THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Spurious Leadership Dear Sirs: "My dad can whip your dad!" Is this the level of "statesmanship" and "diplomacy" to which we have descended? President Eisenhower's recent...
...Bowles, "that our military intervention was an inevitable corollary of the earlier Soviet intervention" (italics mine...
...What is Mr...
...we offer you not greater H-bomb tests, but greater tests of our faith in the goodness of humankind, a goodness which will respond to realistic idealism...
...If they hadn't been, few of my countrymen or his own co-religionists, not to mention people of other countries, would now be alive...
...Evidently she reads the propaganda of the American Medical Association...
...and "Whereas our eyes have been opened to the dangers from strontium 90, and from the presence to a lesser or greater degree of radioactive particles in the water and air around us, by scientists throughout the world and by such prominent individuals as Dr...
...America Jolted Dear Sirs: No need to worry about your editorial comment headed, "Hurrah for the Russians" in the November issue...
...David Stry Melbourne, Fla...
...It seems to me that unless the "ideological approach" of the pacifists is put into practice very, very soon, the actual historical facts will overwhelm us and there will no longer be any question of who is right and who is wrong—in fact, there will be no human beings to argue any question...
...Senate: "Whereas Great Britain, the United States, and Russia have been engaging in extensive tests of nuclear weapons and presumably plan to continue such tests in the future...
...That the cold war, oppression of the smaller and less powerful, and the constant threat of violence must surely follow seems obvious...
...Hiram B. Holdridge Evanston, 111...
...By whom...
...Such a document if adopted by the U.N...
...They point out to us that war is a relic of a barbarous past and should not be continued...
...Disgraceful Policy Dear Sirs: Negotiations designed to end the arms race in the Middle East and place the dominant emphasis on social and economic rehabilitation of the whole area as suggested by The Progressive and Senator Humphrey are constructive measures but ignore the basic issue, which is the right of a people for self-determination...
...But who was selling armaments to the nations of the Middle East before the earlier Soviet intervention...
...Mixed About Mayer Dear Sirs: I usually read Milton Mayer with mixed feelings...
...But those who would not go back certainly could have been distributed to much better advantage in other less populated and more hospitable lands, both physically and socially, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, some South American countries, and other parts of the world...
...So let's stop being fooled and exploited by the pharmaceutical houses, the physicians, the hospitals, the insurance companies, and the druggists...
...Let us hope that all leaders of all nations will become men of mature mind...
...Howard S. Miller Hiawatha, Kansas Fallout Dear Sirs: On July 31, 1957, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon introduced the following resolution in the U.S...
...Sometimes Mr...
...They tell us that wars are fought only to save the evils that cause war and that war intensifies the evils it pretends to eliminate and never solves any problems, but instead creates more problems that could be solved with common sense instead, bringing harm to no one...
...It is not very often, however, that I meet with the consistent quality and subtle perception to be found in the reviews and critical pieces of your columnist Martin Dworkin...
...and "Whereas it is not alone the death and destruction which the bombs themselves can wreck, but also, and perhaps more important, the devastating effects upon our own and future generations of the radioactive fallout which is the aftermath of such explosions...
...It was an unusual experience to find oneself exposed to both sides of this emotionally charged issue...
...Matthew (chap...
...There is no logical reason why the millions of refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe should have been dumped there, except for the ridiculous religious claims of the Jews that it is their land because they were there first or because it was promised to them...
...Let's look around us...
...Where there is no vision, the people perish...
...I used to be a pacifist myself, and can still think of several excellent reasons for being one...
...If we liberals let The Progressive down soon or late we may expect to go down with it...
...What there is no place for in Miss Rand's world is charity that subsidizes vice instead of virtue, or love for worthless or depraved persons...
...By the way: I am a Catholic...
...E. Nelson Hayes (November issue) thinks I am suffering from a "great illness...
...And Much More Dear Sirs: There are many places where I could make good use of the enclosed two dollars, but I owe it and much more to The Progressive for what it has done to further the economic interests of the common people of America and especially the farmers—of whom I am one...
...Charity is performed for the value that the recipient demonstrates, and love is rational because based on the qualities achieved by the beloved...
...In the first place, most of the refugees should have gone back to their homes...
...The tajents must be there prior to the cooperation...
...and one of the most compelling is the last war...
...and "Whereas millions of people in Japan alone have signed petitions against further H-bomb tests and thousands in our own and other countries are showing increased concern as to the fate of humanity itself in a world made unfit to sustain life of any kind...
...His presentation is alone worth more than a year's subscription to The Progressive...
...How shall we or anyone else proceed...
...to the lands, to the language, and to the culture that they knew—under the protection of the United Nations...
