Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR RA'ANAN Laszlo Kiss ("Dear Editor,*' NL, September 23) almost makes me despair of the written word as a medium of communication. Thus he censures me for allegedly comparing the de...
...New York City George F. Gilder TUCHOLSKY'S FAILURE I read the review of Harold Poor's biography of Kurt Tucholsky ("Picking the Raisins," NL, September 23) with interest...
...Let us suppose the Wallaceites shipped 10,000 supporters into New York and demanded the right to camp in Central Park and to parade through Harlem in support of law and order...
...In the 1920s, Kurt Tucholsky called the cruel persecution of the Jews in Rumania an Asiatic brutality...
...As for Edward Ward's letter (NL, October 7), I find it remarkable that he has found it in his heart to reply to "purest Newspeak" with "oldest Doublethink...
...New York City Victor Fox A NIXON VOTE Gus Tyler's Manichean tract ("The Liberal Crisis—Now," NL...
...Control of outdoor gatherings is a proper function of the police, and where a gathering The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Ward's failure to grasp so elementary a distinction reveals more about his own powers of political comprehension than it does about the article which enraged him...
...might lead to violence or seriously inconvenience others it is their duty to veto it—an obligation often exercised selectively...
...Most were doubtless simple peaceniks or confused young people looking for involvement...
...Humphrey has apparently decided on a strategy of beating the Republicans by helping Wallace and throwing the election into the House, where the forces of light will have to compromise in shadowy rooms with right wing Southern Democrats from states likely to be won by Wallace...
...Nowhere in my article did I state that such governments have to be "democratically responsible," merely that they had to be the generally recognized governments of their countries...
...That is why radicals promote confrontations...
...Humphrey, like John Kennedy before him, would be thwarted by the nearly united partisan opposition of the Republican contingent and by the Dixiecrats controlling about half the committee chairmanships...
...Dr...
...Alone among the candidates, moreover, Nixon is determined to abolish the draft and establish a volunteer military despite opposition from Humphrey, Tyler and others who prefer the present system that has estranged a generation of youth and dragged some of its most noble representatives from the altar into jail...
...Alfred R. Ross...
...I'm afraid that the choice in 1968 is much more complex than liberals would have it...
...Had I made such an infantile comparison I might be deserving of his scorn...
...In 1935, Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide because he could not stand the following truth, which Adolf Hitler explained to Forster in Danzig: "As long as I am known as the archenemy of the Jews...
...Devotees of that art inevitably reply to an article by attributing to the author criteria which are, in fact, refuted in every one of his lines...
...what makes his failure to understand me almost incomprehensible, however, is the fact that, at the very outset of his letter, he quotes me, perfectly correctly, as saying "there is a government—Charles de Gaulle's—whose offenses against Washington far outweigh those of Prague against Moscow...
...While Siegfried Jacobsohn of the Wellbuhne openly declared: "What I am and what I have, I thank you for, my Judaism...
...A great power can respond to the appeal of a recognized government within its "sphere...
...nor are we discussing here whether that action was necessarily wise...
...Whether stinkbombs are a statement of political opinion has not been adjudicated...
...In other words, as far as I made any comparisons at all they were between Paris and Prague and I most certainly did not make any between Paris and Moscow...
...My article was simply concerned with establishing the ground rules under which the "spheres of influence" concept could still remain consonant with minimal global safety...
...I have a fifth column in every Christian country...
...I stated the simple and obvious fact that this policy was deeply resented in Washington...
...Otherwise Tyler's forces of light seem to depend on the flickering candles of nostalgia...
...Thus, Ward triumphantly "disproves" my point about Vietnam by saying "surely the Diem government, which was not in any way democratically responsible to the people of South Vietnam, was also 'armed, supplied, organized, led and instructed' by a foreign power—namely the U.S...
...Nixon will also be better able to gain Congressional support for the moderate course in foreign affairs he has outlined in recent speeches...
...Would sensitive libertarian consciences support the demand...
...He tried in his answer to explain the facts away and refused to publish my protest...
...Would the aclu involve itself...
...I did not utter a single word of censure against de Gaulle's right to pursue any policy he considered suitable...
...it cannot, without endangering world peace, stage a brutal invasion of a peaceful, friendly country within its "sphere" in order to overthrow or strangle a recognized government...
...The U.S., on the other hand, did respond to the invitation of a recognized government—that of Diem (it being totally irrelevant in this instance whether that regime was "democratic...
...Santa Barbara, Calif...
...As a member of a community of Asiatic origin, I protested to him that cruelty committed by European Christians against their neighbors of Asiatic origin was not Asiatic, but European brutality...
