ALASKA’S SWEETHEART
LIVING IN ALASKA, I heartily concur with Fred Barnes that Sarah Palin is Alaska’s sweetheart (“The Most Popular Governor,” July 16). Perhaps after America wakes up from the Hillary nightmare, Palin will become America’s sweetheart, also. She is tough and transparent, but tender and disarmingly affectionate, too. We are very glad to have her in Juneau.
JOSEPH MCDONALD
Sitka, Alaska
A GLORIOUS DEBATE
I ENJOYED GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB’s review (“Glorious, Indeed,” July 23) of Michael Barone’s new book, Our First Revolution, in which he contends that Britain’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 was the “founding event” of our own American Revolution. The parallels that Himmelfarb draws between Barone and Macaulay are interesting. Our history writing still suffers from a paucity of the sort of good narrative history that Macaulay was so good at, and Barone’s book is welcome for that. Nevertheless, I was surprised that Himmelfarb made no mention of Bernard Bailyn’s pioneering work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), which showed what a crucial dividing line Britain’s “Glorious Revolution” became in the debates that eventually led to Lexington and Concord.
In his book, Bailyn points out that “pride in the liberty-preserving constitution of Britain was universal in the political literature of the age, and everyone agreed on the moral qualities necessary to preserve a free government. But where the mainstream purveyors of political thought spoke mainly with pride of the constitutional and political achievements of Georgian England, the opposition writers, no less proud of their heritage, viewed their circumstances with alarm, ‘stressed the danger of England’s ancient heritage and loss of pristine virtue,’ studied the process of decay, and dwelt endlessly on the evidence of corruption they saw about them and the dark future these malignant signs portended. . . . Few of them accepted the Glorious Revolution and the lax political pragmatism that had followed as the final solution to the political problems of the time. They refused to believe that the transfer of sovereignty from the crown to Parliament provided a perfect guarantee that the individual would be protected from the powers of the state. . . . They insisted, at a time when government was felt to be less oppressive than it had been for two hundred years, that it was necessarily–by its very nature–hostile to human liberty and happiness; that, properly, it existed only on the tolerance of the people whose needs it served; and that it could be, and reasonably should be, dismissed–overthrown–if it attempted to exceed its proper jurisdiction.”
Bailyn’s contention that the American colonists didn’t find the “Glorious Revolution” glorious enough (unlike, say, Burke) sounds persuasive to me, but I am looking forward to reading what Barone has to say in his book.
EDWARD SHORT New York, N.Y.
INTEGRATION BLUES
SAN FRANCISCO’s experience with socioeconomic integration calls into question Erin Sheley’s optimism about this approach (“Down but Not Out,” July 23). Despite taking into account language spoken at home, eligibility for free lunch, residence in public housing, academic performance, and reputation of former school, the policy has not resulted in racial integration. In fact, schools have become more racially segregated in many districts. We need to ask ourselves whether economic diversity is all that matters.
WALT GARDNER
Los Angeles, Calif.
