THE PEOPLE FORUM
THE PEOPLE FORUM 'The Big Issue' Dear Sirs: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., reveals what seems to me to be a tragic blind spot in his otherwise commendable article, "The Big Issue," in the September...
...An examination of the voting record of Catholics in Congress shows the greatest diversity among them, clearly demonstrating that there is no "conspiracy" on their part to undermine our democratic heritage as many would have us believe...
...It is the right of citizens to petition the government when their ideas disagree with those of people in power...
...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has pointed out that a Catholic President would perhaps be more resistant to the demands of the Roman Church in seeking to avoid the label of "partisan" than would a Protestant President who would be seeking to avoid the label of "bigot...
...Let everyone be convinced in his own mind...
...It is remarkable that Schlesinger can argue his point for seven pages without once raising the hope or the prospect of an eventual, to say nothing of an immediate, reduction in military spending as the most effective means of financing and expanding our public services...
...Mrs...
...My membership had lasted for more than twenty-five years and had given me the satisfaction and stimulation that can come only through work with loved and respected friends for a great and urgent cause...
...Dear Sirs: After the collapse of the Summit Conference, Adlai Stevenson said: "It appears this year's campaign will be waged under the darkest shadows that ever hovered over the world—the mushroom clouds of a nuclear war that no one wants...
...Please give us much more of Kempton...
...Louis, Missouri 'These Moral Dandies' Dear Sirs: All the haggling over the degree of Senator Kennedy's liberalism reminds me that I recently came across a comment by George Bernard Shaw which seems most appropriate...
...But as I see it the problem is not so much one of shifting resources from the "private sector" to the "public sector" as it is one of reallocation of funds within the public realm...
...Among all the good feelings I have one fear: the absence of the reviews of Richard Schickel may indicate that his reviews and essays are not appreciated...
...Today's Pharisees Dear Sirs: Murray Friedman's article, "Discord on Sunday," in the September Progressive certainly shines a spotlight on inanity that might be amusing if it was not so hypocritically blasphemous...
...Kennedy has said that Berlin might be worth a little war...
...Nixon did not break a Senate tie vote and kill a measure providing for federal aid to education...
...In some respects, specifically in increasing arms expenditures, it is a backward step...
...If, added to the generalization that the WIL opposed all totalitarianism, there had been an official WIL statement as to the nature of present-day Communism, its purposes, and its operations, especially in this country, pro-Communists, finding infertile ground in the WIL, would have left, and the ill-informed "fuzzy-minded" would either have followed them out, or remained and been exposed to sound education for peace work...
...Like Nixon, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and other refugees from the Bronze Age, he brushes it off with the euphemism, "defense...
...I believe it is the responsibility of the people in this community—not the state government and not the Federal government...
...An understandable sentiment, but the wrong conclusion...
...Jonathan Meade Alexandria, Virginia Schlesinger 'Wrong' Dear Sirs: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in "The Big Issue," focuses attention on the big difference in philosophy of government between the liberal Democrats and the conservatives in the United States, whether Republican or Democrat...
...By this action the group seeks to reintroduce onto the American scene the idea that the voter has the right to vote for issues rather than personalities...
...Dorsev M. Roth Fort Wayne, Ind...
...He is a well known national symbol of nonviolent direct action, a policy our nation could well adopt...
...Its concepts go to the heart of our problem and illuminate areas of our national life too long obscured by political cliches and shoddy thinking...
...To this type of zealot "brother's keeper" means "brother's jailer...
...In addition to voting for that party's candidates, one might well write explanatory letters to, say, the national chairmen of both major parties...
...Depth of Perception Dear Sirs: The October issue article on Henry Cabot Lodge, "Made in the United Nations," by David C. Williams, is an example of the depth of perception one comes to expect in The Progressive, particularly after reading an article on the Ambassador in Time which took the opposite view...
...It is to pick one of the minority parties which, on at least one important issue, takes a worthy stand...
...And it is clear that sooner or later, and preferably sooner, we and other peoples have got to relinquish part of our national sovereignty to an international organization as a condition of survival...
...True, most liberals would agree, too, with his general premises concerning the urgent need for government spending in the fields of health, education, welfare, and housing...
...1. Disappointing because it is hard to see how a liberal can be for a candidate, who, like Jack Kennedy, was unable to discern any issue of principle in McCarthyism and who has a weak record on civil rights...
