An open letter
Winn, Marie
American rightists or dealing with South Africa or Syria, the problem is always negotiating a course among these multiple evils. By now the Reagan administration has been roundly criticized for...
...Meese, Baker, Darman, and five other top White House advisors...
...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...
...The absence of a single such person made me begin to wonder whether you were seriously pursuing expert advice, or whether, perhaps, you were seeking approval for your present policies, so many of which have drastically cut back services to children and families...
...When the Justice Department spokesman offered as his major contribution a program introducing volunteers into the courtrooms I began to feel even more uneasy...
...Instead of traveling to Moscow to publicize their Commonweal: 134...
...But if Nixon and Kissinger, why not Andropov and Gromyko...
...A CONSULATE IN KIEV H I ISTORY, as Ronald Reagan has conclusively demonstrated, does indeed repeat itself...
...But what do Americans know about the Ukraine...
...Kto kavo...
...I suddenly felt a great need to return to the real world...
...Both presidents, evidently, appear to think it's the Soviets...
...Since ! had to rush off after our get-together, I thought I'd write you this letter instead...
...3. A consulate would also be to the advantage of Ukrainian dissidents...
...Among other things, by breaking off negotiations for establishing a U.S...
...And then your two ultra-conservatives, James Dobson, who runs a network of radio stations, and Tim LaHaye, who inveighed against "secular zealots polluting the minds of innocent children" and proposed that the government establish an accepted moral value system all Americans would have to adhere to, something like the Hammurabi Code, he noted - - well, I hardly think they addressed any of the pressing problems you mentioned on that page of suggested topics for discussion you sent us in advance - - "Taxation, divorce, child abuse, housing costs, crime, abortion, adoption, drug abuse, teenage unemployment, missing and exploited children, etc...
...I hope you didn't think it was ungracious of me to take issue with the president on his little joke about poverty...
...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...
...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...
...Within the Soviet Union, it leads in the development of computer technology and know-how...
...I couldn't help wondering whether such volunteers would be as helpful to young offenders in trouble with the law as a real lawyer provided by a publicly-funded program of legal assistance to the poor - - the sort of program the present administration is working so hard to eliminate...
...The Ukraine, as Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer points out, is the key to the USSR's ethnic stability...
...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...
...In addition to the above products, the Ukraine exports trucks, metallurgical and mining equipment, lathes, precision instruments, and electronic and optical devices to over one hundred countries...
...But consider the following points: 1. The Ukraine, with a population of fifty million and a territory larger than that of France, is one of the world's major economic powers...
...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...
...Not understanding the Ukraine means not understanding the Soviet Union and its place in the world...
...How...
...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...
...She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine...
...pursued genocide as matter of high policy in Vietnam...
...Who is punishing whom...
...Would Sojourners print the same kind of accusations, or does "love your enemies" only begin at the Iron Curtain...
...Angry at the Soviets Ifor shooting down KAL 007, he has done exactly what Jimmy Carter, angry at the Soviets for invading Afghanistan, did over three years ago...
...together with the similarly privileged Belorussian SSR, it enjoys a seat in the United Nations and numerous other international organizations...
...Where were social scientists whose focus is on family matters, most notably Uri Bronfenbrenner, or one of the writer-teachers like Herbert Kohl or James Herndon who have worked with children and their families in public schools...
...Is it possible, I thought, that you really believe posters and volunteers are what's needed by people in serious trouble today...
...Your two conservative think-tankers, Michael Novak and Charles Murray, are neither of them specialists in this area, nor is Ernest Green of the NAACP, who is a partner in a Washington D.C...
...Where was Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, for instance, or Judith Wallerstein of the California Children of Divorce Project, or any of a number of eminent child specialists like T. Berry Brazleton or Burton White...
...Did you imagine that your selected guests would be happy to hear how thrifty the government is in providing so little help to the poor who, after all, might just be trying to rip you off in one way or another...
...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...
...Both presidents, in fits of selfdestructive passion, resolved to "punish" the Soviet Union...
...Rather, I had the unnerving impression that the president, and the others in his administration, are quite out of touch with the realities of life in America today...
...Just as noteworthy is the Ukraine's political importance...
...That's why I was somewhat taken aback when the spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services spent so much time showing us those posters promoting family togetherness...
...The Soviets insist that the Ukraine is a sovereign republic...
...marketing-consulting firm...
...Perhaps it is unfair to cavil...
...Who really benefits from an American consulate in Kiev...
...March 6, 1959 I both of them "soaked in the blood of their victims...
...You remember, when he was explaining how government aid has so "institutionalized" poverty that people could no longer be poor with dignity as they used to be when he was growing up (just before his other anecdote about the girl from a "fancy" college who got in trouble during her vacation in Europe and financed an abortion with public funds on her return, and before his defense of the "squeal rule" and those things he had to say about Social Security making people lose their sense of responsibility towards their elders...
