Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number I commooeaI w Correspondence Editorials 3 Up...
...Now that he is in the White House, Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...From the majority she takes, she But even farce can be turned to good purpose...
...But it is equally the tale of assimilative pressures on the educated 0 N NOVEMBER 15, some forty million Brazilians went to classes in their post-Christian, secular culture...
...Roiphe of not being a Jew, of policy of neutrality on unionization in its Southern plants, but self-hatred, of religious ignorance, that was an understate9 out of 10 plants opened by G.M...
...Like her friends she became "rational, humanist, mistakes, even when they are mistakes about herself...
...Both the God who drowned the Egyptians and particularly at "the antifeminism of the Jewish patriarchy...
...As the Second Vatican Council affirmed, the arms race is "an utterly 19 January 1979: 3 treacherous trap for humanity and one which injures the poor in the industrial unions...
...Brzezinski and the State Department on how to treat with result of votes from legislators elected with the help of union the Soviet Union...
...tion site picketing bill that had been previously vetoed by reversed its negotiating position last month just before an President Ford, it wanted job expansion programs, it wanted important round of talks in Mexico City, apparently as a a new and ambitious minimum wage law...
...increasingly skeptical eye by labor...
...In this case, a takes, she takes...
...Labor has fallen on evil most likely place for theological discussion-not amidst the days, and the future does not look bright...
...When the Dance: B & B at New York: Don valuable public servant Paul Warnke offered his resignation as director of McDonagh 17 the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the White House apparently Screen: Altman's 'A Wedding': Colin L. saw a chance to appease arms-minded conservatives in the Senate...
...foreign, $22...
...the God who did not save his chosen people from the gas "I prefer the stranger's ways," says Anne Roiphe, in the chambers present problems of belief...
...Labor wanted passage of a construcdirection, but they ran into a serious snag when the U.S...
...Taking in the arms trade of other son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Seignious would have an easier Beyond the Cheeveresque: George W. Hunt 20 time with Senate hawks than the commendably dovish Mr...
...This means, in leaders are not sounding a very optimistic note these days...
...Instead of Westerbeck, Jr...
...the sense of the void, to which Anne Roiphe against the void...
...to military The Moral Choice: Robert O. Johann 22 inferiority...
...Her children "who have never heard of the Diaspora Election in Brazil or Masada," are not certain whether they are Jewish...
...Special two-year rate: developing countries amount to $140 billion since 1970...
...human community," and to escape the bounds of "a we and As a consequence...
...In brief: Barbara Mutkoski 28 While the SALT talks move toward their end, the sale of non-nuclear arms by the major powers to smaller nations continues almost unchanged...
...George M. Seignious, former director of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon...
...Carter picked a military Verse: Richard A. Hawley 19 man, retired Lt...
...Warnke...
...Recently Mr...
...Her daughter plays the Virgin Mary in a and the Holocaust to the version purveyed in Frosty the holiday pageant...
...General Motors is pledged to maintain a letters printed, accusing Ms...
...As the largest supplier of you have a confused and frustrated labor movement...
...non-union...
...75¢ each...
...They say they are feminists, humanists...
...been losing an ever greater number of representation elecNo one imagines that the United States alone can put an tions, dropping to only 46 percent victories last year, and this end to this international trade in non-nuclear arms...
...The rejection the polls in a nationwide election that most Americans of one's own tradition as parochial or "tribal," the relativiz- would call a farce...
...Carter announced that he had placed a ceiling of $8.43 Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor billion on the total value of American arms that could be sold in the 1979 fiscal Publisher: Edward S. Skillin year to nations not allied with the United States-a very modest reduction from Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Litera- last year's total...
...non-nuclear arms to the rest of the world, this country should Given all these problems, it is not hard to see why labor's take the lead in seeking to curb the arms trade...
...or else moves right in, and group for the sake of another...
...Then, to make the choice even more ironic, it was discovered by the press that before his new appointment was suggested, Gen...
...And ently in the right place on this subject, but not all his subordi- one thing is sure: every candidate from President on down nates seem to display the daring and the imagination badly can in future expect to have his credentials checked with an needed if arms limitation is to be achieved...
...As ganized labor...
...But to turn away from line that, perhaps more than any other, may have stung her the struggle of good and evil, weak and strong, in the Exodus Jewish readers...
...At the same time his selection with its unmistakable Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Wayne aim of appeasing Senate hawks says something larger about this country's general Andrews 27 approach to the subject of arms and the arms race...
...in the South since 1973 are ment...
...Perhaps the "Home" section didn't be seen in the construction industry...
...Not to have a grasp of cal party permitted by the generals since 1966, carried the Christianity-and of Buddhism in all its varieties, and of popular vote despite great odds...
...Thus the latest round of U.S.-USSR talks money and union efforts...
