THE PEOPLE'S FORUM

THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Signal Public Service Dear Sirs: At this time of crisis for both East and West, The Progressive has performed a signal public service in publishing a special issue devoted to...

...A program of free medical care for a nation exacts a heavy price, not only in terms of monetary cost to the country but also in terms of effects on the medical profession and medical research, in terms of doctor-patient relationship and in terms of the motivation of patients...
...How does a person under voting age make his voice heard on the matters which concern him...
...The first has to do with the extent to which the federal government should attempt to underwrite the welfare and security of the individual...
...He says he won't let his government make him shoot guns at people...
...Guy W. Finney Burbank, Calif...
...James P. Warburg's "Background to Danger" is a valuable and competent contribution to your issue...
...If too many more articles like "Our Languid Liberals" by Fred Rodell in the March issue and Mayer's "Egghead's End" in the April issue are printed, perhaps The Progressive will fold up...
...The Democrats only favored "unemployment and old-age insurance under state laws...
...And on the other side of the equation, if the individual would alter his budget by reducing or eliminating such items as cigarettes, {60...
...he says his conscience tells him not to kill...
...The second fundamental issue that should be faced is whether a health insurance program would actually provide the greater amount and improved quality of medical care that its proponents claim it will...
...If it is important that everyone see a doctor for every illness, how much more important is it for everyone to have three . good meals daily and to be adequately clothed and housed...
...The real difference between Milton Mayer and Richard Neuberger is very simple: When it comes to the important issues, the issues that really count, Mayer is right, Neuberger is wrong...
...he says arming the country makes war more likely...
...he wanted to be a constructive citizen...
...What does he mean by "Algerian...
...It will cost money to carry the case through to decision in the higher courts...
...It reads as follows: ; "We, the undersigned, as teen-agers, are = unable to vote for the people whom we feel will best advance our interests and ideals...
...Wiley on Latin America Dear Sirs: Carleton Beals' letter in the September issue of The Progressive is unfortunately so completely erroneous that I am setting forth the basic facts regarding my views on Latin America...
...Lucy P. Carner Philadelphia, Pa...
...When it comes to downright folly man is far weaker than woman...
...It can be shown statistically that a third of our people are improperly or inadequately fed...
...The United States should stop toadying to the "uncommitted peoples" by criticizing her proven allies, or she will have no friends left...
...Mayer's beliefs, reasoned with him...
...for example, I have not toured the Caribbean area...
...There is no middle road...
...Schindler some 16,000 or so to choose from...
...I'd try not to give voice to those pat things which seem to make for best sellers, and so here again Dr...
...What problem...
...That means, I think, junking much of our present power politics, and instead aiming our program at what a just and conscientious Arab sincerely interested in the real interest of his people would want...
...I heartily agree with every word you said and only wish that some of your wisdom would be exhibited by the powers-that-be in Washington...
...attorney as defense counsel...
...Let us set an example which will inspire men everywhere to rise to our standards...
...The money was $32.78, plus interest...
...But when it is indulged in in The Progressive, by a writer of a best seller, and in an article doubtless destined to be part of another best seller, then it ought to be challenged...
...A typical bureaucracy would be created to administer the program...
...The problem centered around petitions against nuclear weapons tests...
...Teen-agers' Protest Dear Sirs: As a teen-ager, I have for a long time been faced with a dilemma which probably confronts many other teen-agers...
...entertainment, $50...
...High-handed attempts to impose our own concepts simply will not work...
...Mark it for the Mayer Tax Case...
...A lot of other writers whose articles appear in liberal magazines fall somewhere in between...
...Schindler states that "neither sex is innately superior to the other in any significant way" (most people agree with that) but then proceeds to prove (sic) that man really has nothing that can compare to whatever women have...
...Maybe...
...What would be the over-all end result...
...W. F. Brown Cambridge, Mass...
...Simple solutions— "Why don't the Arabs and Jews get together and settle this thing in a Christian manner...
...Challenge to Dr...
