THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM The New Left Dear Sirs: Sidney Lens' article on the New Left has been proved wrong in including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee as part of the "New Left." SNCC...
...Leland R. White Pippa Passes, Kentucky Dear Sirs: "The Other War—A Frontline Report" by Haynes Johnson is the best and most honest appraisal of the war on poverty I have seen, and I don't know whom to pass it on to first...
...Many of our very old people live like vegetables...
...Now and always he has been an opportunist...
...The New Left, as I see it, resembles the Non Partisan League of the Twenties— nothing but a pressure group...
...We would like to suggest a special poison-free "plum" which should appeal to your readers who want to "beat the bugs" without recourse to lethal chemicals: Gardening without Poisons by Beatrice Trum Hunter...
...the quality of education is sacrificed to suit the taste of the ruler...
...China has no honor...
...They finish twelve years of schooling with courses in citizenship, world history, and American history—with fair to good grades, too...
...Do we not realize that with advancing years we are sure to lose gradually, or suddenly, our various senses —even, heaven forbid, our minds...
...The Progressive is one of my favorite magazines...
...John Anderson Willmar, Minnesota Traitors Dear Sirs: Your editorial in the May issue, "Nobody Dropped Dead," proves beyond all doubt that you are Communists...
...That army isn't going to fight the Russians...
...Or of keeping alive those who would far rather be allowed to die...
...I live and teach in Knott County, near enough to Breathitt County to have heard for some years about the dynastic situation there and the relationship of the school administration to machine politics...
...Middle schools (grades 7-12) had increased from 501 to 1380 and students from 103,641 to 341,905...
...I must remind you that he has always been hysterical on the subject of China...
...Mrs...
...Why, under present circumstances, should doctors make such a point of merely keeping them alive...
...Patricia Tutty Lewiston, Idaho Dear Sirs: The article "The New Left—and The Old" by Sidney Lens is interesting, but I think he fails to understand what caused the decline of the Old Left...
...I consider you and Senator Fulbright to be traitors to your country...
...Like our support of the Progressive Party in 1924 it disrupted the radical movement, and it has not as yet recovered...
...Alfred Baker Lewis Greenwich, Connecticut Dear Sirs: Sidney Lens in his "The New Left— and the Old" has blown fresh clean air into a fog-besmeared atmosphere by explaining the who-what-and-why of the "New Left...
...The Association now includes nearly eighty societies throughout the United States and Canada...
...We hear a great deal about the ever-increasing number of the elderly and of the very old...
...Hugh B. Hester Brigadier General, Retired St...
...Lorraine Greenhouuse Chicago, Illinois Americans' Rights Dear Sirs: Americans have the right to expect more from their government than a program of vast efficiency in the physical destruction of those with whose political philosophy it disagrees...
...John Elder Waverly, Ohio Education in Iran Dear Sirs: This is to thank you on behalf of many Iranian students for the comment you made in the June issue of The Progressive regarding the donation of $700,000 to UNESCO by the Shah of Iran...
...Have we not enjoyed life on this planet for a long time...
...Truly, for a man in control of a "repressive police state" and eager to "curtail the expansion of education," this is a dismal record indeed...
...It is planning to fight the Iranian people...
...Louise Kidder Sparrow Washington, D. C. Funeral Reform Dear Sirs: The struggle for funeral reform has passed into a new phase...
...Here in Idaho we of the Old Left became disgusted by the support for the Henry Wallace—Glen Taylor party by so many of the Old Left...
...All this can start whenever the United States stops bombing and starts rational consideration of giving their own citizens and the peoples of the world what is theirs rightfully to expect—a world where human beings can live creatively without fear...
...Naturally this wonderful adventure which we so erroneously call "death" must be a voluntary offering, unless one is not in a condition to make it—in which case a proper authority should be called upon to act under a beneficent law...
...Let us ask to be, under a beneficent law, gently and painlessly "put to sleep...
