Forum, Feb. 24, 1975

To the Editors:

I could not let the Feb. 17 issue of your magazine pass out of mind without commenting.

Candidate Jackson has a distinct advantage at this point. He can speak in generalities: “taking inventory of resources,” “thinking of new technologies,” “seeing an America fully employed,” “building a new America,” “not corrupting the atmosphere and the water and the land in the name of growth,” etc.

The President, on the other hand, must talk of specific programs, recommendations and action. He must deliver—not with generalities, but with real specifics. Not all these programs are going to be popular. There will be criticism of specifics. Specifics can be argued and debated, but this is not so with generalities.

As we move into the 1976 campaign period, I hope people and the press will carefully consider presidential candidates on the basis of performance. President Ford has had to formulate a program and make some hard and tough decisions. He has performed. At this time, the Democratic majority in both houses (including a majority of those you list as potential presidential challengers) has failed to come forward with any program. Leadership requires courage; crisis requires action. The President has provided both.

Senator Jackson concludes his interview with your magazine by observing: “People are really looking for answers.” On this point, I would heartily agree. The President has provided an answer. The Senator and his colleagues should support that answer or quickly offer one of their own.

Mary Louise Smith, Chairman

Republican National Committee

Washington, D.C.

The seemingly widespread criticism that Congress is not acting fast enough on economic and energy programs is unjustified. Of course, it is easy for President Ford—one man—to put his hundreds of bureaucrats to work and come up with a program. It is another thing for the Congress—the people’s branch —to determine the true feeling of the American people and then vote on specific issues.

The American people can rest assured that their House and Senate are moving. We Democrats in the House have drawn our own alternative program, and action will come by the end of March in six major areas. Speaker Albert, in addition, has sent President Ford’s energy proposals to four committees, which will report to him this week.

No one should be misled by the President’s flying circus and media blitz into believing that all his solutions are what is best for this nation. We will put his theories to the test before the toughest of juries—the American people—before we write a law that affects the lives of them all.

President Ford’s proposal to put a $3 tariff on oil is unanimously regarded by economists to be inflationary and would deepen the recession. No program at all is better than a bad program.

Thomas P. O’Neill Jr.

Majority Leader

House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.

Rape the South

What does reader David Elms mean, the New Englanders get the boot again as far as energy is concerned [Feb. 10]? If they are so interested in keeping their electricity bills low and their houses warm, why don’t they allow more oil and gas drilling off the East Coast and refineries in their area? They criticize the South, but the Southerners bear the burden of offshore oil and refineries. It is high time they choose between a superclean environment or more energy. It’s not fair to rape the South to serve the East.

Paul Peterson

Louisville

Good heavens! Tell the New Englanders not to come here. My electricity bill for December was $80, with no heat, and my bill for September was $150 for air conditioning.

Shirley Ryan

Miami

Saving Saigon

Congressman Beard’s remark [Feb. 10] that he has no obligation to support the U.S. commitment to Saigon because the commitment had been made prior to his election seems to typify the attitude of many new Congressmen. Such attitudes tend to confirm Ho Chi Minh’s opinion that democratic governments are like “ships that pass in the night.” Although legitimate objections to the continuation of aid to Saigon can be made, does Mr. Beard seriously claim that he has no obligation to support any treaty or agreement made before his arrival on the scene?

Hugh H. Mills

Seattle

After 30 years of fighting, 50,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Vietnamese lives and billions upon billions of American dollars, it ought to be quite clear that if the integrity of South Viet Nam is not yet secure, it probably never will be.

Could the Communists, or domestic insurgents as they would be more properly labeled, possibly cause as much suffering and misery to that battered area as the past 30 years of endless war have?

Chip Treen

Lincoln, Neb.

Henry Ford Besieged

Henry Ford II wonders if the auto industry has the right to chew up so much raw materials, if they have done as much as they should have with scrap, if more recycling should now be done [Feb. 10].

That’s like an alcoholic asking “I wonder if my imbibing whisky has contributed to my alcoholism.”

Samuel Whitman

Long Beach, Calif.

The announcement was no doubt sufficient to set Henry I revolving 180° in his tomb, but Henry Ford II actually advocated economic planning.

Admittedly, national economic planning is not the immediate answer to our economic woes. There are too many problems involved, including the general public’s distaste for anything smacking of controls, regimentation, socialism or other frightening concepts.

Nevertheless, it is time to begin discussing this much maligned subject. Isn’t it about time we stopped this tinkering and patching of our floundering economy and began to plan ahead in order to prevent recurring disasters?

