Correspondence
Correspondence Antidote to silliness New Brunswick, N.J. To the Editors: These days, I frequently give up all hope for an intelligent discussion of public issues. David Riesman's essay ["The...
...A theory which makes human nature so amorphous and in need of shaping leaves itself open not only to conservatism, but to authoritarianism...
...Nonetheless he did exaggerate some of Berger's weaknesses and neglect others...
...As the systems grow more complex and topheavy, their vulnerability and fragility increase, and with them the chance of nuclear war...
...The Non-Proliferation Treaty will remain a farce, more and more nations will obtain.nuclear arms, as long as the great powers continue to maintain and add to their own world-breaking arsenals...
...This is group activity based on standards higher than personal ambition and glory...
...One counterforce to these "leaders'' has evolved which gives hope for better days...
...Berger draws many of his principles here from Arnold Gehlen, and they are the foundation of the conservatism of both authors...
...To the Editors: Your editorial "A Chance For Anderson...
...In this instance, he is responding, perhaps with excessive bite, to a species of orthodoxy in some academic circles...
...To the Editors: Peter D. Hall's review of Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia [May 23] was analytical and persuasive, especially to one deeply involved in group rather than elite realities...
...To the Editors: Gregory Baum's "The Puzzlement of Peter L. Berger" was eloquent and enlightening [May 9...
...A twelve-hour day of heavy work in the last century gave little time for our forebears to ponder the decisions needed but they at least were avid readers of the press and classics and knew that their future was not in the hands of absent authoritarian figures but rather lay in group response based on thoughtfulness and morality...
...During this same time the stockpiles of nuclear weaponry in both countries have grown into mountains of overkill capability...
...Nuclear arms have daily become more numerous, more murderous, more versatile, more precise...
...MARJORIE MURPHY / August 1980: 447...
...The memory of the town meeting has faded and strength of conviction based on something other than prag(Continued on page 447) Commonweal: 418 (Continued from page 418) matism...
...No moral justification whatever can be made for the possession, threat, or use of these arms...
...May 23] is invigorating now when we are numbed close to despair by an officialdom which acts hell bent to "let slip the dogs of war...
...He cares about truth more than fashion...
...W. CAREY McWILLIAMS Beyond control Scarsdale, N.Y...
...One wonders how to separate it from the practical conclusion of Gehlen in favor of National Socialism...
...Contrary to Baum's claim, Berger has always been critical of American capitalism and its ideologies: the recent Facing up to Modernity has plenty to say in this regard...
...The general principle to follow is: Anything is better than thermonuclear war, for the United States and for the world...
...We have known for a generation that millions will perish along with their civilizations if the great powers go to war with each other...
...But he has insisted on seeing the positive sides of the social system and the truth in the ideologies and, above all, on seeing the dangerously illusory element in socialist dreams...
...Now we Americans face an expenditure for war in the next few years of a trillion dollars or more, much of it in refinements of nuclear bombs, their delivery, and their near cousins, laser weapons...
...If John Anderson could get Senator Mark Hatfield for vice-presidential running mate, or another "most able" man or woman with wit to know that MX, vengeance, poisoned earth, atmosphere and outer space do not create security, then election day could offer a chance to choose life and get about the work of civilized living...
...With all the silliness that is talked these days, Riesman is as rare as a breath of unpolluted air...
...For about fifty years law, labor, government and even medicine seem to have been swayed by individuals, for whatever reason, rather than a consensus from group commitment...
...We sought to get rid of them for good...
...And as welcome...
...The object must be elimination, not control...
...Efforts at "control" have amounted to striving for parity, nothing more...
...But I am afraid he adopts a familiar and wrongheaded position from his first sentence: "The overriding issue...
...We can scarcely do less about the greatest peril ever to menace the earth...
...To the Editors: David Riesman has unimpeachable credentials for prescribing measures to deal with the apocalyptic possibilities of thermonuclear war [May 23...
...L. J. NAUGHTON Andersonville Saxtons River, Vt...
...Personal experience during the past twenty years in several forms of group action seems to sustain the hope that many, especially the younger members, are not about to give over to some selfanointed spokesmen the direction of either their lives or the life of their nation...
...Where he is easy on Berger, though, is in his remarks on the amorphousness of human nature in his writings...
...Even when I disagree with Riesman, I feel elevated: this is someone worth disagreeing with, an observer who is not content to push the facts into ideological pigeonholes...
...Whether it be neighborhood or community action or self-improvement in the manner of A. A. or Gamblers A., they seem to thrive when the life experience of the members and painful individual analysis and thought are substituted for the empty, vacuous, and capsule versions of what is true and equitable from the mouths of others...
...Our problems are not easy to solve but they will never be if we surrender our individual efforts to reach solutions to the elite...
...MICHAEL J. KERUN Professor of Philosophy, La Salle College Group activity Spring Lake, N.J...
...This is clearly not Berger's conclusion, but to avoid it he needs to rework the philosophical basis of both his social thought and his religious thought...
...There is general agreement that we grow less secure at each stage of this demented competition...
...w. h. ferry Berger & human nature Philadelphia, Pa...
...has been control of nuclear weapons...
...David Riesman's essay ["The Overriding Issue"] in the May 23 issue is a marvelous antidote...
...It is a puzzlement that so sharp a commentator as Baum does not perceive the importance of insisting on these points...
...We did not try to control yellow fever, plague, smallpox, and other universal threats to mankind...
...The United States can play the noblest role in history by renouncing the use of nuclear weapons and taking the initiative in seeing to their elimination throughout the world, by unilateral example if necessary...
Vol. 107 • August 1980 • No. 14
