the local population declined? Does Mr. Berry understand what the word "Catholic" means? Where is Tomas de Torquemada when we need him!

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Trade, John McCain, Harry Reid, Islam, Books, Constitution, Law, Military, Iraq, Iran, Israel, NATO, Oil