The Enola Gay compromise humiliates us
It's a shame that the Smithsonian Institution decided to scrap the planned Enola Gay commemoration exhibit. In its place will be a much smaller, less comprehensive display.
I was hoping there could have been some way to encompass diverging and sometimes contentious views of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima.
But it's the public context of the decision -- that after years of compromise it was decided a presentation of differing views was not possible -- that is surprising and troubling.
The decision to cancel was in effect an admission of failure. The cancellation begs the question: If controversial events cannot be commemorated in the shelter of such a venerable public institution as the Smithsonian, where can they be?
That this body, beholden to the whims of public sentiment, has thrown in the towel is tantamount to a breakdown in social discourse in society.
I'm not neutral. Though I served in the Army for four years, I'm disgusted at the intransigence of the veterans and military support groups, supposedly speaking in my behalf.
They remained uncompromising in their demand for an exhibit that reflected their view of history alone. In the face of compromises by the Smithsonian, these groups insisted on all or nothing.
Their stubbornness reflects less a concern to have their opinions represented than a desire to monopolize and control the issue.
These groups were not alone in their arrogance. The firing of the man responsible for planning the exhibit, at the insistence of 81 members of Congress, ominously foretold the decision.
When the debate over how to present the Enola Gay exhibit began, I found common cause with the veterans groups. I was concerned that history would be rewritten for the sake of political sensitivities that developed after the passions and urgencies of World War II.
But, time and again, the revisions by the Smithsonian to ensure a truly balanced and multi-faceted portrayal of the event reassured me that history would not be denigrated or lost.
I have nothing to fear from an historical view of the bombing that includes the perspective of the victims. Nor am I threatened by the approach that sees that single event in an ongoing context.
I don't understand what veterans and military groups are so afraid of.
I'm a little disappointed at the Smithsonian as well. It is more important to view something as important as the Enola Gay exhibit in all its controversy than to refrain out of deference to a single opinion.
I was hoping that the contention that has come to characterize so much of the political process in this country would be limited to elections and Capitol Hill. I hoped in vain.
The stunted Enola Gay exhibit will be less a commemoration of an historical event than a condemnation of a country where people are too afraid to listen to one another.
John Bailey
Baltimore
40-hour week
Baltimore County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersburger's response to "Executive wonders if Berger heard him" (Jan. 26) should be to require a full eight-hour work day of all Baltimore County employees.
Currently, most Baltimore County employees work seven hours a day with a one-hour lunch break. This totals a 35-hour work week.
In the private sector, a 40-hour week with additional time for lunch is required.
Instead of a 17-cent increase in the property tax rate, as Mr. Ruppersberger hinted, he should require a full 40-hour work week from all Baltimore County employees.
G. Noble
Towson
Pension outrage
I cannot believe Gov. Parris Glendening would say that the premature pensions his youthful aides got for their "layoffs" are similar to those in private companies.
Few companies even offer a decent pension plan nowadays. Few, if any, pay for unused sick leave. But one Glendening aide got $125,000.
Workers in private industry can't retire at age 36. At a few companies, workers might wangle early retirement if they are forced out in their 50s, but the company will reduce their pensions from what they would have gotten if they had waited for normal retirement age.
Many companies are eliminating even that benefit, so if they throw you out, you get nothing.
Oh, and workers have to live on their fixed pension for life, because they don't get the regular cost of living increases that government pensions do.
So if they experience a few years of high inflation, they'll be lucky to buy dog food with their private industry pensions.
Executives of large companies get the golden parachutes, but the rest of us have to take whatever crumbs they throw us. That's the real world.
I can't believe taxpayers are allowing the governor's aides to live in a fantasy world on taxpayer dollars.
Allan C. Stover
Ellicott City
We are all in this together
Re Michael Levin's piece, "The moral case against welfare" (Other Voices, Jan. 30): In order to inoculate those who read this article from its latent racism, egoism, isolationism, Social Darwinism, and fear- and hate-mongering, I have decided to respond.
Professor Levin charitably concedes that "everyone is obliged to help the unfortunate, and that indifference to this obligation is a character defect." What appalls Professor Levin is the "forcible xTC fulfillment of charity."
Professor Levin is thinking in a political and social vacuum. A capitalistic society like ours creates both a great disparity of wealth and the poor.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, in 1989, in a period of economic expansion, 31.5 million Americans (12.8 percent of the population) lived in poverty.
The poor do not choose to be poor. It is an accident of birth. This society creates an underclass. Are we responsible for what we create? If so, then welfare is not a matter of charity, but our obligation to mitigate the misery of those we have made miserable.
This point merges with another of the great slogans of the New Right: "Responsibility." Professor Levin uses a wonderfully loaded stereotype, sure to raise the hair on the back of some necks, of the unmarried woman who gives birth out of wedlock.
Professor Levin takes no responsibility for impregnating these unwed mothers, but leaves out the society's responsibility for providing everyone decent living conditions, a safe environment, solid schooling, health care, and, above all, hope.
How many people are going to have the ambition that Professor Levin so admires when they live in a state of war and all of the above are absent? Thomas Hobbes says that in a state of war, survival, but nothing more, is possible . . . Living in such a hostile environment, can there be any ambition other than surviving the day?
Professor Levin wants us to rid ourselves of the "myth" that we are all in this together . . . Professor Levin, in taking a egoistic and atomistic approach to problem, does not see that in many issues "we are in this together."
Two quick examples: the environment and the economy. Why will the United States go to great lengths to help other countries? Certainly not for their sake.
We are interested in rain forests for a similar reason. Professor Levin assumes that all people are islands. By rejecting the argument that "we are all in this together," the New Right fosters a blind individualism and self-defeating self-reliance that alienates people, prevents solidarity of equally oppressed groups, and deflects us from the core of the issue: the Rich versus the Others.
Incidentally, this rule of not helping others is conveniently broken when a corporation such as Chrysler is in need.
If the New Right truly wanted "family values," then it would attempt to develop a society in which those values could flourish.
One case in point: promiscuity. The family can teach chastity all it wants, but if the predominant theme of the commercialized media is sex, then that "family value" will not be reinforced.
The same can be said of alcohol and cigarettes. If you want "family values," then formulate solutions that do not work at cross-purposes with the realization of those values. Placing profit before persons works at cross-purposes with "family values." . . .
George David Miller
Romeoville, Ill.