HILLARYCARE 2.0
REGARDING FRED BARNES's editorial ("S-Veto It," October 8) exposing the fallacy that mandatory health insurance is analogous to mandatory auto insurance, I would like to point out that by law (at least in Colorado) you are required to carry only liability auto insurance. Collision, comprehensive, and medical are up to you. Hence, mandatory auto insurance is only to cover the "other guy" when I do something stupid. Whether or not I care to cover my 1989 Chevy Caprice station wagon for collision and comprehensive is up to me. HillaryCare 2.0 would mandate that I cover myself. Big Brother (or in this case Big Sister) is once again trying to protect me from myself.
SCOTT EUGENE FARLEIGH
Thornton, Colo.
ON THE ROAD, AGAIN
I ENJOYED TED GIOIA's thorough and thoughtful essay on Jack Kerouac ("Fifty Years On," September 24).
Gioia rightly states, " On the Road is a book of broken dreams and failed plans." Of course, that is par for much of life. And Gioia points out the trouble from the start, and might have mentioned that for quite some time Sal Cassidy takes the wrong road, the lightly traveled U.S. 6 instead of U.S. 30. That's the sadness of Kerouac's life for me: the wrong road from the start.
For my money, Kerouac's prose in the story "October in the Railroad Earth" is unrivaled anywhere as quintessential beat, superlative stream-of-consciousness, and melodic, hard driving American prose poetry at its best. If redemption were based on works, some of those lines would be enough. May grace abound for Kerouac, Cassidy, and the rest of us.
BOB BOOMSMA
Madison, Wisc.
GET A (REAL) LIFE!
I FOLLOWED JONATHAN V. LAST's article exploring the virtual world of Second Life ("Get a (Second) Life!" October 1) right up until he wrote: "You can see why reporters and corporate honchos and foundation presidents get excited." I'm afraid I still don't get the point of it. I can understand reading news on the web. I can understand porn on the web. I can understand Amazon.com. I can understand eBay. I cannot understand people pretending to live on the web. These people need to get a real life. I'm 62 years old and not retired. In the last nine months, I swam three miles non-stop, got a new dog, and took up playing the sax. I have neither the need nor the time for a "Second Life."
EDWARD L. SCHREMS
Norman, Okla.
DEFINING JAMES DOWN
DAVID KLINGHOFFER's effort to buttress faith with a few selected snippets from William James ("James's Faith," October 8) neglects the overwhelming import of James's The Varieties of Religious Experience.
James wrote: "The pivot round which the religious life revolves, as we have traced it, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
Pragmatism is James's way of accommodating human vanity by proclaiming that objective truth is unnecessary to the ego and that fantasies are more easily obtained, contending essentially that all we really need is to feel good about our importance in the scheme of things.
I dispute the notion that humanity can be summed up quite so easily as is implied by Klinghoffer's review.
MAX COHEN
Dublin, N.H.