...I hope other understandably bitter Steven-sonians will join me in getting behind Kennedy...
...To these people, freedom in any form is anathema...
...A more effective way, I believe, is to vote for a candidate who represents more closely the views to which one subscribes...
...Richard Deats Union Theological Seminary Manila, Philippines Catholics Beat Stevenson Dear Sirs: Even if Senator Kennedy will, as he says, resist any improper papal pressure, there is some doubt as to whether he deserves or will get any large vote from Stevenson supporters...
...This is an egotism that I, as well as many with whom I have discussed this attitude, find offensive...
...Schickel but we have always been interested in his fresh, honest, and strongly expressed opinions, opinions obviously well based in a large store of knowledge of contemporary and classic fiction...
...A month of solitude plus one speech showing wisdom would be preferable to what I much fear we shall receive...
...In other words, World War II took that reform program off the hook...
...THE PEOPLE FORUM 'The Big Issue' Dear Sirs: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., reveals what seems to me to be a tragic blind spot in his otherwise commendable article, "The Big Issue," in the September Progressive...
...Will Murgatroyd fill a baby's stomach, restore his manhood to a mental patient, or make a child laugh again...
...This terrible danger— and how to avert it—will and should overshadow every other issue...
...And yet it is quite discouraging that the religion of Senator John Kennedy seems to have become the central issue for many people who seem more fearful of the intolerance of the Roman Catholic Church in Spain than the possible annihilation of our entire civilization in a nuclear war...
...The Socialist Party's position of presenting platform planks to the Democrats and Republicans while sitting out the election does not offer such an opportunity...
...Pathetically few liberals question the efficacy of this "shock therapy" type of foreign policy, to say nothing of its cost...
...To be sure, this vote will not contribute to the election of one's candidate—but then neither will not-voting...
...This question has troubled me ever since reading his article in the September issue...
...Like Schlesinger, I also favor a shift of values from emphasis upon things to emphasis upon people, to spending more on education and roads and less on television sets and automobiles...
...Apparently Schlesinger is as paralytically attached to the policy of "obsessive reliance on an ever greater accumulation of military power" (in the words of The Progressive editorial in the same issue) as are Kennedy, Johnson, Jackson, Harriman and outers...
...I reject the philosophy that the nation's needs will only be met by Federal government planning...
...Otherwise the right of petition has no meaning...
...Audrey A. Rothkop Stockton, Calif...
...Evidently he does not consider our overwhelmingly large defense budget as contributing in the slightest to the insecurity engendered by the misallocation of wealth which is the major theme of his argument...
...and Tertullian, in his Answer to Jews states that "To Christians, Sabbaths are unknown...
...Jesus knew man's weakness in making an idol of a day, a book, or any other thing that kept man in bondage, that stopped spiritual growth...
...He believes there is a real difference between the sum of individual purposes, and a national purpose...
...Voting Alternatives Dear Sirs: I sympathize with those who have recently written to The Progressive that they wish to protest-vote against Senator Kennedy, although they do not want to vote for Vice President Nixon either...
...Schlesinger's views coincide closely with Senator Kennedy's, it is little wonder that thinking people today recoil at the prospect of voting for either of the available candidates...
...Jesus did, in no uncertain terms...
...Thank God, His Will is done, not theirs...
...C. P. Stevens Escalon, Calif...
...No, we don't need a religious mystic, but we do need a man...
...Byrne Stevens Princeton, New Jersey The Real Issue Dear Sirs: Arthur Schlesinger's article, "The Big Issue," in the September issue, strikes me as incredibly superficial...
...Harold Flincker Committee for Real Electoral Expression Box 83B, R.D...
...Leader Dear Sirs: Arthur Schlesinger's "The Big Issue" is one of the most challenging articles you have ever published...
...True Christians will not interfere with anyone's freedom where a day is concerned...
...There are still too many investigations of people who are merely in a thoughtful and fearless way performing the patriotic duty of thinking about the public welfare...
...R. L. Calhoun Ann Arbor, Michigan Dear Sirs: For a socialist, staying at home on election day may save one from compromising his principles but it is a neutralist attitude that does nothing to advance the socialist cause...
...Nixon so bitterly for having taken varying positions on issues carried an article praising his opponent for having "come by his liberalism in small stages...
