Refugees: The Uncertain Welcome

To the Editors: It is disillusioning to realize that a majority of the American public never objected to wasting $150 billion killing off Asians they did not know, in a war they did not understand, but now react violently to spending a few hundred million to save the lives of some of that war's victims. Any amount for death but not one cent for life, right?

Kay Byrne Charlotte, N.C.

While it is part of our civil religion to aid the hungry and to welcome refugees from all over the world, it is a religion we have practiced selectively. At the end of the second World War we turned back to Stalin's armies many Russian soldiers who had escaped, even when it was clear that they would go to labor camps or to the firing squad. We welcomed the Hungarians. Some of us worked to rescue Chileans endangered by the present right-wing junta. But what would be the reaction on the liberal left if we were asked to receive refugee Afrikaners from a civil war in South Africa?

There may be an element of racism in some popular attitudes toward the South Vietnamese refugees, just as Asians on the West Coast in earlier generations, both Chinese and Japanese, were subject to terrible cruelties. But such attitudes have generally been repressed since the second World War by the almost uniformly antiracist attitude of the enlightened stratum of our society. Yet the Viet Nam agony divided this group, and now this division has allowed hostility toward the South Vietnamese refugees to come to the surface.

The ordinary American is characteristically generous. It is the enlightened, educated American who is more apt to be swayed by abstract ideological considerations: by feelings of disgust toward the war itself, joy in the triumph of the North Vietnamese, and the acceptance of stereotypes about South Vietnamese as the "bad guys," viewed self-righteously as a group rather than as individuals in need.

I can feel no Schadenfreude in anyone's victory, anyone's suffering, or in the notion that we can find better people to help. Of the country's capacity to absorb this relatively small number of refugees there is no doubt. Of the country's capacity to recover from its orgy of grievance and self-pity, its striking out blindly at those who remind us of past errors, there is considerably more doubt.

David Riesman Cambridge, Mass.

Author of The Lonely Crowd, Riesman is Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences at Harvard University.

It seems ironic that 54% of the American public opposes helping the South Vietnamese refugees. When white men fled from England during the 1600s, they were "refugees" who fled in fright from the powerful grip of the King and Queen.

Wake up, Americans! My great, great, great Indian grandfathers did not complain or bellyache when they first met the white man at Plymouth Rock.

Don Decker II San Carlos Apache Tribe San Carlos, Ariz.

Lift the Boycott?

For too many years Cuba has been under the control of an alien power. Under the direction of the Soviet Union, the Cuban regime has become an instrument of the Kremlin's secret intelligence service, the KGB, for spreading the Soviet brand of totalitarianism to other nations of this hemisphere. The regime in Cuba is simply not one of concern to Cubans only, it is of concern to every citizen of this hemisphere because of its intimate links to a hostile foreign power, and because of the ruthless suppression of civil liberties that it seeks to export.

Cuba also provides facilities for the Russian navy that on short notice can be augmented so as to accommodate the Soviets' most modern nuclear-armed submarines.

The sanctions maintained against Cuba by the Organization of American States [May 19] must be retained if the Cuban people are ever to have a chance for freedom. But whether or not they are retained, I shall oppose any attempt by the U.S. to restore formal diplomatic or economic relations with Castro Cuba until Castro Cuba purges itself of the Soviet presence.

James Buckley U.S. Senator, New York Washington, D.C.

Foolishness First

Few events can have carried such a clear cosmic message as the recent running of the Kentucky Derby [May 12]. While two horses fought for the lead, a third came up from behind and stole the purse. The two horses intent only on challenging each other for the favorite's position were Avatar and Diabolo. Avatar means a deity. Diabolo means devil. So, while the deity contended with Lucifer, who dashed home first? Foolish Pleasure. Let that be a happy lesson for us all.

Richard P. Goldwater, M.D. Cambridge, Mass.

No Indifference

Contrary to your insinuations, Daniel P. Moynihan's "benign neglect" memorandum [May 5] did not recommend indifference to black needs. Why indeed would the author of the Family Assistance Plan, whose main beneficiaries would have been the black poor, have recommended such a policy? Writing in January 1970, Moynihan described the "extraordinary progress" blacks had made in the decade just ended and the various threats to that progress, including the pre-emption of the racial issue by "paranoids ... on all sides." He urged the President to pay "close attention to such progress" while seeking--and here is where benign neglect came in--to avoid situations, like the one the Chicago police had created in raiding the Black Panthers, "in which extremists of either race are given opportunities for martyrdom..."

That Moynihan's memo should have been misrepresented in the overheated political climate of the time is explicable if still reprehensible. But there is surely no reason to go on doing so today when the only purpose served is the wanton undermining of a brilliant public servant.

Norman Podhoretz Editor, Commentary New York City

Wrong Message

From Justice Greenfield and Lord Cross [May 12], the message is unfortunately quite clear: "Rapists and frauds fear not. It may be legal to rape and perpetrate fraud (if you do it our way)." Someone ought to inform Lord Cross and Justice Greenfield that women are people.

Jim Dorskind Ithaca, N. Y.

The Biscuit Award

Much as we appreciate your kindness in publishing a review of Burke's Presidential Families of USA [May 5], I feel that some misleading impressions may have been gained by readers from your reviewer's leaden facetiousness.

As a devotee of P.G. Wodehouse, may I say that of all the many failures to achieve a pastiche of the style of the Master, this effort of Mr. Kanfer's must take the jolly old biscuit. The idea of Jeeves as a club waiter serving "gin stengahs" (whatever they may be) is lamentable. For the rest, your reviewer has unfortunately let his anti-limey prejudices get the better of him, and his cliches and mixed metaphors are too dire for comment.

However, for the record: "gules argent" and "bars sinister" are heraldic impossibilities; Nixon is called many other things in the book apart from "controversial"; there are at least twelve Kings in the book (see the "Royal Descents" in the appendices) apart from President Ford's father, so that joke is not so clever; and, above all, our books are scholarly records of social history, not "snob's bibles." If you do not believe this, try reading one--without prejudice. You will be surprised. Indeed, your flabber will never have been so gasted.

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd Editorial Director, Burke's Peerage Ltd. London

Your review wallah has gone and pulled a howler. When one has knocked about the federated Malay States for donkeys' years, as one has, one learns that "stengah" means a small whisky and water, nothing more, nothing less. Any chappie askin' for a "gin stengah" at the Yellow Dog in K.L. would be hooted off the verandah before you could say knife.

Richard ("Pinky ") Johnson Singapore

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