...He has always been opposed to recognition, to admission to the United Nations, and has always favored General Chiang...
...I believe lasting benefit can be obtained only by a third party with a platform built on our objectives...
...Or is it, perchance, the biased reporting of The Progressive that is slipping badly...
...You ignore history and want to conduct our foreign affairs to suit the Communists...
...Whether by design or as the by-product of criminal indifference, the local schools seem to be doing a beautiful job of educating for a closed society...
...But we cannot survive as a humane people with the mark of Cain upon us, and the reputation as a lawless nation and people...
...Some figures published in the Keyhan of Tehran in August 1963 may help underline the inaccuracy of this remark...
...In a day when we have to build stronger international organizations to save mankind, it is reactionary, not "left...
...This is an area of concern which should be given serious consideration by everyone who expects to die some day...
...Gertrude Collison Richmond, Ohio The Right to Die Dear Sirs: The June article by Seelig Greenberg, "The Right to Die," interested me very much...
...The handbook of the movement, A Manual of Simple Burial, ($1, Celo Press, Burnsville, North Carolina), has recently appeared in its third edition, extensively revised...
...He is slipping badly...
...It is not a question of whether we can have butter and guns...
...It is about time you get wise to some of these politicians who sell the people down the river...
...O. Edmund Clubb's recent article, "The Cost of Vietnam," in the April issue, has not been equalled anywhere else, and Charles Taylor's article, "The View from Peking," in the May number, is also excellent...
...True greatness in any meaningful sense must have a moral as well as a material base...
...Much of this situation is concealed behind glowing but false figures published in the tightly-controlled Tehran press...
...You lauded China to the skies and condemned the United States...
...Students with fair or even superior intelligence are given no basis for forming an ideology of their own—even an "enlightened" conservative one—because they are not given an intellectual background...
...It is also a foolish idea for a minority of a ten per cent minority in the United States to take up, and will inevitably lead to frustration and probably racial anger...
...He said the army was in good shape thanks to U.S...
...In addition, the Manual lists twenty-four cooperative burial societies...
...Martin R. Haase Friends of Nature Belmont, Massachusetts...
...It is supporting segregated, all-Negro parties in those few counties in Alabama where it has influence, and, in Mississippi, it supports the all-Negro Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party...
...In the South, particularly, the worst thing that could happen to Negroes politically would be to have a black party opposing a white party...
...Included in the latter are men and women between eighty and one hundred, myself among them...
...The Shah uses over half of total government expenditures on the military...
...The spearhead of the movement is the Continental Association of Funeral and Memorial Societies, 59 East Van Buren Street, Chicago, Illinois 60605, which held its fourth annual meeting last May...
...It may be obtained from our office at 346 Concord Avenue, Belmont, Massachusetts for thirty-five cents postpaid...
...Ernest Morgan Burnsville, North Carolnia Poison-free Plum Dear Sirs: Your excellent June issue contains a nice list of paperback gardening books, William McCann's "Paperback Plums...
...A U. S. Congressional committee estimated literacy in Iran as low as seven per cent ¦—in cities—only a few years ago...
...Odd as it may seem to some, I hereby offer my place to a new-born baby, and go so far as to counsel others of fourscore and over, to do the same...
...SNCC has now become purely and simply a black nationalist group...
...Your June editorial, "Retreat at Home," expresses better than I have seen elsewhere the inconsistancy between the concept of "The Great Society" in the United States and the practice of destruction by the Johnson Administration abroad, especially in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam...
...The so-called social studies, commonly taught as the basketball coach's "minor" course, do an excellent job of preparing the student to accept as the major issue in politics who will or will not hire whose uncle or cousin in what county job, and to assume that politics naturally should be a matter of personal machines and not of "boringly" abstract issues...
...In addition to all this is the introduction of a massive campaign against illiteracy by using army conscripts to open schools in villages previously without them...
...I have no respect for Senator Fulbright, nor for any of his followers...
...Tibet proves China will stoop to anything she thinks she can get away with...