...are no longer possible...
...Nearly all of those I have seen imply that the signers are voting age people...
...Alexander Wiley United States Senate Washington, D. C. Stop Toadying Dear Sirs: In a letter in your October issue, Mr...
...Schindler's wide experience, sympathy, and plain speech...
...He doesn't expect the government to stop making ready for war until he can persuade a lot more people than he's persuaded yet to agree with him...
...I challenge Dr...
...Double Talk' Dear Sirs: Dr...
...Mayer's Torturing Dear Sirs: Readers of The Progressive had a right, I think, to expect a first class piece of reporting of the prayer vigil at Las Vegas by someone who had been on the spot and who has perspective about its meaning and influence...
...He did not want to be a conscientious objector...
...Lancaster, Pa...
...and guns are not constructive...
...All persons between the ages of 12 and 21 are requested to sign this petition...
...Then Mr...
...The above are only a few of his pseudo-scientific gems of double talk...
...William Gorham Rice The Law School University of Wisconsin Madison, Wis...
...1. As anyone can see from reading my past statements, I have noted with genuine regret the fact that the high political, social, and economic standards which we have are not enjoyed by many lands to the south...
...Were I to attempt a "How To" book I'd try to be authoritative through study of the best writings in the field...
...Schindler's...
...Attorney General's office has announced that it is taking the place of the local U.S...
...I am writing to explain how I have dealt with this problem, and I would like to enlist the help of other teenagers who have been faced with this same problem...
...A meal ticket, clothing coupon, and lease provided to each individual man, woman, and child by the government would quickly eliminate want about as readily as a health insurance policy would eliminate lack of medical care...
...Andrew Salter in his Conditioned Reflex Therapy (Creative Age Press, N.Y., 1949) writes: "Excitation is a basic law of life, and neurosis is the result of the inhibition of natural impulses...
...The U.S...
...He holds that the citizens have authority over the government, and that the conscience of the citizen has authority over the citizen...
...Overstreet adds: "Friendliness and neighborliness are essential to a healthy mind and a healthy culture...
...Due to the danger to future generations from radioactive fallout and strontium 90, the ignorance and strife of scientists over the problem, and the world tension produced, we feel we must stop testing them, whether Russia cooperates or not, but we must stop immediately...
...3. Just as I want this country to "raise a standard to which the wise and the honest may repair," so I do not want it to be guilty of trying to force other lands, by bayonet, or by economic brute strength to adopt our system...
...But the wisdom that a counselor gains from such confidences can, with no breach of faith, be turned to the benefit of many others by men of Dr...
...And so the State Department has time and again rightly stated that it is now America's policy not to interfere with Latin American governments, even though we may, as individuals, deplore some of their internal policies...
...To fulfill its promise it would distribute free goods and services to all...
...She says she is just trying to find a solution to the problem...
...Schindler Dear Sirs: Dr...
...Schindler Dear Sirs: I liked your October selection, "The Pursuit of Happiness," from Dr...
...The straw man: "A number of psychologists and psychiatrists advocate that people behave in what they term an 'uninhibited' way...
...John Schindler to name one reputable psychologist or psychiatrist guilty of anything reasonably resembling the quoted statement...
...A resolution in the United Nations Gen-i' eral Assembly deploring atrocities on both sides during the tragic Algerian struggle would be a way of showing America's condemnation of the use of force to settle disputes, but to humiliate a France already weakened and embittered by three wars against German imperialism will not help the free world...
...As a physician himself, Dr...
...Mayer's money...
...The outside world knows that the American male changes diapers, washes dishes, does housework, and his female counterpart more and more wears the pants figuratively and literally, but I should like to suggest to Dr...
...After three years, neither having persuaded the other, the government stopped talking and took the money from the Mayer bank account...
...I agree with him that: (A) There is no psychotherapist nor psychiatrist I know of who says that people should indiscriminately follow the dictates of their basic impulses...
...In Sweden after many years of national health insurance there are 95 doctors per 100,000 population as compared with 140 doctors per 100,000 population in the United States...
