OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES

...102 pp...

...Rutgers University Press...

...Doubleday...

...Arnold Forster, who is general counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, and Benjamin R. Epstein, the League's national director, draw upon their files to examine one special human rights problem, that of anti-Semitism...

...This observation is reflected in the steady flow of argument and opinion about civil liberties problems in our time...

...Horizon Press...

...With this kind of constitutional law almost any proposition can be sustained...

...Edward A. Shils, who is professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago, also addresses himself to the background and consequences of American security policies in The Torment of Secrecy...

...Grodzins invents the term "traitriot" to make this point...

...American Paradox, by Merle Cur-ti...

...All interested people will welcome Grodzins' searching and fresh analysis of the nature of loyalty and disloyalty...

...Barton writes, "has developed a healthy respect for techniques...

...The assumption is that communism is not and has not been a menace, and that the notion of such a menace has been a hoax and a fraud...

...But men have many loyalties, and these loyalties tend to support one another...

...All patriots are potential traitors...

...He believes that they have created more traitors than they have uncovered...

...Above all, in describing the pathology of dissent, he points out that the alienated, isolated person who succumbs to treason is, in his own mind, searching for another loyalty, and usually justifies his action in terms of some larger ideal...

...Public Affairs Press...

...While many interesting and readable books have been published on civil liberties subjects in recent years, few have actually contributed very much to our fund of basic knowledge...

...382 pp...

...Since the endemic quality of anti-Semitism is of course well-known, I suppose the contribution of this book lies in the not very convincing attempt to show that the various anti-Semitic forces of ,the contemporary world are held together in a "real though elusive . . . internation-ale," which functions through personal contacts and continuous working relations rather than through formal organization...

...2.50...

...At the level of concrete achievement in improving human relations, Mrs...

...In contrast, he believes that loyalty in totalitarian states is much more brittle because a totalitarian system seeks to destroy or absorb all independent social organizations...

...A proper loyalty program must take into account the nature of loyalty and the diversity of opinions essential to democratic life...

...The paradox is that our people have prized education and feared intellecKols...

...The very strength of loyalty in the free, democratic state, he argues, comes from the individual's loyalty to other groups within the state, such as the family and the profession, with which people identify themselves...

...Drawing upon the insights of contemporary social science, this professor of political science at the University of Chicago shows how complex both concepts are, and thus warns against the danger of oversimplification, one of the most common in the civil liberties field...

...Curti maintains that to fulfill our destiny we must make full use of all our talents and skills, those of the men of thought as well as the men of action...

...He believes that "the torment of secrecy" has clearly gone far beyond the legitimate purposes of safeguarding vital information and preventing subversion...

...I should add, however, that Lamont does not consider, at least in this book, the findings upon which these programs have rested...

...That is why we aim to be social engineers rather than social reformers...

...There is little to learn in Corliss Lamont's strangely-titled book, Freedom Is as Freedom Does...

...loyalty and disloyalty exist side by side within individuals and groups...

...Most of them restate well-known bromides, or rearrange familiar facts...

...All workers in this field should study this lively book for the instruction it gives in method...

...But he writes, though very eloquently, in the manner of the literary essayist...

...Our strength as a nation lies in our complexity, in our pluralism, in our recognition of the fact that national loyalty is at best limited, since much of life in a free country is non-political...

...Such a book is The Loyal and the Disloyal by Morton Grodzins...

...The crucial point is that the discontented finds a face-to-face group that shares his discontent...

...322 pp...

...Throughout these various books one factor seems to appear and reappear in the background of civil liberties problems, and that is the sentiment of anti-intellectualism...

...Reviewed by David Fellman WHERE there is much desire to learn," John Milton once said, "there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions...

...His plea, like that of Grodzins, is for a pluralistic politics, and for functional secrecy instead of the symbolic secrecy required by "paranoid ideological extremism...

...Cross-Currents, by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein...

...Cross-Currents describes certain anti-Semitic activities among professional hate merchants in the United States, Germany, and the Near East...

...If the Court sustains a statute by, let us say, a 7-2 vote, the minority justices are invariably right, and the majority justices are wrong...

...Those who are concerned with developing the techniques of social engineering in a delicate and complicated field will learn much from this informative account of an intelligent and imaginative practitioner in the art of persuasion...

...Nevertheless, totalitarian loyalty has its attractions, such as the psychic comfort so many derive from freedom from thinking, and the author discusses these satisfactions frankly...

...The nature and basic reasons for its persistence in American history are brilliantly explored by Merle Curti, of the University of Wisconsin's history department, in American Paradox...

...3.95...

...The paths to disloyalty are closed to no man...

...He does not even speculate on the possibility that Congress may have some competence to assess the state of the nation...

...Our Human Rights, by Rebecca C. Barton...

...His principal contribution lies in his analysis of some of the continuing factors in American life which explain the background of our current excesses: hyperpatriotism, xenophobia, isolationism, fundamentalism, "the strain of politics," and above all, American political populism...

...Most striking is the author's analysis of the universality of ambivalent attitudes...

...There is not only a great desire to learn, but the writing is at various levels, and comes from widely different sources, scholars, essayists, special pleaders, professional group relations experts and exhorters...

...The very loyalties a normal, happy man has to his job, church, and family may lead him to disloyalty to the nation...

...2.75...

...Barton, who is director of the Governor's Commission on Human Rights in Wisconsin, tells in Our Human Rights the fascinating story of how her agency has handled specific problems...

...Some reflect scholarship of a very useful sort, and once in a long while a book appears which really digs deeply, and explores an original idea...

...Of course if this is so, many of our state and national programs in the past decade have been quite unnecessary and indeed wrongful...

...Our Commission," Mrs...

...Furthermore, in democratic systems much of life is non-political, and the meaning of national loyalty is ambiguous, whereas in a totalitarian state every effort is made to reduce the ambiguities...

...His method is simple...

...Men are loyal to the state for all sorts of reasons, and combinations of reasons, ranging from inertia and fear to the satisfactions derived from public services and even suffering...

...Loyalty is strongly influenced by the individual's life situation, and Grodzins illustrates this basic point by drawing upon the experience of the Japanese-Americans during the late war...

...Grodzins argues that the various loyalty-security programs have done more harm than good, producing a withdrawal of affection and competence from the nation, and a miasma of fear, suspicion, worry, conformity, timidity, and discouragement...

...Aside from its value as a compendium of information, much of which is presented in a wholly slanted manner, die validity of its essential argument depends upon its initial assumption...

...Freedom is as Freedom Does, by Corliss Lamont...

...Furthermore, Lamont argues that most of the legislation in the security field is unconstitutional, in spite of the Supreme Court's decisions to the contrary...

...116 pp...