...Multitudes across the world are looking up and seeking the bread of real leadership...
...John Welnhofer Chicago, 111...
...C. W. Griffin Erlton, N. J. Favors Higher Price Dear Sirs: I am enclosing a check for $6 to pay for a year's subscription...
...he asked...
...If enough people make their feelings known some action will be taken...
...Even our daily newspapers are carrying articles about our scientific lag and how we have neglected our intellectuals...
...in subsidizing and protecting Israel, financing expanded immigration through Jewish bond drives using leading politicians as keynote speakers, can only further aggravate the Arabs to increased hatred toward the West, all to the advantage of Russia in her aim to penetrate the strategic area of the Middle East...
...By using their minds...
...Why not propose that the U.N...
...Terrible as war is, the rule of Hitler and the gas chambers would have been worse...
...Of course the papers could do with a little soul-searching of their own and see how they supported educational needs...
...I have never felt this more strongly than a while back, when I read what he had to say about France, about which he didn't know very much, and about my own country, of which he apparently knew still less...
...We are now calling for science and more science...
...I am frequently haunted by a feeling that if I could actually be present at some of the scenes he describes, they wouldn't look that way at all...
...As long as we seek destruction, the finest results of our most thoughtful men will be misused in these ways...
...You are to be congratulated on providing an arena for a critic of his caliber and perspicacity...
...It is probably too late now, but perhaps something like that can still be done...
...Let's not believe everything we read in the press...
...Middle East Proposal Dear Sirs: Congratulations on your excellent November issue with its comprehensive treatment of problems in the Middle East...
...then if some of the Jewish refugees go back to their or other lands, that would enable the Arab refugees to go back to their land and it should even enable some of the educated Arabs who cannot find a place for themselves in the Middle East, to emigrate to Germany in exchange for German Jews who emigrated to Israel...
...If the aggressive impulses of men can be diverted from sowing hatred and discord, from perfecting methods of exterminating life, and channeled into the adventurous challenge of space travel, then war will become less of a psychological necessity...
...Millions of dollars worth of patent medicines are sold...
...Degenerative diseases are on the increase...
...Hayes' refutation of Miss Rand's philosophy...
...Paula Jenkins Falls Church, Va...
...Bowles...
...Mayer annoys me with his flip references to the way Germans were killed in that war...
...The loser in the race to the moon will fare better than the "winner" of the next war...
...Miss Rand's "worship" of money and material wealth is simply her approval of them as the means by which man can live happily on this earth...
...It is high time for a society to take stock of its direction when the soldier, the militarist, and the scientist become exalted to the minimization of the poet, the prophet, and the scholar...
...Alfred G. Fisk Professor of Philosophy San Francisco State College San Francisco, Calif...
...Hayes believe that love could keep the world alive for a week...
...And Miss Rand's point is that the men of inferior talent could not survive without the enormous contributions of the men of genius...
...Unfortunately I can think of still better reasons (as they appear to me) for not being one...
...Read it and see if it doesn't sound like a photographic description of what will happen if they get careless with those things...
...Guts r Dear Sirs: I want to express my thanks for the information you gave us on the Middle East situation in your November issue...
...Israel an Injustice Dear Sirs: Congratulations on the special Middle East issue of The Progressive...
...Shirley Langmore Ann Arbor, Mich...
...Instead of concentrating on the war missile aspect of the satellite launchings we should accept the Russian challenge in its peaceful, scientific aspects...
...We are used to this sort of bias from our leaders who are losing the Cold War, but it is hard to take from a liberal like Mr...
...Cooperate how...
...They prove how stupid it is for mankind to have wars...
...Certainly the United States and the victorious allies, after World War II, could have done much better...
...Disappointed in Bowles Dear Sirs: Your November issue on the Middle East is excellent, but I was disappointed in Chester Bowles' article...
...they are being offered the stone of fear and of bankruptcy of vision...
...They try to convince us that no man is wise enough, no nation important enough and no human interest is precious enough to justify the wholesale murder and destruction which constitute ugly wars and that more war anywhere is unthinkable for intelligent human beings...
...for greater and greater emphasis on technology and technical skills...
...For a nation like the United States that proclaims democracy and self-determination to have been the leading nation in effecting the partition of Palestine against the will of the great majority of its people, using dishonorable means to force the partition through the U.N...
...if we had no technological knowledge and no capital equipment, how does Mr...
...And the free market, which Miss Rand admires, is precisely the method by which individuals can rationally cooperate in order to make the world a better place to live for everyone...
...On the basis of rational values...
...It was equally unusual to find so much space devoted to affirmative alternatives to present policies...
...Assembly would then replace all former U.N...
