CONSERVATIVE PERFORMANCE
Re: W. James Antle III’s Rewarding
Labor:
Some short observations on this article, which you may or may
not agree with.
The profile of the Labor Dept. under Elaine Chao was very
interesting and informative, but also encouraging in a larger
sense. Many observers have been highly critical of Donald Rumsfeld.
Colin Powell was to some extent a disappointment, and Condoleezza
Rice has been criticized for naivete or “going native” at the State
Department with regard to the “Middle East Peace Process,”
“consultation” with North Korea and Iran, and other matters. The
issue might more accurately be stated: has anybody better been
available for their slots, from 2001 until now?
The personal opinion of one of your readers (of no particular
wisdom or distinction) is that in historical terms, the team of
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Ashcroft, and (as it turns out)
Chao has been as good as any assembled by any President since
Lincoln. Moreover, it’s hard to think of anyone else in public life
who could have equaled the work of any of these people under the
conditions in which we now live. But who can the next president
draw on, of equal experience or stature or gravitas? Rice is still
young, and might yet have some “star quality” at the beginning of
2009. The rest are history.
Mr. Antle referred to the Weekly Standard reference to
Chao, and about a year ago the National Review had a
full-page article on her. The Republican “bench” of
statesmen is apparently a bit deeper than it might
seem.
— Thomas Paulick
Do we really need a gushy article about the head bureaucrat of a
massive agency that directs local and state labor issues, pension
plans, health and welfare funds, etc One need only review the
agency website to
get a quick realization of how out of control, overarching and
incomprehensibly Kafka-esque federal agencies have become. The
Department of Labor oversees employer-based health insurance, and
yet patients caught in the outright defiance of insurance companies
that fail to adhere to Department of Labor regulations have no
recourse. Regulations issued by the Department of Labor regarding
insurance response to and payment of claims is routinely ignored,
and there are no penalties. This agency is yet another example of
an overgrown bureaucracy that Republicans have no desire to address
or reduce. Rather than self-congratulatory adulation, the heads of
these bureaucracies should be talking to the American people
victimized by the government agencies that, by their nature, have
little interest in the individual. It appears the writer of this
article did not address any of the major issues Republicans
formerly would have raised: federalizing issues and laws that
should be in the purview of local government, depriving individuals
of their rights to sue in state courts and to instead be forced
into cumbersome federal remedies and courts, and the outright
defiance of health and welfare entities to obey the rules, even as
their executives get hundreds of millions of dollars in stock
options.
— Caroline Miranda, Attorney at Law
North Hollywood, California
W. James Antle III replies:
So which way does Ms. Miranda want to argue this — is the
Department of Labor a massive, imperious bureaucracy or does it
regulate too little? I make perfectly clear that the Labor
Department is even now too big. If I had my way, it would not exist
at all. But if the Labor Department isn’t going anywhere in the
foreseeable future, it would be better to have it well run, with
restraint in its annual budget growth while still effectively
addressing many of the concerns it is supposed to deal with. Under
the current labor secretary it has, and at a time when swing voters
question conservatives’ ability to govern this fact is well worth
pointing out.
WRONG NUMBER
Re: The Washington Prowler’s “Marginal Call” item under Up to His
Ankles:
I think the “unexpected” phone calls are childish. Come on, does
Giuliani really think voters are going to vote for someone that
does not have the sense to turn off his phone during a speech?
Funny and kind of cute it is not.
— Elaine Kyle
FOOD VALUE
Re: Ben Stein’s A Taste of
Summer:
How much is Ben willing to wager on the results of a poll of
Americans on which meal they prefer, a McDonald’s cheeseburger or
their preferred choice of a meal costing up to $100? Inquiring
minds want to know.
— Jim Drake
Papillion, Nebraska
HONORARY DEGREES
Re: Clinton W. Taylor’s Yale,
Columbia:
I whole-heartedly agree with your editorial.
You put in words exactly what I wanted to express. Thanks.
— Ann Carmichael
Sterling, Virginia
Let me see if I understand this.
Columbia University won’t allow U.S. military recruiters or the
ROTC on their campus because they consider the “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell” policy regarding gays in the military to be a violation of
civil rights.
Yet they invite Ahmadinejad in, in spite of the fact that he and
his country violate the civil rights of gays by killing them,
…of women by denying them even basic human rights,
… and of Jews by advocating the violation of their rights to
life and national existence.