...Estes Kefauver United States Senate Washington, D.C...
...Frank K. Meers, Jr., MJJ...
...The government says to such people, "Okay —you can do peaceful work for the public welfare...
...To tell them to go "back home" to France would be like telling a third-generation American of British extraction to go "back" to Britain...
...He wrote to his government, saying he wanted to pay his tax, he would pay his tax at once, if the government would not spend his money for guns...
...Schindler Dear Sirs: Kicking the stuffing out of a straw man is an ancient if not honorable tradition...
...It taxed him, and used, he figured, at least half of the money to buy guns...
...But alas, that is evidently too much to expect...
...The problems raised by the 900,000 Arab refugees, freedom of transit through the Suez Canal and the other international waters of the Middle East, the threat to pipeline routes carrying essential oil to free Europe, Communist infiltration as in Syria, Egypt and Yemen, incendiary shipments of Soviet arms to these same Arab states, and the irresponsibility of local demagogues among the Arabs are ones which must be solved...
...Schindler Replies Dear Sirs: It is a pleasure to be corrected by a man of the stature of Professor Horace B. English whose book on child psychology has been a valued volume on my desk ever since it was first published...
...Richard B. Sickel New York, N. Y. Praise for Dr...
...Jose Gonzaga Gova Santiago de Cuba Not So, Dr...
...If you think this question is important and want it adjudicated, send $5 (or $10 or $2) to the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, 2006 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
...John Schind-ler's book...
...they are the people who seem to be heading in the right direction, but are not "hot" enough...
...Kathleen R. M. Stokes London, England Politics and Pensions Dear Sirs: Senator Neuberger properly noted in the September Progressive that the GOP is "Rigging the Record" by statements from which "one inevitably would have concluded that Social Security was wholly and totally a GOP invention...
...For the record, allow me to cite two psychotherapists...
...Mayer vs...
...Schindler will neither substantiate nor apologize, a grave question of professional ethics is involved—for him and no less for The Progressive, since freedom of opinion does not include irresponsibility about facts...
...Richard L. Neuberger United States Senate Washington, D. C. Excellent Dear Sirs: Your November issue on the Middle East is excellent—a truly wonderful job...
...The suit is on appeal, and the U.S...
...This important event was relayed to us, instead, through the familiar torturings of Milton Mayer's Conscience, and I, for one, am not satisfied...
...I submit that we are now paying a fearful price for our over-emphasis here in America on competitive enterprise, at the expense of cooperative enterprise...
...The result will be the same...
...The GOP favored merely facing "the future un-afraidl" Only the Socialist Party proposed a full program of social insurance including "old-age pensions for men and women sixty years of age and over...
...Furthermore, it is as impertinent as it would be for France to demand statehood for Alaska, or equal rights for Southern Negroes...
...If he's "safe" it's likely that he isn't a pacifist, and if he isn't a pacifist, he's wrong...
...Many of these people are third generation French-Algerians and know no other home, and they fear to see their country governed by a people of alien race and religion...
...alcoholic beverages, $50...
...How long are they going to look in vain to America for some signs of friendliness, neighborliness, and moral leadership...
...Algeria is home...
...Mayer objects to making war...
...I only wish that some of the parties to the bitter disputes occurring in the Middle East could share with us the November issue of The Progressive...
...Therefore it is our intent to make our views known to the leaders who have been chosen by others, yet who hold our future as Americans in their hands...
...there are many others who hold identical views...
...I liked it because—since it runs true to my own experience—I believe it may save others from blindly misstepping their way and hurting others...
...What makes them run so frantically, as though they were driven by the threatening swish of an invisible whip wielded by an invisible slave driver...
...We may accept as a reputable psychologist one who is a member of the American Psychological Association or is at least eligible for membership: this gives Dr...
...After reading some of the informative articles in this issue of The Progressive, I found myself much more able to understand events presently occurring in this cradle of mankind where so many human conflicts and human achievements originated...
