ArticleIP_3864.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
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               A
Slender Reed
            

            David
Plotz's assessment of Ralph Reed, "Ralph Reed's
Creed," only got it half right. He is correct to identify the glibness,
guile, and style with which Reed manipulates mass audiences, but he doesn't
point out that this masks a dark, self-serving ambition. Elevating such people
to "gifted" status puts a nice face on their hypocrisy and does very little to
improve America's expectations of its politics or government. So I only wish
that while delegitimizing Reed's Christian décor, the author could have called
a spade a spade.

            
               --Thomas
A. DeLuca
            

            
               Illogical
Rigor
            

            In "Who Shall Inherit the
Earth?" Steven E. Landsburg continues to astound by insisting that logical
rigor requires binary choices. Once more he's taken an issue which he modeled
as a silly yes-or-no question, extended the consequences of this answer to
ridiculous lengths, and smugly pronounced the conclusions as the only logical
result. He posits that "the unconceived are like prisoners being held in a sort
of limbo, unable to break through into the world of the living." So life no
longer begins even at conception, as some would have it. Rather, the process is
like a giant heavenly gum-ball machine, where the bored and listless unborn
souls wait to be selected. From this dubious proposition, he deduces that we
are morally obliged to have more children than we really want.

            Then he
uses his trademark rhetorical trick, the false absolute choice: "If we have no
obligations to those imprisoned souls--then it seems there can be no moral
objection to our trashing Earth, to the point where there will be no future
generations." The truth that his assumptions try to mask is that even if you
don't assume that all potential unborn, unconceived souls have "rights," there
is still a certainty that there will be many children conceived and raised, and
there is no contradiction in considering their future to be important.

            
               --Daniel
Schwarcz
            

            
               First
Comes Time, Then Comes Money
            

            Michael Kinsley's
money-over-time argument in "Trumpet Voluntary" all adds up nice and neatly--provided
one's time and one's money aren't intimately linked. But people want to spend
money on things they feel connected to. If the hypothetical donor doesn't care
about the cause, she will write fewer and smaller checks. But if she's willing
to "sacrifice" more of her time, she'll "sacrifice" more of her money.

            
Ultimately, volunteer work benefits us at least as much as those we serve. It
can bring balance and fulfillment to our lives, while providing real leadership
to some who may need motivation more than money. And, for the sake of Kinsley's
ledger, it benefits the bottom line as well. Get individuals to invest their
time and the funding will follow.

            
               --Gary Sulentic
            

            
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