The rigors of travel

...In those days, to be sure, it was hard to get anyone interested in the problem because it seemed only to be one for rather special members of society...

...Eventually even the FBI came out against lynching, although I'm not sure if they ever pardoned those who were against it too soon...

...Pre-eminent among those affected were Americans who had supported the government of Spain against the treasonous attack by General Franco...

...Similarly, people who wrote and organized against the lynching of black people in the South came under the ban, though again, with the passing of years, this, too, was seen as acceptable...

...On the other hand, by 1942 the American government itself was waging all-out war against Franco's principal supporters and suppliers, the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy...

...The moves of the immobilizers in government were at their most mysterious in music...

...Instead, both have invoked eternal principles...

...But morality governs one's own actions...

...Premature labor organizers, for example, were held at home, though later this became a quite acceptable occupation...

...For that matter, I suppose we must thank heaven, too, that our staunch allies and worthy playfellows, the good Brits, never invaded Afghanistan, Afghanistan having been invented only after the Brits had left Asia...

...The same timing problem applied to other categories of those excluded from travel...

...In politics as in cooking and acting, timing is everything...

...The danger in moralism is not really the touch of Tartuffe that clings to the moralizer and that positively takes over in moralizers like Nixon and Kissinger, but rather that the moralizer gets to believe his own moralizations, to believe that he is indeed the only honest player, that people who oppose him at home or abroad can only do so from base motives, even such base motives as visiting one's captive children or demonstrating one's athletic skills...

...Having attacked both motherhood and amateur athletics, President Carter, if he ever does venture forth to the voters, is bound to be implored, say it isn't so, Jimmy, and what will he be able to say...

...There was a tricky time problem involved there...

...As perceived by both these political theorists, it is fundamentally a question of us and them, but neither theorist has been prepared to say so...

...If they attempt to visit their children imprisoned by President Carter's inability to say no to David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger in the matter of the deposed Shah, they risk being called Red Star Mothers, having their passports lifted and anything else unpleasant the government can think to do to them, from income tax audits to phone taps and perhaps a little FBI burglary...

...What we have here is one of those clashes of moralism that can change societies, bring down governments and, if you happen to believe in morality rather than moralism, make you throw up...

...The anti-Franco non-travelersfor some odd reason actually labeled "fellow-travelers" by the very government that was keeping them from traveling at 'all—were doubtless premature anti-Fascists...

...Not only athletes, but amateur athletes, thought by many to be the conscience of athletic activities, or the probity, or something...

...The new Carter moralism, like the old Nixon moralism, is based on the perception that whatever is done in the name of "freedom" is not only moralistic but moral, even commendable...

...Still, with all these shenanigans going on, most Americans felt that it could never touch them...

...If you held sentiments in opposition to, or even not in total accord with, those of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard M. Nixon, you were not fit to travel...

...Their point was simple and direct...

...Since the Soviet regime is second to absolutely none in the history of mankind when it comes to invoking eternal principles and wrapping their shadiest dealings in moralist considerations, there is a natural clash...

...Moralism is always dangerous stuff in politics...

...It was always hard to tell exactly what the government travel-regulators had in mind, whether they had anything in mind or even a mind to have anything in...

...The only people inconvenienced or deprived of their employment were political thinkers, writers, social ameliorists, artists, musicians, in general the scum of our society...

...At home, in the meantime, we have all been taught by, for example, the two Billies, Sunday and Graham, and the one, inimitable Louis, namely B. Mayer, that nothing is more American and moralist than Mom, that nothing is more American and moralist than athletics and within athletics, amateur athletics are the most moralist of all...

...It differs from morality, which a lot of political observers are also distrustful of...

...And not only mothers, but specifically mothers whose sons have been taken prisoner by the wild Ayatollah while serving their country, mothers who, in a more innocent time, would have been called Blue Star Mothers...

...What the Carter administration is obviously scared stiff of is that one of those mothers will somehow prevail on someone in the French farce that passes for the Iranian government to give her her son, thus demonstrating a power of persuasion and of liberation that the administration has been unable to find in political and economic sanctions, in the court of world opinion, in diplomacy or in the odd military adventure, and I do mean odd...

...Bass baritones, for instance, were high on the list of non-travelers, though, as far as I know, tenors and mezzos were as free as the birds to migrate where they would...

...Perhaps it was the memory of Senator Borah that saved him...

...Harmonica players were deemed a clear and present danger to national security when abroad, although the other great harmonica-player of the time, Borah Minevitch, was never halted in spite of a clearly Russian last name...

...If you were against Franco in 1937, you were clearly disqualified for travel abroad in, say, 1952...

...On the other hand, if the same thing is done in the name of Communism or Socialism, it is immoral...

...The underlying assumption has to be, thank heaven we Americans have never invaded and tried to subdue a small Asiatic Asiatic country...

...Eventually Richard M. Nixon, having built his whole career on strenuous antiCommunism, found himself downing toasts in the People's Palace in Peking, as it was then called, swilling vodka with the red rascals in the Kremlin itself...

...FRANK GETLEIN 23 May 1980: 297...

...The ban on Olympic athletes attending the games for which they have trained all their lives has been imposed because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, it being thought in high administration circles that any country that would invade a small Asiatic country is not fit for Americans to play with...

...Again, I'm not sure he ever pardoned anyone who advocated such measures before he took them and I know he never forgave women politicians who wore pink underwear and otherwise gave aid and assistance to the enemy...

...Well, I hate to say I told you so (actuCommonweal: 296 ally I love it, somewhat perversely) but sure enough, now the travel ban has been extended to the two principal pillars of our society, mothers and athletes...

...There is no place called Vietnam, there never was a place called Vietnam, hence there can hardly have been a war in Vietnam brought there by the Americans or anyone else...

...On the other hand, it was not always easy to guess what those semi-official sentiments might turn out to be...

...Moralism, in contrast, is used in the first place to justify one's own actions on high moral grounds—all those nauseating Nixon speeches based on the "I could have taken the easy course, the politically profitable course," were moralism—and in the second to denigrate one's opponent both at home, as in the White House attributions of Kennedy's gains to Carter's willingness to make hard decisions, above politics, of which he has yet to make his first, and, worse, abroad, as in the whole Afghanistan posing against the background of a Vietnam that never was...

...I suppose you can't blame them for that, but the point remains: when we accepted the right of the government to restrict the travel of people with whom the government disagreed because they were premature social ameliorists or antiFascists, we tacitly gave the government license to withhold the same rights from people who might now be described as over-enthusiastic mothers or overdedicated amateur athletes...

...Of several minds: Frank Getlein THE RIGORS OF TRAVEL NOBODY HERE BUT US COMMIE MOMMIES SOME OF US warned that this would happen when the first modern attacks on the freedom of Americans to travel abroad began back in the early years of the Cold War...