The Nation's Pulse/Shanty Talk
Fossedal, Gregory A.
THE NATION'S PULSE SHANTY TALK Stanford, Calif.—Late this January, half serious and half just curious, I spent several hours at a group of shanties, erected to oppose South Africa's apartheid...
...He would not, they said...
...Do you really believe what he said...
...THE NATION'S PULSE SHANTY TALK Stanford, Calif.—Late this January, half serious and half just curious, I spent several hours at a group of shanties, erected to oppose South Africa's apartheid regime...
...I asked Tutu's assistants several times before and after his talk, by telephone, if he wished to comment on the ANC's presence...
...I don't think it's ourbusiness" to support freedom in Afghanistan, Poland, or Nicaragua, said one student collecting petition signatures across from the shanties...
...Most political movements, including the right-to-life cause, are a mix of calm men and uncalm fanatics...
...Yet for every crusty conservative Reaganism offends—the GOP austerity school of economics, the fans of nuclear weapons and Mutual Assured Destruction, and the die-hard South Africa defense brigade—he hasreached out to millions of Americans who are now Reaganite converts...
...Will a collection of people who nominated George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale really back the contras...
...Your freedom is on the line, too...
...The only answer is violent revolution...
...It's you...
...When was the last time you encountered a college student pro-testing "the imbalance between fiscal and monetary policies," or demanding that "the Sergeant York anti-tank gun must go...
...My second reason for joining in the apartheid opposition movement is my conviction that conservatives have been in error (admittedly, "conservative error" has an oxymoronic flavor) about South Africa...
...and held a mutual and constructive dialogue with leaders of the campus divestiture movement...
...Reagan in Nicaragua, Namibia, to hell with that shit," chanted a large, muscular black man with fierce eyes...
...The fanatics supply the energy, the calm men focus it and keep it in line...
...It is enough to say you are anti-Communist, and then this country doesn't care [how oppressive you are]," Tutu said...
...In fact, I signed a petition calling for the university to divest of holdings in companies dealing with South Africa...
...paperback 59.95 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 29...
...Kill Reagan...
...Oh, there are Marxists in every country and every movement," said Will Masters, a graduate student handing out literature in support of divestiture...
...Are these flighty notions...
...Two items in the paper struck me: they described a Seattle rally to ex-plain "What's behind Reagan's slander campaign against Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organization," and a West Virginia forum designed to "combat Zionist lies...
...The more these people scream, the more Mr...
...When one man is not free, all freedom is threatened...
...But, as we are for democracy in Russia and Vietnam and Nicaragua, we may as well be for democracy in South Africa...
...I think that's a pretty strained analogy...
...But she didn't believe me: "No," she said, "I believe it's something Nelson Mandela wrote from prison...
...It seems, as others have observed, that liberalism has become less liberal: less broad, less catholic, in its concerns...
...These people speak to us of violence as if we were virgins," he said...
...Freedom," she concluded, "is indivisible...
...You meet students who camp out night after night in card-board shanty huts over apartheid...
...Join the President, members of Congress and thousands of freedom loving Americans and wear the campaign-style button which clearly proclaims this message...
...First, the crusade to eliminate apartheid may be the only progressive crusade currently on the map...
...Whistle-blowing is not the answer...
...Kill 'em:" As he chanted on, a middle-aged woman, wearing faded jeans and a Bishop Tutu T-shirt, moved through the crowd, soliciting subscriptions to "The Militant: A socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people...
...All of which would seem to punch a hole in my hopes for a grand domestic alliance, a foreign policy that opposes all dictators...
...It so happened she was paraphrasing, almost quoting, one of my favorite speeches: John E Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" address...
...A young black with a Cambridge accent solicited for the African National Congress, a group with professed Marxist leaders and alleged ties to the Soviet Union...
...And yet, happily, there is evidence that even such unilateral gestures, by a strong President to a demoralized domestic opposition, work...
...They went berserk...
...Despite their concern for one group of people, blacks in South Africa, however, most anti-apartheid activists at Stanford voiced little support for such movements as Solidarity or the freedom fighters in Afghanistan...
