Governor Wallace and Hatred

Sir / Why is it that a man of conviction has to suffer from the hand of blind hatred?

Governor George Wallace [May 29] may or may not hold a majority opinion on various topics. Like every other American, however, he has the right to the benefits of one of the fundamental principles on which this nation was founded: freedom of speech. That freedom must not be suppressed by violent ignorance.

DONALD W. SAMP

Chicago

Sir / As the gunshots of May 15 ring out a few more notes in the swan song of democracy, I should think that both of the major parties' candidates would, if only for their own protection, summon the courage to stand up to the adherents of gun ownership and make meaningful federal gun control an issue in their respective campaigns.

JERRY McCORMACK

Lieutenant (j.g.), U.S.N.R.

FPO Seattle

Sir / Wouldn't it be just as well if candidates used radio and television to express their ideas rather than direct contact with the public for a few years until this rash of unrest passes.

One reason, it seems to me, is that attempted assassinations tend to cast a halo over victims and their families, when in reality they are only mere mortals.

MRS. M.E. CRAWFORD

Los Angeles

Sir / A few months ago, the Maryland legislature passed "emergency" legislation prohibiting the carrying of handguns without permits and giving search-on-suspicion power to the police. This was to be the cure for violent crime, and now that its uselessness has been demonstrated, the "pass a law and solve every problem" people will howl for more gun control.

I expect that handguns will eventually be outlawed, thus another multimillion dollar bureaucracy will be born, gunrunning will become lucrative for organized crime, we will again have been told that we are too stupid to handle our personal affairs, and, of course, crime will continue.

JIM SHAMP

St. Louis

Victims of Abortion Laws

Sir / On behalf of the millions of women who breathed a sigh of relief when Governor Nelson Rockefeller stood firm for liberalized abortion rules [May 22], I express my heartfelt gratitude.

I hope that I will never need to make use of this operation, but no contraceptive yet devised is foolproof, and I shudder to think how I would be victimized by those who would callously impose upon me their brand of morality if I became pregnant despite all precautions.

Many women today are aware that our rights as human beings need not forever be trampled on simply because we are nature's means for continuing the human race.

MARLENE LOVELL

Riverside, R.I.

Sir / Since when is the killing of innocent babies immoral only in the eyes of Roman Catholics? When vetoing the New York abortion law repeal, Governor Rockefeller remarked: "I do not believe it right for one group to impose its vision of morality on an entire society." His gratuitous statement is a slur not only on Roman Catholics but also on all people of compassion--Protestants, Jews, and those of no particular faith --who saw the present New York State abortion law for what it really is: legalized murder.

(THE REV.) LESTER P.

MESSERSCHMIDT

St. Luke Lutheran Church

Dix Hills, N.Y.

Sir / Governor Nelson Rockefeller's statement upon vetoing New York State's most recent abortion bill is interesting, especially if one notes the ultimate logic of his argument about morality.

May we expect New York State now to set aside all laws that deal with moral issues, such as gambling, narcotics, prostitution, euthanasia, provision for welfare, etc.?

(MRS.) ALMA J. LAGACE

Avon, Conn.

Sir / Governor Rockefeller proposes to continue protecting murderers by offering them safe abortions. It seems only right to let these women take their risks from a hack doctor.

The mother had her choices about her sexuality. The fetus' only crime is its begrudged existence.

(MRS.) CAROL HAILE

Reading, Pa.

Sir / Bravo for Governor Rockefeller! I am tired of seeing people pretend that "Christianity" gives them the right to impose their personal moral values on others.

(THE REV.) DAVID L. GOBBLE

First Christian Church

Harrisonburg, Va.

Sir / The picture of the anti-abortion assemblyman demonstrating his point to the New York state legislature by displaying a fetus in a jar was striking indeed. How righteously the antiabortionists would respond if someone presented on the house floor the preserved body of a young girl who had succumbed to sepsis from an abortion she could not obtain under sterile and controlled conditions.

MANFRED ROTHSTEIN

Duke Medical Center

Durham, N.C.

