Letters

National Interest, The, Fall, 2000

HERBERT K. MAY

McLean, VA

Rodman replies:

I am not in a position to judge Mr. May's criticisms of U.S. foreign aid practices, though he seems to have a point. At the same time, I want to make clear that blaming America was not the thrust of my article, or of my analysis. It is true that some of the anti-American resentment I document is provoked by clumsy or heavy-handed American behavior. Much of it, however, is structural--that is, the natural reflex of weaker powers to a single power's predominance. A proper response is not to go around apologizing for American misdeeds (as the Clinton administration is wont to do) but simply to recognize that the world works according to classical geopolitical principles regardless of how altruistic we believe our actions to be. This is the starting point of strategy. We should of course strive to be good internationalists--maintaining the liberal economic system and our security commitments, consulting more scrupulously with allies, etc.--but reserving the right to act as our best judgment requires us, especial ly on compelling issues of security.

Culture Matters:

Lawrence E. Harrison ("Culture Matters", Summer 2000) writes, "Over the almost two decades that I have been studying and writing about the relationship between cultural values and human progress ..."; and, "largely unnoticed in U.S. academic circles, a new, inward-looking paradigm that focuses on cultural values and attitudes is gradually filling the explanatory vacuum left by dependency theory's collapse." These two citations from his fine article are noted because as I read the article it became increasingly clear to me that Harrison has not encountered the work of Thomas Sowell. Sowell has been writing about the overriding significance of culture with respect to human progress for almost those same two decades of Harrison's study and writing; his syndicated columns and three brilliant books have, for this student of history, settled any controversy over colonialism versus culture that may have existed in the past. Therefore, I commend to Dr. Harrison, and others who may have overlooked them, Race and Cultu re (1994), Migrations and Cultures (1996) and Conquests and Cultures (1998)--all reviewed extensively and with near-unanimous praise.

SIDNEY HELFANT

City University of New York

Harrison replies:

I am very familiar with and have found extremely helpful the excellent work of Thomas Sowell. I have cited him in the three books I have authored, Underdevelopment is a State of Mind, Who Prospers? and The Pan-American Dream.

I know Professor Sowell and urged him to attend the 1999 Harvard symposium on the relationship between culture and human progress. Unfortunately, and to our great loss, he was unable to attend.

Islam and Islamism:

With all due respect to Daniel Pipes and his long years of work on Middle Eastern affairs, I would urge him to drop the term "fundamentalist" when speaking of anyone other than those Christians who employ it when speaking of themselves. I fear that careless use of the "fundamentalist" buzzword will not only alienate portions of the Muslim world, which might welcome Western cooperation, but also play into the hands of those who would stifle recent Christian inputs into the American domestic political dialogue.