United Nations Real Estate

The New York Sun’s November 30, 2004, article, “U. N. Would Be Fine Site For Housing” [Julie Satow, Page One] brought to mind a Harry Canyon quote from the movie “Heavy Metal,” “The U.N. Building. What a joke! They turned it into low rent housing. It’s a dump.” Unfortunately, the article was as much about fantasy as was the movie. I’m sure that if you relocated the Statue of Liberty, you could build some pricey condos in its place. But that isn’t likely to happen. Maybe if the U.N. had plans to relocate (none was mentioned in the article), it would be worth writing about, but to speculate about it as you do just makes the developers and others mentioned in the article look like greedy (and ugly) Americans.

MICHAEL SCHULER
Whitman County, Wash.

Warning Sign of Iranian Attack?

An evening news broadcast report disclosed that more than 100 Canadian airport security uniforms were missing and unaccounted for. In light of Rep. Curt Weldon’s allegations [“Congressman Warns of Iranian Attack On U.S.,” Eli Lake, Page One, December 14, 2004], isn’t this one more fact that should be incorporated into his equation?

IRA SOHN
Manhattan

Unorthodox Campus Politics

Ronald S. Lauder notes that leftist professors are increasingly “out of step” with the undergraduates they teach [“A New Free-Speech Movement, Starting with Alumni,” Opinion, December 8, 2004]. My own experience at Brown strongly supports Mr. Lauder’s observation. However, the disconnect felt by undergraduates is increasingly felt by Ph.D. students as well. Part of this comes from the natural flow of ideas toward truth in light of historical facts. But this process has been accelerated in recent years by the arrival of large numbers of well trained, highly motivated graduate students who grew up in the former Soviet bloc. The best graduate student with whom I am now working, for example, experienced socialism first hand in her native Romania. She brings insights from that experience to campus every day. Such students add ideological ballast to political conversations among graduate students, shaking many of them from dogmatic slumber.

It is not only undergraduate and graduate students who are bringing fresh ideas to campuses: Change is afoot among the ranks of junior faculty as well. For the past couple of decades, groups such as the Olin Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies have strategically nurtured graduate students interested in the ideals of freedom, individualism, and personal responsibility. From my first year in graduate school, for example, I was regularly invited to small gatherings of promising graduate students in various disciplines from around the country. We were introduced to leading scholars such as Richard Epstein, James Buchanan, and Milton Friedman, who encouraged us to believe that we could have successful careers even while holding “unorthodox” political views. From our first years in graduate school, we were urged to consider the causes and structure of ideological imbalance within the academy (F. A. Hayek’s brilliant essay, “The Intellectuals and Socialism” was a staple at such events). Some of us began even then to think systematically about how we might someday contribute toward a correction of that imbalance.

JOHN TOMASI
Barrington, R.I.
Mr. Tomasi is an associate professor of political science at Brown University.

Pork, Snakes, and Horn Flies

John P. Avlon unintentionally provided New York Sun readers with a perfect example of why Congressional pork is so difficult to control [“Wanted: Wild-Hog Control” Opinion, December 3, 2004]. Mr. Avlon identifies a number of seemingly “pork” projects, and, in deed, it is difficult to imagine some of these programs as anything other than an utterly ridiculous waste of money (“horseback therapy” and “mariachi studies” come to mind).Some of these projects, however, are far more important than their titles would suggest.

Brown tree snakes, for instance, may not strike fear in the hearts of most Americans. But to the residents of Guam – including some 12,000 military personnel plus their families – these snakes are a verminous pest and a health threat on the order of New York City’s burgeoning rat population. And given the increasing importance of countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines to the war on terror, the continued safety and morale of the Guam bases should be a priority for the nation.

Likewise, city dwellers don’t often think much about animal waste beyond their pooch’s pooperscooper. But for areas of the country whose economy depends on pig and other livestock farming (such as rural Iowa), this is a major issue. The stench from the pig farms makes huge tracts of these states uninhabitable and undevelopable, hindering economic growth – yet the pig farms themselves are vital to these states’ economic base. Since the economies of the 50 states are inextricably intertwined, solving the animal waste problem is therefore far more important to all of us than it at first appears.

The point here is that the sheer immensity and diversity of our great nation makes it very difficult for our congressmen — even the most conscientious ones – to be truly knowledgeable about every one of the myriad of proposed programs being offered for their consideration.

A senator from Nevada – no matter how experienced or responsible – is most likely not terribly educated about whether horn flies are actually a serious issue for Alabamans, or just some environmentalist’s pet peeve. Thus, it may be hard for him or her to justify outright rejection of such a proposal when it’s attached to an otherwise essential budget bill. Who wants to be known as the guy that held up the Army’s paychecks on account of some horn flies?

ADRIENNE SCHOLZ
Brooklyn

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