Editorials
Contents Volume CXI, Number 5 Correspondence 130 Editorials 131 An open letter: Marie Winn 132 Kto Kogo?: Alexander J. Motyl 134 New Constantinianism: John Garvey 135 Silence: Stephen A....
...Despite the short fuse which is Lebanon, events may really allow this nation a moment of reappraisal of its international rival...
...But one has the distinct impression that Chernenko was promoted to his leading post precisely because surprises are what his fellow Politburo members don't want...
...The Editors, "A Catholic for President...
...March 6, 1959 I both of them "soaked in the blood of their victims...
...The Soviet Union is an "evil empire": which word, after all, would one challenge...
...dollars by International Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Unnoticed was the fact that the two phrases are significantly different...
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...It may be history's most mocking reprisal of these architects of proletarian dictatorship that the machinery they set in place now produces leaders to head the Great Revolution like Konstantin Chernenko, a man of no discernible public personality, whose known pronouncements are of a stunning mediocrity, and whose forty years of service in the coils of Communist party bureaucracy have linked his name to no major Soviet achievement whatsoever...
...Given the history of the Soviet Union since 1929, when Chernenko became a minor propaganda operative in the bloody days of farm collectivization, his lack of notable achievement may actually be a recommendation...
...Contents Volume CXI, Number 5 Correspondence 130 Editorials 131 An open letter: Marie Winn 132 Kto Kogo?: Alexander J. Motyl 134 New Constantinianism: John Garvey 135 Silence: Stephen A. Kurtz 137 Free even in enslavement: Francisco F. Claver 141 Screen: Tom O'Brien 146 Recordings: Mark Pruett 147 Are charismatics off course?: Juan-Lorenzo Hinojosa 148 Verse: Paul Petrie 150 Books The Rosenberg File: Francis J. Flaherty ! 51 Winter's Tale: Thomas De Pietro 152 A Sociable God: John A. Coleman 154 Erosion/The Kingfisher: Rosemary Deen 155 The Upstart Spring: David Toolan 157 Staff Editor...
...James O'Gara Executive Editor...
...After all, you said, we might not get everything in during the three minutes we were allotted to present our ideas to the president...
...Would Sojourners print the same kind of accusations, or does "love your enemies" only begin at the Iron Curtain...
...CHERNENKO'S USSR: IN & OUT OF FOCUS F ROM HISTORY TEXTS, from Eisenstein, more recently from Reds, most of us retain vivid images of Lenin, Trotsky, and the Old Bolsheviks who seized the helm of revolutionary Russia...
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...Whether the debate is over Euromissiles or grain embargoes or cutting off aid to Poland or sending aid to Central 9 March 1984:131 American rightists or dealing with South Africa or Syria, the problem is always negotiating a course among these multiple evils...
...The fact that many of these anti-war activists articulate their stance in terms of Christianity makes it noteworthy to us, however less serious a force they may actually be politically than Mr...
...The last point has been partially conceded by Mr...
...D EAR MR...
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...Perhaps it is unfair to cavil...
...bank...
...What we have in mind is frequently not expressed explicitly as much as manifested in a kind of double standard or selective vision when dealing with the So~'iet Union and the U.S...
...Anyone seriously concerned with the relation of personal belief to matters of public policy receives little reassurance from the simple rejection of the problem in Senator Kennedy's statement...
...Reagan's recent parable about Jim and Sally and Ivan and Anya, but goes beyond that to condemn anti-Communism as equivalent to anti-Semitism...
...POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Commonweal, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Since ! had to rush off after our get-together, I thought I'd write you this letter instead...
...I was flattered and more than a little awed that the president of the United States wanted to hear my views on what the government might do to help American families...
...I do think, however, that if you prevailed upon those powerful people to spend two hours of their valuable time at such a gathering, you might have assembled a more significant group of child and family experts than the curious collection yo u invited to the White House on the 17th...
...To start with, I have nothing but praise for your considering the fate of the family of such importance that you actually got the president and vice-president to attend this "working" luncheon, as well as Messrs...
...A crucial question for the electorate will be whether the administration has actually absorbed something from this criticism, as recent gestures might indicate, or whether a second Reagan term will simply mean an unqualified return to the original narrow vision...
...that Richard Nixon is a "barbarian" and Henry Kissinger a "predator," Going.._ on60 From Commonweal t w e n t y - f i v e years a g o : "In a recent issue of Look magazine, Senator Kennedy makes known his views on some of the questions about which nonCatholics are most c o n c e r n e d . . . Mr...
