Editorials
existence of most people. It has sounded the alarm again and again --and in not every case has the alarm been justified. And some of the population activists, in particular, have proven...
...Abroad, cropland is being diverted from domestic food production...
...conception by rape or incest...
...EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT In our May 22 issue, an editorial called "A GOP Future...
...citing various statistical measurements, noted that voters in the United States are becoming increasingly Republican in sentiment...
...Now comes another confirmation of this thesis, this time from the latest Asso~eiated Press/NBC News poll...
...R.I.P...
...And if the Reagan program ends in disaster after the Dem9crats fiave gone along with it, what issue will they be' able to take to the people...
...Somehow, Hooker Chemical's claim that at the time of the original dumping in Love Canal there was no scientific evidence there would be any substantial damaging effect is little consolation or excuse...
...Or the deluge of paper...
...Or where will we be if we poison ground water in the great plains, or erode that one foot of precious topsoil there and elsewhere that is all that stands between us and the barrenness of the moon...
...No less than the abolitionists who spoke for voiceless slaves, or those who protested child labor, ecologists and environmentalists have spoke n for silent nature...
...The enormity of the defeat at the polls--68 percent to 32 percent--raises questions about the nature of Catholicism in this most Catholic of countries and, perhaps more importantly, about the pope's approach to the delicate relation of church and state in Italy...
...But when all is said and done, the religious factor is indeed basic9 Complex issues will never be settled by reams of "facts...
...And it is even difficult to imagine that we would be better off without some of the movement's exaggerations...
...According to some scenarios, it could result in climatic changes that would reduce the U.S.Canadian "breadbasket" to the status of near-desert --and what the extinction of so much of the earth's genetic pool would mean for medical and other kinds of scientific research is anyone's ominous guess9 Is all this hamburger worth it...
...Report from Italy I ABORTION 1, POPE 0 A CRUSADE THAT FAILED F OUR DAYS after narrowly escaping death in St...
...All is not lost for the Democrats, of course...
...Data will always be evaluated in light of a preexisting attitude, and the environmentalists are right i~ demanding that this attitude be one of reverence and stewardship...
...Minors must have either parental permission or the approval of a judge...
...The Democrats, we said, would therefore be making a mistake to be overly optimistic about their prospects in 1982...
...None of these trends, with region.al and international cooperation, are irreversible...
...In a historic reversal of opinion, more Americans told the AP/NBC pollsters that they will vote for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives next time than for their Democratic opponents, with forty-three percent of those ques9 tioned saying they would vote for the Republican candidate, Commonweal: 356 thirty-five percent for the Democrat, and twenty-two percent "not sure...
...In the debate, for instance, between the Club of Rome and its critics, even the Club of Rome, it seemed, had to admit much of the critics' case...
...In fact the law has not functioned well...
...Or all these single-family homes with their warm tropical wood floors, cabinets, and walling...
...It has sounded the alarm again and again --and in not every case has the alarm been justified...
...And some of the population activists, in particular, have proven themselves to be all-too-faithful heirs of Malthus and the Social Darwinians...
...Manatt's earlier declaration, "We must organize this party from the grassroots up -- not from the top down...
...This is the first time in almost thirty years that the Republicans emerged as winners on this question...
...Manatt convinced the DNC to reduce the number of delegates to the 1982 midterm ,convention and "to keep the selection of these delegates largely within the hands of party officials...
...The Italian abortion statute, which went into effect in May of 1978, sets four conditions for legal abortion in the first trimester: serious damage to the physical or mental health of the woman...
...Environmentalism has been accused of being a new religion, one with a fundamentalist's lack of concern for the complexity of the issues it addresses...
...If this is religious, so be it...
...For where will the rights of individuals and the free market be if tropical deforestation and chemical pollution heat up our latitude a few degrees by next century or disturb the ozone layer protecting us from the sun's killing ultraviolet rays...
...I experiment to keep up with what is going on, to hear what everybody else is doing...
...and sicl(ness or malformation of the fetus...
...To cultivate her well-being is to preserve the fundamental condition without which neither individual autonomy nor the market could exist...
...The Democratic leadership ought to be warned...
...A woman who wants an abortion during this period must state her reasons to a private or public physician...
...Over-intensive erosive farming is drinking up and poisoning ground water at an alarming rate even here in the U.S...
...No, nature is not just one more competing interest among others in the political race for attention...
...The congressional elections are eighteen months away, twenty-two percent of the voters are still undecided, and a lot can change by 1982...
...His strategy worked well enough to make him the biggest loser of any incumbent president since Hoover...
...disfavorable economic, social, or family conditions...
...After his four years in office, more voters considered him a "conservative" than had in 1976 --but the greatest number were just plain confused about what he was...
...But by no means have all environmentalists and ecologists been doomsayers...
...Patrick's cathedral in New York...
...One reason for this state of affairs is that 72 percent of Italy's 19 June 1981:357...
...9Reagan and not the Democrats who will get the credit...
...The answer is nowhere...
