Survival

Sir / Your cover headline "Can Nixon Survive Dean?" [July 9] was a mistake.

It should have read: "Will the U.S. Survive the Witch Hunt?"

JEAN CARTER

Columbia, Md. Sir / "Can Nixon Survive Nixon?"

JOHN W. OLIVER JR.

Canton, Ohio

Sir / "Can the Presidency Survive Nixon?"

ROBERT KOHL

Florissant, Mo.

Sir / "Can Anyone Survive Nixon?"

JENNY CHALIMAN

Lansing, Mich.

Sir / Why doesn't someone defend Nixon for trying, if he did, to "cover up" Watergate? What duty does he have to advertise a scandal to the wide, wide world?

It is impossible for me to believe that an American President could be a criminal; therefore I only regret that he could not "cover up" better, investigate quietly, and punish properly.

RAY H. HYNDS

Corpus Christi, Texas

Sir / Mr. Dean is the only person I have heard who can surpass my teen-agers with excuses about why it wasn't their fault and why they shouldn't be blamed and how they really didn't mean to be there, and after all I had said "Good evening" to them when they came home, so I must have known what was going on and agreed to it.

M.S. WHITEHEAD

Beltsville, Md.

Sir / My President is not a criminal, but your Dean has admitted wrongdoing. My President is not unethical. Would you and your colleagues destroy our country in order to ruin one man?

E.A.C. BENNETT

Savannah, Ga.

Sir / Right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, Dean's testimony is one of the best things to happen to our nation in a long, long time. If nothing else, a more enlightened American public realizes that it must do something about political campaigns and their expenditures. And perhaps just as important, that a candidate should be able to prove his right to an office on his own merits, rather than on the amount of dirt and slander he can hurl at his opponent.

(THE REV.) LEWIS P. BOHLER JR.

Los Angeles

Sir / The real tragedy of the Watergate business is that our President and so many of his followers cannot tolerate the spirit of democracy. They have substituted personal loyalty to Nixon for loyalty to the ideals of democracy.

Why do so many of us tolerate and even support an Administration that has violated the best spirit of our country?

KAREN WEST

Philadelphia

Sir / You illustrate the lack of resourcefulness of the White House staff where you say Haldeman advised, "Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's going to be very hard to get it back in."

Faced with this problem I've always unrolled the tube, cut the metal strip off at the bottom, squeezed the tube open, and re placed the toothpaste, and then rolled the tube back to its previous position. It's simple.

WALTER B. WRIGHT

Shaker Heights, Ohio

Sir / We don't need a summit meeting between Nixon and Brezhnev or Nixon and Mao Tse-tung nearly as badly as we need a summit meeting between Nixon and the citizens of the U.S.

LEONA D. PURVIS

Caledonia, Mich.

Sir / At last a touch of humanity in the whole Watergate mess of spying and treachery. Julie Eisenhower's defense of her father and her willingness to face a critical and often hostile public are the nearest thing to gallantry I've heard of in a long time.

(MRS.) GOOLBAI GUNASEKARA

Colombo, Sri Lanka

The Good Team

Sir / My spirits were given something of a lift when I read that virginity is now regarded by "many contemporary young people" as being "on the same team with crew cuts and Sensible Orthopedic Shoes and Billy Graham and the Republican Party" [July 9]. This doesn't sound like such a bad team to me.

PATRICK M. DEMPSEY

Northridge, Calif.

Sir / I have never in all of my 19 years heard of anything more ludicrous than an "embarrassed virgin." To my mind, your article refers to only a minority. Still, it's a sorry state of affairs when some women are so ignorant as to be "embarrassed" by high morals.

CARLA REZNAK

South Orange, N.J.

Sir / Bravo! At last someone has stated clearly this emerging social phenomenon. It makes me wonder if there are not also "embarrassed husbands" who have not cheated on their wives yet or "embarrassed couples" who want to marry rather than live together in eternal uncommittedness.

ROBIN SLATER

Arcadia, Calif.

Paying for Parochial Schools

Sir / The Supreme Court, functioning as a superlegislature, has, by banning federal aid to parochial schools [July 9], granted a legal basis to prejudices existing against Catholics for centuries. There now exists outright bigotry.

Other parents do not wish to pay for parochial schools their children do not attend. Is it justice that we pay for public schools our children do not attend?

Does the First Amendment preserve religious educational freedom or seek to destroy it?

JOHN M. GRONDEI SKI

Perth Amboy, N.J.

Sir / There is no such thing as a neutral education. Every form of education instills in students ideals and values as well as pure knowledge. A secular education that ignores religion is a denial of religion; at best, it is a denial of the importance of the role of religion in one's life.

Consequently, a government that supports only one form of education, and denies educational opportunities to those who would choose another form, is dangerously close 10 forcing a totalitarian conformity upon all its citizens.

SA K A KAPLAN

New York City

Ethics and the Law

Sir / Your Essay, "An Awful Lot of Lawyers Involved" [July 9], raises more questions than it answers. If "the law is supposed to be the repository of society's ethics and morals," what of the lawyers whose reputations are based on their ability to show their clients how to evade the law? What of the lawyers who aid and abet their clients in flouting the ethics and morals of society? If the Watergate scandal is to result in an ethical purge of our country, we must apply the lessons at the grass-roots level.

LETTY R. BRAUN

Wyomissing, Pa.

Sir / Jose M. Ferrer III has an idealized view of lawyers.

Anyone who wants to get around the law knows that the first person to consult is a lawyer. And where do lawyers go when they are promoted? They become judges.

(MRS.) MARY L. STEWART

Norwalk, Ohio

Sir / More newsworthy than the Essay on the shortcomings of lawyers would be instructing your readers that the earth is round. An honest attorney is as rare as a virtuous prostitute.

M.H. GORDON

Norfolk

The Serious Mr. Schickel

Sir / Did I read right? Is Richard Schickel really reading social commentary into a James Bond film [July 9]? James Bond the

Great White Hope? Live and Let Die is just fantasy!

Mr. Schickel is taking somebody far too seriously.

K.M. DRENNAN

Portland, Ore.

Sir / Agent 007 a racist pig? Oh, come on!

WENDY HOGAN

New York City

Parents' Rights

Sir / Should the so-called social implications noted in your story "Adults at 18" [July 9] have the effects described, a great burden would be taken off parents, that of saving and doing without so that money can be saved for their children's education. If a parent is paying the bills or any portion thereof, he certainly has the right to be mailed grades and disciplinary reports.

And the parent certainly has the right to say whether his child is going to live in a dormitory or not.

FAITH L. SHERFEY

Saginaw, Mich.

The Pornographers' Nightmare

Sir / Bravo, bravo, bravo for Chief Justice Burger [July 2]! It was a pleasant surprise to read that someone at last has the foresight and courage to take a stiffer stand against pornography.

Anyone who claims that pornography is not harmful has closed his mind to the existence of illegitimate births, rape, adultery, broken marriages and venereal disease.

I hope that the nightmare facing publishers of pornography and makers of obscene films will not only set them back to the Dark Ages but into oblivion, where they can stay until they resolve to use their "creativity" to produce something that will build rather than demoralize and destroy America.

LADEAN H. RUPP

Tremonton, Utah

Sir / I trust the prudes and self-righteous censors are pleased with the Supreme Court's recent obscenity decision. Now the police can double and redouble their efforts to keep pornography away from people who would never have read or seen it anyway. Of course, this means the police will have even less time to worry about such nonserious offenses as murder, robbery and rape.

I hope those who support the court's recent decisions are the victims, not me.

PAUL L. WARNER

San Francisco

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