Kondracke on Muravchik

“Newspeak,” the language of George Orwell’s nightmare novel “1984,” has apparently been bequeathed to the new Administration through the so-called “neocons” who are attempting to insinuate themselves into jobs there. Kondracke, one of ideologically agile publicists of this group, supports Joshua Muravchik, one of his own, for the post (of all things) of assistant secretary of state for human rights!

His qualifications? “Muravchik and others neocons supported the Republican alternative to human rights (italics mine)--democracy building . . .” because undermining the U.S. regime with human rights pressure would allow anti-American dictators to come to power.

Seventy-five thousand Salvadorans and many more thousands of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, and others around the world, died at the hands of this “Republican alternative.”

This kind of semantic fracturization is no more than the chutzpah we have come to expect of the likes of Kondracke.

FREDERIC E. PAMP

Santa Ynez