...Donald Harrington, chairman of the American Committee on Africa, Inc., calls Americans to support Algerian independence...
...Some of your readers may have been asked for funds for this case...
...I hold the office of Citizen...
...2. Unfortunately, I have not visited as extensively in Latin America as I might have hoped...
...We do and should cherish our personal privacy of thought and taste and creed, revealing it only so far as we please...
...John A. Schindler, M.D...
...To carry through this appeal will cost about $1500...
...Henry S. Reuss House of Representatives Washington, D. C. Noteworthy Journalism Dear Sirs: Your special Middle East issue is noteworthy journalism, highly valuable to Progressive readers in giving them a clearer understanding of the tragedy, the costs, the implications of the Arab-Israeli conflict...
...otherwise, the Middle East will remain backward and a threat to its own and the world's peace and well-being...
...But this did not quiet Mr...
...to be conservative), he would soon have the wherewithal to finance the "high cost of medical care...
...Franz Alexander as saying in his book Our Age of Unreason: "The analyst sees' patients—physicians, lawyers, engineers, bankers, advertising men, teachers, and laboratory research men of the universities, students, and clerks—engaged in a marathon race...
...the Government Dear Sirs: said Milton Mayer, "am the highest official in the government of the United States...
...37) "Living in society necessitates inhibition, but modern training goes too far when it teaches children to be polite at all times, not to contradict others, not to interrupt, not to be selfish, and always to consider other people's feelings...
...Mayer reasoned with hij government...
...I'll stimulate like the rest of mankind but it's not quite as simple as that...
...Ruth Askew Chicago, 111...
...Thus, contrary to Mr...
...Uncle Sam I could pick up the tab (not to mention the administrative tip of 15 per cent) and meet the additional financial demands by new taxation...
...The suit declares that the government has no right to make Mr...
...At stake is a principle important to every man who thinks conscience ought to be free: Can the government conscript money from the man of conscience to enable others to do what he will not do himself...
...With the exception of Panama...
...However, I feel sure that yours is one sane voice that will not join the loud clamor for a stepped-up missile program as our only answer to Russia...
...that if a person is to be mentally healthy, he should have the very minimum of inhibitions, that is to say, barely enough to elude the law, yet considerably less than is connoted by the term "decency...
...That's not what I've learned...
...Jacob K. Javits United States Senate Washington, D. C. Superb Omnibus Dear Sirs: The Progressive's superb November omnibus on the Middle East suggests that humility is a virtue for all who concern themselves with our policy there...
...doctors have had to work longer for less pay and pile through mountains of paperwork...
...Naturally, as Americans, each of us deeply prizes liberty...
...Hallock Hoffman White Plains, N.Y...
...Starting in 1948, he kept back one-half the money his tax amounted to, and gave it to two organizations the government said were engaged in work of national importance, the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation...
...Mayer is a conscientious objector to military service...
...Schindler would have the better of me...
...Warburg, Bowles, Humphrey, and Thomas give us some good ideas on the subject in the November Progressive...
...What these people don't seem to realize is that if there is anything almost any Latin American will resent, whether he be a liberal or authoritarian, it is "Yankee meddling" and "interference...
...Suicidal Arms Race Dear Sirs: Congratulations on your excellent editorial on the Middle East, "A Self-Defeating Course," in the October Progressive...
...If a family is medically indigent, it must also be in need of food, clothing, and housing (unless a distinction is made between the doctor's and grocer's bills...
...Has the United States lost all moral sense and reason...
...Milton Mayer, government official, is now engaged in trying to bring his government to book for what he regards as its unconstitutional abuse of his rights...
...Is the health of England better as a result of all this bureaucracy...
...Schindler, Prentice-Hall and you as an editor all have the advantage of me because I'm not a writer, an editor, or a publisher...
...They insist that a person must remain juvenile in expressing, saying, and doing the things he wishes to do...
...Such a policy would obviously lead to serious legal consequences for the doer as well as the psychotherapist advocating such conduct...
