All Those men in a Tub
Sir: Your article on the Republican presidential hopefuls [Oct. 20], occasioned by the state Governors' trip aboard the S.S. Independence, reports an idea about Richard Nixon that I find to be as leaky as the Independence is seaworthy. This "can't win" idea just shouldn't be attached to a man who lost the California gubernatorial race in 1962, when the Republican Party there was split between conservatives and liberals, and who came within a hair of winning the presidency in 1960, when the G.O.P. in the South practically didn't exist. This is 1967; the Republican Party is nationally unified and is strong in the South.
ARTHUR CODY Ridgefield Park, NJ.
Sir: You mentioned the possibility of New York's Mayor John Lindsay's being nominated as the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1968. It seems inconceivable to me that the Republican Party would so honor a man who in his own campaign went to great lengths to shun the Republican label. While it is true that such men as Nelson Rockefeller and Charles Percy refused to support Barry Goldwater in 1964, these men disavowed a candidate, not the entire Republican Party. With so many other promising Republicans coming to the front of the political picture, the party will hardly be inclined to reward Mr. Lindsay's past and present actions aimed at maintaining his independent image.
DIANE M. FERGUSON Norwalk, Conn.
Sir: The implication of your review of the Republican candidates was that the American voting public is more concerned with the looks and appeal of a candidate than his views and experience. I think you underestimate the seriousness of the issues confronting our nation and the mentality of the voter.
T. FREEMAN Morristown, NJ.
Sir: As usual, your pseudointellectual, leftist "enlightened Republicanism" has placed a misfit on top. Wishful thinking. That divorced, unhonorable protege of your ex-boss appeals only to the ignorant and uninformed Eastern Seaboard masses so easily led by TIME. Thinking Republicans are conservative and in opposition; the way back to constitutional government requires that we place our faith in God, country and self, not liberalism and material wealth swapped out for basic freedoms. Reagan is a clean top choice. Rockefeller as a vice-presidential candidate would be a necessary evil to carry votes of the misled.
HARRY M. GREEN Dallas
Drawing a Line
Sir: Senator Dirksen says that "our outer defense perimeter started in Korea and went to South Viet Nam" [Oct. 13]. It would clear the air considerably if we heard a little less about freedom, justice, democracy, treaties, commitments and obligations in our public discussions, and a little more about defense perimeters. Then, for example, we who oppose the war in Viet Nam would not need to bother with moral points which don't interest anybody, or produce pictures of napalmed children; we could simply point out that our defense perimeter has no business being in Viet Nam.
Senator Dirksen is appalled by the notion that if our line in Viet Nam fails, it will be pushed back to Alaska and Hawaii. Now a line from Alaska to Hawaii strikes me as an excellent line, a natural line, a defensible line, and even, if you wish, a moral line.
Just as France was not undone by clearing out of Algeria, we will survive clearing out of Viet Nam, and as for prestige, it neither wins nor loses battles. This means "abandoning our allies to the tender mercies of the Communists." Yes it does. We have so abandoned millions in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, etc. They have survived it, and so will Southeast Asia.
OSCAR MANDEL Associate Professor Division of the Humanities and Social Studies California Institute of Technology Pasadena
Sir: Public opinion is a freedom; freedom is not presently public opinion. I am awe-struck by the Senators, Governors and "noncandidates" who would rather lose Viet Nam (and thereby Cambodia, Laos and Southeast Asia) than lose a vote.
CHRISTINA FORTIER Palo Alto, Calif.
Sir: Although as a professor I am committed to the central importance of free debate, your in-depth presentation of our Viet Nam alternatives in the Con Thien cover story [Oct. 6] showed me that our present national "debate" is intellectually sterile and, worse, physically destructive in its effect on both sides in the war.
In contrast with your factual consideration of alternatives, the debaters only demand emotionally that we stop what we are doing. Certainly it is the irresolution shown by this foolish debate that encourages the aggressor to continue to commit slow suicide in what has turned into history's most senseless aggression. Frustrated by the restrained opposition of the world's most powerful nation in his attempt to take over the resources of the South by naked terrorism and power, he has not only been losing every battle, but losing his own home resources at an ever increasing rate.
If America could show the aggressor that it realizes its only real alternative is a steadfast continuation of its present resistance to his takeover, the mortal hemorrhaging of Viet Nam, and the bleeding of America, would cease.
HERBERT A. SAWYER JR. Professor, College of Engineering University of Florida Gainesville
Sir: The absurd assertion that our intervention in Viet Nam is necessary because a Communist government there would threaten our security must be repudiated by Americans. The implications are devastating: if tiny Communist Viet Nam is judged such a threat to the U.S. colossus as to justify our war there, then scores of countries can justify pre-emptive wars against unfriendly neighbors. This assertion, like the policy it defends, reveals a neurotic fear of Communism, which poses a far greater threat to our nation and the world than does Communism.
PHILLIPS R. JONES Amherst, Mass.
Watch on the White House
Sir: The analysis of President Johnson [Oct. 13] was no less than brilliant and spoke succinctly for my own rising sense of concern that a man as powerful and gifted as our President should so often exhibit unabashed emotional immaturity. I have watched President Johnson's manipulative tactics over the years; first with wry admiration, then with amusement, and now with a rising sense of alarm. Can a man so ruthlessly concerned with his own interests run our country effectively? Is the cynic right when he claims that in the world of politics, honest is merely another word for ineffective and that in a dishonest world we need a man less than honest to deal with it? This type of logic seems reasonable but leaves me vaguely uncomfortable. Can it be that we have outgrown the ideals upon which this nation was founded?
