The American Spectator

Reader Mail

CHECK IT BEFORE YOU WRECK IT
Re: Doug Bandow's Christmas Card Check:

Obama will be remembered as The Potlatch-by-Proxy President. That is to say, he will enhance his own reputation by giving away the property of others.
-- David Govett
Davis, California

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This article is slanted anti-union and misses the greater picture, in my opinion.

Unions have their place; they come about from natural causes, and they die from natural causes too. During their lifespan they can become diseased from all sorts of ailments, both internal and external.

The larger picture would address a vibrant and healthy business structure, competing with others of similar nature. However, life is not so ordered, just ask your buddy K. Marx and others.

Dynamic and natural conflict.

Read Epictetus for enlightenment, perhaps.
-- R. Philiips
Corrales, New Mexico

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LOCAL YOKELS
Re: Ryan Young's The Myth of Buying Local:

Mr. Young makes a very valid point about the necessary ubiquity of foreign products in our stores, but he TOTALLY misses the point about buying local. The “buying local” goal has nothing to do with the origin of the products as much as with who is selling the product: Joe at the local electronics store or Amazon.com. Money spent with Joe helps the community. Money spent with Amazon helps Amazon and is a drain from the community. No myth there -- cold hard fact.

So, good point about the globalization of the economy -- but it has nothing to do with the central thesis: that buying local is a myth.
-- Jim Luptak
Bismarck, North Dakota

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Of course buying "local" helps the community. The profits, if any, stay with local owners and operators. The local framing shop doesn't have to pay a percentage of its gross revenue to a home office to use to support "administration and executive oversight." I made a choice for convenience and price and bought many Christmas gifts online this year. I bought some personalized jewelry at a local shop. Most of my other purchases were done at chain supermarkets and stores; I supported non-chain restaurants. "Buying(entirely) local" is probably difficult if not impossible in some locales and may be the equivalent of killing a few flies to help the local pest situation. But my mechanic, my barber, my jeweler, my framing shop, and my fishmonger all appreciate my business. The local Wal-Mart might, but until they started asking if the cashier greeted you on the debit/credit card keypad, it seemed local and out-of-town management wasn't interested in my returning to the store.

I manage restaurants at a local, privately-owned resort hotel. After I ensure that the guests' meal is "okay," I thank them for coming and telling them that we appreciate their patronage.

I learned that from a corporate airline. Something about, "We know you have choices in airline travel today..."
-- Marcus Bressler
Tequesta, Florida

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COULDN'T BE BETTER
Re: Peter Ferrara's Utopia:

Great article by Peter Ferrara. My comment:

Liberals will never allow any enclaves of freedom because liberals are essentially parasites who cannot live without host bodies. They are also tyrants who derive their perverted form of “joy” from telling other people what to do and say, namely, adopt liberal dogma. A country cannot live half-free and half-slave, as a well-known non-liberal once said. We are either going to save America as a free country or turn it over to our liberal uber-meisters. There’s no other choice.
-- Michael G. Novak
Ellicott City, Maryland

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The problem with the the Utopia solution is that the people from them will move out because of crime, high taxation, corruption, etc., then move into a nice state and then start trying to get all the laws that they had in their hell holes passed in their new home. "Californication" is a common name for it.

Some times when they move into a small town and try this crap they get corrected, but so many of them move into the mid-sized and large cities things start going to hell.
I don't know what the solution is -- unless a 5-year waiting period before they could become voting citizens of the new state, county, and town they moved to?
-- Douglas Chandler

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TERMINOLOGY
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s Bubbleheads and Dupes:

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"Bubbleheads" are United States Submariners. They refer to themselves by that term which is a sign of respect by surface ship officers and sailors. This term has been used for decades. You can easily confirm this by calling the Pentagon and/or the Chief of Naval Operations.
-- A.R. Warmington
Former Lieutenant, USN

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There's a snatch of dialog in one of the many "Peanuts" movies/TV specials. After Charlie Brown saves his friends from a dangerous situation, they say: 1: Am I dead? 2: Thanks to Charlie Brown. 3. I'm not dead? 4. No thanks to Charlie Brown.

George W. Bush is the Charlie Brown of the left, and will probably remain so long after he's left office.
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

The New Your Times/The Old Left Witch:

"All the socialist anti-American propaganda that we see fit to push."

"Double-talk, fabrication, defamation, and subversion is our method; lethargic, self-indulgent, ignorant people our target."

Thanks for a solid hit, RET!
-- Carl Gordon Pyper
Monett, Missouri

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BLESSING IN DISGUISE
Re: G. Tracy Mehan, III's Compassionate Conservatism for Detroit:

As a 22 year old physics major at UW-Madison, I obviously need not state who I voted for. With that being said, it seems as though the rise of the broken Republican party might come through a blind Democratic support without any scrutiny of failing companies. I've heard these things oscillate and when Republicans finally admit the shortcomings of Bush, along with promoting a reluctance to put me and my generation in an outrageously large debt, maybe it won't just be "common knowledge (oscillations). Then again, I'm much too young to speak with too much certainty.
-- Matthew Noel

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LOTS OF HOT AIR
Re: Ralph R. Reiland's A UN-Approved Christmas Dinner:

I hate to be so crude, but the wind from the UN's collective ass and that of a few dishonest scientists and a wannabe president has caused more global warming than all the food animals that have ever lived.

They have no sense of shame, not a bit of conscience or judgment, nothing but the urge to outdo each other with a more and more outlandish claim to get attention. The word joke is now spelled U-n-i-t-e-d N-a-t-i-o-n-s.
-- Roy W. Hogue
Newbury Park, California

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PARTNERS IN CRIME
Re: Eric Peters's Are the Unions to Blame?:

Methinks the author meant "Chrysler" not "Ford" in his summation (second last paragraph). He could be right that the UAW doesn't deserve all the blame, though the UAW hasn't helped. But still, Wall Street gets trillions and Washington doesn't bat an eye. Wall Street created the world-wide financial melt-down of 2008, not Detroit. Wall Street ushered in The Great Depression in 1929 too. Of course Wall Street has lots of help from The Federal Reserve and the geniuses who run things in Washington. Wall Street and the Fed dream up something for us to gag on every few years. It's time we took a close look at Wall Street and the Fed, don't you think?
-- Morley Evans

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NOTHING TO ADD
Re: Michael Novak's The Day My Brother Was Murdered:

What a wonderful, but sad tale. He is with God now and certainly in my prayers.
-- Gary

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WELFARE FOR TRUST FUND BABIES

This letter is in response to the articles appearing recently concerning those banks asking for bailout money this year that rewarded their executives last year with millions of dollars. A good portion of that pay matches the bailout amounts requested.

It is a well known fact that the ratio of top executive to factory worker pay has exploded this decade from 42 to 1 in 1980 to 419 to 1 last year. Why are we paying these people so much more if they don't have the intelligence and will to act in our best interest? What tangible proof is there that top executives contribute that much more to the successful attainment of corporate goals? Why aren't these executives (Enron) given longer prison terms than car thieves? If intelligence determined corporate leadership rather than birthright, the compensation ratio would be much lower because smart leaders would recognize it as the right thing to do whereas those that are there by birthright simply don't know any better. It is this ignorance perpetuated by birthright that is leading this country to collapse. Perhaps someday our society will be lead by intelligent people who see their own best interest as having promoted society's best interest.
-- Joe Bialek
Cleveland, Ohio