...There is a fantastic imbalance between money spent for military purposes as against nonmilitary foreign aid and domestic welfare purposes...
...Schlesinger's article, and a number of others of comparable excellence, The Progressive has reaffirmed its leadership among the nation's thoughtful journals...
...But they are still Nazis—which is why they find the atmosphere of East German totalitarianism such a congenial one...
...To the extent that the latter are opportunistic, and the pressure mounts, they will be responsive...
...It was established in honor of the Sun God, and the Emperor referred to it as "the venerable day of the Sun...
...Mrs...
...If there is no such splinter-party candidate, one can write in the name of someone whom one prefers (although the procedure is tricky for Presidential elections...
...He is precisely right when he notes that "We are in trouble purely and simply because of the way we have chosen to employ our talents and resources...
...As Lyndon Johnson said on TV, the bill was killed by the House Rules Committee...
...We need men like Adlai Stevenson or Barry Goldwater to pull our country out of the socialistic trend...
...I submit that Mr...
...Modern Churchianity, which gives its sanction to the observance of days and to the waging of "wars of defense," is certainly not Christian in the sense that it is perpetuating the instructions of Jesus Christ...
...The break need not have occurred had the WIL leadership helped, instead of, for the most part, discouraged and ignored, over a period of more than two years, our efforts at full and searching exploration of our differences in interpretation of WIL principles...
...Otis W. Coan Los Angeles, Calif...
...W. T. Knox Cranford, New Jersey No 'Big Issue' Dear Sirs: I read with interest in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s, article in your September issue his claim that "there is a profound issue between the parties, an issue...
...Paul's letter to the Romans, Ch...
...The additional ten or twelve billion dollars a year that Mr...
...Paul Miller Santa Ana, Calif...
...Lou Wilhelm Portland, Oregon What Kind of Catholic...
...Public acquiescence in the U-2 fiasco showed how deeply we are infected with that primitive disease...
...This means higher taxes...
...It will give notice to the politicians that you are protesting (and are not merely being lazy) and why you are protesting...
...Therefore the question to ask about Senator Kennedy's religion is not what it is but rather, "What kind of Catholic is he...
...Senator Kennedy is without executive experience and his profile was without courage on the censure of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy...
...I think he is quite right in stressing "allocation of resources" as a fundamental issue...
...Schlesinger is interested in increasing rather than decreasing the defense budget, the "marginal shift" will be onto the shoulders of the taxpayers—and we know which group of taxpayers suffers most with each increase...
...Eau Claire, Wisconsin Sour Grapes Dear Sirs: All the post convention comments in The Progressive, The Nation, The New Republic, and Frontier sounded like sour grapes to me...
...Your participation will be most welcome...
...These differences were seriously crippling the work of the Chicago Branch...
...What is the difference between the cultivated Harvard accented political reasoning of John Kennedy and the commonplace political platitudes of Richard Nixon...
...These two issues are too urgent to be left unattended...
...The public sector already claims a very substantial portion of my income...
...It is quite true that those mentioned by Mr...
...C. W. Griffin Denville, N. J. Disputes Schlesinger Dear Sirs: What are the special qualifications that make Arthur Schlesinger a "liberal...
...It is a policy which seems to me as ineffective as it is unimaginative, as demoralizing as it is costly...
...Therefore no Stevenson supporter needs to feel under any obligation to support Kennedy...
...Their compulsion to control has now reached the grotesque point where they now insist that their proper sphere of influence extends even to the marriage beds of the world, where they would impose their birth control methods upon all and sundry...
...What about all the "sinful" telephone operators, gasoline merchants, firemen, policemen, doctors, nurses, life guards, druggists, ambulance drivers, transportation employees and newspaper boys...
...What is the difference between a rigged Democratic convention and a rigged Republican convention...
...But they are not former Nazis...
...It suggests to me that they really are not serious about this business of disarmament, that they really never come to grips with its demands or implications...
...Surely averting war and the building of a stable peace in our world is the central issue in this campaign...
...There will be more centralized government control...
...Personally I see a world full of freshmen—I'd like to open doors for some of them, even if it is only a crack...
...Our answer as life-long socialists is to support and vote for the candidates of the Socialist Labor Party...
...Marcia J. Lyttle Chicago, 111...
...As a poet, I disagree...
