OUR FINEST EXPORT
PROGRESSIVE "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" Our Finest Export We live in a whirl of headlines. If today's headlines proclaim a crisis, we may brood about it for the...
...It sounds simple, doesn't it...
...Take the case of Venezuela as an example...
...Everything else seems expendable...
...I do not think [the situation] calls for any basic change in the American policies which are based upon our own traditions and our own faith as to how to conduct our affairs with the other countries of the world...
...Both have been described by a respected Roman Catholic editor, the Reverend Jesus Hernandez Chapeillin, as "murderers...
...In fact, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles ran true to form when he said, in response to questions regarding the wave of anti-Americanism: "I do not believe there is anything basically different we can do...
...For 10 years the 21 nations of Latin America have received less in American aid than a single European nation, Yugo"Mirror, Mirror On The Wall" slavia...
...But one common denominator runs through them all, whether the country is Canada or Lebanon, Peru or Burma, Venezuela or Indonesia—and that is a deepening conviction that the United States is strapped inflexibly to only one aim in foreign affairs —the negative doctrine of "stopping Communism...
...But we would like to see the State Department export the great commodity and the greatest selling point the American people have—democracy...
...It would mean the beginning of an affirmative American policy of lending a helping hand to the underprivileged of our world, even if they don't hate Communism as much as we want them to...
...They tortured and killed thousands of political prisoners and generally enforced an unparalleled reign of terror...
...It is a significant fact that the most violent attacks on Nixon occurred in the two countries, Peru and Venezuela, whose late dictators have received special honors from the President of the United States...
...McCarthy, an able, scholarly Congressman, defeated Mrs...
...The attempt to liberalize the President's unemployment compensation measure was scuttled in both the House and the Senate by a bi-partisan coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats...
...Item: The Ohio primaries showed the Democrats casting more votes than the Republicans for the first time in many years...
...Polls of public opinion show Mike DiSalle, former mayor of Toledo and former OPA director, running well ahead of Governor C. William O'Neill, who is seeking reelection...
...Meanwhile, our tariffs and quotas threaten the very livelihood of countless thousands of workers in more than a dozen countries south of the border...
...Nothing, so far as we know, is being done by our State Department to foster hopeful change...
...The decision to reject tax reduction as a weapon against economic recession was reached by four men, President Eisenhower and Secretary of the Treasury Anderson, both Republicans, and Speaker Rayburn of the House and Majority Leader Johnson of the Senate, Democrats...
...The headlines proclaiming this extraordinary wave of anti-Americanism have long since been replaced by others, but the underlying causes of this wide-ranging resentment against the United States remain undisturbed...
...A foreigner seems to us to understand more clearly what that faith and these traditions are...
...Item: Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, Democrat, piled up 600,000 more votes in the California primary than did his Republican opponent for the governorship, Senator William F. Knowland...
...there were anti-American demonstrations from Djakarta to Beirut, Tokyo to Cairo, Paris to Peru...
...Is it then so difficult to understand why the freedom-loving people of Venezuela erupted as they did when they were visited by the man who represented those who had praised and supported a hateful dictatorship...
...If the present trend continues, it...
...Oscar Yanes, pro-United States editor of La Esfera in, Venezuela, put it this way: "We like the United States' political and economic systems...
...There isn't space to analyze the causes of conflict in the other areas of the world that produced anti-American demonstrations in recent weeks...
...Under California's cross-filing system, each won his party's nomination, but Knowland succeeded in defeating Brown in the Republican primary by less than three to one, while Brown swamped Knowland six to one in the Democratic primary...
...The coalition forms quickly whenever there is a showdown on progressive legislation...
...If today's headlines proclaim a crisis, we may brood about it for the day, but if tomorrow's headlines shout of a new disaster, we are quick to abandon our preoccupation with yesterday's...
...Item: A recent Gallup Poll showed Republicans suffering the sharpest losses in four years...
...Our obsessive commitment to "stop Communism" in Europe, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, and in the Far East, has resulted in a policy of taking Latin America for granted, of providing her with the meager leftovers after we have poured out our billions in areas in which we thought we saw a Communist menace...
