Letters

How is it "irrelevant" that Suze Orman had a speech impediment as a child? Is it not interesting that someone so afflicted would rise to prominence as a seminar speaker? And why is it "nobody's business" that Orman never married? She talks endlessly about achieving "balance" in life; shouldn't her primarily female audience look at her own success in that area?

The only "proof" I offer of the victimization movement's corrupting effect on American values is the case of convicted Starbuck's embezzler Rosemary Heinen? Are you kidding me? Did Lehmann read the book? I would direct his attention to much of the introduction, all of Chapter 8 ("We Are All Diseased") and perhaps two-thirds of the conclusion ("A SHAM Society").

Further, many of Lehmann's provocative-sounding broadsides can't withstand even the most cursory logical scrutiny. He observes, for example, that the "outrages" I describe are "real enough, but the reader wants some sustained explanation of why they keep occurring." Has Lehmann done his own painstaking investigation of the self-help movement? Or is he just omniscient? If neither of the above, then what was his basis for rejecting the wealth of data and argument that I (and my many firsthand sources) provide? Indeed, Lehmann's review was so full of gratuitous, purposeful venom that I wondered halfway through what his own agenda was, going in.

-- STEVE SALERNO

Allentown, Pa.

Doing Right by Children

Judging from Elliott Currie's review of Martin Guggenheim's What's Wrong With Children's Rights (Book World, June 26), it is clear that Guggenheim sees the battle cry for "children's rights" as having isolated children from the interests of their parents. He wants to return America to the era of parents' rights, in which the government intervenes as little as possible in family life.

If Guggenheim had done the most rudimentary of Internet searches, he would have found several children's rights groups, including the Children's Rights Council, that are working toward precisely such goals. CRC's federally trademarked motto is "The Best Parent is Both Parents." What this means is that we are not talking about polar opposites -- either parents' rights on the one hand or government on the other, but that there is a "third way" in which children are seen as loving and needing two parents.

CRC operates mainly in divorce, where the highest number of at-risk children exist. Our research has found that government tax policy, child support policy and family policy of the past 25 years have inadvertently encouraged and supported more single-parent families, which increases the burden on government to make those single parents more self-sufficient. The "third way," which would encourage joint custody, parent education, mediation, parenting plans and access (visitation) enforcement, would dilute the power of government, strengthen families, result in more marriages and reduce problems for children and society.

-- DAVID L. LEVY