Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR ROSENFELD Friends of the Iate Isaac Rosenfeld are trying to collect enough money to insure the higher education of his children. Those who knew him or were taught by him or read his...
...There are...
...Those who knew him or were taught by him or read his work are asked to send what they can in a check made out to Russell M. Cooper, Treasurer, and mailed to Dean Russell M. Cooper, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 14, Minnesota...
...Then they can think of the CP in the terms that stark realism demand...
...They are used to thinking that, when the Government clamps down on Communists, they are also threatened...
...Saul Bellow Russell M. Cooper Ralph G. Ross Allen Tate (Committee for the Isaac Rosenfeld Fund) FIFTH AMENDMENT Sidney Hook's painstaking and fair-minded analysis of the various facets of the Fifth Amendment [NL, October 1, 8, 15, 22] performs a much-needed service...
...Please try to dissuade the Dean from any further effort to respond...
...Thus, he immediately dissociates himself from the totalitarian contingent and by so doing weakens the position of the anti-democratic elements in authority by stealing their thunder...
...M. Bodan I have just read Professor Hook's rejoinder to Dean Griswold ["Logic, Law and History," NL, November 5...
...ways of standing on one's rights, of protesting, of not yielding one's individuality, without the dubious use of the Fifth Amendment...
...Understanding the motives of the McCarthys, he protested...
...Liberals and Socialists serve themselves and the democratic process best by proclaiming baldly that precious difference between themselves and the Communists...
...Having nothing to hide about himself, he spoke out...
...honest anti-Communist under investigation, who speaks out to clear himself of the Red taint, can find the ways to protest the injustices and hypocrisies of the investigation, no matter how obscure a person he is...
...However, it does seem to me that, when democratic society is threatened by espionage, conspiracy and subversive schemes of a totalitarian power, and is plainly confronted with the delicate task of maintaining security with democracy, the honestly anti-totalitarian individual should feel a responsibility in the situation...
...One might say that Weehsler could do this because he had a record and a newspaper behind him...
...It is customary to defend what society owes the individual and rarely to think about what the individual owes a democratic society...
...Such an individual under investigation ought to reveal all he honorably can about his political past, whatever it may have been...
...Every The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Merely to stand on the so-called right of the Fifth Amendment makes no contribution to the triumph of the democratic forces in the crisis in which democratic society finds itself...
...Quite the contrary...
...Baltimore C. P. Ives...
...It is painful thing to see a man walk open-eyed into a buzz-saw...
...James Wechsler is a shining example of speaking out and protesting at the same time...
...Many liberals and Socialists still nurture a lingering kinship with the Communists in this sense...
...so they make common cause...
...Brooklyn, N. Y. Mrs...
...it adds grist to the mill of the reactionaries...
...Does that sound reactionary...
...Withholding evidence and creating the presumption of guilt has the effect of giving justification to the McCarthys...
...A second thought may be apropos...
...But it serves no purpose to continue mulling around in this imagined melting pot of the so-called old Left, willy-nilly supporting whatever the Communists do, be it invoking the Fifth Amendment or making their own rules about academic freedom...
Vol. 39 • December 1956 • No. 50
