Reaganomics

To the Editors:

Here's hoping we will all take the medicine the Administration prescribes and support Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserve Board in their determination to stop inflation [Sept. 21]. There are no free rides for the sin of overspending.

Frank Wall

Redlands, Calif.

Mr. Reagan can cut the budget, he can cut taxes, he can even cut flowers, but if he doesn't cut the interest rate nothing positive is going to happen.

Robert P. Morrison

Tucson

Reduced inflation, reduced interest rates and a balanced budget are fundamental. But how do you attain them? By reducing "entitlement accounts." I receive Social Security, but I believe senior citizens should accept the pain along with the younger generation.

Burton Hughes

Jadwin, Mo.

I am undecided who committed the greater folly, Reagan or me. Reagan, for reducing taxes before balancing the budget, or me, for voting for him.

Gordon S. Alfredson

Meriden, Conn.

Many years ago, when there was no Social Security, welfare, Medicaid or unemployment insurance, the needy would come to my grandmother's door and she would help them out with money. Today Reagan is turning back to that world, except that this time, the needy may take what they need at gunpoint.

Otis Kidwell Burger

Colebrook, Conn.

Faulting Wall Street for the state of the economy is like blaming the thermometer for the weather.

Leon Bromberg, M.D.

Galveston, Texas

Feline Phobia

Your article on books promoting the cult of ailurophobia, the hatred or fear of cats [Sept. 21], reminds me of the Chinese proverb: "He whodislikes the cat was in his former life a rat."

Jane P. Wilkinson

Alexandria, Va.

Don't classify all of us animal lovers with the cat worshipers who apparently have neither a sense of humor nor a sense of proportion. Anybody who can't laugh at the pale black humor of 101 Uses for a Dead Cat is sick.

Elisabeth Arvin

Alvaton, Ky.

There's a big difference between Polish jokes and cat jokes because for cats, "harmless" ridicule often leads to physical abuse. No cat remains unaffected when it's been set afire, had an eye shot out, or been locked in a closet for three weeks.

Paula Sedor

Public Affairs, Felines Inc.

Evanston, Ill.

Considering that only one out of every eleven cats is lucky enough to have a home and the other ten are homeless creatures with a life expectancy of a year, your statement calling felines "pampered pets" seems inaccurate.

Deb Sitkin, Secretary

C.L.A. W.S.

Ridgefield, Conn.

Cat haters are of four types: the insecure, the egocentric, the stumbler, the peasant. By their manner of recoil shall ye know them.

Jean R. Hoppin

Columbus

Benito Mussolini, Napoleon, Louis XIV and Alexander the Great were all cat haters. Abraham Lincoln, Albert Schweitzer, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain were all cat lovers. I much prefer the company of the latter group.

Nadine S. Colbert

Rockville, Md.

Resisting Rape

Does Frederic Storaska really expect a rapist to allow a woman to run into a building and tell a friend not to wait for her [Sept. 21]? Researchers have concluded that a rapist's motives are to prove dominance over women. Polite and docile treatment of an attacker is playing right into his hands.

Michelle Caprara

Detroit

John Leo states that feminists are "willing to gamble with the safety of the woman in the street" simply because many feminists advocate immediate physical resistance to rape. This is a gross oversimplification of the difficult question of whether one risks death by trying to fight off an attack. Feminists are not gambling with any woman's safety. We are trying to teach women to fight back with their most effective weapons, their strength and their wits.

Alessandra Ross

Paris

I have always understood that a rapist enjoyed a good fight. If he wanted a passive woman, any local singles bar would do. I am in total agreement with Mr. Storaska. The mind and time are much more powerful weapons.

Robin L. Desjarlais

Golden, Colo.

Oriental Diplomacy

Your article "Let a Hundred Flowers Wilt" [Sept. 21] was a welcome report on the terrible conditions of writers and dissidents in Red China. It stands in ironic contrast to the news several weeks ago of Secretary of State Haig's offer to sell U.S. weapons to that country, as well as to ex-President Carter's ingratiating table talk with China's Deputy Party Chairman Deng Xiaoping. Why is it that U.S. leaders are so willing to forgive the crimes of those smooth-talking Chinese Communists while at the same time they are talking tough to the Soviet Union? American naivete concerning Chinese totalitarianism knows no bounds.

Michael S. Duke

Assistant Professor of Chinese

University of Wisconsin

Madison, Wis.

Ma's Temper

Mr. Schickel's review of Mommie Dearest [Sept. 21] stands as tragic testimony to one of the most serious obstacles to recognizing the extent of child abuse in our country, namely, that it's really no big deal for parents to haul off at their children now and then.

John E. Imhof

Port Washington, N. Y.

Losing one's temper at times, even unjustly, doesn't make a parent a monster. I'm not necessarily an admirer of Joan Crawford, but my sympathy lies with her for not being able to strike back at her accuser from the grave.

Maria Mertl

Darien, Conn.

Breeding Seals

TIME'S story on the endangered condor [Sept. 21] attributed to me the comment that "captive breeding has already saved the elephant seal." Several animals have been saved by captive breeding, but not the elephant seal. In response to TIME'S question about the ability of animals to recover from a small population base, I noted the history of the northern elephant seal, which has grown from a population of about 20 to one of about 40,000, but not in captivity. Siberian tigers, Mongolian wild horses, Pere David's deer and European bison are examples of animals that were originally found in small numbers and are now populous in zoos.

William Conway, General Director

New York Zoological Society

New York City

Dough for Doe

I am discouraged to learn that while we are slashing budgets in the U.S., we are giving Liberia's ruthless Samuel Doe $68.3 million [Sept. 21]. We help pay the country's oil bill, send it rice and build barracks for its army when our men in Germany have to live in quarters built 200 years ago. If we kept our money at home, perhaps then we could balance our budget.

Theodora H. Smith

Philipsburg, Mont.

Rough Love

Sociologists should not be surprised that college lovers frequently knock each other around [Sept. 21]. A generation that feels free to cohabit at first tumescence, must feel equally free to react physically when angered.

Murray Howden

Allentown, Pa.

The most important time for developing gentleness, humanness, love and idealism is during adolescence when one enters into romantic love. This fundamental maturational phase has been cut short by the sexual promiscuity indulged in by millions of still very dependent adolescents.

Stanley B. Stefan

Retired Clinical Psychologist

Monterey, Calif.

Misplaced Praise

Your story on Jailhouse Lawyer Richard Owen [Sept. 21] makes the criminal a hero. We give praise to Mr. Owen for his fine accomplishments, which came about because he shot a policeman who was performing his duty.

Lawrence R. Marino, Detective

Inglewood Police Department

Inglewood, Calif.

Wear and Tear

I disagree with the Essay on burnout [Sept. 211. It is not narcissism. Burnout is the psychological price one pays for too little self-love, manifested by overextension and the failure to recognize one's needs. Ultimately, it is self-hatred.

Patricia C. Pilette

Framingham, Mass.

Few victims of burnout deal with the possibility that being unqualified for the work involved and the psychic energy needed to hide the fact may be the strongest contributing factors in the development of the syndrome.

Norma Steelbrook-Tentindo

Bridgewater, Mass.

Baby Boom Bust

Having been born in 1947,1 am part of America's great postwar baby boom described in "Going After the Mightiest Market" [Sept. 14]. The sad aftermath is that in 30 or 40 years many of these 76 million "baby boomers" will be residents in overcrowded nursing homes. The Social Security fund, to which we have contributed, will be depleted. What now appears as the rosy future for the consumer can change to thorns a few years down the road.

Dorothy Miller

New Washington, Ohio

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