‘A Victory for New York’

I read with interest your front-page editorial opposing the West Side stadium [“A Victory for New York,” June 7, 2005]. In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to state that I am a Jets fan. However, I live in New Jersey and do not currently have access to tickets, so I watch all games on TV. If I do get tickets, it is much easier for me to go the Meadowlands than Manhattan.

The main point in your editorial is that the bidding should be open to all and that, therefore, there’s no need for city/state subsidies. As a realist, you are probably aware that this is a pipe dream. If the stadium is not built, then the West Side of Manhattan will still be a dump when my grandchildren are grandparents. The cost of the bonds will easily be paid by all the business and the jobs that will be created, including the Super Bowl on a regular basis. I would suggest you travel to downtown Baltimore to see what a stadium can do for a city.

Another aspect that is not being considered is that the Jets are willing to spend $1.6 billion. This is double what any stadium has cost anywhere else in America.

The stadium vote is a further indication of the anti-business policies of New York politicians – remember the Wal-Mart and BJ’s fiascos?

DANIEL PITTINSKY
Highland Park, N.J.

‘Evil, Old Habits’

I could not agree more with Mr. Gerstenfeld that anti-Semitism has to be fought wherever it tries to gain acceptance in society – not only in Germany [“Evil, Old Habits,” Manfred Gerstenfeld, Opinion, June 8, 2005]. However, I cannot agree with his conclusion “that there are profound negative processes under way in Germany.” I would even argue that the safeguards in Germany’s civil society against anti-Semitism today are stronger than ever.

The proof? If you want people to vote for you in an election, you should definitely not use metaphors the Nazis might have used, like the term “locusts” for American investors. It just drives voters away (and investors probably as well). I am surprised that Mr. Gerstenfeld, in his list of “Evil, Old Habits,” did not mention the late Juergen Mollemann, a powerful politician of the Free Democratic Party, the usual junior coalition partner of the Christian Democrats. In the last national elections in 2002, Mollemann criticized Israel in a way that created quite an uproar in the campaign, because most Germans perceived his criticism as anti-Semitic. On Election Day, the Free Democrats got punished for it. No, Germans are not forgetting the moral and political responsibilities they have because of their history. The way Germany commemorated the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II may serve as a further indication. Today, for 80% of Germans, the end of World War II means the liberation from Nazi dictatorship, a recent Polis poll found out. Only 9% see it as the loss of a war for Germany. Those numbers still looked very different 10 or 20 years ago. Indeed, we are witnessing a shift in German attitudes toward the Nazi past. But the shift is a positive one.

WERNER SCHMIDT
Consul, Press and Public Information German
Consulate General Manhattan

‘Western Self-Desecration’

Mark Steyn’s response to reports of murder and torture at U.S. detention facilities boils down to, “We’re better than Stalin – better than the butchers of Darfur” [“Western Self-Desecration,” Opinion, June 13, 2005]. Is this the standard by which Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” should be judged?

JIM CORBETT
San Clemente, Calif.

‘Fight of Their Lives’

Re: “The Fight of Their Lives,” James Bowman, Arts & Letters, June 3, 2005. Mr. Bowman’s sly attacks on the notion that an individual can prevail against adversity were necessary; without them, he couldn’t use the Great Depression to argue for the altruist creed in a movie review.

Though billions of dollars have been spent to convince us otherwise, Americans should never forget that it was bleeding-heart altruism that caused the Great Depression – not the determination of Americans to take advantage of a booming economy.

In order to help postwar Britain rebuild, the Federal Reserve was “asked” to keep interest rates far below what the ever-increasing demand for capital necessitated. Removing the invisible hand from the valve that controlled the flow of investment money created a bubble whose heard-around-the-world burst is still seen as indisputable proof that unfettered capitalism doesn’t work.

Where would prominent commentators, regardless of political leanings and religious inclinations, be without the millennia old superstition of original sin?

JOHN HARLABOPOULOS
Bayside, N.Y.

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