Letters Letters
Black lives more than matter; sharing is creepy; the root of the problem; radical pessimism; one person, no vote; any fool can make a rule…
Feb 25, 2015 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Those were the days; it's not mutual; the school-to-prayer pipeline; bad good guys; Julia M. Klein replies…
Feb 11, 2015 / Our Readers and Julia M. Klein
Letters Letters
Actions speak louder; progress and poverty; learning from Teachout; don’t be fooled
Feb 4, 2015 / Our Readers, Eric Alterman, and William Greider
Letters Letters
Fantasy Island; voices of sanity; going beyond green; clicking for human rights; no tears for TNR…
Jan 26, 2015 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Mutualize Uber?… what a mensch!… too broad a brush… make ’em care!… nobody does it better…
Jan 13, 2015 / Our Readers and Barry Schwabsky
Letters Letters
Controlling the enemy—us?… Hillary hangover… keeping score…
Jan 6, 2015 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Torch-Eyed Elephant Stampede!… droning on… black & white & gray all over… hanging up her pencils…
Dec 23, 2014 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Calvino! Thanks so much to Aaron Thier for his wonderful and informative article on Italo Calvino [“Calculators and Butterflies,” Nov. 24]. I was so impressed by Calvino’s philosophies and writing style that I immediately went online and purchased a copy of Difficult Loves, principally for the short story “Smog.” Robert Fuller hayward, calif. Slavery and Capitalism I enjoyed “Apostles of Growth,” by Timothy Shenk [Nov. 24]. I recommend an excellent book, Reservation “Capitalism”: Economic Development in Indian Country, about Native American capitalism from pre-invasion to the present. It’s by Robert Miller, who taught Indian law at Lewis and Clark College. Eugene Johnson milwaukie, ore. Timothy Shenk’s “Apostles of Growth” matches an incisive assessment of how slavery in the United States figures centrally in new histories of capitalism with a demonstration of why that matters to progressive politics. What is lacking, and not without irony, is attention to a longer history of engaged scholarship that has demonstrated the ways slavery was integral and internal to modern capitalism as it was forged in the Americas. The groundbreaking work of anthropologists Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz foreshadows and, one can only hypothesize, informs the work of the historians to whom Shenk refers. Some nod to this precedent would have been welcome, especially given the deep and productive entanglements of history and anthropology today. Oren Kosansky portland, ore. Shenk Replies I am grateful to Oren Kosansky for allowing me to correct an omission made to prevent an already lengthy essay from becoming even longer. He is right to draw attention to the importance of Eric Wolf’s and Sidney Mintz’s writings; but, as I am sure he is well aware, the list of major antecedents to the newest students of slavery’s relationship to capitalism extends well beyond these two scholars. Eric Williams’s classic 1944 Capitalism and Slavery remains an essential starting point for any serious consideration of the topic, and Williams has worthy successors in more recent figures such as Ira Berlin, Robin Blackburn, Barbara Fields, Cedric Robinson, Seth Rockman and Stephanie Smallwood. But even now our scope is too limited. If Christopher Hayes is right to argue, as he has in these pages, that the emancipation of 4 million enslaved Americans in the nineteenth century provides the most useful precedent for opponents of climate change today, then we must also study the connection between capitalism and abolitionism. Here, David Brion Davis, Eric Foner and James Oakes supply indispensable guidance, but they are just three contributors to a much larger field. Even if our concern is restricted to slavery’s relationship with economic growth, no discussion is complete without reflecting on Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman. Trained as economists, they depicted antebellum slavery as a thriving system in their 1974 work Time on the Cross, which appeared decades before historians of capitalism took their own path to a similar conclusion. That book sparked a fiery controversy upon its release, further widening the division between historians and economists. Much of the template it relied on, however, was already apparent in Fogel’s first book. There, as in Time on the Cross, Fogel used techniques developed by mid-century economists to reframe a question fiercely debated among historians. In this earlier case, the subject was not