An Ideology That Focuses on No. 1

In his column (Times, April 21) Jody Powell states that a benefit of the right’s rise to power is “the evidence that the left has no monopoly on mush brain,” as the hard-headed right has long contended. The silliness of the left, Powell suggests, is perhaps grounded in an “excess of zeal for the golden rule,” but this seems to him less dangerous than the mush-head point of view of an Administration appointee on the right who argues that we are violating the “order of the universe” by trying to help the handicapped.

What this suggests to me is that the compassion for the less fortunate, which characterized our society and our political philosophy from the Roosevelt through the Carter years, has been replaced by an ideology that focuses on looking out for No. 1.

This, together with a voracious militarism that divides the world into friends and enemies and labels any reconciling attitude as communistic or at best soft-headed, threatens to take us into an Orwellian future terrible to contemplate even if we avoid the ultimate holocaust.

BEATRICE MILLER

Los Angeles