FREEDOM CALLING

Letters

Gore Vidal's "The War at Home" [November] should be required reading for every American who wants to live without government invasiveness. This nation was founded by a group of people attempting to escape intrusive laws. Today we are the most governed people on earth. The Constitution is the only document we need in order to exist, and it does not need to be changed. But every time the government decides something is immoral, it makes it illegal. Former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders was banished from Washington because, among other things, she felt that the legalization of drugs would reduce crime. Conversely, Attorney General Janet Reno continues to protect our civil rights by killing Americans who practice their freedom of religion. God help us all.

JOHN J. SMITH Montgomery, Alabama

AS A LONGTIME resident of what Gore Vidal termed the "ultima Thule" of America's Great Plains, I am grateful to him for speaking so eloquently about the desperate state of rural America. My county, like many in the western plains, lost 20 percent of its population between 1980 and 1990. We are now poised for another such exodus. In North Dakota, per-capita farm income dropped 90 percent, from $33,963 in 1996 to $3,440 in 1997. Income isn't rebounding, because the prices farmers are receiving for cattle and wheat are at their lowest in 50 years. Imagine today's publishing industry saddled with a 1940s price, $1.50 per book.

KATHLEEN NORRIS Lemmon, South Dakota

IT WAS JARRING to see you refer to Gore Vidal as "the world's pre-eminent political essayist" and then read his vitriolic outpouring of gratuitous insult.

He first describes our government as "spontaneously tyrannous and callous," and then faults us for not allowing the Clintons to bestow upon us a national health service. Would not such a service end up as the unfeeling bureaucracy it has become in other countries?

On the issues of drug use and terrorism, many of us would take exception to his view that these problems aren't as serious as Uncle Sam would have us believe. While there is room for discussion on how best to deal with the drug problem, there is little disagreement about the threat of terrorism. Most of us don't mind the inconvenience of luggage searches at airports and even find them reassuring.

As for campaign-finance reform, the notion that it is the only means we have of preventing our tyrannical government from grinding us all down is so simplistic as to be ludicrous.

EDWARD G. KORAN Phoenix, Arizona

IT IS A PITY that Gore Vidal, in an otherwise fine article, presents the Clintons as victims of the wave of intrusion into private life, rather than as perpetrators. It was, after all, Clinton's attorney general who oversaw the conflagration at Waco. By endorsing stronger sexualharassment laws, Mrs. Clinton, the embodiment of the social-uplift busybody, assisted the very process that has now trapped her husband. Conservatives have warned for years that such laws will cause, rather than reduce, abuse of individual liberties. Surely Clinton was aware that the Republicans would enjoy watching as Democrats were hoist by their own petards.

MARK RICHARD Worthington, Ohio

MR. VIDAL gives a very insightful perspective on the drug war as a manifestation of totalitarianism. More than 100,000 Americans are arrested every month for illegal drugs, 50,000-plus for marijuana alone. Never in American history, and seldom in world history, have there been so many arrests. And then there are the prisons: Texas and California, with hundreds of prisons and hundreds of thousands of prisoners, are world-class penal colonies. In the wake of a collapsed Soviet gulag, an American gulag has risen.

IN 19421 MET CharlesJames ["Gowned for Glory," by LauraJacobs, November] at a party in New York. I had no idea who he was and was even less familiar with haute couture. My clothes were offthe-rack from Ohrbach's, that wonderful old store on East 14th Street. When James learned I was about to be married, he offered to design my wedding dress. I thanked him but declined his offer, since my dress was being made by Macy's bridal salon. You can imagine my chagrin when I found out later who he was!

IRENE B. CONOVER Poway, California

WILLIAM E. HALL Federal Correctional Institute Seagoville, Texas

UNTIL I READ Mr. Vidal's article, I thought that this country had gone mad. As a member of the legal community, I have witnessed the "war on drugs" with the citizens of the state of Kansas. Our firm's clients have come to us with horror stories: their families are awakened in the middle of the night by D.E.A. agents and local police officers dressed in black with hoods covering their faces. Their homes are broken into; doors, windows, ceilings, and floors destroyed; their possessions— including family heirlooms—are stolen. It all amounts to legalized thievery by the state. The victims ask if this is America. We tell them it is. They ask about their rights. We are forced to tell them that their rights no longer exist, as far as the Supreme Court is concerned. Your tax dollars, and mine, at work.

