‘What Would Gandhi Do?’

Arthur Herman, in his “What Would Gandhi Do?” writes that “he once suggested that Germany’s Jews could successfully confront their Nazi oppressors with non-violence” [Opinion, November 8, 2005].

He did so in an article in the November 26, 1938, issue of Harijan. In that same article, he also wrote about the Jews, “They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them.”

If we wish to excuse Gandhi on the grounds that he didn’t know what he was talking about, since he was writing before Hitler’s plans were known, we should also consider what he said to Louis Fischer, one of his biographers, after the war was over: “The Jews died anyway, didn’t they? They might as well have died significantly” (see “The Gandhi Nobody Knows” by Richard Grenier, Commentary, March 1983).

There were some Jews who survived the Holocaust. Instead of rejoicing that a few human beings had lived through an attempt to exterminate them, Gandhi expressed the view that they all should have quietly agreed to be killed.

GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ
Manhattan

‘Same-Day Voter Registration’

The debate over whether to enact Election Day registration as proposed by Citizens Union misses a much larger problem with New York’s arcane election laws [“Same-Day Voter Registration is Sought,” Jill Gardiner, November 7, 2005].

Few New Yorkers realize that there is a 333-day waiting period to change your party registration to vote in the primaries, which are usually more decisive than the General Election in determining who represents us. This rule applies even to voters who declined to enroll with a party when they first registered.

One out of every six New York City registered voters are unaffiliated and have already missed the date to change their registration to vote in the Republican or Democratic primaries in 2006. Incredibly, their next opportunity to vote in a primary won’t be until 2008.

This system disenfranchises youth disproportionately, since only 14% of NYC voters 40 years old and over are registered without party affiliation, compared to 21% of youth under 40. Clearly, the 333-day waiting period has nothing to do with Board of Election logistics and everything to do with protecting incumbents of both major parties from independent-minded citizens.

SCOTT JEFFREY
Manhattan
Mr. Jeffrey is founder and president of Lincoln Voters (www.lincolnvoters.com) and founder and executive Director of Legalize (www.legalize.com). He was a Libertarian Party candidate for governor of New York in 2002.

‘Supreme Strategy’

David M. Shribman’s op-ed piece, “Supreme Strategy,” argues that the imminent confirmation battle over Judge Alito is “good for America” [Opinion, November 4, 2005]. I concur with his conclusion but not with the bases for his conclusion.

Mr. Shribman presumably believes that the forthcoming confirmation hearing is the propitious time for a debate over the so-called “burning issues” of the day, i.e., abortion and civil rights (does he mean busing, affirmative action, quotas?). But these issues of the day, subject to future rulings, were in large part decided, for the present, by the electorate in the “Red States” when they re-elected the president, thus endorsing the captain’s view from the bridge.

Indeed, the confirmation hearing should not be a television mini-series where the nominee is the punch-ball for a replay of an election, which, once again, left the Democrats with only one source of food; the destruction of an independent judiciary stamped with their rejected agenda.

The mechanism utilized by them, to advance their rabid inclinations is camouflaged under the seductive and neutral battle cry of a “mainstream” manifesto. But, their interest in the qualifications and temperament of the judicial nominee is slight and therefore subject to the inquisition of ideology.

Of course, the “borking” of Judge Bork, perhaps the most qualified candidate of recent memory, was the quintessential example of ideology trumping a qualified and independent judiciary. Does anyone really question the proposition that the left wing would swallow the shallow qualifications of Harriet Miers for a pro-choice mess of porridge and the retention of a second “designated” female seat on the court?

If there is a debate to be had, for the “good of America,” it is one centered around the perimeters of the limited right of the Senate to “advise and consent” juxtaposed against the president’s enumerated power to nominate and appoint. The original meaning and history of those terms can be discerned without resort to any so-called “living constitution.”

JOEL LEWITTES
Manhattan

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