Letters

From the April 1997 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

This slipshod example typifies Ponnuru's superficial review. He faults the book for not giving enough attention to persons (like Albert Gallatin and Thomas Jefferson) and topics (the tariff during the Civil War, the arguments of early American free traders) that he deems important. This is arrogance at its worst. A reviewer can always slam an author for not writing the reviewer's ideal book.

Finally, Ponnuru seems to think that my facts do not square with his theories. This is the criticism historians frequently hear from amateurs and polemicists ignorant of the documentary record. Ponnuru needs to visit the National Archives and gather some dust under his fingernails reading primary sources. Familiarity with the documents might jar his sophomoric illusions about protectionism and Smoot-Hawley.

Alfred Eckes
Ohio University
Athens, OH

Ramesh Ponnuru replies: Despite Prof. Eckes's scholarly letter, I still don't quite understand why voters worried about "globalization" would have elected Republican congressmen, who tended to support NAFTA. But I'll confess to slightly oversimplifying Eckes's claim if he owns up to the statistical chicanery and slippery arguments which I exposed and which he now passes over in understandable silence. If he rereads my review, Eckes will see that I didn't fault him simply because he paid insufficient attention to figures like Jefferson and Gallatin, but because his attention was so selective and tendentious as to misrepresent their views. Prof. Eckes evidently believes that his archival work, impressive in some respects, entitles him to use such tactics and even to dispense with logic. I suspect I will not be able to argue him out of that position.

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