How ironic that Matthew Dallek’s postulate of the end of liberalism appears in the same issue as Willie Morris’s wonderful memoir of Mark Twain (October issue). Twain’s “death,” too, was reported prematurely.
Thomas E. Wark
St. Davids, Pa.
The End of Liberalism?
As an ex-liberal I read with interest and general agreement your well-researched article on liberalism’s demise. However, I would like to add two points:
First, liberalism isn’t dead or even in any danger. It is alive and well in institutional and statutory federal and state bureaucracy, which will not be changed any time soon, even by the new “antigovernment mood” of the people. Many of the flower children and storefront attorneys of the 1960s are functioning as bureaucrats in comfortable government management jobs exerting immense power and control over all of us.
Second, my conversion from a young liberal, who worked to defeat Goldwater in 1964, to a conservative took place over a long period of time. It came about not so much by accepting dogma from a conservative “smoothly running political machine” but through my observation over the years of the almost complete failure of liberal policies.
Nolan T. Cordle
Los Gatos, Calif.
The End of Liberalism?
As a first-century Christian awaited with certainty and calmness the return of his Lord, I await the resurrection of liberalism. As Churchill regarded pessimism, so I regard conservatism: I see no value in it—although I realize that it, too, will return every twenty years.
Victor Hugo summarized the end of Napoleon, “God was bored with him.” Vox populi, vox Dei. Or as my old nurse observed, “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”
Donald N. Groff
Pine City,N.Y.
Too Grim
I was disappointed with your September cover on violence in America. The article itself is wonderful, but the overall impression is tainted by a horrifying cover image. The mass media is full of shock and graphic news bits. The last thing I want from American Heritage is more of the same.
Manuel A. Santos
Hartford, Conn.
Loyal Even Then
Willard Sterne Randall’s “Thomas Jefferson Takes a Vacation,” in your July/ August issue, raises the old suspicion that Jefferson and Madison visited New York to engage in anti-Federalist “double-dealing” with Aaron Burr and Philip Freneau. There may be another explanation for such a get-together.
As Randall points out, the 1791 trip was Madison’s idea, and he made the arrangements. An alumnus of the class of 1771 at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), Madison was dropping in on a ’71 classmate (Freneau) and a member of the class of ’72 (Burr). At a time when Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale remained essentially regional institutions, Princeton was the most national of American colleges and had recently conferred an honorary doctor of law on Madison. President John Witherspoon, himself a signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote that the trustees and the faculty “were not barely willing but proud of the opportunity of paying some attention to and giving a testimony of their approbation of one of their own sons who had done them so much honor by his public service.”
In the spring of 1791 Madison (and Jefferson) could have been stopping to urge Freneau to found the National Gazette and thereby join Congressman Madison and the new Senator Burr in what would later become known as “Princeton in the nation’s service.” Freneau certainly did so and received a sinecure as a translator for the Department of State, whose secretary happened to be Madison’s traveling companion. On the other hand, Madison was the first president of Princeton’s alumni association, and if Jefferson was inventing the summer vacation, Madison may have been enjoying another popular activity of that time of year: the Princeton reunion. (By the way, this year would have been his 225th and also happens to be the university’s 250th anniversary.)
Andrew H. Browning
Beaverton, Ore.
Time Again
Like most people, I rarely take the time to compliment what I enjoy, waiting instead until there is something to complain of. But today I break with a long-standing tradition to say how thrilled I am to see the return of “The Time Machine” in the September issue.
For years it was the first thing I turned to when the latest American Heritage arrived—short little “exercise” pieces to get my brain ready for the feature articles. The latter teach me about the “important stuff” in history; “The Time Machine” and “American Characters” tell me about what mattered to people.
Karen Martin
Cochranton, Pa.
Time Again
Thank you very much for reviving “The Time Machine” in your magazine. If asked to explain why I subscribe to American Heritage, I would cite “Sewing-Machine Wars” from the September column, which amplifies an event history students take for granted by giving it life and a new perspective.
Kathy Showen
Sheridan, Wyo.
Great Guns
I especially enjoyed “The Last Powder Monkey” in the July/August issue. What a wonderful boyhood Roy Smith had! Navy juniors tended to live in exotic climes, but few had adventures like that!
Two minor quibbles. The picture of USS Noa “in Shanghai Harbor” can’t show Shanghai; Shanghai doesn’t have a harbor. One moored either at the Bund (destroyers only) or to anchored buoys in the middle of Whangpoo River. (It was difficult to turn cruisers in the Whangpoo, and impossible for battleships. One cast off the bow moorings and let the current swing the ship around the stern buoy before casting off!) In the picture Noa is anchored close to a shore with a water tank but with no sign of a metropolitan area.
The other quibble is the author’s reference to a .50-caliber Lewis gun. No such animal; all Lewises were .30 caliber (British .303). It was a superb mechanism, but .5Os would have shaken it apart (even the .30 rattled it very badly at first, until Lewis redesigned some of the parts).
Lt. Col. Isaac N. Lewis (U.S.M.A. 1884) developed the weapon in 1911 and offered it to the War Department, which was backing a monstrosity known as the Hotchkiss. American troops adopted them after Pershing goosed the War Department. We used Lewis guns into World War II, and the British used them (plus a Vickers modification) right through the war. As did the Japanese.
