LIVING THE DIFFERENCE
Re: P. David Hornik’s Getting the Sexes Back on Track:

Just a brief comment about the difference between boys and girls.

My wife and I have had 5 children, 3 girls and 2 boys. We noticed a difference between the first two children within the first couple of years after #2. Our first who is a girl and the second who is a boy, showed very different mannerisms, attention levels, wants and needs. For instance, after our son, the second child was born, we noticed how he would shake his crib a lot, bang toys on the sides while verbalizing sound effects, even to step on items in what appeared to be an escape attempt. As he got stronger, he would shake the crib towards the door of his room, which we would keep partially shut, only to get the crib to shut the door and wedged up against it. Eventually, after months of perfecting the “bare footed crib bar climb” we heard the grand finally as he hit the floor. This was about 6 months after he could walk. We graduated him from the crib to a bed earlier than we had expected to. What seemed especially odd was his older sister, who was three years his senior, was still content sitting in her crib, almost without a sound, playing with her toys, feet etc.

Our third child, a girl, was only happy when following the older two, no matter what. She was very competitive and was our earliest walker, at 9 months. Our fourth child, a girl, and our last child, a boy, pretty much followed a similar pattern as the first two. The girl was fairly quiet and the boy was rowdy and had a gift for sound effects. The last two were also quite content to be the two older sisters’ live dolls. Strange thing, even though our youngest son was quite often dressed up in girlie doll clothes in his early years, he turned out exhibiting strong male characteristics?

Of course none of this is anywhere near scientific, but it fits within the stats and certainly proves to us that males and females are different. Putting the two together for most of life’s purposes is a very strong combination.

Thanks for the article!!
— Mark Young

THOSE KIDS
Re: George Neumayr’s Estranged No More:

I’ve been waiting for someone to remark on the Reagan clan and this love fest that the liberal press is having with Mrs. Reagan and their children, and you stated it brilliantly. Meaning no disrespect to Mrs. Reagan, this is the same press who hated her and her husband. She should remember this when the liberal press uses her words to advance their agenda. There is no excuse for the past or present behavior of either Patti or Ron. These are two of the most spoiled, self-indulgent, disrespectful brats I’ve witnessed in long time. Listening to Ron’s eulogy of his father took my breath away, as he used it to insert politics into his father’s funeral. How he could have insulted his father’s memory like this is beyond comprehension. I was stunned at how Mrs. Reagan looked on with such admiration at her son’s remarks.

The one child who does respect his father’s memory and beliefs is Michael. However, if body language means anything, it appears he is considered an outsider. As you pointed out, the liberal media will not be presenting Michael’s beliefs. What a surprise. Kudos on your article!
— Janice Mascia

I really enjoyed your article, except for one thing. Ron Reagan is NOT a Jr. His middle initial is P.… It irritates the devil out of me to see so many people refer to him as Ron, Jr. — he’s just Ron, the one that didn’t have anything to do with his father until he became very ill. I don’t know if he reconciled with his father when President Reagan was still aware of his surroundings, but, with his “performance” during this past week, it was all a sham. He doesn’t deserve being called Ron, Jr.
— Gale S.
Houston, Texas

Next to the press corps’ discomfort, the Reagan children were the most fascinating aspect of Reagan Week. I found the children to be intelligent , sincere, and a important component of the Reagan legacy.

Ronald Reagan believed in freedom. Unlike other politicians, it was not a compartmentalized one. It extended to his home life. His children were allowed to be individuals and when they turned out to be pro-choice, name-changing, ballet dancing liberals, he loved them anyway.

One of the most maddening statements I’ve heard lately was by a 22-year-old officer of the Army. While in ROTC at University, he was routinely spat upon by fellow students. His response to his attackers was, “That’s OK. I’m fighting for your freedom to spit on me.” Well, Ronald Reagan was spat on continuously but he never gave up the fight for freedom. Ultimately his efforts, as his many other eulogists testified to, brought down the Soviet Union. In the last presidential election Ron Jr. was able to use the freedom his dad had so well preserved, to cast his vote for Ralph Nader. As maddening as that is.
— Mrs. John B. Jackson III (Janet)

I was disappointed when Ron Jr. made his not so subtle political comments during the eulogy for his father. I instantly felt they were a swipe at Bush and his commitment to God and prayer. It affected the somber, respectful, and reverent mood — and seemed incredibly inappropriate.

Your commentary caused me to think how disappointed, yet surely not surprised, Reagan himself would have been — had he been able to hear them. It was quite amazing for Ron Jr. to offer castigation for something that his own father practiced.

I was paying attention during Reagan’s presidency. Reagan was the first president I voted for and the only presidential candidate who inspired me to walk the neighborhood and man the phones at his local campaign headquarters.