...The road is then clear for what TAS readers will recognize as an "additive compromise," in which Reaganites support freedom fighters in places like South Africa—but the op-position supports them in places like Nicaragua...
...For President Reagan and all Americans who support aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, this slogan summarizes the real and present dangers associated with Nicaragua's Communist Sandinista regime...
...The only wonder is that some Reaganites resist the impulse to join in the fun and support concrete action against apartheid...
...Send a check or money order payable to: Council for Inter-American Security 122 C Street, NW Suite 330 Washington, DC 20001 Order now...
...And, as we favor concrete pressures on those governments, we ought to favor them on Pretoria...
...They were not just skeptical of Reagan's link-age of the Philippines and South Africa to Nicaragua...
...This foreign policy revolution stands as the third great leap of Reagan's presidency, the first two being his pro-gram of supply-side tax cutting in early 1981, and the Star Wars defense initiative of 1983...
...Price includes postage and handling...
...Lewis dragged out the ghost of Senator McCarthy once again, while Kinsley announced that "the analogy is preposterous," outlining at length the many differences between the Philippines and Nicaragua...
...Pentagon coffee makers will be with us for some time, but are conversation fodder mainly for Gary Hart, Les Aspin, pointy-headed people at the Brookings Institution, and other cerebral fellows...
...Somewhat chagrined, I asked some of the mainstream SOSA leaders if all this didn't trouble them...
...We have already experienced the terrorism and violence of apartheid...
...You can order this cleverly designed, two-color celluloid but-ton for $2 each or three for $5...
...Reagan's bold statement of the principle in early March...
...Oh, the loyal opposition has plenty of issues: the deficit, overGregory A. Fossedal is a media fellow at the Hoover Institution and a contributing editor of Harper's...
...It isn't just South African blacks who are suffering," Cindy said...
...I guess what I'm saying is that you have to look at the situation there," she answered...
...You meet some interesting people at your local anti-apartheid shanty...
...Yousee people devoting hours, days, weeks, years to a democratic South Africa: chanting, marching, sitting in, breaking the law...
...Star Wars is too popular with most young people to attract a resistance effort...
...priced Pentagon toilet seats, Reagan's war in Central America, the Philip-pines, homosexual rights, Star Wars, and on and on...
...Kill Botha...
...But the deficit is fading fast...
...Well then, what about people in Poland or Nicaragua...
...One way to measure that sincerity is to test people's reaction to other, similar causes—causes on which they can comment freely...
...As he spoke, I recalled a conversation I'd had with a Stanford activist, Cindy, several days before, out by the shanty huts where petition signatures were being collected...
...While Reagan "rushed" to support Solidarity and UNITA, Tutu said, the President approved sanctions against South Africa only when he as "forced...
...See my article, "The Art of Additive Compromise," TAS, October 1985...
...The Philippines was not a movement but a press event, and an event at that only until Reagan adeptly handled the transition to democracy...
...Tutu's comments sounded like an endorsement of the ANC, which had been raising money outside the hall...
...That's what I hoped to find out...
...I told them, after Tutu's talk, that per-sons soliciting funds for the ANC and the Stanford divestiture group, SOSA, both claimed Tutu supports the ANC...
...It also brings pragmatic political benefits...
...My own theory is that liberalism is doing just fine...
...Feuds, jealousies, favoritism, warfare, pressures...
...We are right about more important things: about the far greater tyranny of the Soviet Union, most notably, and how to combat it...
...even the mandarins at the Congressional Budget Office certify shrinking shortfalls as far as the eye can see...
...There's anger in Harlem, in Philadelphia, South Africa...
...It was the day after Martin Luther King Day, Bishop Tutu night at Stanford...
...That's why we need to apply economic pressure now, before they get stronger...
...Shouldn't we be interested in them too...
...What we have is the Reagan-doctrine plus: the opposition to dictators not just in Moscow but everywhere, announced in Mr...
...As I write,it is well before the House vote on aid to the contras—an advantage, since I may therefore predict that Reagan will win solidly...
