SHAME ON THEM

Jackson Lear’s review of Stuart Schneiderman’s book “Saving Face: The Politics of Shame and Guilt” (Book Review, Feb. 25) would pass for an effective critique of this social primer if it weren’t for its thinly disguised defense of the antiwar counterculture.

I am hard-pressed to believe that the “let it all hang out” philosophy of the 1960s is not the promulgator of the “anything goes” 1990s, considering the product being cranked out by the baby boom decision-makers of today’s media conglomerates with regard to misogynistic rap lyrics and violent film fare. It should come as no surprise that shame would not be part of the equation.

It is difficult to see why Lears would treat Schneiderman’s missive on shame with such contempt and derision when it merely deals with such apparently despicable traits as responsibility and conscientiousness. With the glamorization of sociopathic behavior being given the stamp of approval by critics and rewarded with riches, is it any wonder we live in a society where 5-year-olds are dropped from high rises and innocent children are drowned when they become inconvenient?

MARIS BELLAMY, NORTHRIDGE

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This is in response to Lears’ review of Schneiderman’s “Saving Face”:

Schneiderman believes that America is in a decline because our society is controlled by the individual and guilt rather than by the group and shame.

What’s so bad about guilt anyway? Guilt is an individual accepting responsibility for his or her actions, which is very commendable. Shame is just another word for group pressure and conformity, which stifles creativity and independent thinking.

Schneiderman defines a nation’s success in solely economic terms. But there are a lot of other criteria that lead to a society’s success: its cultural heritage, educational development, military power, the freedom it allows its citizens or control it has over them, racial harmony, technology, morality, the degree to which it protects the environment and conserves scarce national resources.

Unfortunately, in this century the most effective group-oriented societies have been the fascist right earlier in the century (Germany, Japan) and the communists of the recent USSR and China--nations that have either come close to conquering the world or have dictatorially controlled its own people but have lost their national soul.

KENNETH ZIMMERMAN, HUNTINGTON BEACH

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Regarding Jackson Lears’ review of my book, “Saving Face: America and the Politics of Shame” (Feb. 25), I would like to offer a few remarks.

I did not, as Lears declares, label “the hippie turned yuppie” “the villain” of the cultural transformation that occurred after Vietnam. As he himself noted, I did point specifically to “our own leaders’ refusal to take responsibility for a mistaken policy.” After calling this point “plausible enough,” Lears brushes it aside to focus on the counterculture. He neglects to mention my stating that corporate executives and lawyers bear a major part of responsibility.

Lears imagines that I describe the counterculture as “little more than a crowd of mindless ranters in flight from their own shame, perpetually stoned and copulating like rabbits.” I am tempted to reply: Speak for yourself! The cartoon-like caricature is his, not mine, and renders neither the sense nor tone of my remarks.

I said of the counterculture that “a great deal of fun was had by all.” That does not mean that the fallout has been salutary. The effects of destigmatizing drug use and divorce have not been beneficial.

What most agitates Lears is the possibility that I maligned “the many fundamentally decent Americans who tried to stop the slaughter in their own imperfect ways.”

In my book I labeled our government’s Vietnam policy a failure. But this does not mean that all attempts to overturn it were justified. However decent the intentions of the protectors, their infantile antics may well have prolonged the war.

The saintly protesters did more than try to stop the war. They attacked the nation, its customs and traditions, its symbols and ceremonies. Many denounced the United States as a fascist dictatorship. Youthful enthusiasm, if you will, but actions do have consequences.

With a democratically elected government, an honorable military tradition and Democrats conducting foreign policy, a refusal to serve the country does not count as a badge of honor. It is hardly excessive to say that this creates the appearance of having ducked a fight.

In order to erase this appearance, the counterculture had to maintain that there was a moral equivalence between the “Amerikan” government and the Third Reich and that refusing to serve in the U.S. Army was analogous to refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht.

Serious thinkers at the time held that the United States was founded on an act of genocide, had repressed the will of the people, had made youth into “cannon fodder” to fatten corporate profits and had prospered by persecuting minority groups and exploiting workers. Thus, disloyalty became the supreme virtue.

The substantive issue of my book was whether Vietnam was a bad policy pursued by an honorable nation or whether it revealed the truth about the American character. I argued for the former. Does Lears wish to assert the latter?

STUART SCHNEIDERMAN, NEW YORK, N.Y.