Ron Jr. is in denial — but what can you expect of a blatant, flaming liberal, uh, pardon me, “progressive,” who has yet to “find himself”?
— Cathy Thorpe
Columbus, Georgia

The N.Y. Times is amazing in its lack of consistency on the use of Ronald Reagan’s image in political contest. In that fine “Paul Wellstone Moment” young Ron takes an unprovoked swipe at George Bush for his religiosity before his father is even interred and this is just fine with them. This swipe was a complete non sequitur and came from the paid left wing employee of Chris Matthews’s Hard Ball. I am sure we will wait forever to hear from Matthews any criticism of his boy’s rude and crass behavior which was about the only sour memory in a week of respectful coverage of Mr. Reagan’s career.
— Basil Weir
San Jose, California

UN-DOING
Re: Steven Martinovich’s Another Ignored Discovery:

We all know the UN is stupid. But please don’t be stupider.

“The report neatly disarms arguments that Hussein’s WMD programs were non-existent after the first Gulf War.”

No one says they were nonexistent. They were INACTIVE. UNMOVIC was monitoring them. Read the report (available at the UN website), you will see the Iraqi weapons found in scrap yards world wide have UN tags. That is because they were under inspectors supervision (despite all the many many faults of the UN, they are good bureaucrats). And you should notice these are old weapons, and there is no evidence of active programs, even after more than a year of U.S. hunting high and low.

“The implications of the United Nations’ discovery of how Hussein’s regime got rid of many of its banned weapons programs is staggering, especially considering that it happened partly under the watch of U.N. weapons inspectors.”

Nice weasel language “partly”. Sure weapons were looted and trickled out of Saddam’s stashes. But during the U.S. invasion and chaos they POURED out. That is staggering. They show before and after satellite pictures of weapon sites before and after the invasion in the report — overflowing before, stripped down to nothing after. Take a look, it is staggering.

This fiasco has done the opposite of what Bush wanted — created another underground market of as he says over and over “the worlds most dangerous weapons.” Instead of a stable country where we can keep our eye on Heinous Hussein, now old chemical rockets and who knows what have looted by…well, we don’t know who…for…well, we don’t know what for. Talk about proliferation!

Let’s not even get into how much this is all costing the US tax payer.

It hurts me to say it, but W and Company are discrediting our party with misadventuring and, something they promised not to do (just another campaign promise?), “NATION BUILDING.”
— JW
Weston, Connecticut

Thanks for the article on Weapons of Mass Destruction. You are doing much better than our media and lost newspapers! They are afraid to reveal any truths and relied on silly Hans Blix’s word. Please keep up the good work.
— Susanne Olson
Global Support Voice Services

I understand why the “major media” ignores these stories. But why don’t we hear from the President about them?
— Jeff Sullivan
Dallas, Texas

Scene: FedEx Shipping commercial. Substitute Saddam and Baghdad Bob for the actors.

“We’re doomed, Doomed!!” “Yes Doomed, if we don’t get the WMD out of here!”

“Yo FedEx!……”

So I have to ask, why hasn’t somebody pulled up the tracking numbers? Find the Corporal Klinger that pulled this off, hire the man and blow the lid off this whole Iraq situation.

And Rotterdam could have one HELL of a Fourth of July with the SA-20! 🙂
— John McGinnis

Seems to me if these alleged WMD’s were in the process of being dismantled and shipped, they weren’t much of a threat. were they?
— Ted Schurch
Memphis, Tennessee

UNCLE JOE’S NUMBERS
Re: Ben Stein’s Homage to the Eastern Front and Reader Mail’s All Noise on the Eastern Front:

According to the post-USSR investigations, the USSR had lost between 43 and 50 million people, including approximately 27 million military men and women.

It was of course an early ally with Hitler’s Germany and an aggressor against Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania. It was perhaps Stalin’s Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov’s visit to Germany and his demand to annex Romania that served as casus belli for the Operation Barbarossa, German invasion of the USSR, because Romania was just about the only source of natural oil for the German military machine.

The U.S. overall losses were 408,000 people with the additional 78,000 MIA for the total of 486,000 men and women.

After the war, Stalin managed to murder about 2 million more expatriated Russians, turned over to him by the victorious Western Allies.

Just a few facts about Uncle Joe.
— Dan Leo
Miami, Florida

TAXING IT ALL BACK
Re: David Hogberg’s Year of the Taxing RINO:

David Hogberg makes the point clearly. Overall and sadly, it is Conservatives who are now the RINO’s. The Liberal Republicans who used to be are now quite at home in their Grand Old Party. It is past time for Conservatives to stop wearing those rosy colored glasses and again to start asking, “Why Not Victory?”
— Mike Rizzo

BRANDED
Re: Tracy Robinson’s A Newdow Is Dawning:

As a start, perhaps Mr. Michael Newdow should change his given name. How ironic that an atheist is named Michael, which means “Who is like God?” in Hebrew.
— Mike Haire
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts

EXPANSE ACCOUNT
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Simi Tough (DNC DVD):

I can’t wait to expand my “circle of friends” by viewing a movie made by someone who looks and acts like he lives in a cardboard box under a highway overpass.
— Jay Ciastko
Clinton, Connecticut

