The Techniques of Controversy

...Evans confuses himself and his readers because he plays fast and loose with the presumed evidence of the consequences of certain policies advocated by some atomic scientists and the presumed evidence of their intent...

...When these issues are discussed without reference to facts, without intelligent assessment of the facts or without distinction between past and present facts, it is safe to predict that policy will veer from extreme to extreme...

...Even so, it seemed to me we were under a moral obligation to bring home to the Japanese the nature of the threat they faced, and to do it in such a way that they realized it was no bluff...

...Among the issues today which are most easily exploited by dishonest polemic are Communist penetration and influence, and the methods by which they should be exposed and met...

...Last spring, in a letter to the New York Times, I called for the organization of a non-partisan national movement to retire McCarthy from public life...

...The habit of approaching issues in this way extends itself to other questions...

...Some of them have even denounced Norman Thomas as a renegade civil libertarian...

...After all, whatever political illusions they had at the time were no different from those that Roosevelt and Truman had about "good old Uncle Joe—prisoner of the Politburo...

...Suspicions of this kind may well paralyze intelligent debate and destroy those processes of open and vigorous discussion without which a democracy can be neither safe nor wise except by chance...

...But is it not surprising to hear in academic circles still: "Hiss is a victim of the witch-hunt...

...But, on the other hand, many of these men were weighed down with a sense of great moral responsibility for the existence of the bomb and its subsequent use against a Japan already knocked to its knees...

...But this presupposes a very large number of spies working daily and with a system whose continuous operation could only escape detection with the contrivance of security officers...

...What would have been an intelligent policy had it been adopted at one period will be hastily introduced at another period when it may be unnecessary or insufficient...

...Evans is able to paint a terrifying picture of the atomic-energy setup in this country...

...There may be something serio-comic in extolling to members of political parties, sects and coteries the intellectual and moral canons of scholarship...

...It will prescribe the silence of contempt for the political hack and psychiatric care for the exhibitionist wallowing in scurrility...

...Evans will always be able to interpret this coincidence as, in effect, collusion to further the Kremlin's cause...

...The very position he held makes all the more grave his violations of accepted norms of responsible discussion—violations which range from the intellectually inadmissible to the morally inadmissible...

...his first article, "The Ethics of Controversy," appeared in The New Leader of February 1. Professor Hook is Chairman of the Graduate Department of Philosophy at New York University and the author of Heresy, Yes—Conspiracy, No and many other important books...

...Speaking of the decision to build the H-bomb, he writes: "Fantastically, vision and courage of the high order possessed by Teller and Strauss were required to make possible this obvious step...

...Apparently, they would not content themselves with stealing samples for transmission to the Soviet Union...

...This is a grave charge and an unsupported one...

...No person in public life has been so abused but that he cannot find, if he pores over the darker pages of American history, someone else who has been even more violently abused...

...Evans's "not wholly uninformed guess" must be regarded as utterly implausible...

...Pacifists will savagely attack as "warmongers" anyone who advocates a policy of firm defense against threat of armed aggression...

...It is not necessary to resort to outright fabrication to discredit opponents...

...They might have systematically pilfered from all plants...

...Evans's key...

...Even academic circles reflect this debasement of intellectual standards whenever a controversial political issue is raised...

...Evans in places declares that he has no wish to ascertain or judge the motives of individuals, his claim that reluctance to develop both the A- and H-bombs was "sabotage" is tantamount to an imputation of motive...

...Tip a charge with a fragment of fact, dip it in venom, hurl at an appropriate moment, and it will insinuate itself into the public mind more easily than a whole lie...

...The Zionist press will sometimes polemicize against non-Zionist Jews in such a way as to suggest that the latter are deliberately giving aid and comfort to the enemies of Israel...

...In this article, Sidney Hook concludes a discussion of American polemics today...

...This is, in fact, false...

...Although he was not a spy, his action showed that the opportunity to steal existed...

...His techniques are comparable to those found in Communist and fellow-traveling literature...

