On the September issue:
Affirmatively Deactivated
To the Editor:
As Naomi Schaefer Riley’s article on the College Board shows, Landscape could be used as a tool to facilitate admissions by race, even after universities had been directed to discard affirmative action (“College Board Games,” September). So it was good news to hear that the College Board has since scrapped Landscape altogether. Offers of admission should be based on merit, which includes a coherent SAT essay, high school test scores, and perhaps extracurricular and voluntary activities, regardless of economic or racial background.
Christian Milord
Fullerton, California
To the Editor:
After reading Naomi Schaefer Riley’s article about the College Board’s shenanigans, it occurred to me that getting rid of affirmative action might have the salutary effect of forcing people to do what should have been done decades ago: make the public schools actually teach again. This would involve breaking the stranglehold that the teachers’ unions have on schools, allowing discipline back into classrooms, and dealing with differing social norms around education. But success would obviate the perceived need for unequal treatment of applicants, which is abhorrent.
Karen Bernstein
Nashville, Tennessee
The War and the Information War
To the Editor:
The Israeli military successes that Jonathan Schanzer details cannot blunt Israel’s profound failure on the information front (“How Israel Can Defend Itself in the Future,” September). Hamas had an information strategy that was fully operational beginning on the day of the attack. So instead of international sympathy for Israel, there’s been condemnation and threats, which have put world Jewry in danger as well. In response, Israel has been speechless. The Israeli genius evident in the pager operation in Lebanon—unique in its conception, long-term preparation, and miraculous execution—is nowhere to be found when it comes to the media and the public. How can a people who built Hollywood and mastered Madison Avenue fail so spectacularly where they have always excelled? I don’t understand why there was no information strategy.
Larry W. Josefovitz
Beachwood, Ohio
Jonathan Schanzer writes:
Larry W. Josefovitz is 100 percent right. One cannot argue with one word of his blistering critique. Israeli public relations is a hot mess, and it has been so for years. My hope now, as Israel begins to grapple with the triumphs and fail-ures of its two-year war, is that the leadership in Jerusalem begins to take a hard look at this problem. Only a clear-eyed and unflinching view of Israel’s blunders in the information space will create the sense of urgency needed to improve Israel’s approach to information warfare. Indeed, the first step for Israel is admitting that it has a problem. How much this issue is prioritized amid all the other post-war analysis, however, remains to be seen.
Life and Fiction
To the Editor:
Joseph Epstein states that compared with biography, the novel “remains, and always will remain, the more truth-bearing form” (“There Are Too Many Overweight Biographies,” September). George Sand might well agree. As she said in her novel Metella, “Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.” Life is inherently anarchic, and art, unlike nonfiction, is not bound by lockstep allegiance to facts.
Garry Apgar
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Critical Alliances
To the Editor:
Thank you for Mike Burke’s beautifully written and well-articulated discussion about liberty and national memory, nations with shared values standing together, and building alliances not through debt and dependency but through cooperation and nurturing trust (“What Japan Remembers,” September).
May we remember what we stand for. And may the Japanese remember and behave accordingly. Europeans should also recall the lessons of their history, chiefly that their freedoms cannot be taken for granted.
Thank you for drawing our attention to a quiet but critical alliance and what it means to us and the world.
Judy Starr
Isla Morada, Florida
Mike Burke writes:
I am deeply grateful to Judy Starr for her kind words and for striking the true nerve of my essay: that liberty endures only through memory. In Europe, memory of the threat on its border has wavered.
The Russians, however, remember. The Mongols overran the Russian heartland; Napoleon and Hitler came within sight of Moscow before being driven back at a staggering cost. From that trauma grew a strategy of security through conquest—a geopolitics of insecurity shared by both the czars and the commissars: Expand until you reach the natural barriers that promise safety, the Carpathians, the Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the Pacific coast. Yet it was not NATO expansion that proved Russian insecurity right, but rather a cruel joke: Yevgeny Prigozhin (a former burglar turned hot dog seller, turned restaurateur, turned catering oligarch, turned, astonishingly, warlord-general) whose rabble of convicted criminals marched toward Moscow and plunged the regime into chaos. One suspects that Putin shudders to think what a morally reawakened, remilitarized Germany—armed to the teeth not with hot dogs, obscene amounts of vodka, and obsolete Cold War relics, but by Rheinmetall—might threaten. Yet that is precisely the reality he is bringing into being.
“It couldn’t happen to a nicer chap,” as my grandfather used to tell me.
Europe is rearming, yet I lament that its resolve has arisen not from the lessons of this history, but from reaction—the fear of Russia on one side and of American withdrawal on the other. I would much prefer that Europe’s rearmament sprang from duty instead.
The Sweeney Freakout
To the Editor:
Christine Rosen’s column about Sydney Sweeney and the left was spot-on (“Why Jeans Are Making Progressives Blue,” September). The progressives have learned nothing. The American Eagle ad campaign makes me realize how much I missed this kind of sensibility. Sweeny was wearing regular boyfriend jeans, and she had the coolest car!
I felt a bit released and free from the tyranny of political correctness. It made me realize how everything has become so silently oppressive. As always, thank you for your voice.
Viki Love
Costa Mesa, California
Incentivizing Terrorism
To the Editor:
Regarding Meir Y. Soloveichik’s column on the Palestinian Authority’s terrorist-reward system, it’s worth noting that the PA gets what it incentivizes (“We Will No Longer Tolerate ‘Pay for Slay,’” September). And what it gets is not preparation for a state that wants to live in peace with Israel. And the PA is not coy about what it’s doing. In February of this year, PA head Mahmoud Abbas said before the Fatah Revolutionary Council, “If we have only a single penny left, it will go to the prisoners and the martyrs…. They are more honorable than all of us.” Chief Justice John Roberts has rightly recognized that Palestinian leadership needs to be held accountable for its murderous policies.
Julia Lutch
Davis, California
Myth-Busting
To the Editor:
I found Wilfred Reilly’s review of Jason L. Riley’s The Affirmative Action Myth eye-opening and brave (“Myth Directed,” September). It explained several myths that have scarcely been scrutinized or debated in the mainstream media. Reilly explained each clearly and provided evidence to support his claims.
It was refreshing and surprising to read a new (to me) perspective on affirmative action and see the receipts that demonstrate its failure. I say it was brave because I shudder to think of how many will accuse the book’s author, or Reilly for reviewing it, of being racist or supporting the “white man good” narrative. It has become an act of bravery to state facts drawn from careful research and analysis, especially when this supports a conclusion that the mainstream media and woke left do not want to hear. This is the kind of analysis and interpretation that will help inform which policies need to be changed. I applaud Commentary for providing honest and thoughtful articles like this.
Laura Clark
Cincinnati, Ohio
