THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Behind the Cactus Curtain Dear Sirs: John Rogers' article entitled "Poverty Behind the Cactus Curtain" in the March issue of The Progressive contains many...
...If interested, write to the Orange County Peace Exchange, P.O...
...Professor Koenig, widely regarded as America's leading student of the Presidency and a man who has had White House staff experience as well, surely was an excellent choice for your review of Presidential Government by James M. Burns...
...In addition to this there has been a total of $2,342,333 funded for Community Action Programs, bringing the total of funded and pending programs in South Texas to $11,832,125, not including San Antonio itself, which Rogers agrees has received more than $2,600,000 in OEO funds...
...I have tried, but have had no answer in six months—that is, I have had no answer from the Social Security division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare...
...Carole Knutsen San Francisco, California Confused Idiots Dear Sirs: I don't imagine you'll print this letter...
...The kernel of truth here is that the motel and restaurant owner was a relative of the man who owned the only lumber yard in town, and from whom some construction materials were purchased...
...For instance, if Mr...
...Such a thing would never have been countenanced by the center administration, which was firmly opposed to racial discrimination...
...Wechsler says, an unappealing one...
...As the author asks for a name to use instead of "ombudsman," may I suggest a few that come to mind: Everyman's Man...
...To talk peace, meaning peace on your own terms, is an old Communist gimmick...
...Central Bridge, New York Freedom to Travel Dear Sirs: Your allusion in the February "Notes in the News" to the State Department's magnanimous gesture to allow medical doctors and scientists to travel in heretofore "restricted" Communist countries as a "move in the right direction" is a gross overstatement...
...but in argumentation they need to be distinguished...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Behind the Cactus Curtain Dear Sirs: John Rogers' article entitled "Poverty Behind the Cactus Curtain" in the March issue of The Progressive contains many inaccuracies...
...Rogers wrote: "Yet in most of the South Texas communities in which these submerged Americans [Mexican-Americans] live, not one penny has been spent on their behalf through the war on pov-ery...
...The scapegoat theory of history is, as Mr...
...As for Robstown being in Nueces County, this is true, but then so is Corpus Christi, a city of 170,000 population...
...Alan B. McKnight Stratford, Connecticut Wechsler's Sensitivity Dear Sirs: While I daily feel the frustrations of living in a world where it is so difficult to settle in one political camp for long, I felt completely clear-headed and reassured after reading James Wechsler's "The Larger Conflict...
...Constitution that you do acknowledge the Vietcong proposals sound good "on paper...
...OEO has determined to take the Breckinridge contract away from Southern Illinois and give it, according to report, to Graflex Division of General Precision Instruments...
...Significantly, I would like to think, this "special approval" was announced less than three weeks after my article was published in The Progressive and the approved program parallels what the article said might solve some of the problems of South Texas...
...James C. Smith Bryan, Texas Rewarding Experience Dear Sirs: I am a student from Finland studying at the University of Wisconsin...
...That is what war always does to people...
...Emphasis added...
...He has gone further than anybody in concrete proposals to control these causes, putting his faith in methods that have worked elsewhere, such as collective bargaining, compulsory arbitration, democratic institutions, and universal law, not in methods that have always failed, like military might...
...George Koski Bronx, New York Racial Queries Dear Sirs: Your March, 1966, issue contained, as usual, excellent articles and one, in particular, struck me as outstanding—G...
...The real question raised here is whether Job Corps centers should not be in cities...
...The article did' not say Robstown was seeking CAP funds, as Mr...
...R. C. Chai.lman Minneapolis, Minnesota Secrecy and Security Dear Sirs: As we plod along toward our ultimate goal of converting the United States to a vast, all-inclusive military bureaucracy we are warned, with increasing frequency, that it is disloyal to criticize the State Department, the CIA, or the Pentagon, since we do not know all the facts—and the facts must, of course, be concealed for reasons of military security...
...The fact that he did not even deal with the one and only adversary, the National Liberation Front, proves to me without any doubt that he is as insincere in this "peace" hocus-pocus as he has been repeatedly proven before...
...He condemns not only hot wars but cold wars, and he faces "the burden of daily decisions," the responsibility of "day-to-day judgments," in his struggle to end and prevent wars...