...The Trotskyists—who still defend the terroristic suppression of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres at Kronstadt, the outlawing of all non-Bolshevik political parties, who strongly justified the frame-ups of the Mensheviks until Trotskyists were in the dock, who used to break up meetings with the cry of "No free speech for Fascists" and bitterly denounced the American Civil Liberties Union for defending Gerald Smith's right to speak—have recently blossomed out as champions of absolute civil rights, as have the Stalinists...

...Evans that the Soviet Union had willing, even if unknowing, allies among the American scientists working on the atomic-energy projects...

...Furthermore, the proposal that information on the results of basic atomic research should be shared, the Acheson-Lilienthal plan for international control, the lax standards of security and the stress on achievement as the best form of security—all indicate to Mr...

...Evans unfortunately cannot be dismissed as a man wholly without credentials...

...The point is not that the atomic scientists should be immune to criticism or that everything Mr...

...One is not surprised to hear readers of, or listeners to, Fulton Lewis say: "A pinko is a Communist who hasn't been caught with the goods" or some variation thereof...

...Arguments of this kind are the mark of a bad book...

...In the present climate of opinion in the United States, what is needed is a new birth of intellectual responsibility...

...A grave and unsupported charge is therewith made against the personal integrity of many individuals, merely on the basis of the presumed objective consequences of a policy they advocated...

...They never made clear or plausible how inspection could be properly carried out in a country of total political and cultural terror...

...The very decision to develop and expand American production of atomic armaments—including the hydrogen bomb—gave the Kremlin through its agents an opportunity to steal from us what at that time it could not produce...

...Alsop and Lapp say, 'The causes of the lag have nothing whatsoever to do with treachery.' But Alsop and Lapp are here speaking from ignorance...

...In its context, Mr...

...I wish to consider some illustrations of this, in a field seemingly removed from the current political jungle with its obvious bushwhacking and ambuscades...

...Their justification, when challenged, is that the consequences of such a policy always lead to war...

...To some of them, it all depends on whose ox is being gored...

...On every one of these questions, honest and able men can and will disagree...

...You say the Communist party is a conspiracy...

...He writes its story almost completely in terms of espionage, dupery and political naivet...

...For eight years, he was an official of the Atomic Energy Commission, and, when he resigned to become dean of a college, he was Chief of Training of the AEC, a position which included security education...

...It is also known that some spies and some CP members were active in atomic-energy projects...

...It is not at all surprising that atomic scientists should be indignant against a polemic of this kind...

...I do not want to suggest that similar phenomena were absent from our culture in the past...

...Although Mr...

...Irrespective of any political disagreements with them, if we believe with Churchill that the only thing which stood between the Red Army and the Atlantic Ocean in 1946 was American possession of the atom bomb, then as a group they deserve the honor and esteem of their fellow citizens for services essential to the survival of the West...

...It is observable in books, articles, the press and the pronouncements of political figures in both major political parties...

...and, worst of all, writes it in such a way that the essential distinctions among these terms all but disappear...

...In ordinary affairs, possibilities must be evaluated as probabilities if they are to be a guide to conduct...

...The question has become a political football...

...One group greatly exaggerates the extent of Communist penetration...

...Their arrogance in political matters was often a direct function of their ignorance...

...They did not sufficiently distinguish between Communism as heresy and Communism as a conspiratorial movement—a failure not unique to them alone...

...But potentially just as dangerous is the fact that these unethical procedures have invaded fields not related to party politics...

...Sometimes it takes amusing forms...

...Literate and liberal minds smiled and ignored them when they went slumming in the pages of the Communist press or the racist smear sheets or dipped into the editorial columns of some frenzied newspapers (not all of which were tabloid...

...This sort of writing is just within the law, but it cannot be morally condoned in any community which respects truth and human dignity...

...Who, after all, is so bumbling and ineffectual as the scholar in political affairs...