...Nor did Bishop Tutu have any kind words for Solidarity in Poland, for UNITA rebels in Angola, for the contras in Nicaragua...
...it's just that liberals are doing rather badly, and those who are doing well are now labeled "neocons...
...An SOSA supporter named Cathy explained, "You have to remember, most of the people in South Africa aren't interested in either capitalism or socialism...
...A rugged, football-player type had been asking why anyone should really care about South Africa...
...Still other cans and handouts were passed around to promote Stanford Out of South Africa, or SOSA, the local divestiture group...
...Reagan is on to something, though, comes from the reaction of such writers as Michael Kinsley and Anthony Lewis...
...High Level opposition to improvements...
...The reluctance of apartheid's opponents to comment on such unsavory groups is understandable...
...My reasons for infiltrating this movement were twofold...
...Reagan should hammer the point home...
...By sup-porting democratic movements every-where, one claims the moral high ground, something which does exist even if it is located several thousand miles from where Arthur Schlesinger stands...
...An Official under Civil Service Describes His Experiences The Struggle to Make Improvements During The Depression, World War II, and Peacetime .. those who do the work .. . Tales of the Federal Civil Service...
...I asked...
...by Gregory A. Fossedal Any doubts that I was entering a strange new world were removed hours after my enlistment...
...chanted at an anti-apartheid rally...
...We gotta embrace Superman, the Easter bunny...
...After all, if only Ronald Reagan is willing to reach out—on the Philippines and South Africa, for example—then there can be no deal, only unrequited concessions by one side...
...Well, yes," she said, sensing a trap...
...It elicits aficion...
...Perhaps, as the editor of this journal hypothesizes, we are witnessing "The Liberal Crack-Up," the disintegration of a once confident, progressive movement into a cranky collection of causelets...
...attended an ex-citing evening capped by a speech by Bishop Desmond Tutu...
...I IF YOU LIKE CUBA, YOU'LL LOVE NICARAGUA...
...Conservative support for economic sanctions and other pressure to end apartheid is not only justified on abstract philosophical merits: our belief in the Declaration's dictum that "all men" are created with the right to self-government...
...It does not seem reasonable to me that support for the contras in Nicaragua should be contingent upon the removal of every former leader of Somoza's national guard, or that aid to El Salvador re-quires the lynching of every politician who Ray Bonner may once have claimed is "linked to the death squads...
...ANC members said they had coordinated travel plans with Tutu's staff, and SOSA members handed out lists of Tutu quotations, including Tutu's comment to the Picayune Times Tribune that he is merely "standing in" for ANC leaders who are in prison...
...What does count is that these movements be composed generally of honest, democratic men, who demonstrate their sincerity over time in a hundred smaller actions and statements...
...Both programs frustrated many old-style Republican sentiments...
...The real tipoff that Mr...
...And "gay rights" was last seen entering the local AIDS clinic...
...South Africa, by contrast, is a cause...
...And the reason, in my opinion, is that he has already stood firmly against repression in South Africa and the Philippines...
...In fact, he was downright irritable in answering charges that the ANC and other groups are becoming progressively more violent, eschewing the tactics of Gandhi and King in favor of armed struggle...
...And is the "democratic" opposition to apartheid even democratic to begin with...
...546 pp...
...The supply is limited...
...As a hybrid group of students, faculty wives, and affluent Silicon Valley types lined up in front of Memorial Auditorium to wait for seats, I mixed with the crowd to hear what some of my fellow divestiture advocates were saying...
...Even if the initial vote fails, he will win aid later this year...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 explained that my objection was not that these other groups don't support capitalism, but that they don't support democracy...
...What Nixon wanted the author to do .. . r . Name Address City State Zip AS Send a check or money order for $9.95 to: National Directions, 500 26th St., Greeley, CO 80631...
...That old dichotomy doesn't have any meaning for them...
...Still no comment from Tutu, who was of course on a tight schedule...
...Even Bishop Tutu, who tends to speak cautiously for fear of arrest by the South African government, was less than reassuring in his public remarks...
Vol. 19 • May 1986 • No. 5