...But such a policy would involve a basic change for the United States...
...But more significant in touching off the anti-Nixon riots were the political considerations—a deep-running conviction among Latin Americans that the United States has betrayed its role as the professed leader of the free world by encouraging and consorting with some of the most anti-democratic forces in South America...
...A month or so ago American foreign policy took its fiercest pounding in a long time...
...Dulles' complacent conviction that there isn't anything that can be done...
...When the revolution drove Jiminez from power, he found sanctuary in the United States...
...Item: In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party decided at its recent convention that the prospects for a Democratic sweep were so bright that they allowed Representative Eugene J. McCarthy to give up a safe seat in the House and impressive seniority on the House Ways and Means Committee so that he could run against Republican Senator Edward J. Thye, a formidable opponent...
...the Vice President of the United States was stoned and spit upon in Latin America, and even our closest and dearest neighbors, the Canadians, grumbled angrily over our policies...
...A few years ago Marcos Perez Jiminez was dictator-president and Pedro Estrada his chief of the secret police...
...It would mean an end to decorating dictators in Latin America, an end to coddling feudal regimes in the Middle East and Asia simply because they insist they are anti-Communist, an end to pouring so much of our foreign aid into military operations...
...Once an emergency disappears from Page One, we blithely assume that it no longer exists...
...A coalition of conservatives from both parties in the Senate deleted from the foreign aid bill a proposal to give President Eisenhower authority to use foreign aid funds to help Communist-ruled nations loosen their ties with the Kremlin...
...On the basis of the poll's questioning of a cross-section of the electorate, the 100,300,-000 citizens eligible to vote would divide as follows: Democrats—56,800,000 Republicans—35,100,000 On the fence—8,400,000 Coalition Theoretically the Democrats control Congress, but when major issues are resolved the dominant voice in our legislative branch is a coalition of hard-bitten conservatives in both parties...
...Thus we neglect the Catholic continent of South America because we feel it is safe from Communism...
...Both Senators from Maryland are now Republicans, but the Democrats are united behind a single candidate for the first time in years, Baltimore's Mayor D'Alesandro, who is seeking to unseat one of the most reactionary and McCarthyite Senators in that body, Senator John M. Butler...
...United States libraries were sacked in Lebanon and Algiers...
...A glance at South America, the area where anti-American sentiment reached its most violent pitch, reveals how false and dangerous is Mr...
...Item: Registration figures in Maryland show Democrats outnumbering Republicans by three to one...
...And yet Secretary of State Dulles sees no need for "basic change" in the "American policies which are based upon our traditions and our own faith...
...Thus we apportion 80 per cent of our foreign aid program for anti-Communist military operations, and a pitiful 20 per cent for economic assistance, which means, for example, that a little country like Jordan is bristling with American firepower while the great mass of people live in indescribable squalor...
...Eugenie Anderson, ambassador to Denmark in the Truman Administration...
...Thus, too, we support every regime, however feudal or dictatorial, if it is anti-Communist...
...The two principal sources of grievance, in the judgment of our best informed authorities on the area, are: 1) our neglect of our Latin American neighbors in political association and economic assistance, and 2) our enthusiastic support of some of the worst dictators in the history of that explosive continent...
...Some estimate of the reversal involved in the recent primary can be gauged by recalling that six years ago Knowland captured both the Republican and Democratic nominations in running for the Senate...
...In the long run, the real friends of freedom will not be those who have been showered with millions of dollars worth of guns and tanks and planes, but rather those who have been given a helping hand to build the system of economic security on which political freedom rests...
...In this instance the coalition was greatly assisted by a last-minute reversal of position by the President and the State Department...
...It is far too early, even for those with crystal balls, to predict the outcome of the 1958 elections four months from now, but it seems clear enough that the first straws are blowing in a strong Democratic wind...
...But Dulles publicly praised them both—in fact he described the bloody dictatorship as "a model for the Americas"—and President Eisenhower, even as thousands filled the Venezuelan concentration camps, bestowed the award of the Legion of Merit on Jiminez...
Vol. 22 • July 1958 • No. 7