...2) As to Hitler, the long-time pacifist can say, and in effect did say in 1939, "If you had listened to me all along, you wouldn't be in this mess now...
...Rogers states that in Robstown, Texas: "So far the town has not even received initial funding...
...Where better, indeed...
...all pacifists understand that...
...nevertheless, he is unable to free himself from Winston Churchill's version of history that makes demonic scapegoats out of Hitler and Stalin and a naive scapegoat of his political opponent, Neville Chamberlain...
...For that matter, is poor administration the real reason for taking Job Corps centers from educational institutions and handing them over to industries, or are there other, "higher-level," reasons...
...Crook's remarks are hardly surprising since part of his responsibility is to develop poverty programs for South Texas...
...The pacifist's work does not end with demonstrations against dirty wars...
...A "black paper" entitled The Education of Minority Group Children in the New York City Public Schools is available at this price from the Harlem Parents Committee, P.O...
...To tolerate this nonsense is to reach, with one leap, a state in which every action of the government must be accepted without question, on the grounds that Big Brother knows best...
...certainly he says nothing that rebuts it...
...It does, however, include rural loans to 178 families totaling $314,080, Head Start programs for 7,405 children totaling $1,-099,894, work-study programs in Hidalgo, Nueces, Kleberg, and Cameron counties totaling $222,039, Neighborhood Youth Corps programs providing jobs for 7,999 out-of-school, out-of-work youth totaling $4,050,866, and Adult Basic Education programs for 12,447 people totaling $732,057...
...I am sure someone will think of just the right name—short and easy to pronounce...
...The latter is a phony issue, because both sides reject both alternatives and in fact are concerned to find a third way out...
...Wechsler would know if he joined the demonstrations...
...They are not, however, intended to imply that the job that so badly needs to be done in South Texas is complete...
...What he didn't say was that there are between 500,000 and 600,000 persons in South Texas whom the Federal government would categorize as "poor...
...but he refused to serve the mayor, the newspaper publisher, a banker, and other citizens because they were members of the Human Relations Committee...
...We are, however, making meaningful and even dramatic progress...
...Many thanks to The Progressive for making it possible to read his works...
...So in this, as in many other ways, we have come to resemble the worst in our "enemy...
...He says $11,832,125 has been funded for South Texas to reach 28,029 persons...
...It certainly is a bundle of fun...
...To the "what about Hitler and Stalin" argument, such a pacifist can offer two replies: 1) The "nuclear" pacifist can say that Wechsler would have been right up until 1945...
...Dear Sirs: Readers who want additional information on the ombudsman, described by Representative Henry Reuss in the February issue, can receive a seven-page bibliography on ombudsman by sending a self-addressed envelope and fifteen cents to: Friends Committee on Legislation (FCL) 2160 Lake Street, San Francisco, California 94121 Charles L. S. Smith Berkeley, California Peace and the President Dear Sirs: The editorial in the February issue, entitled "The Central Issue," raises the question of President Johnson's sincerity in his so-called peace offensive of January to end the war in Vietnam...
...What I want you to do is ask the United States Selective Service and the Social Security Board how they justify racial queries on their blanks...
...but we may be less happy about our own ignorance...
...The regional OEO director also refers to the "special approval" by Sargent Shriver of a $2,050,000 for Laredo...
...My article did not say that no poverty projects had been started in South Texas...
...There are 124 cities and towns in South Texas...
...Again, it is simply not true that "one man who had a fat construction contract at Breckinridge ran a motel and bar in Morganfield that barred Negroes...
...The unrecognized lesson of the Third Reich is that Hitler followed the example of the European powers that went before him, and he carried their policies to their logical conclusion...
...We only wish that the opinions expressed in The Progressive were representative of a larger number of Americans...
...At this writing, the proposals have, at last, reached Mr...
...Again, the facts are these: Robstown is in Nueces County (community action grants are made on a county-wide basis) which received its first OEO grant in December, 1964, for $168,050...
...In the last paragraph Mr...
...You say, "The Department . . . was taking this step at the urging of the medical community to promote greater international cooperation in combating diseases that are 'no respecters of frontiers.'" Implicit in this statement is the appalling reality that a free exchange of ideas is a respecter of frontiers...