...Were his book accepted on its face as a serious indictment, atomic-energy research in this country would grind to a halt—for atomic scientists as a class would come under suspicion as security, if not loyalty, risks...

...They are also customarily employed in "totalitarian-liberal" organs which portray outspoken opponents of Communism, in labor or education, as followers of the McCarthy line...

...Evans's book, however, contains worse, which makes it reprehensible...

...And their current efforts, both technical and educational, are doing far more to insure our survival and to enlighten public opinion than could a whole library of fantasies written in Mr...

...Since Teller and Strauss were the only ones who were in favor of building the H-bomb and "held it against all comers" until Truman came to their support, this means that almost all atomic scientists took a position "which was in accord with the prima facie interest of the Soviet Union...

...Nor was this the only proposal whose consequences were allegedly beneficial to the Communists...

...As one who believes that only the method of creative intelligence will advance us in our attempt to solve social and political problems, I must confess that recent events, although reinforcing my belief in the desirability of the method, have made me wonder to what extent it rests on faith...

...And this despite Ben-Gurion's view that today very little difference exists with respect to Israel between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews...

...Here the implication seems clear that treachery did have something to do with the decision not to build the hydrogen bomb sooner—and the juxtaposition of the names of those opposed to building it suggests that their opposition did not flow from ignorance, error or honest difference of opinion...

...This is not so much a question of the manners of civilized discourse but of development of mores of debate which will make one feel more ashamed of being unfair in argument than of being wrong...

...But when he does act, his virtues as a scholar can only enhance his virtues as a man...

...Nonetheless, a certain nobility clings to him so long as he is true to his vocation never to say what he knows is not true and always to offer evidence for what he believes true...

...More relevant, however, is the observation that, if they followed the principles behind their inference, they ought to regard themselves as warmongers whenever their policy of appeasement or passive resistance encourages an aggressor to seize what he might never have been tempted to take had it been strongly defended...

...If all theoretically non-accountable material had systematically been pilfered from all plants during 1945-8, when security measures were not rigorous, according to Evans's reasoning, "we have a not completely uninformed guess that from eight to forty atomic bombs may be stashed away somewhere [in America] waiting the Day...

...my correspondence showed a remarkable support for the proposal...

...Unfortunately, they are sometimes found in reputable quarters...

...Evans's argument clearly indicates that he believes his estimate to be no wild conjecture but a well-founded probability...

...Some leading atomic scientists were politically naive in the past, unaware of the mixture of fanaticism and Machiavellianism in the Communist ideology, and too ready to look at the community of nations as if it were a community of international scientists in quest of truth...

...According to Medford Evans in his book The Secret War for the A-Bomb (Regnery), such a proposal was, in effect, playing the Communist game—although it is never clearly explained why Stalin should care more for Japanese lives than for Russian...

...I have previously argued that only in pure logic and mathematics can absolute impossibilities be established...

...Evans writes is false...

...Not all of McCarthy's critics are free from the use of his methods, especially the method of amalgam...

...What...

...But a crass refusal to apply to oneself the same principles of logic and ethics by which one judges opponents is almost always found among fanatics and extremists...

...Evans's book is not an isolated case...

...This is almost like saying that property is the cause of theft and marriage of divorce...

...After the excesses of the First World War, however, there did set in an improvement in the level of public discussion...

...This means that the Communists had both motive and opportunity to steal systematically...

...In my article on "The Ethics of Controversy" [The New Leader, February 1], I indicated that, just as one can act dishonestly and dishonorably within the letter of the law, so one can abuse the forms of democratic discussion for purposes of malicious and scurrilous exaggeration...

...Most of them have learned...

...Although this implication is specifically disavowed on other subsequent pages, nonetheless the total impression created by the book is that, in the highest places of the atomic-energy project, treachery was afoot and these men knew something about it...

...It was opposed by Backer, Oppenheimer and Lilienthal—formidable opposition...

...Even if true, this by itself is innocent...

...Unfortunately the warnings of the democratic socialists during those years fell on deaf ears...