slavery but railroads. Yet Fogel’s larger concerns were characteristic of their moment, and evident from the book’s title alone: Railroads and American Economic Growth. Timothy Shenk new york city Questions for Pro-Lifers I’d like to add another to Katha Pollitt’s excellent list of “Questions for Pro-Lifers” [Nov. 24]: far more fetuses are lost by miscarriage than abortion, a significant number of them caused by preventable conditions such as inadequate nutrition and healthcare. Since you’re concerned about the life of the fetus, isn’t it equally (or more) important to ensure that every woman of childbearing age is guaranteed basic healthcare, nutrition, and safe and healthy living conditions? Ken Jones yakima, wash. I would add one more question: If “personhood” begins at conception, what (if anything) would you do to limit corporate practices that threaten fetuses in the womb (i.e., fracking, GMOs, toxic waste, etc.)? Cait McKnelly I’d add: Are you against the death penalty? Why haven’t we heard you speak out against capital punishment? We haven’t seen you demonstrate at executions at penitentiaries, but you do at abortion clinics. You claim to be Christian, yet you don’t let that pesky Commandment get in the way. Michael Miller Jr. philadelphia “Personhood” and related ideas are contrary to the concepts of Judaism, which do not consider an unborn fetus a nefesh, or complete human being. It is dependent on the mother; thus, ending its existence is not deemed murder. Also, in Judaism the life of the mother is paramount; if her life is threatened by a fetus, Jewish law requires an end to the fetus. Amjpnc Point 5, “Men,” in Katha Pollitt’s list is the key. The pro-life movement’s male supporters know they will never, ever have to face the hard choices faced by a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. We can’t change that, but we can change that men get off scot-free. Until such time as it is shown that women can make themselves pregnant, I propose we institute a universal “dick tax.” (Think of it as honoring Nixon and Cheney.) The dick tax would be a flat fee of $100 annually for every US male over the age of 14. Dick tax avoiders would be excluded from all government benefits, as well as driver’s licenses, hunting and fishing licenses, concealed-carry permits, etc. Such a tax would raise some $15 billion a year and could be used to support women with prenatal care, childcare and education. Men who could prove they are incapable of impregnating someone would be exempt. Haydon Rochester Jr. onancock, va. Unsung Masters Readers may be interested to know that a collection of poems by Catherine Breese Davis (1924–2002), author of “The Summer Leaves” [Nov. 10], will be published in the Unsung Masters series, accompanied by essays, in June 2015. Martha Collins, Kevin Prufer, Martin Rock, co-editors cambridge, mass.; houston
Dec 16, 2014 / Our Readers and Timothy Shenk
Letters Letters
Cancel My Cancellation Please tell me the November 10 issue is not an aberration. From beginning to end, it is the best issue of The Nation I’ve held in my hands. From Broad and Cavanagh on Satyarthi to Schwabsky on Matisse, from Greider’s “Hillary’s Nightmare” to Toumani’s deeply affecting “ ‘With This Madness, What Art Could There Be?’ ” you’ve given me new tools to use, new thoughts to digest. And you’ve brought us all a welcome echo of the late Catherine Breese Davis, whose seemingly fragile poem [“The Summer Leaves”] remains, on its carefully wrought trellis, enduring and strong. How did you know I was about to cancel my subscription? I won’t now. Donald M. Patterson stratford, conn. Thank you, Meline Toumani and The Nation, for “ ‘With This Madness, What Art Could There Be?’ ” delineating a lifelong process of inhabiting and then moving through and beyond one of the tragic histories of our time into understanding and compassion. Toumani’s faithful struggle may serve as an example for the participants and witnesses in all of the atrocities rampant today. In this global community, all of them are civil wars. Sharon Rose Smith amherst, mass. Our Bodies Are Ours Katha Pollitt, in “Abortion: No More Apologies” [Nov. 10], articulates a compelling case for asserting that reproductive rights are imperative so that women can gain the social goods of self-determination and equality. We also need to be mindful of two more social positives. First, access to contraception and abortion should be unapologetically a part of population control in a world that cannot continue to expand exponentially. Second, abortion must continue to be an option of fertility control for all women who decide