Conservative forum

Enviromental Laws And Collectivism

In "Conservative Forum" [Oct. 21, 1999] Bonner Cohen posits that environmental laws are rigorously applied as a means of denying political opponents a way to make a living. He states that this practice started in the West with bogus claims of endangerment of the Spotted Owl and warns that it will spread to the South, where some other critter will be found to serve the same purpose.

Advocates of liberty would do well to recognize that "environmentalists" have not blazed new trails with their punitive economic measures. Rather, punishing political opponents began with the modem civil-rights movement. Therein, one finds the most basic of human freedoms redefined as a violation of another's rights.

Race and sex have been used to enrich some and impoverish others. Sanctions imposed are severe enough to deprive those others of their livelihood. In the military, feminists glibly proclaim that opponents "need to find a new line of work."

The same combination of government, schools, media, and nonprofits that causes economic hardship through bogus environmental concerns cut its punitive teeth on bogus civil-rights concerns.

And while that combination silently watches as millions of board feet of timber are lost to forest-fires resulting from govern: mental regulations, it nimes its own silence at the discrimination of millions of white men resulting from governmental regulations.

Civil-rights law blazed the trail for the environmentalist herd. No significant progress orf property rights will occur until Americans are willing to challenge the fundamental assumptions of collectivism made by civil-rights law.

-R. Duke Dougherty, Jr Ft. Lewis, Wash.

What Next American President Must Do

I do not think the grueling primaries in which presidential candidates are forced to participate are always the way to select the best candidates. Most of their money and time is spent responding to local opinions of potential voters instead of discussing important issues. Straw polls are futile.

What the United States of America needs is a presidential candidate who would use the White House as a bully pulpit. What we eat and drink can poison our bodies, and the wrong kind of President can poison our morals. We need a President who will abolish gambling, illicit drugs, prostitution, liquor stores, and pornographic movies, television and publications.

The next President must return morality, virtue and respectability to the highest elective office and erase the tarnished image of the United States that Americans have had to endure these past few years.

-Rosalie Dayhood La Grange, Ga Excellent Article

On-Nancy Pearcey

Just a short note to say thank you for the excellent article on Nancy Pearcey [Oct. 22, 1999, page 191, and for drawing attention to an increasingly sophisticated and educated movement that bids fair to make this one of the most exciting periods of modem American intellectual history.

-Dr Rikki E. Watts Regent College Vancouver Canada Questions Regarding

Sen. Rick Santorum

It appears to me that fine conservative writer Terence Jeffrey was implying [Human Events, October 29, page 7] that Sen. Rick Santorum [R.-Paj, the sponsor of the partialbirth abortion ban, was a political leader with a "chest" as described by C.S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man.

I wonder if Mr Jeffrey took in to account that [Maine] Senators Collins or Snowe (two Republicans) could easily have replaced Boxer in the flummoxing performed by Santom, as their positions on abortion are not different from Boxer's.

Santorum also would have no problem with the Republican Party's funding and endorsing Sen. Boxer (D.-Calif.) were she a Republican.

In fact, if she were a Republican, he would probably be helping her to get reelected (remember Christine Todd Whitman). Maybe if Boxer were to be a Clinton nominee to the Supreme Court, Sen. Santorum would confirm her appointment (Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer).

No, Sen. Santorum is not a leader with a "chest."

If we had Republican leaders in Washington "with a chest" '--there are a few exceptions, for example, Senators Bob Smith (R.N.H.) and Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) and Representatives Ron Paul (R.-Tex.) and Bob Barr (R.-Ga.@-I would still be an activist in the Republican Party.

-Thomas Hamill Braintree, Mass. How Shall We

Engage the Culture?

In his review of Nancy Pearcey and Chuck Colson's new book How Now Shall We Live?, Gene Edward Veith uses the Brooklyn Museum's elephant-dung-as-art as an archetypical example of the deterioration of American culture [Nov. 5, 1999, page 161.

In this deterioration, we are seeing a societal example of entropy-movement toward disorder--evidenced by the prevalence of relative values and the popularity of deconstructionism. It's not unlike the art world's reaction to World War H by embracing a movement called DaDa-art that was absurd, had no meaning (neither did the word that described that movement), because the artists saw what was going on in the world as senseless.