...Mother Nature Dear Sirs: In the November issue, in the People's Forum, Helen Kerber makes the following statement: "Considering what medicine has done in conquering disease...
...C. Edwin Hill Seattle, Wash...
...We're the sickest nation in the world...
...I feel sure that many people share Senator Morse's concern, and would like to register their opinions in some tangible manner...
...The answer, presumably accurate, is in the editorial in the same issue, "Powder Keg in the Middle East": "Three times this year the Kremlin has proposed such a plan—only to be rebuffed by Washington...
...This would be prestige indeed...
...President Eisenhower's recent speeches seem to imply that prestige for our nation, in the eyes of the world, lies in our matching Russia's secularist and materialist "faith" in more and more physical force, rather than in standing on our own feet and making a really unique contribution to the world...
...The physicians' offices, the hospitals, sanitaria, and insane asylums are running over...
...New York, N. Y...
...And all these wonder drugs...
...That the Arabs and Israelis will not settle their differences between themselves is abundantly clear from the articles you publish...
...Resolutions now unrealistically appealed to as a basis for negotiations, and would be a concrete step forward from the present uneasy truce toward an actual peace settlement...
...Mature Minds Dear Sirs: Men of reasoning and good logic, who have mature minds, have always reminded us that wars are a disobedience to the Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill...
...violation results in sickness and disease...
...If all would accept these new beatitudes, we would be consistent and would never have to hang our heads in shame...
...I know of no magazine in this country that would have the guts to do this job of presenting the position of both the Arab states and Israel...
...Now that my own country, for whatever incomprehensible reasons, has insisted on getting into the act, what is to prevent Egypt and the Argentine and an endless queue of sovereign states doing the same, till we discover that "one bomb too many" was reached about five or six bombs back...
...Murray N. Rothbard New York, N. Y. No One to Argue Dear Sirs: I have just read Theodore Dufur's letter in the September issue of The Progressive, and I am curious what possible "actual historical facts" he could be considering in writing as he did...
...In contrast, Mr...
...Man has apparently split the atom and challenged the stars "not because of his single talents but because of his ability to cooperate:" but cooperate with what...
...Amos Vogel Executive Secretary Cinema 16 Inc...
...The heroes in Atlas love deeply and cooperate with one another, and perform acts of charity...
...to impose the same unrestricted immigration of Jews into the U.S...
...You do not have to be a pacifist to believe that this hydrogen-bomb business is lunacy, and that an endless succession of tests may result in killing off the lot of us without having a war at all...
...We need at such a time as this a deeper understanding of humanity as we find it in the humanities...
...Another thing that usually annoys me about him is his airy pacifism...
...not a deeper cultivation of man's inhumanity to man...
...What we need to discover in the social realm," he wrote, "is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be...
...But because we have the highest standard of living in the world and are unable to adjust to the temporary loss in material values that we must have if we close our armament factories, discontinue making atomic and hydrogen bombs, and turn our efforts toward seeking a real and lasting peace among nations, we have done little that is constructive since before the beginning of World War II...
...Marguerite Eisen Detroit, Mich...
...Well, who knows—the art of thinking may become such a popular pastime that in 1958 subscribers to The Progressive will increase by leaps and bounds...
...Over a half-century ago William James discussed the psychology of war in his remarkable book: The Varieties of Religious Experience...
...Hayes is dead wrong when he says that in Miss Rand's philosophy "there is no place for charity, for love and understanding and cooperation...
...24, verses 15 to 35...
...This is $2 more than your regular subscription, I know, but I think The Progressive should receive a higher price...
...Then cut out this letter, sign your name across it, or at the bottom, and mail it to me...
...and "Whereas it is recognized that excessive radioactivity not only creates a hazard for all, especially for our children who stand to suffer more directly and acutely from strontium 90 than do we who are responsible, but may even, through genetic mutations and other cumulative effects, gradually and inevitably wipe out the human race: Now, therefore, be it "Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that the President should undertake by all available means to obtain the prompt and concurrent cessation of further testing of nuclear bombs by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, until an international committee of recognized scientists can at least determine the extent of the danger from radioactive fallout...
...Norman Kohn Evanston, 111...
...Michael A. Shadid, M.D...
...Charles Wrong Chester, England Space Travel vs...
...Must our President and our nation be stampeded into a spurious kind of leadership, which seeks to discern the direction the crowd is going, and then to run like mad to get out front and lead it—to disaster...
...This morning, in church, we heard The Gospel according to St...
...Margaret Parker Orissa, India Praise for Dworkin Dear Sirs: As executive secretary of Cinema 16, it is my sometimes unfortunate duty to read and digest film criticism published in a number of countries and a number of languages...
