Letters

From the February 1996 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

Messrs. Maddox and Duarte raise the legitimate issue of the welfare state. It is, I believe, absolutely critical to separate the issue of welfare from that of immigration. Income transfers would exist if every immigrant vanished tomorrow, and far more immigrants are paying taxes to support such payments than are taking out of the system. The one serious exception is the abusive way in which some adult children have brought their parents to America with the expectation that Supplemental Security Income will support them. Congress is addressing this problem by changing the SSI law (and restricting other welfare payments to legal immigrants, even those who have paid taxes).

Anti-immigrant lobbyists still talk about welfare, but such talk is utterly cynical: They are not the least assuaged by reforms on the welfare side, since their goal is to keep out even self-supporting immigrants. That's why Alan Simpson's Senate bill, for instance, is designed to slash the number of highly skilled, tax-paying professionals entering the country legally. And it is why Ira Mehlman of FAIR argues that we have to keep out parents of adult children even if they are no longer eligible for government benefits.

This isn't an argument about illegal immigration, about welfare, or about skills. Those are merely handy tools for people who believe that the well-being of Americans is best protected by keeping the population small, static, and racially pure--even at significant costs to our prosperity and liberty. I prefer to live in a free and dynamic society, one that, as Mr. Lee suggests, constantly renews itself and reaffirms its identity by welcoming people who are here by choice.

V Is for Various

In the November issue, Nick Gillespie identified obvious problems with implementing so-called V-Chip technology ("Chip Off the Block"). Certainly a chip programmed by the networks, or worse yet, the government, is abhorrent to anyone who values freedom. And yet the combination of deregulated airwaves and First Amendment protection has resulted in a profusion of programming, much of it dreck and garbage. Libertarians must admit that the V-Chip initiative is responding to a real problem with the deplorable content of much TV, and that even the most conscientious parents are not able to monitor every minute of their child's viewing. Knee-jerk opposition to the V-Chip will only further confuse libertarians in many minds with libertines.

Gillespie asks the important question, "Who will program the chip?" But who says there has to be only one kind of chip, or that it must be installed in the factory?

Why not a technology that allows the consumer to insert the chip (or later, simply push a button), and why not a market for V-Chips, with offerings from any group with a point of view? Then we can have chips from the Christian Coalition, Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptists, Orthodox Jews, Unitarian Universalists, or Hindus--not to mention People for the American Way, the National Rifle Association, or Reader's Digest (a premium for subscribing).

The second generation of chips could identify programs that are especially worthwhile or enable a person to fashion an individualized program with the proper instructions. I would appreciate the opportunity to eliminate all the daytime talk shows from my set in advance. Not to mention any show with Geraldo Rivera. A third-generation chip should be able to distinguish on the fly between Roots and Rambo, based on criteria that even a computer can recognize, without straining its memory or its intelligence.

Mike Roeder
Ft. Myers, FL

Nick Gillespie replies:I disagree with Mike Roeder regarding the "deplorable content of much TV," but yes, yes, yes to his suggestion of many and varied types of voluntarily enacted programming aids. Indeed, as I indicated in my editorial, dozens of those tools are already on the market in some form. Unfortunately, the proposed V-Chip legislation bears no resemblance to such filters.

Connie Chung Syndrome

Thank you for Michael Fumento's "< a href="../9510/FUMENTOfeat.html">A Con-federacy of Boobs" (October) concerning breast augmentation. I was performing between 120 and 150 breast augmentations each year until Connie Chung's
program about their alleged hazards. I dropped to zero breast augmentations the following year. The number of breast augmentations is coming back slowly, but now we're using the saline implant, which has some inherent problems that were not found in the silicone-gel implants.

In my career, I've performed in excess of 2,000 breast augmentation operations. No other operation resulted in the same percentage of patient satisfaction. The horror stories which became so abundant following Connie Chung's program have not occurred in my practice, nor in the practice of those with whom I'm familiar. We began referring to the panic-stricken patients who called following Connie's program as suffering from Connie Chung Syndrome.

James Michael Bestler, M.D.
Martinsville, VA

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