...WlLHELM M. MOSER, M.D...
...that formerly there were things worse than war—for instance, Hitler...
...Of course, anyone who would print James A. Wechsler's cosmic deductions exposes his standards...
...If Cardinal Spellman has his way, the church and state combined will soon make it impossible for anyone to practice Christianity, and Churchianity, with all the evils it has brought upon the world by its condonation of violence during the past 1700 years, will become total...
...citizens, instead of permitting a scattering of super-citizens such as journalists, scientists, and physicians access to free travel abroad...
...Since my wife and I arrived at the end of last August we have regularly read The Progressive and find it a most rewarding experience...
...The statement in the article "Yet in most of the South Texas communities . . . not one penny is being spent . . ." is not disputed factually by Mr...
...We read in a recent report from Rome that "Cardinal Spellman of New York vigorously defended compulsory military service...
...One of the basic facts of life is that a personality never changes...
...The recent Vatican Ecumenical Council provides a perfect example of this metamorphosis...
...Box 164, Lincolnton Station, New York, New York 10037...
...John Rogers San Antonio, Texas Wechsler on Pacifism Dear Sirs: James Wechsler rejects the pacifist solution because, he says, pacifists are really a "holy order" and because they have no answer to Hitler and Stalin...
...Until I read his article in your February, 1966, issue, I was laboring under the false impression that hardly anyone was interested in the concept...
...One suspects his sources may have been the Madison Avenue men who shape images at national OEO and Job Corps headquarters...
...Richard J. Runge Anaheim, California Trash Dear Sirs: Please do not send any more of your liberal trash...
...He is right, of course...
...the disagreements arise over the theory of containment, and over the question of whether we can risk thinking the unthinkable, and over the emotion-laden question of whether it is better to be red than dead...
...Wechsler seemingly does not...
...Secrecy has seldom been a decisive military weapon, but it has certainly served splendidly in concealing incompetence, favoritism, prejudice, and simple dishonesty...
...Knights of Justice...
...Ulf B. Lindstrom Madison, Wisconsin...
...Naive, confused idiots would be more like it...
...Crook's own figures show that half of community action funds are being spent in one of the thirty counties...
...This thought is pretty well accepted in Establishment circles...
...To the best of my knowledge this was coined by Tolstoy to describe that amalgam of Judaism and Mithraism that has been fraudulently imposed on mankind as "Christianity" since the reign of Constantine...
...Doesn't it ever occur to you that the Communists have had years to prove their integrity beyond the "paper" of the many treaties, agreements, and ground-rules they have broken...
...The great predominance of Corpsmen at Breckinridge were rural youth from the South and Southwest...
...Morgan is in error on several points...
...This figure does not include $854,252 of pending Community Action Program applications which will soon be funded by this office nor does it include a special approval by Sargent Shriver for $2,050,000 for Laredo, Texas, "the poorest city in the nation...
...We can be glad that they know (of what use are deterrent armaments if no one knows that they exist...
...Charles S. Preston York, Pennsylvania Black Paper Dear Sirs: Readers who admired G. W. Foster, Jr.'s grasp of school integration issues in The Progressive for March should invest $1 to supplement his article...
...In every age, and in every country, the military seems to have insisted that secrecy was necessary to survival...
...The two are frequently allied, of course, and many people are both at once...
...He was objecting to provisions for conscientious objection in a 30,000 word tract on the Church in the Modern World...
...R. W. Tucker Wayne, Pennsylvania Dear Sirs: After reading James Wechsler's "The Larger Conflict" in your March issue, I feel compelled as a pacifist to defend my position from his criticism...
...Was it necessary to justify this change by such inventions...
...Apparently most of the money is being used in that city...
...Wechsler claims, about "small" aggressions: he rejects even capital punishment, the smallest of the wars that governments wage...
...On Vietnam, one crumb of realism crept into your March issue, when you said in praising the Vietcong "bill of rights" you so gloriously equate with the U.S...
...Mr...
...it begins there, which Mr...
...The question is not whether they were "urban fish" flung into rural waters, but whether thousands of young men can be satisfactorily housed and educated in remote Army camps which lack the necessities of social living, including girls...
