Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR READER'S REVIEW Enclosed is my check, sent gratefully for a subscription. But there is a bit of a story attached which I think you might appreciate. I first saw mention of The New...
...So, I sent the trial subscription form...
...He does not own them exclusively...
...He can kill a lot of innocent people if he makes a mistake, which sometimes happens...
...This young man had been relieved of duty because he had openly declared himself guilty of assisting in the killing of many civilians because the long-range guns had fired wild so often, hitting houses and people in the vicinity of the target coordinates...
...You must have seen a lot of people killed,' I said...
...I first saw mention of The New Leader in an ad discussing the Negroes who testified before Senator Ribicoff's committee in Washington...
...Princeton, N. J. Eugene P. Wigner Princeton University The seemingly endless debate between Leo Cherne and Hans Morgenthau has shed precious little light on the rights and responsibilities of dissent and an embarrassing glare on the irresponsibilities of both men as writers...
...Another FAC who had just flown his last artillery-directing mission over a nearby village was in the bar at the Eaton compound in Can Tho...
...When the first copy arrived I realized my error and put your magazine aside...
...The Beyond Within) extend outright recognition of the frequency of transcendent experience in modern man, and the authenticity of quality-comparisons with those of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott and Whitman...
...Some of us have natural tendencies toward transcendent perception which indicate the direction of an evolutionary development in man quite as distinct and important as the rise of the function of reason...
...The destroyers were many miles off-shore in a rolling ocean...
...Stepanchev himself states at the end of his article that "the poet achieves, in his poem-making meditations, the effect that the drug lsd is said to produce in some cases," i.e., transcendentalism...
...Could he be wrong again...
...As McGeorge Bundy pointed out in his television debate with Morgenthau, in the past Morgenthau has made numerous statements and predictions on United States foreign policy which later events showed to have been quite wrong...
...Especially is this true when Cherne clearly stated that the Freedom House statement was not aimed at the Morgenthaus...
...China" excellent, but I read on to discover the gem about Marvin Kitman ("The Perils of Publishing") beside his plastic swimming pool in Leonia...
...Eugene, Ore...
...We are not dependent on Emerson for visions of truth...
...Ann Arbor, Mich...
...Why doesn't Buckley pick really worthy opponents like appropriately named Everett McKinley Dirksen...
...It is sad if we cannot argue in a moderate tone??and it also reminds me of the old Hungarian adage, "the angry one is wrong...
...He radioed back to the Arvins and told them he didn't see anybody who resembled a VC but that there were civilians in the village...
...Is this fear what has caused his anger...
...I just want to go home and forget it forever,' he said...
...The lengths of unfairness to which these people are willing to go is exemplified by Mr...
...Sheldon Avery EMERSON AND LSD I quote from Stephen Stepanchev's essay, "American Poets of the '60's," (NL, December 5, 1966): "The amazing optimism of Emerson, his calm assurance that all things were moving in accord with some marvelous and divine plan, is now regarded as rather touching and naive...
...In my usual haste, I thought your magazine was a new magazine being put out by the three Negroes??after all, two of them were well known writers...
...It is my opinion that Morgenthau has abused this privilege if he associated himself with those who accuse the United States of "genocide" and of "fighting a white man's war" in Vietnam...
...For those who have not such well-developed tendencies, there is the possibility of lsd exploration which Watts states is nearly identical...
...Nobody was in the paddy where I directed the artillery fire.' " Let me say again that I admire the moral courage of these men who at the very least risk their careers in order to heed the call of conscience...
...We can do as much as any man before us to secure a vision of truth which shall be undiminishable...
...And from time to time we attempt to set aside the distinction by knocking the pedestal out from under, as Stepanchev indicates at the beginning of his article...
...If they then read Leo Cherne's "Responsibility and the Critic" (NL, January 16), and Leonard Sussman's letter ("Dear Editor," NL, February 13) they will appreciate the measure of the unfairness of which these men are guilty...
...They radioed back that the province chief did, and to send the coordinates...
...He said he was going back home to the States the next day...
...Viola L. La Hines MORGENTHAU I can only suggest to those readers who want to know what my real position is that they read my original statement "Freedom, Freedom House and Vietnam" (NL, January 2...
