It’s the Economy, Steyn

Mark Steyn: As you so sadly write about the “deal of ruin in a nation,” and conclude that Americans elected Barack Obama because they reject their country’s founding values (“Dimpled Ruin,” December 1), I must reject your thesis on the grounds of one simple factor that came hurling to the forefront of the election: the economy. This is still the ardently individualist, self-willed, limited-government, gun-slinging country our forefathers helped create over 200 years ago. The problem was that the GOP candidate was from the same party as the presiding president (or at least appeared to be).

Jake Christensen

Via e-mail

The Doom of Statism

Mark Steyn (“Dimpled Ruin”) may “hate to be the Gloomy Gus,” but his “incremental decay” reminds this anxious conservative of an earlier gloomy and not very happy warrior. A half century ago, Whittaker Chambers, spookily prescient, alluded to his fears about the power of collective, redistributive statism to destroy the fabric of free nations.

In Witness, Chambers, describing his epiphany, stated that “something in me more lucid than mind knew that I had reached the end of an experience, which was not only my experience. Out of that vision of Almighty Man that we call Communism and that agony of souls and bodies that we call the revolution of the 20th century was left that pinch of irreducible dust: ‘Who pays is boss and who takes money must also give something.’ It might stand as the motto for every welfare philosophy.”

Presumably, Chambers would have agreed with Steyn that King Obama’s reign will require any who take the money to give up the liberty that has long been precious to anxious conservatives. Chambers is gone, so, Mr. Steyn, please keep warring and witnessing.

Gerald K. Masters

Newark, N.Y.

Latin Lovers Anonymous

The late William F. Buckley Jr., who loved Latin so much, would have headed Ross Douthat’s clever article on Gov. Sarah Palin (December 1) “Sarah Resarta” (adjective feminine), not “Sarah Resartus” (adjective masculine), in accordance with Latin grammar. Or, being the purist he was, he might have used the gerundive instead, titling it “Sarah Resarcienda,” which better translates the subtitle “Tailoring Sarah for the future.”

On the other hand, many readers would have missed the pun on Thomas Carlyle’s treatise on clothing (Sartor Resartus), and on Sarah Palin’s sartorial spree.

José A. Ramirez

Via e-mail

The Editors reply: We had that conversation, though we made the decision celerius quam asparagi cocuntur. Bearing in mind that Virgil was a poeta and not a poetus, we chose to use the masculine form for the feminine governor, so as to avoid inducing our readers to Google “resarta” and miss the Carlyle reference. Though “Sarah Resarta” does have a pleasing assonance, the governor of Alaska, with her gun-toting, moose-slaying, and caribou-butchering, hardly demands a daintily feminized inflection in deference to her sex, and we’re confident that she will not be mistaken for a man in spite of the masculine resartus. Sometimes an editor must break the rules: Non ducor, duco.