...What is needed is an international be an encouraging element in a discouraging picture, but it is agreement among the great nations to restrain this deadly not...
...foreign, $39...
...the first place, that we should set a good example by impos- Anti-union sentiment is growing in management circles, and ing much more stringent limitations on our own arms sales the goal of union-management cooperation for increased than we have yet done...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...Seignious had joined an organization dediBooks cated to stopping SALT II on the grounds that it would doom the U.S...
...but she would also see herself "in the Sa- Roiphe exposed herself...
...Her hands are empty...
...Last September the latter justice and plain daily decency of reciprocal learning...
...Thousands of jobs are What readers objected to was less the author's adoption of being moved to the Sun Belt states, where anti-union senti- a Christmas tree, Dickens and Dylan Thomas, "The Night ment is strong and successful...
...She has skeptical, existential, uncertain, vague...
...10016...
...On almost all counts labor lost, often as a Mr...
...bankrupt, she borrows from her neighbor's virtual plebiscite has challenged the legitimacy of the regime...
...Before he won the presidency, Jimmy Carter campaigned hard against Abigail McCarthy...
...the pro-government National Renewal a them," the notion of letting one's children "choose"- Alliance (ARENA) retained its majority in the federal House how often are not the same themes voiced by educated Chris- and Senate...
...signated successor, another army general...
...tian, especially post-Vatican Catholics, right down to the especially in the impoverished and patronage-ridden Northnote of regret, the nostalgic admission of loss...
...Add to this labor's conflict with the ended with little progress and not much hope for the future, White House over who should pay the price of inflation, and which is a matter for sincere regret...
...The most dramatic example of this development can only $200,000 per room...
...What this policy of guns $35...
...She has taken all her worldly took away "a sense of belonging to the entire human com- notions from the majority culture, including the majority's munity...
...east, it held firm to 19 of the 22 state legislatures...
...Union forces are shrinking, Before Christmas," and Rudolph, than her abandonment of hitting a low of barely over 20 percent of the labor force in Hanukkah, of a religious tradition she several times describes 1976...
...Thanks too to beholden rural political bosses...
...The flight of the editors announced the next week, the article "drew wideindustry to the Sun Belt has also been a flight away from spread reaction, most of it qegative...
...Grappling with our religious inheritance is of Jesus is just a symbol, an excuse for human bravado never easy...
...The idea apparently was that Gen...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...Poetry: John Fandel however, he apparently finds it harder than he expected to carry out his campaign Staff: Linda F. Kayler, Harriette Balsky pledges...
...20005, Columnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein...
...To make matters worse, unions have to an intolerable degree...
...This is only one example...
...But assimilation, except among amoebas where "the Precisely the prospect of an MDB landslide had earlier led the larger substance swallows the smaller," implies reciprocity...
...The symbol the real world...
...The ceiling does not apply at all to American exports to allied ture and the Arts, is published biweekly, except countries in Western Europe, to Japan, Australia and New Zealand...
...After the 1976 Democratic victory in which labor played commerce, and the United States and the Soviet Union have a crucial part, the unions came up with an ambitious legislain fact been conducting talks aimed at limiting arms sales to tive program which it expected an overwhelmingly Demothe Third World...
...At best his after-the-fact explanation reflects a political The Middle Parts of Fortune/The Wars: Mark Taylor 26 naivete which strongly argues that Gen...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number I commooeaI w Correspondence Editorials 3 Up from farce: Ralph delta Cava 5 Rights & oil: Steve Ellner 6 The triumph of Coca-Cola: Frank Getlein 7 Within the structure: Abigail McCarthy 8 Democrats, dismay & disarray: Peter Kov- CURBING THE ler 10 Spain takes a constitutional: Benjamin Mar- TRAFFIC IN DEATH tin 12 The Gospel & human rights in Chile: J. Bryan Hehir 15 S oMEI'IMFS the Carter administration is just too devious for words...
...19 January 1979: 5...
...Jesus is but one element of Christmas, refers, can never be far away...
...not to know myself, not to know what it is I willingly receive Only careful redistricting in advance and a ban against and what it is I willingly deny...
...On the basis of the union organization...
...stand now, the arms merchants can argue that "if we don't If labor's political program were in good shape, that would sell them, others will...
...But not grappling seems only along with Scrooge-a representation of redemption-and to add another void-one of our own making...
...While the number of ads for leather and chrome chairs and the articles on transthose employed goes up, the number of union members goes forming abandoned gas stations into summer residences for down...
...Their 18 million ballots (to the Islam in its varieties, and of all the other paths and expres- regime's 14 plus) came significantly from wage-squeezed sions of religious aspiration that crowd, differentiate, thril- industrial workers and inflation-wracked middle-class urbalingly color and amazingly speckle our all-manifesting nites in five key southern states accounting for three-quarters planet-not to know my neighbor's way, is in some fashion of Brazil's wealth, population and production...