TERESA HOWELL Cedar Point, Kansas

I APPRECIATE Gore Vidal's wit, but I do not share his nostalgia. Vidal's pique that gone are the days when "the rest of us were usually ignored" betrays a lack of awareness of the past when that phrase, "the rest of us," was usually uttered by blacks. Whereas most Americans could boast of their enumerated freedoms under the first 10 amendments, black Americans were wondering when the document would apply to them. Indeed, we were then the "property" that Mr. Vidal now seeks to liberate from search and seizure.

GINNY TOWLER London, England

GORE VIDAL'S conclusions regarding the relationship between preventing airline terrorism and restricting civil liberties are silly. Vidal concludes that the U.S. government is overzealous in its bid to prevent airline terrorism because "only twice in 12 years have American commercial planes been destroyed by terrorists." While Vidal believes that two terrorist acts imply a small threat, I see a very different picture. Vigilant security measures have successfully limited terrorists to two acts. Don't get rid of the watchdog just because your house hasn't been robbed.

MITCHELL B. WANDER Washington, D.C.

GORE VIDAL confuses being a constitutional curmudgeon with not knowing when it is time to switch over to decaf.

We would do well to remember that the Bill of Rights, like all things constitutional, grew from a living document written by visionary men who enjoyed a deep distrust of one another. Cynicism stitches the crazy quilt of our society together, with the understanding that any form of tyranny will not long be tolerated.

BRAD S. BARNES Santa Ana, California

Wright of Passage

KEN BURNS'S PROFILE of Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Master Builder" [November], took me back to my senior year of high school in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was 1952, and a new home was being constructed in an upscale area of the city's north end for the prominent physician Isadore J. Zimmerman. As it took shape, the building presented a facade of small, high, rectangular windows facing the street. It was contemptuously referred to, even by local professional people, as "the Chicken Coop," because its architect was characterized as a crazy old man who had sponged off the family in their former dwelling for months so he could get a feel for their character. We teenagers used to drive past in our 1930s jalopies to check on the progress.

Now, in rare visits to this area, I always make it a point to drive by the Zimmerman Usonian House, by the Master Builder himself, Frank Lloyd Wright. It is now a civic property, along with the Molly Stark House, only a couple of miles away, and is owned by the prestigious Currier Gallery of Art. How times have changed.

RICHARD LYNDE Aromas, California

Smokin'!

AS A FORMER C.E.O. of a tobacco company, I was astounded to pick up November's issue of Vanity Fair magazine and see Brad Pitt, in two separate photos, smoking a cigarette ["A Commanding Lead," by Cathy Horyn, November], Then again, I was surprised to see Jerry Seinfeld on the cover of the September 20 issue of The New York Times Magazine sitting in bed smoking a cigarette. Then again, I was astounded to see a full-page picture of Leonardo DiCaprio in another magazine sitting in a cocktail lounge with a cigarette in his hand. I think my theme is clear.

Editorials scream that under-age smoking is the tobacco industry's fault. Yet, with "in your face" screen and print images such as your Brad Pitt pictures, you are the ones who are encouraging and promoting the problem. The industry's sharpest critics squarely blame Big Tobacco for under-age smoking, but it is time for them to open their eyes a bit wider.

ANDREW H. TISCH New York, New York

CATHY HORYN'S INTERVIEW with Brad Pitt is the best portrait yet of this gifted—and totally underestimated—actor. Horyn showed why Pitt is so undervalued: because he's a southern boy (not a midwesterner, as he's usually described) and his southern virtues of reticence and courtesy make him unwilling to gossip.

RICHARD FAUST New York, New York

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