...One of the consequences of this tendency to avoid the harsh realities of Soviet rule, the determined Soviet arms buildup of the seventies, and the ominous questions raised by the invasion of Afghanistan is to discredit the protest against the Reagan militarization of foreign policy - - and to provoke centrists to their own excesses of "tough-mindedness...
...by starvation and uprooting of populations...
...Telephone: (212) MU 3-2042...
...But if Nixon and Kissinger, why not Andropov and Gromyko...
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...Strikingly enough, the same issue carried an article in which it was said that the U.S...
...Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of Public Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, is published biweekly, except monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and August, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Reagan and his followers...
...CHAPMAN: Thanks for asking me to lunch with the president the other day...
...Kennedy, according to the Look article, believes that 'religion is personal, politics are public, and the twain need never meet and conflict.' " . . . These forthright statements have been greeted with general satisfaction . . . But we cannot help having a few reservations . . . . That 'religion is personal, politics are public' is undoubtedly the Senator's belief, and that of many other, perhaps most, Americans...
...Reagan himself, trying at the end of 1983 to project his famous amiability overseas...
...Theorizing, debating, conspiring, in and out of jail or exile, rallying their troops at the podium or in print, they were men of ideas, men of action...
...The Soviet Union is not, however, "'the focus of evil in the modern world...
...But apart from such self-inflicted injuries, the real reason for a view of the Soviet Union that is both unblinking and yet put in a larger framework of world problems is simple: peace will never be built on illusions - - neither those of hardline warriors nor of utopian pacifists...
...Yet it seems an unnecessarily simple view of this most complex problem...
...Evil empire" and "the focus of evil in the modern world" are the two controversial phrases that President Reagan launched in a speech to church leaders to describe the Soviet Union...
...A recent issue, for example, of Sojourners - - a journal that has rightly earned much praise - - carries a long article on the innocence of the Russian people (frankly, we have never encountered a Cold Warrior so ferocious that he or she was unwilling to say good things about t~e Russian people...
...At the pre-luncheon briefing you encouraged your ten invited guests to come back to your office after lunch if we had any further reactions or suggestions...
...Liberals either simply heaped obloquy on the president's remarks or insisted that, although they might be true, it was imprudent for the president to have used that kind of language...
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...At the White House AN OPEN LETTER LUNCH WITH THE PRESIDENT An open letter to Bruce Chapman, Director of the Office of Planning and Evaluation, who organized and moderated a Roundtable Luncheon on the Family at the White House on January 17, 1984...
...By now the Reagan administration has been roundly criticized for narrowing its view of the world's problems to the one issue of Soviet expansion...
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...Peter Steinfels Assistant Editor: David Toolan Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy Poetry: Rosemary Deen, Marie Ponsot Staff: Karen F. Silva, Harriette Balsky, Sheila Tanksley Advertising Manager...
...It is precisely the whole problem of international relations today to deal with the fact that the world is threatened by multiple evils - - by an arms race with a frightening dynamic of its own...
...While Vance Packard, Landon Jones, and Pepper Schwartz are valuable social commentators, they are certainly not experts on children or families, nor, I'm afraid, am I. Commonweal: 132...
...Bad ideas, bad action, one might quickly add, but still with the aura of Lucifer and his fallen angels...
...The article more or less parallels Mr...
...Hard-liners cheered, saying the president was speaking the truth at last...
...No one should rule out surprises, of course...
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...Meese, Baker, Darman, and five other top White House advisors...
...pursued genocide as matter of high policy in Vietnam...
...The author insists " I do not even indulge in hyperbole," and one can easily imagine the evidence he would bring forward to support his denunciations...
...At the same time, it should be noted that a portion of the movement opposing the Reagan policies has an equally simple-minded view in which, in effect, the East-West conflict is dismissed as meaningless...
...All Canadian and foreign subscriptions must be paid in U.S...
...Chernenko's reported caution, the settling of dust in the Soviet leadership, and the uncertainty of an election year in the United States combine to reduce the likelihood of any marked improvement in the frosty relationship between the superpowers - - and, one hopes, of any marked worsening as well...
...by forms of oppression, from right-wing and left-wing and no-wing regimes, that are no less death-dealing and spirit-crushing because they do not emanate from Moscow, indeed may even find support in Washington...
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Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 5
