Letters from Spectator readers, August 2024

Can the GOP do normal?

I switched from Dem to Rep in 2014 after the disasters of the Obama presidency and the Dems’ loony hatred of the West and the US became clear. Since then I’ve not voted for the Rep nominee for president once, although I have voted for Reps down the ballot and have written in a Rep for president each cycle. I’m looking forward to the day when the GOP’s weird swooning over the orange one is over.

– Thomas Nienow

‘Justice’ and the fall of a republic

Great article and I hope you’re wrong. The similarities to the fall of the Roman Empire are too close to today’s reality to ignore, including the outside forces (in the Roman Empire’s case, Attila the Hun) forcing a huge influx of people (the Germanic tribes) fleeing into and then conquering the existing, complacent empire. People might all be equal in some abstract sense, but cultures certainly aren’t, and when the culture goes, so does the country/empire. Biden, by opening the floodgates at the border, has created the same situation, as huge masses of people flee the poverty and danger of other parts of the world. He’s fiddling while the US burns.

– George Krantz

The American Ornithological Society’s war on the past

Each day we seem to wake up to yet another example of the real world being challenged (and often overtaken) by nitwit, tyrannical actors such as these in the societal theater of the absurd. While not a formal “birder,” I will hang on to my field guides and will certainly not replace them with whatever the AOS deigns meets the political/sociological diktats of the Handel-Scarl Full-Throated Pecker Heads.

– John Newcomb

How divorce never ends

Thank you for this honest piece. Although my own parents never divorced, even when I was a kid I disliked parents who put their new partners ahead of their kids. It was very obvious to me that in most cases the divorced parents of some of my friends did exactly that. (Just as bad, they also sometimes put their stepkids’ needs before those of their own children.)

Bridget, you are to be admired for having a good relationship today with your parents, but if I were you, I wouldn’t keep managing their emotional issues. If one refuses to be in the same room with an ex, or an ex’s current spouse, for, say, a grandchild’s dance recital, birthday party, whatever, I would advise just saying, “Well, we’ll be sorry to miss you.” If they were adult enough to decide to divorce years ago, they should be adult enough now to figure how to be civil in the presence of other adults for a few hours for the sake of their grandchild.

– Danielle McKane

Explaining China’s IP problem

The anecdote of the traveling doctor with a secret medicine is very obviously an invented story to justify stealing. I’ll bet that everyone in China has heard that story. Why? Because it was created by a government propaganda office to justify China’s intellectual property theft. Only very naive fools will accept it as fact. It’s about as real as Kipling’s “Just So” stories. What is the just-so-story fallacy?

In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or a behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds the listener of the fictional and unprovable nature of such an explanation.

– Edmund Pickett

Suburbia’s irredeemable reputation in the American canon

The smarmy arrogance of the self- appointed “elite” is in full display here. It recalls the New Yorker cover showing little awareness of anything beyond the Hudson. “Pleasant Valley Sunday” bemoaned life in suburban “status-symbol land.” But who thinks the denizens of the Upper West Side, the patrons of Christie’s or those in the New York art/literary scene, are not in thrall to their own status symbols? What hypocrisy.

– Paul Simpson

As an upper-middle class provincial from the suburbs of northeastern New Jersey, I don’t really recognize the suburbia described in this article. I remember mediocre-to-bad schools, quietness and little else. Nothing much about the goings-on of the parents. Until it was ruined by gentrification, New York City was much more congenial.

– Wallace Stevens

In praise of Swiss Army knives

Every small boy and girl should have a proper small knife to carry on adventures. You never know when you’ll need to trim a branch to cross a ravine or some such. About seven or eight I was when I received an old knife from my dad. A cherished heirloom. Went everywhere as we wandered the piney woods of northwest Florida. Thank you for bringing up long-ago memories.

– Rebecca Watson Kahn

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This article was originally published in The Spectator’s August 2024 World edition.