Fallacy

Washington. -- These are salad days for those conservatives whose philosophy is confirmed by, and whose agenda is advanced by, bad behavior of government.Recently, for example, the House of Representatives, home of the most entrenched portion of the political class, voted to continue spending taxpayers' dollars to subsidize, for large corporations and wealthy trade associations, the overseas marketing of fruit juice and candy bars, whiskey and prunes and many other profitable commodities.

Washington. -- In his recent encyclical ''Evangelium Vitae'' (''The Gospel of Life''), Pope John Paul II expressed a profound compassion for women caught in the dilemma of unwanted pregnancy.Irresponsible and predatory men, economic and social pressures, fear and confusion can lead to situations in which, the pope writes, the weight of responsibility for depriving the unborn child of the right to life falls less heavily on a woman in grave psychological distress than on ''those who have directly or indirectly obliged her to have an abortion.

Taxation FairnessEditor: Your front-page story on the ''fairness'' of Maryland taxation (April 23) is full of misleading implications.It has never been established that ''fairness'' requires a higher tax rate on higher incomes, but let's set that aside and look specifically at the article's rhetoric. Consider one example of the confusing mixture of rates, ratios of rates, and actual amounts. The NAACP's George Buntin concludes that ''Maryland's wealthiest 1 percent . . . pays one-tenth of 1 percent more in state and local taxes than families . . . earning $15,800.

AS A RESULT of legislation passed by the General Assembly and signed into law two years ago, local school boards across Maryland will begin the year reviewing proposals from citizens groups to establish charter schools. These advocates will be seeking approval for their contracts - charters - to govern their operations. Ironically, school boards will be asked to transfer their own public dollars to support these independent schools. While all school systems will be affected, the most financially strapped system, Baltimore City, stands to lose the most.

Considering that Westminster Mayor W. Benjamin Brown has announced he is running for Carroll County commissioner, he comes off as courageous for condemning what he says are the county's low rates of property taxes and impact fees. Especially in an election year, most politicians consider it political suicide to even suggest the need for higher taxes and fees.But Mayor Brown's stance is not as brave it might appear. To raise the additional revenue, he advocates increasing impact fees -- charges tacked on to new construction, ostensibly to pay for schools and roads -- because most county residents think they won't have to pay them.

OPPONENTS OF the death penalty once argued that execution was unconstitutional because blacks were more likely to be hanged than whites for the same crimes.That turned out not to be true. The data showed the reverse in fact. Whites were somewhat more likely to be put to death than blacks for the same crimes.The anti-death penalty crowd then changed tactics. Well, they said, it isn't the race of the criminal that betrays the system's institutional racism, it is the race of the victim. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, among others, advanced the claim that when the victim of a murder was white and the perpetrator black, the death penalty was more likely to be meted out than if the victim and killer were both black.

"Centuries-old ethnic hatreds" is the capsule summary mos Western reporters use to explain what's driving the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It is largely untrue.An examination of the history of the area shows not only a long tradition of coexistence and cooperation among the various South Slav groups, but that none has been able to advance without forming coalitions with the others.While their differences may now appear irreconcilable, the Serbs and Croats have fought each other exactly once in history, during World War II.But it was the Partisans, a multiethnic force promising equality for all national groups, who overwhelmed both of these chauvinist armies and set up a unified Yugoslavia.

Head Start is a waste of time and money, and a great man people associated with the program have known that for a long time.In 1985, the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed 20 years of Head Start research and concluded that by the end of the second year after children left the program, there were no educationally meaningful differences between Head Start children and non-Head Start children.No doubt I'll get lots of tearful and passionate letters from grateful parents whose children were in Head Start and did well.

WASHINGTON -- An old joke: A preacher, called to a new church, arrives the day of a funeral at which he must preside. Having never known the deceased, he asks the congregation for voluntary eulogies. A voice from a rear pew shouts, "His brother was even worse."What can be said on behalf of high school textbooks concerning marriage is that college texts are even worse. So say two reports from the Council on Families of the Institute for American Values.In "The Course of True Love: Marriage in High School Textbooks," Paul C. Vitz of New York University praises six high school texts for treating marriage respectfully, discouraging teen-age marriage and encouraging teen-age sexual abstinence.