...Interested readEditor James O'Gara Executive Editor: Peter Steinfels ers can pursue the subject further in a valuable booklet "Arms Export PoliciesAssociate Editor Raymond A. Schroth Ethical Choices" from the Office of International Justice and Peace, United States Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Catholic Conference, 1312 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C...
...He undoubt- THE RELIGIOUS VOID edly wishes he were leaving his post when labor's fortunes The "Home" section of the New York Times is not the were at a high, but no such luck...
...And there was a loss of membership for the years as '-tribal.,, Confronted with the story off the plagues and the 19741976 of three-quarters of a million, with the big losses Egyptians swallowed by the Red Sea, she long ago refused to Commonweal: 4 "celebrate a God who was so tribal as to bring harm to one spiritual house all its furnishings...
...rubber-stamped all 22 hand-picked, incoming state governors Roiphe, with her image of a small, wrathful, tribal Yahweh, and, on October 15, the outgoing President's personally de"is unable to make such an exchange," says Cynthia Ozick...
...The most telling reply to Anne Roiphe came from the In contrast, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), an Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick...
...MANDATE FOR CIVILIAN RULE The tale Anne Roiphe tells is, in part, the tale of assimilative pressures on a Jewish minority in a Christian culture...
...Seignious's interim appointment should never be made permanent...
...As things year looks no better...
...Today the total is under half...
...Contemplating their vague identities, she hopes "the world continues to let them OP FROM FARCE choose...
...Since April 1977, Brazil's 14-yearing impact of education, the "old angers" at oppressive ele- old military regime has enforced successive decrees calculated ments in an ancient faith, the desire to belong "to the entire to stack the political deck in its favor...
...BAD DAYS FOR LABOR After years of service as director of the AFL-CIO's legislative department, Andrew Biemiller is retiring...
...Once he was approached as the man to guide SALT through the confirmation process, he The Young Hamilton/Andrew Jackson and resigned from the American Security Council's Coalition for Peace Through the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821: R. Emmett Curran 24 Strength, giving the explanation that he was previously unaware of the organization's anti-SALT stance...
...Thomas Powers the international trade in the weapons of death...
...Arms sold to monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Au- notions in this latter category last year amounted to $5 billion, for a total for both gust, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madi- allies and others amounting to $13.2 billion...
...Most of all labor result of an internal American disagreement between the wanted a labor reform law to make it more difficult for emWhite House's Zbigniew Brzezinski and the State Depart- ployers to frustrate-by long delays-union organizing and . ment's Leslie H. Gelb, reflecting the deep difference between bargaining drives...
...campaigning on radio and TV braked the MDB bandwagon...
...These talks seemed like a step in the right cratic Congress to adopt...
...and nations as well as that of the U.S., the State Department says that arms sales to the Canada, $20...
...You can fool some of the unions some of the time, but you can't fool all the unions all of the time, and it is a wise office-seeker who remembers this...
...I am glad to be an as- uneasy coalition of opposition forces and the only other politisimilationist," she states...
...Single copy, $1...
...But this family is not Christian either...
...Ap- the signs that "something is sacred, holy, I don't know proaching her own tradition, she feels "old angers rising," exactly what...
...heritage of Christian art, the Raphaels, the Giottos, the One may wince a little at the harsh criticism to which Anne Michelangelos...
...She treasures the no capacity for reciprocity...
...the TV specials about Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph and Kris Klaus-"myths," says Anne Roiphe, "about good triumphing over evil, about the victory of the kind and the weak...
...Politicians who such as our reported threat to walk out on the negotiations if have let labor down should not get too cocky, however, labor the Soviet Union brought up an issue we did not care to may not be able to get what it wants in the way of legislation, discuss, such as arms for Korea...
...18 nominating a civilian of Warnke's caliber in his place, Mr...
...A great choice to support SALT before the Senate...
...Not long ago 90 percent quite know what it was getting into when it published Anne of all construction work in this country was done by or- Roiphe's article, "Christmas Comes to a Jewish Home...
...instead of bread means for the impoverished people in these lands can be easily imagined...
...the trumped-up "electoral colleges...
...Her children sing "Hark the Herald Angels Snowman, Rudolph and Kris Klaus is to prefer Disneyland to Sing...
...Carter's heart is appar- but its support can still make or break many a candidate...
...regime to appoint a third of the Senate and then set in motion its It demands "an exchange of study and of knowledge...
...After all, she continues to search for moan or the Buddhist, the gypsy and the Navaho...
...It also means refraining from conduct productivity is talked about less and less...
...From higher education she calls this universalism...
Vol. 106 • January 1979 • No. 1
