Letters to the editor

It’s not a simple world

In “Third World do-over,” (Op-Ed, Tuesday) Martin Hutchinson engages in the usual shallow thinking employed by market fundamentalists.

In particular, he wheels out the “free market dogma” that markets should be free from all “noneconomic” influences, such as human rights and environmental issues.

In the real world, of course, markets operate as social constructs that are intimately influenced by, and in turn influence, all other social factors, including human rights and environmental issues.

Markets are never just set up and left to operate in a vacuum. As with all things, they need monitoring and adjustment to ensure that they and their participants operate according to agreed socially acceptable rules.

That is a more challenging proposition than the false simplicity of the “free market dogma.” But then the world is always more complicated than fundamentalists would like it to be.

PAUL SETTLES

London

Think about it

Michael Barone is right, too many Americans are lost in the fog of multiculturalism, moral relativism and, I might add, political correctness (“Our covert enemies,” Commentary, Tuesday). This ungainly triad comprise the new religion of America.

It keeps minds closed while blinding its practitioners to the dangers confronting our nation.

When profiling at our airports and intercepting terrorist phone calls are deemed inappropriate because they violate the moral tenants of this new faith, Americans of all stripes are placed at risk.

Members of al Qaeda will die as martyrs to honor their religion. Here at home the politically correct reject common-sense safeguards that protect Americans from attack.

As the jihadists seek to conquer the world for Islam, the practitioners of America’s new religion are doing their best to prevent anyone from stopping them. Left vulnerable are those of us who reject both faiths.

THOMAS M. BEATTIE

Mount Vernon

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With regard to the moral relativism that Michael Barone refers to in his article “Our covert enemies,” a consequence of this moral relativism is the gradual decline of reason and intellectual rigor.

When one ceases to believe in objective truth, then reason loses its allure, if not its relevance. Why be rigorous about anything — historical analysis, scientific inquiry, metaphysical and existential pursuits — when everything is a matter of opinion or advocacy?

In other words, if one dislikes George W. Bush then, by definition, he must be wrong about everything, regardless of the rational merits or demerits of individual issues. If one is convinced of the pre-eminence of science, then the existence of black holes can be dogmatically accepted without an inkling of the underlying physics.

As disingenuous as many in academia and the media are, it may be a matter of competence (or lack thereof) when it comes to the things that matter most.

THOMAS M. DORAN

Plymouth, Mich.

Very little ’progress’

“Public schools outscore charters,” announced a headline on Wednesday (Nation). The story was accompanied by a chart that reveals a five point difference in average mean scores in reading and six points in math among second graders. The small print informed us that both scores are based on a 500-point scale, so the differences are well within any plausible margin of statistical error.

That, however, is not the point. The story indicated that the best average mean scores the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) can boast are in the low 200s out of a possible 500 — in other words, well under 50 percent of the achievable scores.

Are we really to worry about a 5 or 6 point difference when neither public nor charter school students can even reach the 50 percent mark? Seems to me any rational “assessment of educational progress” would acknowledge that very little “progress” is being achieved in either type of school.

LYNDA MEYERS

Arlington

Hallowed heritage

The comments about Sen. George Allen’s sponsorship of legislation to create a Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area is unfair in its criticism of an immensely supported and historically important initiative to celebrate American heritage along the 175-mile corridor from Gettysburg to Monticello (“Where’s the beef?” Inside the Beltway, Tuesday).

The bill before Congress sponsored by Mr. Allen, with companion legislation in the House sponsored by Rep. Frank Wolf (with 20 co-sponsors), to designate the Journey Through Hallowed Ground as a National Heritage Area is firmly grounded in civics and economics.

Contrary to The Washington Times suggestion, I state, unequivocally and for the record that, National Heritage Area status would not infringe upon personal property rights. It does not impose any regulations on land use; it does not interfere with local authority in the area of transportation or development; and it does not allow use of eminent domain to obtain or protect land within the region.

The National Heritage Area program has been in existence for more than12 years and a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office asked property right groups to show just one case of property right infringements — and they could not.

Rather, a National Heritage Area designation would simply recognize the region along Journey Through Hallowed Ground for its role in telling our American story.

CATE MAGENNIS WYATT

President

Journey Through Hallowed

Ground Partnership

Waterford, Va.

Blogged down

Nat Hentoff’s suggestion that anti-Semitism had anything to do with Sen. Joe Lieberman’s defeat in Connecticut — let alone that Mr. Lieberman “was pilloried … because he is a Jew” — is unfounded, and the evidence he adduces to support it is ludicrous (“Amid Democratic soul-searching,” Op-Ed, Monday).

Mr. Hentoff should learn a little about how blogs work. The quotes he borrowed from Lanny Davis were not by “blogging anti-Semites”; the writers are not bloggers themselves, but rather are visiting blog-readers leaving pseudonymous comments. Two anti-Semitic comments among the hundreds of thousands left daily in the liberal blogosphere prove nothing.

But, in fact, Mr. Hentoff hasn’t produced two such comments, because he has failed to recognize that his first “anti-Semitic blogger” was actually employing sarcasm to make a pro-Semitic (and possibly pro-Lieberman) point, as should be painfully clear to anyone who has actually read the entire comment in context.

GRANT HICKS

Acton, Mass.