...At the moment, there's time to take thought of the morrow -- and our Teilhardian responsibility for beating the course of evolution...
...This decision runs directly counter to the mandate of the last Democratic national convention, which voted for two-thirds of the mid-term convention delegates to be chosen by party rank-and-file in elections in each congressional district...
...On May 17 and 18 the It~ilian electorate, 97.5 percent Catholic on the books, roundly defeated a church-sponsored referendum that in effect would have rolled back Italy' s three-year-old abortion law...
...Over the last year he conducted a personal and politically controversial campaign in favor of the antiabortion proposal which in fact he himself had initiated...
...No one can put a style on me," she said...
...I got the sign that everybody should pray every day...
...Without these sometimes strident voices, or the softer voice of a Rachel Carson, we would have proceeded along our anthropocentric way to degrade the earth --obliviously...
...Jimmy Carter, of course, tried this all-things-to-allpeople approach...
...But the problem., in fact, goes deeper...
...It also may not be...
...I even keep a little ahead of them, like a mirror that shows what will happen next...
...The woman herself decides whether the conditions for terminating a pregnancy apply in her case...
...Surely that is part of the meaning encapsulated in eatchphrases about the end of the New Deal or the exhaustion of liberalism...
...and worldwide, we are allowing the "desertification" of cropland, forests, and grassland --at a rate the size of half the state of California each year...
...I had never felt a conscious desire to get close to God...
...After her conversion to Catholicism in 1957, she made a comeback, and in 1975 brought her third "jazz Mass" to St...
...The DemOcratic leaders are right in recognizing that these are areas where their party needs to do some catching up...
...But if they follow this course and the Reagan formula works despite expert expectations, it will be Mr...
...But the drift of the DNC's decision is clear: to keep the party's attention on technical issues "rather than substantive ones...
...People no longer know what the Democrats stand for...
...Said her fellow pianist, Billy Taylor, "she's 9one of the very few people I know who can do this--consistently swing in any context...
...But would the critics have raised the whole issue of environmental limits in the first place...
...The doctor presents her with a certificate which, after seven days of reflection, she takes to a public hospital or authorized private clinic in order to have the abortion...
...Italian statistics ~, claim that 80 percent of abortions among minors continue to be carried out illegally, and the World Health Organization reports that out of 800,000 abortions performed each year in Italy, 600,000 are still done by back-room abortionists...
...After the first trimester, abortions can be obtained only if the pregnancy or birth would result in grave danger for the woman or if illness or malformation of the fetus would threaten her mental or physical health...
...We understand the irreverent impatience with a stuffedup piety that may lead one to paste on a bumper sticker saying, "Nuke the whales...
...Similarly, the current massive destruction of tropical forests in Brazil, Indonesia, and central Africa -- with the projected loss of twenty percent of the world's plant and animal species by the turn of the century -- may be a tolerable risk...
...At the least, the Democratic party should stand for democracy...
...Reagan still extremely popular, the easy thing for the Democrats to do right now is to go along with him on his budget cuts in social spending, his huge increases in military spending, and the income tax plan so many economists think will be highly inflationary...
...But it seemed that night that it all came to a head...
...I've learned from many people...
...Mary Lou Williams, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, died the night of May 28th in Durham, North Carolina...
...But the poll figures are another illustration of the problem in strategy the Democrats now face...
...I change all the time...
...Similarly, on another 'question the number of those formally calling themselves Republicans has increased six points since the opening of 1980, still another indicator of the changing climate 'of political opinion in this country...
...One pollster and campaign advisor to Democrats, for instance, described his own predicament in mapping candidates' strate' gies: "Out of the record of the last two or four years, there was no clear Democratic message, no articulated Democratic vision of the future...
...And none too soon...
...While playing in a Paris nightclub one night back in 1954, she'd got up, and walked away from the music world for three years...
...In this situation, Democrats ought to be debating issues as well as studying techniques...
...The pope had staked a lot on this vote...
...Our laws, tilted to favor individual property rights since the Republic's foundation, are finally beginning to recognize the priority of nature's claim --and that we can't always wait, given the state-of-the-art, for science to establish with certitude the long-term harmful effects of industry...
...It also seems to run counter to Mr...
...Indeed, in the latter case why would they merit support...
...With Mr...
...For it's market demands like these --and so many others of a consumer society --which may well be turning people's short-term economic interests into a long-term ecological disaster...
...The problem as they see il is the Republican edge in party organization, fund-raising, and the whole panoply of recently developed political "technologies...
...In 1980, for example, forty-eight percent opted for the Democrats and thirty-four percent for the Republicans...
...This journal is too aware of the potential excesses of religious fervor and of the uses of a healthy skepticism not to have some sympathy for that accusation...
...Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II faced another and, as it turns out far more serious challenge--not to his life but to what he-stands for...
...Unfortunately that is less likely to occur now that the Democratic National Committee has agreed to the proposal of its new chairman, Charles Manatt...
...And so far, the party's leadership has responded in an uninspired fashion...
Vol. 108 • June 1981 • No. 12