Winning in Viet Nam

Sir / After three Presidents have been playing at Commander in Chief, it is about time that one of them had the guts to use American power, abandon the protected sanctuary areas and bring the war to North Viet Nam, which is where it all started. We can win this war, and it is about time we did.

S.S. FISHMAN

San Francisco

Sir / Nixon seems to be waging the war as if it were an American war, so a South Viet Nam defeat is viewed as an "American defeat which would encourage aggression all over the world." This same attitude can be used to justify full-scale war or whatever involvement Nixon resolves is necessary to achieve an American victory. The South Vietnamese must feel as if they are fighting for America rather than for their homeland.

ALVAN KNOT

Flint, Mich.

Sir / We all feel sorry for the men who have lost their lives in Viet Nam. We should, however, feel more sorrow for the men who will die today and tomorrow. These vain deaths are the most potent reason to stop the war.

EDWARD M. GILLIGAN

FPO San Francisco

Learning What Not to Do

Sir / Your piece on Northeastern University's work-study program [May 22] overlooked one very important educational advantage: the student learns "in the field" what he does not want to do for the rest of his life.

This single pedagogical breakthrough may ease some of the traumatic middle-age career switches we have been witnessing in the postwar U.S. Kudos to Northeastern for holding the fort for all these years on behalf of the offspring of America's "children of the soil."

EDMUND A. BOJARSKI

Professor

Department of English

McMurry College

Abilene, Texas

No Ordinary Skyjacking

Sir / I am thrilled by the daring, skill and imagination of the Israelis in outwitting the Arab skyjackers [May 22]. Too bad if the International Air Line Pilots Association and the Red Cross do not approve. They do not seem to understand that this was no "ordinary" skyjacking. The Arabs insist that they are at war with Israel. This was an act of war. The Israelis' only alternative was to let loose 317 dangerous terrorists and entrust 90 passengers to the tender mercy of their enemies. I hate to think of it.

HENRI TEMIANKA

Long Beach, Calif.

Why Is Man So Different?

Sir / I find it an unimportant miracle that your Behavior section, which has published so many illuminating comments on advances in contemporary science, can present quite such an exercise in 19th century biology as your consideration of Alland's The Human Imperative [May 22]. "It is a cliche of popular ethology," you write, "that man is no more than an animal among animals, a naked ape dominated by his own savage biology and driven by killer instincts." It is ethology that has informed us that the ape is not savage. It is ethology, in recent years, that has observed the innumerable means whereby animals, in a state of nature, limit their aggressions to outcomes less than lethal. The popular cliche that you present is TIME'S, not ethology's. A principal preoccupation of such authors as you most unfavorably cite--Konrad Lorenz, Desmond Morris, myself--has been quite simply, "Why is man so different?"

We all have our different answers. Alland presents the cultural hypothesis--fashionable in American anthropology since the days of Franz Boas in the early '30s--that our cultural milieu determines our deadly determinations. Morris looks to the impositions of the civilization in which we live, frustrated, as in a human zoo. Lorenz has been concerned with the decline of those instincts that at one time inhibited our aggressions. My own preoccupation has been with our long hunting past, which placed selective advantage on those who took pleasure in the violent way. No hypothesis is proved. Yet none can be dismissed, with TIME'S polemics, in a period in which violent behavior so dominates our lives. You do our present and our future an injustice with such careless, improvident, self-righteous bias.

ROBERT ARDREY

Rome

Non-People Day

Sir / Re Non-Father's and Non-Mother's Day [May 22] as advocated by the National Organization for Non-Parents: Who gives them gifts on these days? A non-child? I'm waiting to celebrate Non-People's Day, but who will we have to recommend it?

RAYMOND J. STRYCHARZ

West Springfield, Mass.

A Patting Father

Sir / The child you have Senator McGovern pictured as "patting in Omaha" [May 22] is his grandson and my two-year-old son Timothy McGovern Mead, whom my father "pats" privately and publicly.

ANN MCGOVERN MEAD

Washington, D.C.

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