...No one seems to see the simple contradiction in terms when we are told that our security lies in these horrible weapons of destruction...
...Actually, the Social Security Act would never have been passed in 1935 had both major parties followed their 1932 platforms...
...He goes on to quote Dr...
...Yet today, some liberals are guilty of thinking which is just as imperialist— only now they want the United States to take over countries because "we don't like dictatorship...
...However, multiple checks and safeguards would be required to avoid abuses...
...If he cannot, he should apologize to the two professions for libelous misrepresentation...
...I don't care which happens...
...AU I'm interested in is having Mayer . continue making comfortable liberals who read The Progressive more uncomfortable than ever...
...his government, with great politeness, acknowledging the conscientious nature of Mr...
...Several friends of mine have helped me to draw up a petition expressly for teenagers to sign...
...Indeed, isolated as we are from so many of the Arab peoples by tyrannical rulers, a successful outcome may not be possible at all...
...As numerous writers on world affairs point out, the uncommitted peoples of Asia and Africa are sick and tired of this suicidal arms race going on between the United States and the Soviet Union...
...Let Dr...
...Schindler presumably knows the three or four professional guilds which include nearly all reputable psychiatrists...
...Both he and his audience were standing in the rain, since at the last minute the U.S...
...Milton )|ns addressing a group of Germans...
...Self-control comes from no control at all...
...As H. A. Overstreet pointed out so forcefully in his book The Great Enterprise, the intense rivalry engendered by the competitive spirit results in "deterioration of character" and "a hostility which is usually deep-going and can be of murderous intensity...
...Mayer had no grounds for getting his money back...
...We are 'troubled by our nation's stand on nuclear weapons...
...Every year his government, which could not conscript his body, kept conscripting his money...
...With some expansion of present methods of caring for the medically indigent through private charities, community chest funds, and some government grants, an inexpensive administrative solution of the medical economic problem may very well be accomplished...
...Department of Internal Medicine The Monroe Clinic Monroe, Wis...
...Schindler says, in effect, "The man has superior physical strength but woman has superior physical nature and endurance...
...As a member of the United States Senate, I was particularly impressed with the reasonable and affirmative solutions proposed by my able colleague, Senator Hubert Humphrey...
...By 1935, however, the major parties threw in the towel and, socialism or not, enacted the original Social Security Act 372 to 33 in the House and 76 to 6 in the Senate...
...district court judge said Mr...
...Likewise the communication between husband and wife and in their special sphere between client and counselor, is within the exclusive control of its confider...
...The male is guilty of wars and 57 varieties of conflict but woman has greater feeling and sympathy for human relations...
...He has urged his government to stop making ready for war...
...However, there are a number of psychotherapists who say that: (B) Inhibitions lead to neurosis, and so to unhappiness...
...There are one million people of French extraction in Algeria (over ten per cent of the population), who wish to remain attached to France...
...Now let him name one, either psychologist or psychiatrist—just one—and quote chapter and verse, where he has ever "advocated" (Schindler's term) that a person do just what he wants to do...
...The taboo against such discussion is well broken by a presentation so warm-hearted and universal as Dr...
...I realize that you wrote this editorial before fateful October 4 produced the appalling wave of psychopathic hysteria in the United States...
...The driver and'the whip they carry in their own minds...
...A well-adjusted person is like a housebroken dog...
...Moreover it does a special service for husbands and wives in its plain-spoken advice about their sex relations...
...Comfortable Liberals Dear Sirs: Margaret Hofmann, writing in the September Progressive, evidently thinks that by having Milton Mayer contribute occasionally rather than regularly, The Progressive will sell more subscriptions...
...47) Robert Lindner's Prescription for Rebellion and Must You Conform...
...Dennis Weeks 409 Tilton Park Drive DeKalb, Ill...
...The government said it couldn't segregate Mr...
...Schindler stay with internal medicine and The Progressive stay with politics...
...He has the basic inhibitions to permit him to live in society, but none extra to interfere with his happiness...