What am I missing here?
— A. C. Santore
Pennsylvania
Surprise, surprise a hate filled liberal Northeastern academic
institution that despises President Bush and all conservatives
invited a blood-soaked tyrant (who sounds like a typical Democrat)
to speak to its automatons (students, faculty and supporters). Big
deal! The only difference between Herr Ahmadinejad and a Democrat
politician or one of their media hacks is Ahmadinejad wears a cheap
looking suit, needs a shave and is honest about his genocidal
hatred for America, Jews, Christians and Western civilization. If
only he’d been born in Chicago with his homicidal rage and
megalomania he’d be a shoo-in for the 2008 Democrat Presidential
nomination.
As for that leftist bastion of useless academia and defender of
oppression and despots to paraphrase an old song, “To hell with
Columbia!”
— Michael Tomlinson
Jacksonville, NC
Clinton Taylor castigates Yale and Columbia for inviting Hashemi
and Ahmadinejad to speak. According to Mr. Taylor, ” It’s about a
mystical belief in the power of the academy to bring peace upon the
earth.”
Silly liberals! When will they ever learn? If you are going to
“play footsies” with a bad guy, do it for money — just like Dick
Cheney, when he headed Halliburton, did with Saddam Hussein in the
1990s.
— Mike Roush
North Carolina
I’m not inclined to think that Columbia University would have
extended a speaking invitation to Adolf Hitler, either right now or
in the late thirties. However, I have no doubt they would invite
Joseph Stalin or Vladimir Lenin to speak…
— Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida
FAT OF THE LAND
Re: G. Tracy Mehan, III’s Harvest
Time in Washington:
Even a vegetable must feel Tracy Mehan’s pain at the “subsidies,
supports, and Rube Goldberg programs which will be layered on top
of other tariffs, preferences, and perks to assist the agricultural
sector in the face of what some health officials call an obesity
epidemic.”
Yet despite the cornucopia of Federal pork, vegetable inflation
at its finest remains the private sector’s metier. No Federal
program of pumpkin subsidy exists, yet by any measure — weight,
girth , or distance flown through the air in harvest time
celebration — postmodern pumpkins grossly outperform publicly
subsidized crops.
In Lord Protector Cromwell’s day, a pumpkin weighing as much as
a child was cause for sermons of thanksgiving throughout New
England, and a generation ago, though handy microfilm repositories,
they were still too small to conceal Alger Hiss’s typewriter.
Today, a pumpkin of a thousand pounds is deemed scarcely worthy of
honorable mention at a county fair, for the aggressive vegetable’s
mutation from a staple into a suburban art form puts its husbandry
on the same plane as ostrich wrangling or llama dressage. This is
doubly unfortunate, as were county authorities to promote the
manufacture of pumpkin eau de vie from the prize worthy
strains of each neighborhood, converting a dozen of the vegetables
into gasohol could free a fertile Iowa acre for the production of
maize that might be exported to Mexico, or used by Archer Daniels
Midland to further the private subsidy of Public Television.
Much as I enjoy Mr. Mehan’s writing , you really ought to devote
more space to herbicide ads.
— Russell Seitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Ending subsidies won’t change the amount of pollution that runs
into the Gulf one iota.
— Bob Teter
DAILY ARTS AND LETTERS
Re: Roger Scruton’s Art,
Beauty, and Judgment:
Much thanks to Roger Scruton for his essay, “Art, Beauty, and
Judgment.” After many years of thinking on this topic, unraveling
the aesthetics of cubism from the outcome of relativism, it is
encouraging to read a voice that has made such clear sense of
aesthetic judgment and artistic value. Modern art often affects the
viewer, true — but in what manner and to what end? Scruton tells
us, “without the humility that comes from love,” which ultimately,
I think, alienates us all. Hopefully this will open new doors into
the re-evaluation of art, and enrich our personal, social, and
cultural experience of it.
— Neil Stotts
I’d rather deal with Duchamp than with orderly, humorless, churchy
Scruton.
Duchamp while pulling a prank forced people to never again look
at any object in quite the same way, making that discovery itself
became so vital to XX century art, enriching our lives despite an
occasional failing or two.
Scruton’s no philosopher, he doesn’t have the courage to
question what he should, but picks on a urinal while completely
pissing the point, only believing in make-believe that soothes but
dictates, unable to abandon and play, then step away.
— Anthony Steyning