...What is the difference between a Presidential candidate's campaign being paid for by a millionaire family and one being paid by a group of millionaire businessmen...
...I think Mr...
...These zealots would apparently banish them all to hell for breaking the Sabbath...
...another esteems every day alike...
...This Committee is aware that others may recognize the urgency of these fundamental issues...
...Nazis, Past and Present Dear Sirs: Perhaps I can help to resolve the apparent disagreement between Milton Mayer's statement that there are no former Nazis in office in East Germany and the list mentioned by W. W. Jones in the September People's Forum...
...Nixon's vote on a tie went only to a particular amendment...
...Schlesinger declaims the nation's need for schools...
...If he is elected, it might even become a sort of a "Kennedy Doctrine," or at least a strong precedent, tending to further safeguard this separation from any later encroachment...
...But until he, and other liberals, show evidence of seriously looking around for some new, creative foreign policy attitudes and programs that show promise of reducing the outlandish waste of our resources on military matters, I shall continue to be unimpressed by their arguments...
...These principles demand not the mere allowance of new ideas but the careful fostering of a climate in which constructive thought is encouraged...
...Those of us who love freedom might just as well learn to recognize them and know what we're dealing with...
...Considering that the "liberal" Mr...
...Jones (and many more in the East German army, police, and other branches of government) served Hitler faithfully...
...Marie L. Parkhurst Eugene, Oregon 'Kennedy Doctrine' Dear Sirs: A most happy circumstance of the many interrogations of Senator Kennedy by groups of the Protestant clergy, is their almost universal and unmistakable pleasure in his forthright answers...
...Russian intransigence is an obstacle that is formidable enough, but we seem to be further handicapped by our own mental sets...
...Francis, Martin Luther King, Jane Addams, Helen Keller, and Ralph Bunche— and for all the others, too—teachers, relatives, friends, and strangers, who have helped me with those "unremembered acts of kindness and of love...
...J. Wubnig New Haven, Conn...
...Shaw had just learned that a Labor candidate for the House of Commons, Joseph Burgess, had refused to compromise on some issue and had lost his seat in Parliament as a consequence...
...Norman Vincent Peale say that neither a man's religion nor lack of a formal religious affiliation should have anything to do with his qualification for President...
...Others see the world as full of the hungry, sick, and discouraged...
...I thank God for St...
...R. Bruce Spackman Roseburg, Oregon Kempton's Gem Dear Sirs: Murray Kempton's "The Uncommitted" was a gem—one of the finest things you have ever published...
...Moreover, had such a statement been on file before McCarthyism boiled up, the membership would have had a solid base of common knowledge and mutual understanding and the rift in all probability would not have occurred...
...No, of course not...
...Edith Lovejoy Pierce Evanston, 111...
...It appears that, since Mr...
...The only thing I have read so far that makes sense to me are the letters in "The People's Forum" in the September issue of your splendid publication by John Chappell, Jr., Stephen Shefler, and Mildred H. Biffar, all of whom are now behind Senator John Kennedy...
...Raymond Forrest Montesano, Wash...
...Marshall W. Krause San Francisco, Calif...
...Deena Metzger, Secretary Voters Write-In Committee for Peace and Integration 6227 West San Vicente Blvd...
...Stevenson will have a significant role in our future affairs...
...What is the difference between the political ambitions of Kennedy and the political ambitions of Nixon...
...The fact of unemployment of millions of men and women remains a symptom of a number of difficulties in our economic system not yet adjusted...
...George E. Oestreich, Jr...
...Not with the hydrogen bomb hanging over our heads...
...This will not elect minority candidates, but it will put the pressure of public opinion on the majors...
...Now is the time to speak...
...Francis saw a world empty of love, so he just loved...
...Schlesinger is wrong—his thesis is merely a totalitarian philosophy tricked out in fancy "liberal" clothes...
...Hopes to Mend WIL Rift Dear Sirs: It is a cause of great sorrow to me that in 1954, with Elsie Johnson and about twenty other active members of the Chicago Branch of the WIL, I was forced to withdraw from the organization that had such noble beginnings...
...it was all he could do...
...He has a rare talent...
...2. Disappointing because of factual errors...
...But what he couldn't do in eight years of reform effort in putting men and women to work was done in a few months when World War II started...