...Mayer sued the government to get it back...
...We regret the absence anywhere in the world, in front of, or behind the Iron Curtain, of all the freedoms we Americans cherish...
...The difference between (A) and (B) is merely the practical difference of living in or out of jail...
...The Progressive, like other liberal organs, rightly deplored our tendency in past decades to send marines to take over Latin American countries...
...Even a popularizer should be held to account for his facts or alleged facts...
...But the likelihood of failure makes it that much more imperative that what we do at least leave a clean taste in our mouths if we fail...
...The doctor says of man, "It requires nothing more than such nearness [of any female who is attractive to him] to awaken his sexual desires and stimulate his reproductive organs...
...If the liberals who read The Progressive are satisfied with articles like "Winning the West for the Democrats" by Richard Neu-berger in the May issue, perhaps The Progressive will prosper and soon come out every week instead of once a month...
...Beals, I have never visited the Dominican Republic, for example...
...Ralph W. Bostrom Philadelphia, Pa...
...John A. Schindler's "What's Wrong With Women" is an example of what's wrong with American male eggheads...
...We urge you, as the President of the United States, to give this petition your most careful and serious consideration and then to act to the extent of your ability...
...They do not dare to stop until the rest stop lest they lose' all their self-respect, because they know only one value— that of running—running for its own sake...
...Mayer's conscience...
...Threat to Peace Dear Sirs: You are to be congratulated for your emphasis on what is perhaps the most serious current threat to world peace, the nettling Middle East crisis...
...42) "Childhood encounters, convention, manners, breeding, cliche—all contribute to this inner withholding, amounting to emotional hypocrisy...
...I'm glad he hasn't compromised in order to make his articles more acceptable by wealthier and more widely read publications...
...He's set himself up as the authority, and he's sold a half million copies...
...I guess the average liberal likes this type, because he is "safe" to read...
...Also the responsibility of the international diplomatic blunderers—including the United States, Britain, France, and Soviet Russia— all deep in power politics, little concerned (except by way of lip-service) with the humanities involved...
...Will anyone interested in this movement please write me...
...Against Health Insurance Dear Sirs: There are two fundamental issues which must be considered with respect to national health insurance advocated by Senator James Murray in his article in a recent issue of The Progressive...
...We hope that the day will come when everyone will enjoy jit, as we do...
...38) "The happy person does not waste time thinking...
...But he says his conscience pricks him if he doesn't try...
...Occupation authorities had refused to let them use their auditorium...
...Horace B. English Professor of Psychology Ohio State University Columbus, O. Dr...
...The Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs, in a letter to me just recently, commended my approach on this subject of non-interference in the Caribbean...
...And let us try to heal wounds, rather than to put salt into them, wounds of past memories of "Yankee Imperialism by the Colossus of the North...
...And if Dr...
...I can report that many Progressive subscribers, contributing mostly small amounts, have brought the total to $600...
...Schindler that he make a study of the "whys" of the "eunuch-masochist-mom" complex of the American male, unless it's too late and your men are already conditioned and ready to give birth to babies too...
...This will give Russia a challenge she dare not ignore and prove to the world we want peace...
...are so full of passages similar to Salter's that it is unnecessary to utilize The Progressive's limited space to quote them...
...Mayer buy guns when it acknowledges that it has no right to make him shoot them...
...The man is lower mentally because the average woman is intellectually more capable and lasts longer...
...Rags and slums are self-evident...
...In England patients have had to be more patient and wait longer...
...However, none of us is a psychiatrist...
...Nor is there reassurance in the absurd spectacle of an aggressive Zionism marching in a military uniform brandishing a gun near the Palestine powder keg...
...Should it limit itself to old age, survivors', and unemployment insurance or should it expand into the field of freedom from want of material things...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Signal Public Service Dear Sirs: At this time of crisis for both East and West, The Progressive has performed a signal public service in publishing a special issue devoted to the expression of many cogent and effective viewpoints on the economic, social, and diplomatic background of the Middle East...

Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12


 
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