Letters

--You might at least have warned us Gentle Readers. Imagine my alarm upupon extracting from my mailbox the New York Times (which I use to line my guinea pig's cage) and NR, and seeing the horrible florence king / a farewell bit on the cover. She is a national treasure and NR will never be the same without her.

Jon Gillooly

Keyser, W.V.

--Back in 1990 when I thought I was a liberal, I discovered Florence KiKing and took to her like some folks take to gin. As for Miss King's retirement: Come, Bildad and Zophar, bring on the ashes.

Sylvia Swain Rummel

Fulton, Mo.

--Say it isn't so! Michelangelo sculpted until he was nearly 90 and alalmost blind. Surely Miss King can continue a bit longer!

Peter J. Puleo

Crystal Lake, Ill.

--I felt her end was near when Florence wrote recently about coconstipation, picturing for us the envious sight of a parade horse's easy evacuation. To Florence! May all her future efforts be satisfying and mellifluous.

James V. Stallings

Sikeston, Mo.

--Florence King will no longer write her Misanthrope's Corner and I . . . . I don't want to live.

Irving Metzman

New York, N.Y.

--Rod Dreher's article ("Crunchy Cons," Sept. 30) was much ado ababout nothing. That the GOP is a "big tent" is news only to the mainstream media. It suits them to portray Republicans as anti-environmental, strip-mall-loving money-grubbers. Mr. Dreher has apparently swallowed that interpretation and considers the "Birkenstock" wing of the party an anomaly. In my experience, "live and let live" happens to be the attitude of the vast majority of Republicans.

Debra Krupp

Gold Canyon, Ariz.

--It was clever of you to publish Rod Dreher's article-but also vevery sad. Sad when the magazine for which Russell Kirk so frequently wrote describes "the permanent things" as the hobby of a marginal few.

Piroska Molnar Haywood

West Lafayette, Ind.

--Re John Derbyshire's "Hiberno-Fascism" (Oct. 14): Tim Pat CoCoogan's 1916: The Easter Rising may be a wretched book, but in the course of condemning it Mr. Derbyshire commits offenses as bad as those he exposes.

According to him, the Easter Rebellion was Ireland's own "beer-hall putsch," and Patrick Pearse and Michael Collins were "Hiberno- fascists." This is a shameful traducing of brave and honorable men, men of deep faith and high principle. Nothing in their conduct or beliefs could justly be called fascist.

The actions of today's IRA are as pointless as they are murderous. Ulster shouldn't be forced by thugs to live under a government it abhors, but neither should the rest of Ireland have been forced to live under English rule. Courage and nobility should be honored wherever they are found.

Mr. Derbyshire should have had the good grace to inform readers that he is British, so they would have had a better basis upon which to decide whether his version of events is valid, or simply the atavistic voice of British imperialism.

Thomas Moore

Alexandria, Va.

--As a descendant of Irish patriots, I continue to bristle at NR's ananti-Irish bias, especially concerning the heroic battle against British rule in Eire. The latest example: John Derbyshire's loathing and trashing of all things Irish in his recent book review. There seems to be an Anglophile psychological disturbance raging on Lexington Avenue.

Your take on almost all other things is good, and your writing is excellent. Bigotry is a sin, but I can provide a good Irish priest, ready to hear your confessions and tell you to "go and sin no more." Otherwise, to use Mr. Derbyshire's words, "we know where you live."

Roderick P. Murphy

Southbridge, Mass.

--John Derbyshire replies: The crux of Mr. Moore's argument is that memen of "deep faith and high principle" cannot be fascists. If we take the word "fascism" as denoting an actual political doctrine or style, rather than merely as a term of abuse, this is so obviously untrue that I think I can leave it to readers to supply their own counterexamples.

I do not agree with Mr. Moore's estimates of Collins and Pearse. I will grant their "courage"-I will grant the same to the September 11 terrorists-but "nobility"? Collins was an organizer of murder squads, and Pearse was a blood-and-soil racist and an anti-Semite of a type rather common in the early 20th century.

As for the Irish being "forced to live under English rule," a Home Rule Bill had actually been passed by Parliament in May 1914. The outbreak of a European war that August put the matter on hold; but it was plain to see that when the war was over autonomy could easily be attained by good-faith negotiations.

Mr. Moore rounds off his fallacies with an error: I am American, not British.

Mr. Murphy's reference to my "loathing and trashing of all things Irish" is incomprehensible. I loathe, and I trashed, Irish republican terrorism, for which I believe the 1916 putsch to be a continuing inspiration. I would write in the same style about any other species of terrorism, if asked to review a book by an author who plainly sympathized with it.

Finally, Mr. Murphy's claim to know what I think about "all things Irish" is absurd.