Mike Turzai conducts himself with highest integrity

In his recent letter, Rabbi Michael Pollack of March on Harrisburg throws the word corruption around because someone is not doing exactly what he wants — although it is not clear from the letter what he wants (Aug. 26, “Politicians in Harrisburg Are Shutting Out Pa. Citizens”). This is inexcusable.

Just because someone may disagree with your perspective does not mean that he or she is “protecting a culture of corruption.” Rabbi Pollack does not even address facts, such as current laws or constitutional considerations, because they would get in the way of ad hominem attacks, the politics of personal destruction and smearing of good folks by using pejorative labels.

I have known state House Speaker Mike Turzai for a long time. He conducts himself with the highest integrity. Beginning with taking on the pay raise, which he voted against and led the charge for its repeal, Mike has built a record of reform in Harrisburg. Who else has truly taken on the governor and the establishment to eliminate the state stores and their entrenched special interests?

Rabbi Pollack’s organization brags about the number of times members of the organization have been arrested. This organization does not want to meet. It wants to protest, intimidate and get arrested to gain media attention. The Post-Gazette should not reward such behavior. ROBERT JOHNSON

Bethel Park

I suggest you take a look at the pope’s photo on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times. It’s far less sensational and shows more respect to the man who leads more than 1 billion Catholics and who, by the way, is not the head of a pedophile ring. Your bias is beginning to show. FRANCIS X. CAIAZZA

Downtown

I read professor Glenn Altschuler’s review of my book, “The Price of Greatness,” with eagerness (Aug. 26 Books, “Birth of an Oligarchy”). He holds an endowed chair at Cornell, where he teaches American studies. So, I was eager to learn. Unfortunately, I came away from his review with more confusion than clarity.

Mr. Altschuler’s chief objection to my book appears to be its partiality to James Madison over Alexander Hamilton. Yet it is precisely against such onesidedness that I wrote “The Price of Greatness.” My thesis is that Madison and Hamilton were both right and wrong. Nobody is perfect, and it’s silly to invest these early disputes with much partisan passion, except the passion for history that Mr. Altschuler and I share.

Another source of confusion: Mr. Altschuler cites a compromise on tariff rates hammered out in the early 1840s as evidence against my warnings about political corr u p t i o n . O f c o u r s e , M r . Altschuler knows that the tariff became a tool of corruption after the Civil War, as any historian of the 19th century

We welcome your opinion

would attest. This is why I elaborate on it from pages 185 to 190.

I want to make clear — since I must have failed to do so in the book — that the American Founding can teach us about public policy today. There are trade-offs to be made between Madison’s and Hamilton’s approaches to public policy. Neither was “right” and the other “wrong.” Taking sides in the way Mr. Altschuler suggests I do flattens out the richness of American history.

JAY P. COST Jackson, Butler County