...After all, to accuse McCarthy today of using unethical practices in polemic would be as trite as accusing Huey Long of reckless misstatement...

...the other, to counteract the exaggeration, systematically underplays the actual record...

...This makes so many fantastic assumptions that, although it is logically possible, Mr...

...With the help of the fact that some scientists were discovered to be spies, and others members of the Communist party, Mr...

...In my own mind, the use of the bomb was justified if it was true that it saved a million lives in battle casualties and brought the war to a close...

...I was amazed, however, to find a few factional individuals who felt this was a mistake because, in their opinion, the harm McCarthy was doing to the Republican party outweighed the harm he was doing to the United States...

...And we should be indignant against such polemics because it makes it more difficult for us to criticize what we may regard as the still lingering political illusions and errors of atomic scientists, lest we be interpreted as impugning their patriotism rather than their judgment...

...For it makes it more difficult for them to express public dissent from official policy, thus depriving us of the benefit of their independent judgment in a field in which they must be consulted in any event...

...Here is an instance of each...

...It is the defects of the man, and not of his scholarship, which keep the scholar silent before the great issues of public life or prevent him from acting when freedom of the mind is threatened...

...It is known that a young man took a glass vial containing plutonium from Los Alamos as a souvenir...

...What is startling now is to find the same technique of controversy above ground and wielded by those who make some professions to culture...

...They were men of good will and, except for a few fellow-travelers, capable of learning from experience...

...They simply lasted longer—sometimes longer than those of Henry Wallace...

...If memory serves me right, some time after the news of the explosion of the atomic bomb Norman Thomas and others issued a public statement, with which I concurred, deploring the fact that a demonstration had not been given to the Japanese of the effectiveness of the bomb on some uninhabited island before it was used against them...

...A few had greater confidence in the sweet reasonableness of the Kremlin than in the principles of natural causality...

...It is not innocent, however, to assert that a significant minority (which may constitute quite a few) intended to do this...

...As I showed last month, the description of an action as "objectively" treasonable rests upon the same defective logic and ethics as the Bolshevik description of an action as "objectively" counter-revolutionary...

...What gives discussion on this level a particularly mischievous character is that some important decisions have to be taken about the future uses of atomic energy, about the relative advantages of atomic defense and strategic attack, about the implementation of President Eisenhower's plan for the international pooling and use of fissionable material...

...It is clear enough that the United States could have had the hydrogen bomb about four years sooner if the scientists as a group had wanted the United States to have it...

...Not one of them ever explained why there were atomic secrets in 1939-40 when Hitler was the enemy and no secrets after 1945-6 when Stalin's shadow loomed over Europe...

...Since, whenever it is suitable to their purpose, the Kremlin and its agents will support one of several conflicting proposals as least objectionable to them, Mr...

...The same mode of argument would lead us to the conclusion that by now every important top-secret state paper is in the hands of the Kremlin...

...At that time, I, at least, had not heard of the Franck Report, submitted to the President by some atomic scientists before the bomb was dropped, which made the same proposals in the course of evaluating the possible dreadful effects of atomic warfare...

...Why, that's the way McCarthy talks...

...THE TECHNIQUES OF CONTROVERSY ATOMIC SCIENTISTS DESERVE HONOR AND ESTEEM FOR SERVICES ESSENTIAL TO SURVIVAL OF THE WEST By Sidney Hook One of the first things that strikes a fairly knowledgeable person who has returned to this country after a prolonged stay abroad is the deterioration in the level of political controversy in American life...

...The techniques of character assassination, gross and systematic irrelevance, and the more grotesque patterns of illogic were pretty generally regarded as the stigmata of the intellectual underworld...

...This is made explicit when he says "a significant minority of those who opposed first the use of the A-bomb and second the development of the H-bomb intended to serve the interest of the Soviet Union" (my italics...

...Nor does one have to agree with Dorothy Thompson in order to repudiate the charge of anti-Semitism against her as a shameless libel...