...Police Force, use of the waters of the Jordan basin for the development of the whole area, cessation of economic and traffic boycotts, and provisions for a Middle East Development Agency...
...Assembly with findings and a suggested Draft Settlement of all outstanding issues between Israel and the Arabs, including, if they find it necessary, definite proposals for border adjustments, repatriation or resettlement of refugees, payment for refugee property claims, the statuts of Jerusalem, guarantees by U.N...
...And the new State of Israel is an injustice...
...what attention they gave to intellectuals and how they reported the McCarthy hearings...
...But where do we go from here, and how...
...Perhaps we have at least a partial solution to this problem in space travel...
...With each individual's single talents...
...Oklahoma City, Okla...
...Medford, Ore...
...Harold E. Fackert Jersey City, N. J. Defends "Atlas Shrugged" Dear Sirs: As an admirer of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, I am of course interested to know why Mr...
...and I do not believe that there was any third choice...
...But man's only means of survival is the power of his reasoning mind to cope with reality...
...Hayes apparently denies that A is A, holds that love and not man's mind makes the world run, and tries to "reason" that there are "limits to reason...
...G. W. McCullough Ottawa, Ontario Warburg's Masterpiece Dear Sirs: James P. Warburg's historical analysis of the causes of conflict in the Middle East was a masterpiece...
...They go out of style as fast as they come in...
...From where I sit, Old Mother Nature is the real hero...
...Anybody in his right mind" would have to admit that a nation relying on a war-supported economy would sooner or later have developed the H-bomb, and will, I regret, surely outdo even this accomplishment...
...If there is anything that has jolted America out of its complacency, at least for the moment, it is Russia's Sputnik...
...Journalism at Its Best Dear Sirs: Your November issue on the Middle East is journalism at its very best—thoughtful, informative, and creative...
...But on what basis...
...Would we permit foreign nations through the U.N...
...Would the Soviet Union accept a moratorium on arms in the Middle East...
...under pressure of American Zionists in an election year, is the most disgraceful and immoral action in American history, and we are now paying the price...
...The action of the U.S...
...And the men of "power" are not her heroes but her villains, for they are the ones who wield force to negate man's reason...
...If you would rather remain anonymous just mail the clipping without the signature and it will register as a vote of approval for the resolution just the same...
...appoint a Commission (of representatives of unin-volved nations like Uruguay, Ceylon, Japan, Sweden, Poland) to study the situation and report back to the U.N...
...and the creation of a segregated Jewish police state in our land as was forced upon the Middle East...
...A person is well or sick depending upon whether or not he lives correctly according to nature's laws...
...You have done a wonderful job of showing both sides of the problems—the causes, and some suggestions for solutions...
...The truth is that none of them work...
...I rarely receive an issue that is not worth to me the cost of a year's subscription...
...As an American citizen, I wish I could feel that our country has sought at any time in the past two decades a real solution to the mounting spiral of war and a war-based economy...
...Years of warnings by liberal-minded clergymen, educators, and psychologists couldn't do what Sputnik has done...
...One of the tragedies of the way our nation seems now to be headed is the de-humanization process of such a way...
...This would help undo the need for asking for contributions to pay operating expenses...
...He is always entertaining and usually instructive, but he often strikes me as rather slick...
...If we were to follow this rule, then we should give the United States back to the Indians...
...It is most unfortunate that political Zionism has introduced such extreme and-Jewish feeling and hatred in a part of the world that formerly was free from racial prejudice and most tolerant of religious differences...
...War Dear Sirs: I should like to add, in a roundabout way, one more item to your list of reasons why the Communist satellite launchings may be of benefit to us and to the rest of mankind...
...Albert Schweitzer, Pope Pius XII, Adlai Stevenson, and many others...
...E. Whealdon 804 Cedar St...
...How can there be justice within an injustice...
...Her "mystical" belief in "the unreality of contradictions" means that she believes that A is A and cannot be non-A...
...Her view is not that the unfit do not "deserve to survive," but that they have no moral claim to make the fit struggle so that they do survive...
...We can persuasively argue, of course," says Mr...
...The medical boys haven't figured out how to keep themselves or their own families well...
...The uniqueness of this contribution could be this: courage to step out into leadership —true leadership—and to say to a dark and distrusting world: "We offer you not death, and weapons of death, but life, and the means to that life...
...All of which, however, is just a prelude to the announcement that I have seldom if ever read a better article than his "Close—but No Cigar" (October number of The Progressive...
...First, we find that "man has survived not because of his fitness as an individual, but because of his power to love...
...against aggression from either side, patrols by the U.N...
...More cancer, more heart trouble, more arthritis, more colds, more flu...
Vol. 22 • January 1958 • No. 1
