The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Indecent Appeasement

5.28.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 6)

Enjoyed your article.
-- Terry Hagen

Spending money on a program that does not work has never bothered a liberal. This is possibly because they always see someone else paying the price of the failure. When I hear liberals talking about cutting class size or curbing the cost of government to stop global warming or conserve energy, I will then take serious notice of their carping and moaning. So far I have seen no government energy program, except maybe nuclear, that would surpass the economic benefits of the government making sure everyone got a lucky rabbit's foot. At least you can eat the by product and the fur makes very nice mittens.
-- Danny L. Newton
Cookeville, Tennessee

Once again another biofuels discussion with water simply left out of the equation. Hello? It has taken millions of years to fill the huge aquifers that crops now sit over and consume, yet are being pumped with more and more wells. People and animals also need water from time to time and cities don't necessarily have a river or lake nearby constantly supplied by rainwater or snowmelt. Doesn't anyone remember the Dust Bowl? Before wells and pumps existed, the 'breadbasket' was plowed under and the settlers simply hoped rain would water the crops. Here in the west, a water war has gone on for a century and a severe drought has intensified it. Once the water is gone, fuel will be the least of our worries.
-- Russell Ready

BOYS WILL BE BOYS
Re: Lawrence Henry's How Little Boys Eat:

Trouble with Joe's breakfast? Go to Trader Joe's -- frozen food aisle, breakfast section. Get Frozen steel cut (already cooked) oatmeal, two servings to a box Microwave for 3 minutes. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a scatter of blueberries. Have one, yourself, Larry. That scoop of ice cream gives hot cereal a summery touch. It also cools the cereal down and nobody is late to school.

Steel cut is yummy and crunchy -- not gooey and gluey. My six year old grandson approves.
-- D. Smith

The sony "Roly Poly" was recorded in 1946 by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboy.
-- Stan Bennett
Sugar Land, Texas

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys did this song a long time before Willie Nelson ever learned to play the guitar. You might pass this along to Mr. Henry. Other than this historical gaffe, the essay was pretty good, particularly in its implicit criticism of the obsessive nannyism our kids, particularly boys, face today.
-- Stu Dempsey

I'm sure you'll hear from other pedants but I knew it wasn't Willie. If it was Willie, he'd have been 13 years old when he wrote it. He was born in 1933. Just an old country music fan...
-- Jeff Upton

Lawrence Henry replies: Thank you. I should have remembered that. Pitfalls of Google. I did find the song attributed to Willie Nelson as author -- and he's pretty old.

BREAD AND PRAGMATISM
Re: Hugh Thomson's letter (under "Pragmatism") in Reader Mail's More Fumbles:

Mr. Hugh Thomson asks, "Why should Gov. Pawlenty 'save' Minnesotans from the consequences of their decision...to put Democrats into office? Put another way, why should the adults save the children from the consequences of their choices?"

This is a rather juvenile approach to politics. Put bluntly, the governor -- indeed, any elected official -- is not a rubber stamp who merely validates the choices of the people. Ours is a representative, not a direct democracy, and an elected official owes his constituents his best judgment in order to provide good governance. And that is what Governor Pawlenty is doing -- providing Minnesotans with good governance, whether they deserve it or not.

The notion that a Republican governor should simply allow the citizens of his state to stew in their own juices because he does not support the positions of the majority party in the state legislature endorses what is, in effect, a dereliction of duty. As governor, Pawlenty's mandate is to leave his state in better condition than he found it. Thomson would have him wreck the state by his passive acceptance of Democratic spending initiatives, just to get even with the citizens of Minnesota -- whose interests Pawlenty has sworn to protect -- for electing Democrats to public office. This is petty-minded tom-foolery. Imagine, for a moment, if Franklin Roosevelt had taken Mr. Thomson's path with regard to rearmament and support for Great Britain prior to Pearl Harbor, and decided to do nothing, to punish the people of America for electing isolationists to Congress. Other than Pat Buchanan, who else thinks the world would be better off today?

Mr. Thomson seems to wish that we lived under a parliamentary system, in which the will of the legislative majority is law. Perhaps he likes the notion of clear-cut political decisions unmuddied by compromise. Maybe he needs to live in such a system for a while, where (as one parliamentarian once told me), "Fifty percent plus one means we can do whatever we want." The founders, who lived under such a system, rejected it as legislative tyranny, instead promoting divided government and a system of checks and balances that allow majority rule while protecting minority rights, because legislation can only be passed through consensus and compromise. This is guaranteed to drive partisan ideologues insane with frustration. That's the general idea, Mr. Thomson. Get used to it. It protects you when you are in the minority, just as it frustrates your ambitions when you are in the majority. Everyone must settle for half a loaf, or for no bread at all. This requirement for a broad-based consensus is what provides the stability that has allowed the U.S. to be governed under one Constitution, amended but largely unchanged, since 1789.

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