...nor, but for the few moments duration of his vision, was he any better off or any less faulty as a man than ourselves...
...After all, he went to Yale when Yale had to take almost anybody, because there weren't many depression babies to choose from...
...Sussman have done...
...I read almost anything anywhere on China in a so far vain attempt to form an opinion on the Far East...
...No people got killed...
...In order to assess the character of Sussman's accusations it is necessary to recall what I said in my original comments on the Freedom House document: "If it is referring to members of the Armed Forces who would rather be relieved of their command or court-martialed than be responsible for indiscriminately killing civilians, they are not engaging in 'criticism' either...
...I suggest this particularly to those thousands of citizens to whom Freedom House has mailed Mr...
...Cherne and Mr...
...Edward Costi-kyan's favorable comments in his review of William F. Buckley Jr.'s The Unmaking of a Mayor, while deserved by Buckley style-wise, could have included one crunching blow to the general effect of: Why does expert "nit-picker" Buckley confine his nit-picking to politicians like Lindsay, whose grammer is relatively unimportant to New York City's somewhat larger problems...
...The transcendency in their lives has been duplicated by others as well, so my experience is by no means unique...
...Had Morgenthau been more careful in his definitions of "truth" and "power" and Cherne less fearful of the effects of anti-Vietnam war declarations your readers would have been spared their mutual distortions of each other's position...
...Cherne repeatedly emphasized that it is the right of every American to criticize his government in any way he chooses, but that it is also the responsibility of every American not to abuse this privilege...
...There never should have been a pedestal at all...
...I think Buckley knows his grammar...
...Let me also say, in fairness to Freedom House, that some members of its board refused to sign the advertisement which gave rise to this controversy because they, too, found it inappropriate, and that they are as Continued on next page appalled as I am by what Mr...
...This is the whole gist of Emerson, and were he here today, he would be involved in lsd brain-research right up to his eyebrows, scorning the timid, little-minded, superstitious psychiatrist and layman both??who now, by and large, fear lsd and the conclusions of all the great poets of transcendentalism, past and present...
...This statement refers to two incidents which have been widely commented upon and were originally reported by Frank Harvey in the November 1966 issue of Flying Magazine: "A FAC [Forward Air Controller] must be very sure of what he's doing before he calls in the jets...
...It was impossible not to feel the agony this boy was suffering...
...Did the province chief really want this place hit...
...Such eminent authorities as Alan Watts (Oriental religions) and Sidney Cohen, M.D...
...We erroneously place the early transcendentalists on a pedestal and assume they accomplished something withheld from us by nature when we were formed...
...Cherne's attack without bothering to acquaint them with my original statement or with my reply...
...and I don't think Buckley is intelligent enough to ever be really useful...
...I sent them,' this young FAC told me and drained his drink...
...I have only one criticism, and I happen to be a registered Republican...
...January 30...
...But they are the real moral heroes of this war even though they will never get the Congressional Medal of Honor...
...I not only found Robert S. Elegant's "Mao vs...
...He had been ordered to direct artillery against a village because 'three VC were reported there this morning.' He got over the village, he said, and looked down and all he could see were men, women, and children walking around...
...No,' he said...
...Chicago Hans J. Morgenthau This reader, at least, was dismayed by the tone of Hans Morgenthau's rejoinder to Leo Cherne's article ("The House that Cherne Built," NL...
...I even think nit-pickers can be useful . . . but, not very useful...
...Myron Wilder...
...I met a FAC who had been directing gunfire from Navy destroyers against hootches and VC concentrations for several months...
...I would like equal time (as they say on tv) to introduce Stepanchev to some quite modem thinking on the subject of Emerson's philosophy, I am not an "authority" on Emerson, merely an admirer of his writing after 30 years of private study??more than five years of which were spent re-living the thoughts of Emerson (and Thoreau) in nearly identical physical and moral circumstances...
...To accuse Cherne of fostering McCarthy-ism, of supporting policies which would contribute to undermining democracy, of untruths, of signing a disreputable document, seems fantastic...
...In the recent snowstorm when I finally found time, I opened the January 30 issue because it had an article on China...
...Greenwich, Conn...
...Sussman's misrepresentation of my reference to those members of the Armed Forces who have refused to fire on civilians...
Vol. 50 • February 1967 • No. 5