...It is of the army and the massive police force that a U. S. Senator, Hubert H. Humphrey, reported with a sense of shock: "Do you know what the head of the Iranian army told one of our"people...
...In the course of ten years the following developments in education were reported: Primary schools had increased from 5,675 to 12,451 and students from 730,783 to 1,719,426...
...Government relations with university professors and students are bitter and bloody...
...When Mohammed Reza Shah ascended the throne there was but one university, that in Tehran...
...An Iranian Student (Name withheld on request) The Mark of Cain Dear Sirs: For some time I have wanted to congratulate The Progressive for the soundness of its editorials on the Vietnam war, U. S. foreign policies in general, and some of its splendid articles...
...Is it not strange that no elderly person has freely and patriotically offered to yield his or her place to the younger generation, to the oncoming babies...
...Both have opened somewhat the "curtain of ignorance" about Southeast Asia and the most populous nation on the globe...
...Even primary education is skimpy...
...Trade schools rose in the same ten years from 15 to 114 and their students from 1,370 to 12,198...
...The American people have the right to expect their government to create conditions whereby Americans can open up their generous hearts and purses, and put themselves to the challenging task of healing, feeding, and binding up humanity's wounds...
...The need of medical schools for bodies to be used in the education of doctors continues urgent in many states, according to the Manual...
...At present none of my students comes from Breathitt County, but their educational background, acquired in the schools of Floyd, Letcher, Knott, and Perry Counties, illustrates the same sort of thing...
...the budget for security purposes (secret police) is twelve or more times the budget for higher education...
...The novelty of the attack has worn off, and the proponents of dignity, simplicity, and economy in funeral practices must now rely on organization and education to carry their program forward...
...now there is an additional one in Tehran and new ones in Tabriz, Meshedd Isfahan, Shiraz, and Ahvaz...
...Just a year ago thoughts came to me along the same lines, but concerned ways of dealing with the population explosion...
...Friends of Nature, a non-profit conservation society, published this booklet which describes biological controls, planting, non-toxic sprays, and lists sources ¦of materials...
...We probably can have both for a time...
...the quantity of higher and secondary education is limited by admissions and by high tuition and fees...
...Such a government should be wise enough to know that no one burns and builds a house at the same time...
...E. R?bel Lewiston, Idaho 'The Other War' Dear Sirs: As a resident of Appalachia and a teacher in a small college there I am very pleased with your article by Haynes Johnson, "The Other War," in the June issue...
...During the first year there were 2,461 of these teachers with 173,00 students...
...Ruth H. Pool Seattle, Washington Progress in Iran Dear Sirs: To one who has spent more than forty years in Iran and witnessed the most impressive progress achieved during the reign of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi, it was startling indeed to read the comment in your editorial in the June issue to the effect that "the Shah has curtailed the expansion of education to prevent the rise of an educated class (which might overthrow him...
...And morality as well as legality is completely lacking in present U. S. foreign policy...
...And China is the cruelist nation on earth...
...last year, more than 7,000 teachers with more than half a million students, all of whose parents are illiterate...
...Otherwise we will always be short-changed by the powers that be...
...Growth of the movement is steady, though not sensational...
...Nationalism, whether white or black, is not new but old...
...But they still have not learned to grasp such abstract concepts as liberalism versus conservatism, or such concrete things as what constitutes a continent or a nation or country, and often cannot correctly pronounce "democracy" on seeing it in print...
...Petersburg, Florida Humphrey Hysterical Dear Sirs: In your April issue you again try to defend Hubert Humphrey...
...Americans have the right to expect of their government that it present the world with moral leadership appropriate to the demands of the atomic age so that men everywhere can live creatively without fear...
...aid—it was now capable of coping with the civilian population...
...It should, through perceptive insight, divert hostility, not torture conflicts into dangerous crises...
...Colleges had increased from 25 to 41 and students from 8,991 to 12,197...
Vol. 30 • August 1966 • No. 8