...How far he has strayed from the Christian teachings current in the days of Justin Martyr, who wrote: "We who were filled full of war and slaughter of one another, and every kind of evil, have . . . changed . . . our swords into ploughshares and pikes into farming tools," and from the church in the days of Origen who answered the plea of Celsus that Christians should fight for the Roman Empire in the words: "Nor do we learn war any more, since we have become sons of peace through Jesus...
...Morgan should likewise know that he has been totally misinformed when he writes that "the staff, from the director down, referred to [the Corpsmen] as 'boy' or 'son...
...It is a measure of The Progressive's discernment that it prints what even The New York Post can't stomach, and Wechsler has to get rid of it somewhere...
...The Invisible Government is, of course, the work of David Wise and Thomas B. Ross...
...Its proposals repeatedly have been rejected by the county 'poverty coordinator' as unworkable, although they were copied from programs already in existence...
...Louise Kidder Sparrow Washington, D.C...
...The facts are simply these: In the area described by Rogers as "South Texas," which I assume from his reported references to San Antonio as the "largest city in South Texas" must be from San Antonio south to the border, the Office of Economic Opportunity has funded a total of $8,761,269 worth of programs...
...The jimcrow motel and restaurant operator finally was obliged to serve Negroes through action of the Breckinridge administration with the Justice Department...
...Frederick P. Day Altamont, New York Correction Dear Sirs: I know you will want to correct an accidental note in your April issue book section identifying Louis W. Koenig as author of The Invisible Government...
...It is almost certain that the military leaders of the Soviet Union know more about America's military potentialities— our weapons, our plans, our current activities—than the average American citizen...
...I've seen your magazine, courtesy of a friend who buys it for laughs with which to amuse his journalism students...
...Robert Lauber Greenbelt, Maryland Dear Sirs: All of your articles interest me very much —among them "A Trouble-Shooter for Congress," an excellent idea...
...Director James W. Hughes personally carried on a campaign, week in and week out, on this very subject, and instituted a system of fines for staff members using the word "boy...
...The fact was that there were few city youths at Breckinridge—not half-a-dozen from Chicago, for example...
...He is the modest author of The Chief Executive (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964), an outstanding and important text on the Presidency, in addition to several other distinguished works in the field of administration...
...But at least so far as concerns Breckinridge Job Corps Center in Kentucky, where this writer was information service director at the time of the riot he mentions, Mr...
...William Palmer Taylor Hamilton, Ohio The Ombudsman Dear Sirs: As a Federal civil servant, I am heartily in favor of Representative Henry Reuss' bill to establish an American ombudsman...
...And according to the Robstown Record (March 17) the town is still trying to get funding for a staffed neighborhood youth center and three after-school centers...
...Wechsler has a sensitivity for the world situation that is extraordinary...
...To begin with, Wechsler is lumping together the religious or ethical pacifist with the political pacifist...
...The democracies did not abandon the Prague government, which collapsed before Hitler broke the Munich Pact (made in 1938, not 1937...
...No one has yet demonstrated that a democracy can function if essential facts are concealed...
...Crook's figures tend to prove this...
...but that today war itself is the worst enemy mankind faces...
...if it happens at all, it will happen by degrees...
...It is repulsive to anyone wishing to preserve the American way of life...
...Box 2202, El Mo-deno, California or call 633-0922 (North County) or 494-4338 (South and Coast of County...
...The "holy order" remarks apply only to the former...
...Amusing that you would call yourselves liberals...
...The political pacifist offers what he claims is a reasoned program for action based on a rational appraisal of events...
...If the criticism was uninformed, those who suppressed the information had only themselves to blame...
...How about "citizen's agent...
...Foster said that anyone using racial distinctions should be prepared to justify his purpose in terms of alternatives and ultimate objectives...
...or any other Federal program intended to develop opportunities for the poor...
...Replacing that heritage will not be done overnight...
...There are some of us who remember him when he was confusing only the undergraduates at Columbia, before he attempted it on a global scale...
...As an example of how the money is being spread, Mr...
...The amount of OEO money granted to Nueces County since that time amounts to $1,125,114...
...Morgan's source had been the Louisville Courier-Journal or other newspapers of the area, he would not have been led to say that "most of the 750 volunteers [at Breckinridge] came from big cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles...