they are unprepared for the responsibilities of motherhood, including those women who conclude that bringing a child into the world would place that child at serious risk of poverty in parenting, mental and physical health, education, and economic and social stability. Nicholas Fowler, MD south portland, me. Fantastic article. Pollitt’s point about privacy is extremely important. Why should anyone tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body? Right-to-lifers are no different from the Taliban and other extremists who wish to keep women in their place. I was at university in the late 1960s when I was able to obtain birth control for the first time. It was part of our emancipation that we could control that part of our lives and our bodies. I had hoped our nation would have moved on to where it is totally accepted that it is a woman’s right to choose, nobody else’s. No woman wants an abortion, but it is, sadly, a necessary choice for some. Melanie Woolfenden west sussex, uk We need to put real women—women like my mother—back at the center of the way we talk about abortion. Feminists have lost the “moral high ground” on reproductive rights by becoming ideological and tactical tools for the Democratic Party. There is no reclaiming any moral high ground until feminists and Democrats stop using the issue for one-sided party politics—period (no pun intended). Annette Greco A woman always faces the risk of death in pregnancy and childbirth and should have the right during any trimester to make her own informed decision about the risk it poses to her life as well as to her physical and mental well-being. It should be her right to life that is predominant during pregnancy. wildthang Katha Pollitt’s excellent article about abortion, and her tale of learning about her mother’s abortion, reminded me of my mother’s story. Born in 1907 in upstate New York, my mother was a 21-year-old bride-to-be in 1928. Her older sister had had an abortion, and my mother did not want to go that route. She was a passionate admirer of Margaret Sanger, and although there was no such thing as a birth-control clinic where she lived, sorority sisters told her of a doctor in Ithaca who would provide the newly invented diaphragms for women. My father dutifully took her to Ithaca and waited outside while she went into the “clinic.” Once she was on the exam table, the doctor unzipped his pants and penetrated her, explaining that this was the only way to measure her for a diaphragm. My mother, who was naïve and also ignorant of the process of getting a diaphragm, was mortified. She only told my dad years later. Complaining to the authorities was out of the question, of course, because birth control was illegal. She was 93 when she shared this story with me. So sad. Welthy Myers peru, vt. This is no longer the time to argue if or why women have the right to reproductive freedom; it is time to work on making sure they can exercise that right. That means we have to stop letting the antiabortion forces lead us around by the nose. We have to—at long last—start being smarter, and dirtier, than they are. The antiabortion forces claim the moral high ground and say abortion murders children. That may or may not be true, but it’s immaterial. There are countless ways our society murders children: we poison their water, food and air; we send them off to war; we shoot them in the streets; we starve them; we rob them of their dignity; and we let them die by depriving them of safe birth control and medically necessary abortions. Evidently, the antiabortion forces think some murders are OK and others are not. I see no moral high ground in that. But by discussing this in these terms, I have let the antiabortion people set the agenda. Should we give women permission to have abortions? Hell no! They don’t need our permission—it’s none of our business. Should we continue trying to persuade people of that? Hell no! It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work in the future. Should we work at the local level to chip away at the nice, comfy security of the antiabortion people? Hell yes! It’s damn well time! Paul A. Alter pittsburgh The Dish on Satellites The caption on the photograph above Stuart Klawans’s “What Are Movies Good For?” [Nov. 10] misidentifies “GCHQ satellites in Bude, England….” The picture shows antennas, with reflectors behind them, which allow radio frequency communication with satellites (devices in orbit around the earth). The antennas are often called satellite dishes. The Nation loves words. Please use them correctly. Nicola Nelson n. salt lake, utah
Nov 25, 2014 / Our Readers