...My whole point was, of course, that great powers within their "spheres" do permit themselves to respond to appeals by friendly governments who are threatened by domestic enemies "armed, supplied, organized, led and instructed" from outside...
...They are the secret powerhouse of the Daleys and Wallaces, as formerly of Joe McCarthy...
...many asserted that they were, cheered Ho-Chi-Minh, and rehearsed the technique of smashing police lines...
...October 7), in which he sees the forces of light luminously led by Hubert Humphrey and the forces of darkness tenebrously mobilized by Richard Nixon and George Wallace, leaves me—a Nixon writer and thus presumably a running dog of the racists—cold...
...Although I don't like the oil depletion allowance any more than Tyler does, let us recognize that Humphrey and Nixon both support it and that the Democratic establishment in Congress will not tolerate its abolition...
...Kurt Tucholsky followed Theodor Wolff's (of the Berliner Tage-blatt) bad example in hiding the fact that he was a Jew and never mentioning the Jewish problem in Germany...
...Lexington, Mass...
...I stressed that, taking the Vietnam analogy, the Soviets would have had more of a leg to stand on in Czechoslovakia if the Novotny regime, prior to its removal, had appealed for Russian help against opponents that really (and not allegedly) were helped, armed and instructed from Washington or Bonn...
...But on desirable legislation that is more possible to enact, there is a dramatic difference between the two candidates in likely effectiveness...
...Nixon, on the other hand, has a good chance to win by a decisive majority in the electoral college and will be in no way dependent on the South's support...
...Having set up this fanciful strawman, he then proceeds with relish to knock him down: "Had de Gaulle occupied French-speaking Belgium and set up a puppet regime in Germany's French zone, then his 'crimes' could be compared with those of the Soviet leaders...
...I was simply giving an example which would bring out the full enormity of what the Russians had done in Prague...
...In 1933, Theodor Wolff admitted that he had been completely wrong...
...In recent years, most of the light shed by the Johnson-Humphrey Administration has come from bombs bursting in air...
...All were violators of the law...
...What on earth is there in this simple concept—expressed in simple words—which gives the impression that I had "picked him [de Gaulle]—instead of the Jacobins of the Kremlin" as a "favorite villain...
...Thus he censures me for allegedly comparing the de Gaulle government with the Brezhnev-Kosygin regime...
...American political discourse has long been degraded by two opposed but mutually reinforcing groups: the ham-fisted yahoos and those sentimental intellectuals who profess a higher democracy but are irresistibly attracted by every anti-Establishment thug and totalitarian and justify every atrocity committed by an underdog...
...The assorted do-gooders, bomb-banners, pot-smokers, hair-growers and drop-outs clouted at Chicago are understandably inclined to solidarize with their radical fellow-victims...
...Such actions would be irresponsible, though a legal party certainly has a much stronger claim on our tolerance than a revolutionary conspiracy...
...His statement that the latter were not revolutionaries is preposterous...
...The point I was making—and so far Kiss stands alone in failing to grasp it—was that Dubcek had not permitted himself even 10 per cent of the "offenses" against Moscow which de Gaulle allowed himself against Washington, yet no sane person in the West believed that this entitled the U.S...
...It is unreasonable to expect police or uneducated voters to make a distinction which the highly educated have so often failed to make themselves...
...Yet the only way to prevent more Chicagos is for reformers, both young and adult, to put enough space between themselves and the rock-throwing nihilists so that even a cop can tell them apart...
...to invade Paris, kidnap the French leader and demand the creation of a new French government...
...What made the Soviet action so outrageous, was that the Dubcek regime (recognized by Moscow itself) did not, of course, "invite" the Russians to come and overthrow it...
...Nixon will be able to mobilize a strong majority of loyalist Republicans and liberal Democrats to enact his entire domestic program, including revenue sharing, human investment, and the Domestic Development Bank—all endorsed by Humphrey...
...Uri Ra'anan Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy DORFMAN Herbert Dorfman's "Thoughts and Afterthoughts" on the battle of Chicago (NL, September 23) offers a restrained version of a standard liberal argument, proceeding from the obvious guilt of the police to the innocence of the demonstrators...
...This difference in their likely mandates will be accentuated in the Congress...
...In fact, the First Amendment does not even protect the right to curse a cop without supporting evidence...
...Would Mayor Lindsay accede...
...Contrary to a widely-held opinion, there is no constitutional right to sleep in a park, to hold a parade, or to block a thoroughfare...
Vol. 51 • October 1968 • No. 20
