Letters to the Editor

What You Say

It is hard to know what to make of [Slant, "Cell Out," William DiMascio, March 8, 2007], an incoherent article that argues for more commutations of prison sentences. DiMascio cites wrongful convictions brought to light by DNA evidence as a reason why we need a "safety valve," such as the commutation process. But here he is confusing two issues. Of course anyone who turns out to have been wrongfully convicted should and will be released, but that is a different move from the type of commutation that this article is ostensibly about.

In his words, commutation is a "compassionate" and "merciful" action granting another chance to lifers "emotionally starved of any hope" of being let out. Let's remember that compassion means different things to different people. Remember Richard Adan, the Greenwich Village waiter fatally stabbed by Jack Henry Abbott after the latter, a convicted killer, was released from jail on Norman Mailer's advice? Would Adan's fiance and family say it was compassionate to turn Abbott loose again on society? And take the victim of the 1971 stabbing that DiMascio discusses in his article. DiMascio doesn't care that the stabbing victim's family is quite "emotionally starved" of ever seeing their loved one again in this world.

If we make lenient decisions and weaken the rule of law, is the net result for society as a whole that it is more "humane" and "compassionate," or do we see the opposite — the vicious Hobbsian hell brought to us courtesy of the Warren Supreme Court?

Michael Washburn
Bella Vista

I just finished reading [News, "Ask a Candidate," Michael Nutter, March 8, 2007] and I applaud you for helping to bring the vital issue of promoting school libraries in Philadelphia to light in the upcoming mayoral election.

Elaine Rehm
Cybrarian, Mayfair School

Thank you for your support. School libraries support the students and serve the school's curriculum. School librarians teach research skills important to lifelong learning.

Ann C. Martha, Ed. M., M.S.L.S.
Librarian, Samuel Fels High School

I can't answer the question of "When Will It End?" for black/white relations in the U.S., but I can venture a guess about Jews and Germans [Loose Canon, Bruce Schimmel, March 8, 2007]. It will end when we let the Germans off the hook. ... [T]he generation of Jews and Germans that suffered and caused others to suffer will swiftly be no more. With that should come closure. A few points to consider:

• The generation of Germans contemporary with Gen X has fully come to grips with the Holocaust. Unlike their parents, they confronted their grandparents over what role, if any, they had played, and they should be given the courtesy of moving on.

• Massive reparations have been made, not the least of which is the State of Israel and the reparations paid to it and individual survivors by Germany for decades.

• It is largely Jewish people who keep the "issue" alive, whether it is the founding of a Holocaust museum in the capital of a nation that took no part in it (while no museum is dedicated to the genocide of the indigenous populations of North America) or putting Holocaust deniers in jail. On the latter point, we have the First Amendment to protect such things from happening here, but Europe, Australia and Canada all have laws in one form or another that criminalize being a stupid Jew-hater.

• The German people didn't elect Hitler (plurality, not majority) because they were anti-Semitic. They elected him because they hadn't had a stable government in two years and because they were terribly afraid that the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) would eventually win an election. ... Hitler was lucky enough that some stupid Dutch radical lit the Reichstag on fire to get the Enabling Act, and the rest is history.

There is, of course, a place for Holocaust remembrance, but it should not become the sine qua non of Jewish experience or German cultural identity.