The Week

■ By a vote of 337 to 54, the Soviet legislature has rejected a virtual sin tax on such items as beer and cigarettes. Nice system they’ve got over there. We have seen the future, and it works.

■ “If I had been President for four more years, we wouldn’t have had a resurgence of racism and selfishness,” said former President Jimmy Carter in an address at Georgetown University. In his 1980 campaign, Carter predicted that the election of Reagan would set North against South, black against white, and Jew against Gentile; that it would lead to class war and maybe the destruction of the world. The headlines today seem to say something different, and Carter is a real class act. We could joke about it, but why bother. The twentieth century’s Benjamin Harrison says it all every time he opens his mouth.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

■ By a vote of 337 to 54, the Soviet legislature has rejected a virtual sin tax on such items as beer and cigarettes. Nice system they’ve got over there. We have seen the future, and it works.

■ “If I had been President for four more years, we wouldn’t have had a resurgence of racism and selfishness,” said former President Jimmy Carter in an address at Georgetown University. In his 1980 campaign, Carter predicted that the election of Reagan would set North against South, black against white, and Jew against Gentile; that it would lead to class war and maybe the destruction of the world. The headlines today seem to say something different, and Carter is a real class act. We could joke about it, but why bother. The twentieth century’s Benjamin Harrison says it all every time he opens his mouth.