...Dear Sirs: At a time when the right to live as human beings has been denied many of our citizens and when the very existence of the human race is in question, the American people have no means to express their opinions in the coming national election on the two most crucial issues of our time—disarmament and integration...
...Added together, this makes a firm enough pledge for me...
...Mature Judgment Needed Dear Sirs: Your readers may be interested in the following letter, which I have sent to Senator Kennedy and Vice President Nixon: "As a concerned citizen, I wonder if this campaign can escape from Madison Avenue techniques—and instead give evidence that people selected for positions of leadership can take time to think and to develop the mature judgment required by the hour...
...Los Angeles 48, Calif...
...I still would like to vote for Stevenson but I am afraid to lose my vote, for I have hated Richard M. Nixon for the suffering he has caused to innocent people, for his McCarthyism, and for using that terrible Whitaker Chambers as a tool...
...They are consumed with a need to control the most intimate aspects of other's lives...
...1 West Harwich, Mass...
...Schlesinger makes no bones about the need for more and more missiles and makes it plain that he adheres wholeheartedly to the old familiar line of "keeping up with the Russians...
...Under President Kennedy I look forward to meaningful bills on federal aid to the aged sick, education, housing, urban renewal, distressed areas, and other welfare measures...
...3. Disappointing that the same issue of The Progressive which condemns Mr...
...Schlesinger fails to mention the problem posed by ultimate weapons and international anarchy...
...I thank God for Murgatroyd...
...Dear Sirs: Since there is no pacifist position represented in the parties running candidates for the national election, why not write in Martin Luther King, Jr., for President as a protest vote...
...Here, I believe, is something worth pondering as we face the great decision of November 8 and continue to ruminate about the occasional specks in Kennedy's fine record...
...If Mr...
...Schlesinger suggests we spend for public purposes represents a mere fraction of our military outlay...
...His mission is something else...
...Bayard Fell Berkeley, California Kempton Incomparable Dear Sirs: Murray Kempton's September issue article, "The Uncommitteed," was an incomparable presentation of the character of the men with whom we are confronted in the present campaign...
...But there any resemblance to "liberal" thinking ceases...
...Schlesinger would be sympathetic to the Hyannis Port proclamations calling for spending an extra two or three billion dollars for military purposes, not to meet any specific demonstrated need, but solely to "jar" Khrushchev...
...On the basis of a letter Kennedy has written me, dated August 30, and his recent speeches, I can now give him my support...
...Linus Pauling by a Senatorial committee is a case in point...
...If it is so sinful to work on Sunday, what are the ministers doing at their place of business on Sunday...
...Neither party stands on a platform advocating disarmament, neither party can guarantee that it will enact its civil rights plank...
...Kennedy also has convinced me that he is a true liberal, promising to give top priority when elected to strong civil rights legislation...
...Now is the time to speak out in favor of this sort of climate...
...Why did the old pros and the young pros shrug off their greatest asset in Adlai E. Stevenson to embrace Lyndon B. Johnson...
...We have not always agreed with Mr...
...Probably no one has ever before so thoroughly and carefully outlined and affirmed all of our constitutional safeguards for the absolute separation of church and state...
...The most urgent job facing Americans today is outgrowing tribalism...
...Hence the unpopularity of the Christians with the Romans, who pointed out that they accepted the hospitality of the Empire without being willing to fight for it, to which Origen replied that the only way a Christian was permitted to support a ruler was by prayer...
...Mrs...
...How can a liberal magazine be for a candidate with this kind of record on the two most important domestic issues of our age...
...If, as James MacGregor Burns argues, Kennedy's liberalism is all the stronger as a result of having been long in the making, why does not the same test apply to the Vice President...
...Raymond Finch New Hyde Park, New York Poetry and Politics Dear Sirs: Murray Kempton, in "The Uncommitted" (September), deplores the passing of poetry from politics...
...We have not yet found a way to employ the surplus of our labor which the efficiency of our industrial processes has created...
...Schlesinger's "Big Issue" is merely one step on a long road...
...What is the difference between an open friendship of Nixon for the late Senator Joseph McCarthy and the silent, uncritical friendship of Kennedy for the same McCarthy...
...V. 5-9, begins: "For one esteems one day above another...
...Mayer will only continue to fight the good fight and merely admit contritely that, like most of us, he may not be made of heroic stuff, and that we are all susceptible to corruptions of flesh and spirit, he will be doing more than enough...