...Valiants, and Our Man...
...These points are answerable...
...The pacifist is not permissive, as Mr...
...Most assuredly that job is not complete...
...William H. Crook Regional Director Southwest Region Office of Economic Opportunity Austin, Texas Rogers Replies Dear Sirs: Mr...
...If even one major Western nation had been seriously infected by pacifist thinking at the time of Sarajevo, or of Versailles, or even later, would Hitlerism have arisen in the first place...
...We reap today a heritage of centuries of violence...
...It is hardly fair to say, "Thank God we had Churchill, and not A. J. Muste," because this is asking for a pacifist solution after all the non-pacifist chickens have come home to roost...
...rather it said that too little money was being spent in too few areas to combat poverty effectively...
...Pacifists suggest instead that wars are not started by bad men but by good men who believe their foes are bad, and that cynics are made by the hypocrisy of good men...
...Perhaps even more so...
...Wechsler's phrase, "the appeasement strategy of the 1930's," is another unexamined slogan...
...Although the need for world cooperation in combating disease cannot be overestimated, we must also be aware of the desperate need for world cooperation in combating suspicion, fear, and hate...
...W. Foster's "Color Conscious, Color Blind...
...The Progressive's style of progressivism doesn't seem to include giving any voice to dissent...
...I think Wechsler himself is somewhat infected by it...
...The only valid and just "move" would be to end all restrictions for all U.S...
...It is difficult to avoid the suspicion, however, that secrecy is valued less because it confuses the enemy than because it conceals the stupidity of the generals...
...He said the church should avoid saying that civil authorities may not require military service as obligatory...
...Scholars of the Cold War are no longer so antagonized by Stalin's occupation of Eastern Europe as they study the reversal of Roosevelt's foreign policy by Truman and Churchill...
...Democracies have found a source of strength—not weakness—in the fact that anyone who concealed information was criticized...
...I think it is characteristic of Koenig's thoughtfulness for others that he paid tribute to Bruns' book as "the only work we have" that systematically assesses the Presidential office against the major trends of the American experience...
...Johnson has taken us farther away from real peace and closer to disaster than all the rest of the Presidents since World War II...
...It is important to have a copy because educational administrators around the country may soon be using some of the verbal dodges invented here by our ingenious officials...
...Esme Wynne-Tyson Editor, World Forum Selsey, Sussex England Orange County Peace Drive Dear Sirs: Readers of The Progressive who live in the Orange County, California area and who are interested in working for peace may wish to contact the Orange County Peace Exchange, a recently formed discussion-action group in this locale...
...Crook implies...
...Crook...
...In Representative Reuss' concluding remarks, he mentioned that his proposal will have a better chance if an appropriate name could be substituted for the awkward sounding "ombudsman...
...Nuclear pacifism has a great appeal...
...Crook's office and the office has asked for additional information, according to the Record...
...The article said Chicago (months ago) had received $25 million, yet Chicago has only about 280,000 "poor" people...
...It seems a matter of simple justice that the civil servant should be as heedful of, and as answerable to, a citizen's righteous wrath as an elected official...
...There was no "strategy" in the first place, and Chamberlain's negotiations at Munich were complicated by two factors we commonly ignore today: 1) a degree of justice in Germany's demands, and 2) an inability to foresee the future...
...Maureen Drummy National Center for Education in Politics Washington, D.C...
...Those who are denied the facts may well feel that they are entitled to suspect the worst...
...War and the Church Dear Sirs: As an editor, I am frequently being asked what I mean by the word "Churchi-anity...
...I learned about the race query on the Selective Service blank only this morning and suspect the feeling of one citizen would mean nothing to Selective Service Director General Lewis Hershey...
...Even if we were to free every man from disease of the body, it would be to no avail if his mind were to remain shackled to state-imposed restrictions...
...H. N. Frve II Syracuse, New York Defends Job Corps Dear Sirs: One applauds Edward P. Morgan's concern with the troubles of the Job Corps (The Progressive, March issue...
...These facts are a matter of public record...
...The People's Defender...
...If you wish to give some leadership to liberalism in this country, wise up a little...
...Mrs...
Vol. 30 • May 1966 • No. 5
