Letters to the Editor
Listen to Karen
Editor:
I hope the Daily Bruin pays close attention to the message
conveyed by Karen Loeschner in her letter ("Delete his disk!," Jan.
12).
The pathetically infantile manner in which Kim ("Putting the man
back in manpower," Jan. 10) denigrated feminism with his
stereotypical images of women was less than amusing, to say the
least.
If Princeton "Rush Limbaugh" Kim wishes to keep his head up his
butt for the rest of his life, that’s his prerogative. The Daily
Bruin, however, had absolutely no right to subject the rest of us
adults to his insufferable crap.
Tamar Tokat
First-year
Women’s Studies/Political Science
Rights uber alles!
Editor:
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights José
Ayala Lasso wrote an amazing article in last Tuesday’s Viewpoint
(United Nations supports human rights education," Jan. 16).
Lasso’s, excuse me, High Commissioner Lasso’s, command of Newspeak
and support for 1984-style social engineering would have made
George Orwell proud.
Like every bureaucrat, from the United Nations all the way down
to UCLA, Lasso’s proposals are literally impossible to oppose
rationally. He wrote about foreseeing "the preparation of national
plans of action to set goals" and undertaking "initiatives needed
to achieve those goals." What? He twisted the English language to
its breaking point (where prose takes on that familiar ring of
officiality), and his article became a glorified word search
littered with pleasant and substantive sounding words like "goals,"
"dialogue" and the ubiquitous "justice." It’s not easy to read a
word search, but I think I got the gist of his garbled
propaganda.
High Commissioner Lasso is dying to instruct us about human
rights. Not mere rights, mind you, but "civil, cultural, economic,
political and social rights."
He has plans to give "impetus" to "governments … and the
media," and create partnerships between "governments, international
organizations, non-governmental organizations, professional
associations, individuals and large segments of civil society." The
United Nations will educate "women and men of all age groups and
all sectors of society, both informal learning though schools and
vocational and professional training, as well as informal learning
through … the family."
Your right to be left alone? To think for yourself? Don’t be
silly. The United Nations will make everybody everywhere understand
and appreciate rights "as defined by the United Nations." Rights
über alles!
A radical might call such garbage totalitarianism, but there’s a
better word. Like it or not, "partnerships" between government and
professional associations (that is, government telling business
what to do) and government efforts to shape culture are the essence
of fascism. What Lasso obviously fails to understand is that the
fascist (like any other social planner, liberal or conservative)
faces the dilemma described by economist Friedrich Hayek in which
the "rights which (he) hopes to preserve would inevitably obstruct
the planning which he desires."
If you’re like me and wondered what someone who works for
government or calls himself "high commissioner" can possibly know
about rights, Lasso’s article made the truth clear: not much.
Cosmo Wenman
Fourth-year
Economics
Look out drivers
UCLA motorists:
It’s 5 p.m. and you had a long hard day at work. You are late
for an appointment or you just want to get home quickly. Yet as
night begins to fall the roads become a dangerous place.
We worked hard all day long, and just want to get a little
exercise in before heading home. As we run around the perimeter of
campus a pattern arises. We have to constantly dodge your cars as
you fail to observe traffic laws. You never fail to pass through
the stop sign or red light on your way to making that right turn
onto Hilgard. If you bothered to look right, you would realize that
there is a human there.
We do not cross red lights or run recklessly into oncoming
traffic. You should do your part and look before you plow onto the
roads, or else one day you will find an innocent runner stuck in
your axle. Now wouldn’t that ruin your day?
David Avery
Staff
Institute for Social Science Research
Phillip Kwan
Staff
Capital ProgramsComments to webmaster@db.asucla.ucla.edu