...James Frederick Nevins Silver Springs, Md...
...This was an admission that they either caused Governor Stevenson's defeat or contributed largely to it...
...I have always felt that Stevenson was the best man for the White House, but it was obvious that he did not want it...
...Their lives are dedicated to suppression...
...And, acting from military, economic, and political strength, we could work towards an end to the insane nuclear arms race and for peace...
...Being a Protestant missionary in a country dominated by the Spanish form of Catholicism I am certainly not unaware of the heavy hand of Rome in national and international affairs...
...Oh, these moral dandies, these spiritual toffs...
...Schlesinger offers national planning by men who know what the people should do, even if the people themselves do not know...
...The recent harassment of the great scientist Dr...
...Maurice J. Goldbloom Brooklyn, N.Y...
...Leo S. Hobbins St...
...It might be well to publicize in advance that some people will use their vote in this way...
...It is not that he seems to be ubiquitous, repetitive, or compulsive in accentuating the quest for personal salvation in his zeal for the commonweal...
...The Democrats have taken us into the last three wars while Nixon, being Quaker trained, probably is a better prospect to keep us out of another world war, which would indeed be a nuclear hell...
...Charles Alan Wright School of Law The University of Texas Austin Socialistic Trend If John F. Kennedy is elected the "old Roosevelt domineering era" will be resumed...
...I don't look to the President for poetry, but for the ability to form a peaceful and progressive social framework within which poets can sing their own songs...
...So still disliking Kennedy, I feel forced to vote for him...
...Furthermore, it is far better that we learn to do better by making mistakes, such as delaying a new high school, than by having some all-seeing, all-wise government rescue us from our folly by directing and financing the new school...
...But the issue which transcends all others is nuclear warfare...
...Dear Sirs: Ernestine W. Brehmer wrote, in your September issue, that the two Presidential candidates "were men of my worst fears...
...It is a philosophy founded on the premise of an immature, irresponsible America...
...To be specific, whose responsibility is it here in Cranford, New Jersey, to build a high school which this community needs...
...Not a single state reputed to have a heavy Catholic vote went to Stevenson...
...Kempton longs for a touch of the irrational...
...Can you help me answer these questions on the coming election of our President...
...There will be more "give-away" schemes promoted, both foreign and domestic...
...We might therefore be spared these time-wasting disputes about Sunday observance on Christian grounds, if it were understood that such observance is no more Christian than the bearing of arms which was never permitted in the original wholly-pacifist Christian church before the accommodation with Constantine...
...Only the other day a state official here appeared on television, sponsored by the State Committee for Kennedy and Johnson, to denounce Nixon and Lodge as "integrators" and to praise Kennedy and Johnson for their consistent efforts to delay and to water down civil rights legislation...
...Apparently the Administration determined that it did not...
...The very thought of Richard Nixon in the White House makes me shudder...
...The Committee has selected Norman Thomas and A. Philip Randolph as write-in candidates to symbolize peace and civil rights on the ballot...
...They may be former SS officers, Gestapo torturers, and so on...
...However it was impossible to quarrel with Constantine, and the compulsory day of rest and recreation proved so popular that it was retained in the always accommodating and eclectic Catholic Church...
...Nixon Article Disappointing Dear Sirs: The article "The Case Against Nixon," though written with the Editor's usual skill, is disappointing in several respects...
...The Progressive has been fortunate to have as much writing as it has had from Mr...
...He is so intent upon including himself among those whom he is attacking for derelictions, that his attitude amounts not to any attempted humility but actually to a display of arrogance, of self-preoccupation, and of a mea culpa so allegedly heinous that not even God Himself can forgive it...
...Indeed, he would have us spend still greater sums on our "tragically inadequate" defense...
...Furthermore, the indications are now that if Kennedy is elected, he will appoint Chester Bowles as Secretary of State rather than Stevenson...
...It is as a direct result of the gravity of this situation that the Voters Write-In Committee for Peace and Integration has been formed to register a protest vote...
...It is comforting to know that this astute political thinker is advising with Senator Kennedy...
...Or full of families to be raised...
...States' rights will be diminished...
...But he states clearly that "Mr...