MRS. BETTY WASSER Spokane, Wash.
Sir: If things go well, everyone steps up to take the credit--if things go ill, everyone is quick to blame the President. If he can get that mule-contrary Congress to carry even a small share of general blame (by enacting tax legislation) more power to him. We all holler for peace, security and more, and aren't willing to pay for any of it in any way. Those poll takers never asked me any questions--just once I'd like to meet someone they have queried. All those shooting verbal darts from the sidelines haven't had to put up or shut up as yet, and most of them probably couldn't do as well. I arm a registered Republican, a thinking independent, and darn disgusted with a lot of my fellow Americans who want to have but don't want to pay.
P. C. TWEETEN Crestline, Calif.
Bravo & Blah
Sir: Soon, when the cities are dismantled and our society begins to spread across the continent in one vast suburb, we will see a place for such sculpture as you presented in your cover article on Tony Smith [Oct. 13]. These dancing brittle giants are proper accents for the modern "village stores" that will service those sprawling mega-urbs. This is the place for this living sculpture, which should be part of our visual life. It is not for burial in museums, but to be played on by children, sat on by adults, lived with by everyone. WAYNE A. KALLUNKI Clearwater, Fla.
Sir: Couldn't you call your article something other than "Sculpture"--if for no other reason than the peace of soul to which Michelangelo is entitled? I could suggest "Gimmickture."
MRS. R. L. RENNER Ambler, Pa.
Sir: Verily, if gigantism is now the only test of art, let's start all over again with a return to the loveliness of the Indian and Persian miniatures of the 16th to 18th centuries or the French miniatures of Greuze. To the writer's old-fashioned eye, one tiny Meissen piece is worth 10,000 cu. ft. of blah by Tony Smith.
LEONARD A. MONZERT West Newton, Mass.
Sir: The future of art must be more than a mere confrontation of viewer and creation. Art must no longer be a spectator sport. Rather, it must become a living part of man, challenging him to the day when all men must become artists and thus soar with a vision that is always one day ahead of the times. Tony Smith is doing this.
MICHAEL OPIOLA St. Louis
Compelling Reason
Sir: In your Essay regarding abortion [Oct. 13], you fail to mention one compelling reason for the legalization of the practice: pregnancies among maladjusted teen-agers and pre-teen-agers. Among our current group of roughly two dozen newly arrived girls there are seven who are carrying unborn children whom they have conceived out of ignorance and irresponsibility or as a result of rebellious retaliation against parents and society. These children will be farmed out or kept and nurtured by unwed, and often unloving young mothers, thus being bred as a new generation of disturbed children. A juvenile is not legally responsible and cannot, supposedly, use her own judgment in directing her life. But she can, in a moment of self-destructive and vindictive impulsiveness, create another human being who will help her strike back at society.
JAMES DEWINTER Girls' Training School Adrian, Mich.
Sir: Every woman now has incredible opportunity not to commence a pregnancy; if she fails to use that opportunity, your assumption that her resulting predicament lends itself to making intelligent decisions seems unusually optimistic.
MRS. LEE M. SEITZ Norwalk, Conn.
Pandora's Box
Sir: I appraise TIME'S Essay on "Race and Ability" [Sept. 29] to be a contribution to our national mental health by opening a Pandora's box of important questions. It accurately reports intellectual positions that I deplore and feel may result in great harm to the American Negro and other racial groups. The potentially harmful attitudes show in the phrases, "No one knows," "There is no way to tell," and "Any inquiry is felt to be dangerous." These "can't-don't-shouldn't" slogans characterize what I call inverted liberalism--true liberalism asserts: "The truth shall set you free."
Apparently all improvements in economic conditions and all social-action programs have not during the last two generations made average Negro IQ-test performance gain on whites but instead fall farther behind. Are we somehow unwittingly degrading relative Negro ability? An unpalatable but vital question from the box TIME's Essay opened.
Does TIME really believe that the "No one knows" sentence of its concluding paragraph justifies complacency about ignorance that may lead to unwise and conceivably harmful expenditures of tens or hundreds of billions? With racial strife currently increasing at probably more than 50% per year, we need to reaffirm one of the best American traditions--search for truth must be based on scientific probity.
The public should insist that our Government request the National Academies of Science and of Engineering, the nation's scientific intellectual conscience, to carry out interdisciplinary research on already existing research and to invent and initiate programs to reduce the environment-heredity uncertainty so that our social problems will be attacked on the basis of objectively established facts and sound methodology.
WILLIAM SHOCKLEY Stanford, Calif.
Until Death . . .
Sir: In the article "Races, A Marriage of Enlightenment" [Sept. 29] there was a reference to the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass divorcing a Negro to marry a white woman. My great-grandfather, Frederick Douglass, had as his first wife Anna Murray Douglass, who was a Negro and who was married to him for 44 years before she died. As a widower of two years, Frederick Douglass married Helen Pitts, who was white, to whom he was married for eleven years and who survived him.
ANNE WEAVER TEABEAU Washington
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