Notes & Asides

National Review, Oct 13, 2003

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: Sometime during the 1980s, I began to wonder whom to invite if I could select five people who would accept a dinner invitation. In all these years I haven't come up with a complete list, which has recently caused me to set a condition on my search: The persons invited must all be living, which precludes considering such historical figures as the Apostle Paul and Thomas Jefferson.

I have at times considered that there may not be five people alive at any one time to complete a compelling enough list. But after 20 years of amusing and frustrating myself with the question, I have arrived at the following incomplete list of invitees: 1) my wife, and 2) you. I am still three people short.

If I were to ask you to help me round out the list, whom would you pick as the other three guests? Please take into consideration that I am strongly in favor of inviting President George W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher, but I don't insist on them if there are more compelling dinner guests, which is hard to imagine.

I will dutifully submit your recommendations to my wife, and knowing her sentiments about the sanctity of marriage, your wife had better be on the list, regardless of who else you choose.

We will pray before dining, and will be serving wine.

Cordially,

Donald Snedeker

North Plainfield, N.J.

--Dear Mr. Snedeker: The trouble with such compositions is that we're left with the difficulty of how to allocate time and attention. Socrates played with the question in one of his dialogues -- letting people talk themselves into irrelevancy, and then taking over what seemed an empty table. But thanks for thinking of me, and I defer to your wife.

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: Some semi-pro journalists think that the expression "begs the question" means that some situation logically suggests a question. A few minutes of research in a good dictionary will show that it actually means to evade answering a question. To illustrate: Hilllary: "Bill, did you eat those last two cookies in the jar?" Bill: "Did you see me near the cookie jar?"

Yours for proper usage,

Frank Sgambelluri

Stroudsburg, Pa.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: If one visualizes a nuke -- directed toward you -- one is most likely to call it "nukular"! If one visualizes a nucleus, one might be inclined to say "nuclear"! It is like res'piratory and respir'atory: My late husband insisted that it be "respir'atory," with the accent on the second syllable! Same difference! Why fuss?

Mrs. Ernest B. Smith

("Granny Smith," octogenarian)

Placerville, Calif.

--Dear Mrs. Smith: How did your husband come in on tomayto/tomahto?

Cordially, WFB

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: While the broad areas over which one fights do change, basic principles do not. The marked distinction between conservatives and liberals, it seems to me, can be summarized in a single word: absolutes. Conservatives have absolutes: God's absolutes in the Scriptures for religious conservatives; the Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc., for purely political conservatives. Liberals' absolute principles are themselves: masters of their own futures, captains of their own souls! For them, the Scriptures offer mere guidelines and the Constitution is to be interpreted by their own shifting morality.

Gary C. Wharton

Grand Rapids, Mich.

-- Dear Mr. Buckley: One of the indicators that the Myers-Briggs tests purport to measure is the degree to which a person is a "thinker" or a "feeler." Has anyone tried to correlate this measure to people who are "liberal" or "conservative"? I would appreciate your opinion on this.

Neil J. Mahoney

Columbia, S.C.

--Dear Mr. Mahoney: I know of no such study, but if my views were solicited, I'd call the liberal the dry-as-dust entry, drawn to collectivities and unplanted generalities.

Cordially,

-- WFB