ANSWER MEN
Re: Peter J. Wallison’s Reagan, Iraq, and Neoconservatism and Stefan Halper & Jonathan Clarke’s Would Ronald Reagan Have Attacked Iraq?:

Thanks for posting Peter Wallison’s eloquent response to Halper & Clarke. While reading the H&C article yesterday, I thought many of the same things which Wallison pointed out. Where, in that article, is there even an attempt at a rational, fair definition of neo-conservatism? Instead we’re treated to inflammatory depictions of a mindset steeped in “Hobbesian state-of-nature primitivism … where adversaries … must be preemptively crushed lest they crush you.” Yep, sounds like a straw man to me. More to the point, though, I kept wishing to say to the authors: Gentlemen, putting aside the rhetoric about neo-conservatives for the moment, can you tell me what you believe Reagan WOULD have done in response to 9/11? In fact, if they’re willing, I would still like to hear their answer.
— Mark L.
Toronto, Canada

Rejoice! America. The economy is hot, news from Iraq is generally good, and historical revisionism is moving ahead at flank speed.

I refer, of course to the article by Halper and Clarke asking whether Reagan would have attacked Iraq, the thesis of which is — suitably parsed and interpreted — “Well, OK, Reagan wasn’t such an ‘amiable dunce’ after all, but Dubya and those nasty neo-conservatives sure are self-deluding idiots.” Their main technique is to show that although they might have originally misunderstood Reagan’s goals, by benefit of a couple decades of hindsight it can now be seen that he was just continuing the Nixonian and Carteresque policies of “constructive engagement,” albeit with the teeniest bit of a sharper edge.

So when Ron demanded of Gorby that he “open this gate” and “tear down this wall” he was merely employing rhetoric that really meant, “Why don’t we have a nice friendly discussion about our differences, Mr. General Secretary? I know we can work the problems out of detente if we just keep up the dialogue.”

Proof of this? You want more proof? say the authors. Look how Reagan “lift[ed] the grain embargo” in order to initiate a meaningful dialogue. Regrettably, Halper and Clarke take this action wholly out of historical context while naively accepting Reagan’s declared purpose at face value. In fact, when lifting the grain embargo (as a political sop to American agricultural interests, not as an altruistic attempt to start a peaceful dialogue) he was also doing his level best to tighten the embargo on technical and industrial aid to the Soviets, especially striving to damage their potentially huge natural gas industry by refusing them equipment and technology while encouraging the West Europeans not to buy the gas. This loss of foreign capital was almost as great a contribution to the breakup of the USSR as was Reagan’s ravaging its moral legitimacy by declaring it an evil empire.

We can argue forever, I suppose, over the aim of this or that Reagan policy, about whether he was wholly consistent or occasionally influenced by which group of advisers, over the relative influence of neo-conservatives in his administration, even over what-the-devil a neo-conservative is. But what Halper and Clarke are trying to sell is the basic liberal bilge that the “moderates” were right all along; that without any actions by the American President, the British Prime Minister, the Pope or any other hardliner the Berlin Wall would still have fallen, the Soviet Union would still have “reformed,” the Baltic states would still have regained their freedom… It was all inevitable, doncha see, and the lefties and softies had the right policies all along.

Well, I don’t know about you but they have me convinced. And they’ve also convinced me that the invasion of Iraq will have no effect on the development of Middle-Eastern democracy or the diminution of terrorist attacks on the U.S. Along those same lines, I am also convinced that if the Greeks had not prevailed at Marathon and Salamis the Persians would still have withdrawn from Europe, that had Charles Martel not beaten the Saracens at Poitiers Western Europe would still have remained Christian, that had William not conquered at Hastings we would still be ordering “pork chops” and not “swine flesh,” that had Washington not crossed the Delaware the Brits would still have given us our independence, and that had D-Day been a failure the Reds would still have stopped at the Elbe.

But then, I’m pretty simple; possibly you might be a bit more skeptical.
— Richard Donley
New Lyme, Ohio

HIS LAND IS OUR LAND
Years ago, Leonard Cohen wrote a great tune, “Passing Through,” with stanzas about Adam, Christ, George Washington at Valley Forge, and FDR calling for brotherhood of man. (In those naive days, even a Democrat could mention them in the same breath without blushing or being sued.) But years ago, I thought that Reagan should have his own verse in such a great American folk song and so I penned:

Oh I listened to Ron Reagan on that night in ’85
When he said we can begin the world anew.
So call your neighbor and lend a hand;
Ask God’s blessing on this land,
And we’ll work for freedom as we’re passing through.

REFRAIN:
Passing through, passing through.
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue,
glad that I ran into you.
Tell the people that you saw me passing through.

Mr. Reagan may not be on Mt. Rushmore, but we can build him a monument of song — and simple, plain American folk songs at that.
— Philip Marston
Alexandria, Virginia