...The Kremlin would face an unenviable choice: either grant the Ukraine and Belorussia greater international autonomy along East European lines or admit to the international community that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics really is just a facade for a modern-day Russian empire...
...consulate in Kiev, the capital of the Soviet Ukraine...
...USSR KTO KAVO...
...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...
...Reagan and his followers...
...After lunch I mumbled something about catching a plane and I left rather quickly...
...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...
...It also gives the United States the opportunity to score substantial propaganda points against the USSR...
...So why not put the Soviets to the test...
...When he laughingly added that poverty today no longer means an inability to get food and shelter, but seems to be merely the difference be9 March 1984:133 tween having one car or two, I'm afraid I completely forgot it was the president of the United States who had uttered those words and I spoke a little sharply to him...
...The answer, unfortunately, is next to nothing...
...But that wasn't what his words made me think...
...As the largest non-Russian republic, with a long history of nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment, the Ukraine represents the greatest challenge to the Kremlin's policy of ethnic management...
...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...
...I naturally assumed that since each presentation was limited to a few minutes it would focus on the most important and effective programs your administration is pursuing...
...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...
...Oh dear," the president answered, with his disarmingly boyish grin, " I ' m afraid my joke must have made you think I'm callous and unfeeling...
...The Editors, "A Catholic for President...
...But when she mentioned that the budget for this worthy program is a mere $150,000 my heart sank again...
...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...
...I wish I had said that...
...as Lenin once asked...
...2. But a Kiev consulate doesn't just serve an educational purpose...
...And that, inevitably, means not understanding U.S.-USSR relations...
...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...
...The article more or less parallels Mr...
...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 Connie Marshner worked hard on the Reagan-Bush election campaign and had interesting things to say on National Public Radio, but she hardly qualifies as a child or family authority...
...Of course the president himself did give us a clue as to the prevailing view on the use of public funds to help poor and needy families when, during lunch, he told us that anecdote about the girl who was so eager to leave home and get "a pad of her own," as he put it, that she got herself pregnant in order to set herself up with Aid to Families with Dependent Children funds she was now eligible to receive...
...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...
...My spirits lifted when a woman from the Labor Department described a program that really sounded great - - a plan to help move poor women into the work force by providing all the support systems they might need to make a go of it - - job training, day care, transportation...
...Yet it seems an unnecessarily simple view of this most complex problem...
...But I'm afraid my excuse did not entirely explain my haste...
...Even though the renderings of happy families of all races and creeds were rather handsome, nevertheless this effort didn't seem of much use to the less happy, less "together" families in our society - - those struggling with poverty, illness, alcoholism, divorce, abandonment, unwanted children, and the like...
...Only the United States and Japan exceed its output in tractors, and no country in Europe outproduces it in diesel locomotives...
...You must have been distressed to hear Vance Packard speak out for family subsidies, during his three-minute talk at the lunch table, and to have him quietly observe that an entire program of such subsidies would cost less than a couple of strategic bombers...
...Why not "build bridges" to the Ukraine and Belorussia by establishing a consulate in the capital of a member of the Security Council and, perhaps, eventually requesting an exchange of ambassadors...
...And indeed, it has a ministry of foreign affairs and the formal right to engage in diplomatic relations...
...While William Clark may permit himself the luxury of such ignorance, a world power may not...
...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...
...Yours sincerely, MARIE WINN (Marie Winn is the author o f The Plug-In Drug, and the recently published Children Without Childhood...
...Strikingly enough, the same issue carried an article in which it was said that the U.S...
...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...
...I hope you'didn't mind my taking an extra two minutes to tell him of some of the families I have come to know in the course of my work as a journalist who struggle stoically and desperately to make ends meet, and of great numbers of people living in my own neighborhood in New York who not only do not possess a single car, but for whom every subway ride is an expense that must be carefully weighed...
...Government officials, journalists, and academics still tend to confuse it with Russia -- an error tantamount to identifying Austria with Germany, or Canada with the United States...
...A leader in the steel, chemical, and machine-building industries, the Ukraine also has vast reserves of iron and coal, and accounts for one-fifth of the USSR's grain harvest and more than one half of its sugar production...
...I didn't hear anything about what you are doing for those unfortunate citizens...
...Starting in January 1984, the Ukraine began serving on the UN Security Council...
...U.S...
...CHAPMAN: Thanks for asking me to lunch with the president the other day...
...After all, you said, we might not get everything in during the three minutes we were allotted to present our ideas to the president...
...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...
...My feeling that you are not really out to help families who need help was intensified during the pre-luncheon briefing, when representatives of three government departments arrived to fill us in on what your administration is actually doing for children and families...
...D EAR MR...
...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...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 5
