Letters

National Review, March 10, 2003

--Re Jay Nordlinger's "Hootie vs. Hootie" (Jan. 27): I would dearly love to see a wealthy conservative man with a little time and huge you- know-whats make a point of joining the National Organization for Women.

He must be prepared for ridicule, run for office within the organization, and make every attempt to change its agenda and bylaws. If he encounters any caterwauling from those women, he should file a lawsuit to force NOW to accept a certain percentage of men. He should run on the grounds that men are being discriminated against and are underrepresented in NOW, and attempt to get his fellow men to join with the express purpose of undermining that useless body and throwing it forever on the ash heap of history.

If NOW members were really interested in helping their fellow women, they would take on the entire Islamic world for its inhumane treatment of their sisters. Instead, the NOW gang sit in their ivory towers and take on easy marks within a tolerant American society.

I am sick to death of NOW's hypocrisy and utter uselessness.

Mary P. Ingham

Citrus Heights, Calif.

-- As a witness to the Jan. 18 peace rally on the Mall in Washington, I was grateful to Byron York for exposing the Communists in "Reds, Still" (Feb. 10).

It took all this conservative's will power to keep from picking verbal fights with some of the more ignorant protesters. I wanted to challenge those decrying American "imperialism" to go home and enjoy an evening without cable or even without a full meal. Let's see these socialists put their money where their mouths are.

Allison M. Bruneau

Charlotte, N.C.

--At the antiwar rally in San Francisco on Jan. 18, I rediscovered the joy of the public square. Each handmade placard was its own honest statement, a "letter to the editor."

I can't say it mattered much who hosted the event. People had come for their own reasons: to protest the civilian suffering that follows every war and the racist tendency to reduce the enemy to a gook. As for the anti-Bush bent: Hating Clinton was never un-American!

Jay Martin

San Francisco, Calif.

--In his Feb 10 article on AIDS ("Death in Africa . . ."), Rod Dreher writes that the success of Uganda's promotion of abstinence and monogamy is ignored by the politically correct. But Mr. Dreher himself is being PC by ignoring a far more impressive success.

The Third World has a magic bullet that prevents AIDS and that magic bullet is Islam.

Most Muslim countries have an infection rate of less than one per thousand adults, while the rest of Africa has an infection rate of more than one in ten. This clearly shows that religion can greatly reduce the spread of AIDS and other venereal diseases. If Christianity would preach abstinence and monogamy, it could be just as effective as Islam.

Richard Bruce

Davis, Calif.