Edward J. Powers

College Park, Md.

Jong’s Unwashed

Ms. Erica Jong’s heroine’s idea of sexual bliss [Feb. 3] seems to derive from masculine flatulence and her partner’s unwashed feet. It is not uninhibited openness but commercialism; not Molly Bloom or the powerfully abominable Henry Miller, but a shrewd hawking of The Most Repulsive as The Most Sincere, in keeping with Madison Avenue gospels. Male characters, supposedly psychoanalysts and Freudians, speak and act like disgusting junior-high-schoolers with IQs of 70. Ms. Jong so often refers to herself as a writer that a suspicion arises whether she is not just someone who has published a book.

Leopold Tyrrnand

New Canaan, Conn.

Sour Gripes

For meanness of spirit, TIME’S art critic and his story on Thomas Hart Benton [Feb. 3] deserve a good swift rebuke. I have never read a more transparently prejudiced attack on one of our most original and worthy artists.

It is all well and good for a critic to try to create a climate of acceptance for the kind of art that fits his nature and associations. But for him to go out of his way to denigrate the success and poison the esteem of a wide audience for a man whose earthy and forceful works do not fall into the critic’s category of approved art constitutes the sourest of gripes. For him to state that,every self-respecting art historian since 1965 would bolster his argument against Benton is ridiculous.

Aaron Bohrod

Madison, Wis.

The writer, one of the leading exponents of American realist painting, succeeded John Steuart Curry as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin.

Not Hell and Not New

If Old Soldier James Bell is shocked by the all-volunteer Army’s basic training [Feb. 10], minus harassment and b.s., think how this new soldier feels.

I experienced all-volunteer basic training at Fort Ord, Calif, in the spring of 1974, and the picture Bell paints is totally unrecognizable to me.

The story of recruits giving precision orders on how they would like to have their hair cut was fed to me by recruiters. It was a total lie—we were given uniform half-minute sheep shearings—no choice whatsoever.

Harassment was not by direct physical abuse, but men were made to stand at attention while they were called every foul and obscene name imaginable, and while the same epithets were extended to their immediate families.

Either the Army has changed a great deal in a few months, or Fort Jackson is a unique trainees’ paradise, or Mr. Bell’s vision is highly clouded.

I’m not saying BCT is hell—it’s not.

But neither is it a great new American lifestyle.

(SP/4) David Peter Haugern, U.S.A.

Washington, D.C.

Mr. Bell’s statement that “no one even seems to swear any more” was the biggest laugh I have had in a long time. They certainly had his visit well planned.

Frank Pennell

Lexington, Mo.

Security Blanket

If your report entitled “The Hartford Heresies” [Feb. 10] tells the whole story, then current theology has apparently fallen back to its last line of defense, whose slogan might be: “For God’s sake, at least be orthodox.”

To use the word heresy against your opponents is to imply that you feel the need to protect your ideas behind the fortress of orthodoxy. Orthodox theologians can have a real ball by emphasizing different doctrines at different times. Apparently the Hartford group has decided that now is the time to concentrate on transcendence. This is the safest approach of all, since it makes one sound holy and humble.

To reach now for the theological security blanket of emphasis on God’s transcendence is a copout. The church has indeed been attempting some tentative steps into the world, and we already know what the Hartford group has discovered: “Baby, it’s cold outside.”

(The Rev.) Douglas W. Fletcher

Sag Harbor, N. Y.

After a decade when so many in the theological community have been busily whoring after every cultural movement, the Hartford document is at last a bit of good news for Christ, his church and God’s world.

(The Rev.) James Bortell

First United Methodist Church

Mason City, Ill.

The scholars represented at Hartford did American Christians a distinct favor by pointing out what really underlies our weakness as instruments of God in this world—namely, a man-centered instead of God-centered theology.

Madelyn V. Powell

Chicago

Ideological Captive?

“Ujamaa’s Bitter Harvest” [Jan. 27] is ideological reporting at its most brutal. Tanzanian socialism has laid down the basis for a modern agriculture and renewed human community. As with agricultural reform in any context, the resulting gains in productivity do not immediately appear. Moreover, a massive population explosion, inflated import prices, drought and the oil crisis have compounded the foreign exchange problem. TIME nevertheless attacks the evolving system of egalitarian concerns which Americans should be applauding. By doing so it is simply a captive of its advertisers’ ideology—crudely slandering the humane Tanzanian experiment at a time when corrupt elites are proliferating around the globe.

Peter Walshe

Notre Dame, Ind.