Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Fighting for Uncle Sam’
For the second time I have read Max Boot’s arguments for enlisting immigrants in our military to fight with us in the war on terrorism and rewarding them with U.S. citizenship [“Fighting for Uncle Sam,” Opinion, June 20, 2005]. The historical precedents he cites are well known.
My father, an immigrant from Central Europe at the age of 3, left high school at the age of 15, with his mother’s consent, to fight the “tyrants” of Europe in World War I. He became a much more rounded American by virtue of living and training with the Texans and Oklahomans that made up his regiment, and told us many stories of their interactions.
I think that an increased attachment to the “culture and cultures” of America would happen to immigrant soldiers today more than in the past because of the all pervasive radio, TV, and film culture free or almost free to all.
E. A. LINDBERGH
Brooklyn
‘Plan B’
Kudos for your editorial, “Plan B” [June 27, 2005], inviting the United Nations to decamp from New York and seek another headquarters in some other city, now that the world body’s Plan A to develop an office building on a city park and renovate its obsolete buildings has come undone.
In economics, Gresham’s Law holds that bad money drives out good. At the United Nations, a kind of Gresham’s Law is at work, in which the reprehensible values of odious regimes such as Sudan, China, Burma, Cuba, and Zimbabwe drive out the exemplary values of democracies.
A “race to the bottom,” a form of international least-common denominator, all too often characterizes the United Nations.
ERIK PETER AXELSON
Brooklyn
Your editorial of June 27 on the United Nations perfectly articulated the feelings of many people in the city and the nation about the United Nations.
It’s a hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy with five settings: “pathetically ineffective,” “actively harmful,” “give me a dollar,” “it’s all America’s fault,” and “we hate Israel.”
I particularly appreciated the reminder that good in the world can survive without the United Nations’ “management”: “the World Health Organization, say or the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or the International Labor Organization. What vainglory to suggest that these institutions, to the degree that they have value, cannot carry on either independently or in a new structure. The ILO was founded in 1919, 27 years before the United Nations. It survived the demise of its original host the League of Nations. Surely it would survive the demise of the United Nations.”
VIRGINIA RANDALL
Manhattan
‘Bias at PBS’
As a longtime producer and executive of public television – including the first nine years of WNET – I was puzzled by Cal Thomas’s tunnel vision about federal funding [“Bias Is Running Deep at PBS,” Opinion, June 23, 2005]. Some items:
1. He focused only on Bill Moyers’s “NOW.” But why should any one program be required to be free of opinion; or, to put it another way, who says the truth lies equidistant between two opposing sides; or, why can’t “balance” be across the spectrum of programming a station airs, instead of “left-right,” “he says, she says” programs?
2. He claims that it’s okay to air opinion when it’s not funded by the government, but “the taxpayers” shouldn’t pay for opinion. Isn’t that precisely what the taxpayers should pay for: free speech?
3. He ignores the fact that many conservative writers and hosts have had opinion shows for years on public television, without comment or complaints: Tucker Carlson is the newest, but there was Bill Buckley’s show for years and years and years. And economic “consultants” galore.
4. Finally, he seems oblivious to the fact that Fox, his network, and surely one of the most one-sided news arenas in American television history, is also supported by the taxpayers: it gets its airwaves and allocation totally free.
CHRISTOPHER LUKAS
Sparkill, N.Y.
‘Impatient Patriots’
Re: “Impatient Patriots,” Editorial, June 22, 2005. Just three words for Condi Rice in Egypt: Tell it, sister.
KATHERINE MEEKS
Manhattan
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