...President Roosevelt built a system of reforms more thoroughgoing than any ever attempted before in this country, and yet in his State of the Union message to Congress in 1940, he admitted failure in these words: "We cannot report that all problems are solved...
...Why clothe a practical argument in philosophical garments...
...If ever there was a time when efficiency, rather than poetry, was needed in government it is now...
...Neither can it be his frequent historical inaccuracies and logical fallacies which have been pointed out at various times by readers here...
...Who is Joe, anyhow, that he should not risk his soul occasionally like the rest of us...
...His brother Bob was a member of the McCarthy staff and his father a friend of McCarthy...
...We are told that all this vital public spending (which, by implication, would unquestionably be immediately implemented by a Democratic Administration) can be handled by "a marginal shift of resources...
...Miss Brehmer, and other voters who find that neither of the two major parties deserves the vote, have an excellent but seldom used alternative to abstention...
...We need a constant adherence to the principles that will make democracy grow...
...Orin D. Doty Minneapolis, Minn...
...as the one the nation faced in 1932...
...It is my continuing hope that we may yet with full intellectual integrity and mutual good will work together again for peace and freedom in the League that was so dear to the heart of Jane Addams...
...Mayer vitiates the cogency of his arguments so often because he has never succeeded in drawing the important distinction between remorse and contrition...
...Surrounded by such men as Stevenson, Bowles, and Humphrey, Kennedy could re-establish American initiative and leadership of the free world...
...The treatment of the Indo-China incident is inaccurate as your article itself shows...
...The only difference in 1932 between the two major parties was what was the best method to be used to save our economic system from collapse, and the result we all know...
...Mayer himself sees us as unthinking hypocrites and he does what he can...
...Nixon did not tell the newspaper editors that he personally supported intervention with American boys...
...It is obvious that the "fundamentalists" supporting the Blue Laws choose to ignore Jesus' fundamental practice and preaching with regard to the Sabbath...
...Senator Kennedy wrote that he could not at present name Stevenson as Secretary of State because "that would open up pressures to make other appointments," a reasonable assumption...
...That is what the New Testament is all about...
...I have no choice between them...
...It would be up to all of the people, not just a handful, to decide what is needed, as things then would be made for use, and not made to sell at a profit, the cause of all world tension...
...In publishing Mr...
...Schickel and we hope to see more...
...as clear cut...
...If Mr...
...Esme Wynne-Tyson Selsey, Sussex, England Each to His Choice Dear Sirs: I have just read "Discord on Sunday" and I would like to make a comment...
...Christians and Sunday Dear Sirs: In his article, "Discord on Sunday," in the September issue, Murray Friedman wrote: "The first Sunday law was enacted in 320 A.D...
...Esther C. Richards Portland, Oregon Praise for Richard Schickel Dear Sirs: I have just finished reading the excellent September issue...
...At the Democratic convention in 1956, the Larsen report by supporters of Senator Kennedy pointed out that many Catholic votes went over to the GOP in 1952...
...Mark Winnson Wilmington, Delaware Thank God for Murgatroyd Dear Sirs: Milton Mayer's Murgatroyd (September) sees the world as stupidly determined to blow itself up and he does what he can to stop it...
...when Constantine embraced Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire...
...Satisfied with Kennedy Dear Sirs: In the classified advertising section of The Progressive for September I urged Steven-sonians to write Senator Kennedy that they would not vote for him unless he firmly pledged to appoint Adlai Stevenson his Secretary of State...
...Also both Kennedy and Dr...
...I like this much better than Nixon's statement during the convention, that a man's religion is not an issue and that only if he had no religion should it be an issue...
...The alternative, as Koestler puts it, is to follow the trail of the dinosaur...
...The Christian bishops were appalled by this ruling since it was well known that the founder of the Christian faith had forbidden "the superstitious observance of days," for, as Origen put it, "To the perfect Christian all his days are the Lord's...
...This is no time for a super-Boy Scout flexing of missile power, but a time which demands a leadership with imagination enough to lead us into the Twentieth Century...
...Allen Klein Mount Vernon, New York Kennedy by Default Dear Sirs: I am an old lady but am still growing up and am in need of a higher education...
...If we, as citizens of the community, are so blind as not to see the value of putting a substantial part of our income into better educational facilities, then we do not deserve THE PEOPLE'S FORUM if any better...
...I am grateful for Milton Mayer—he has done me a lot of good over the years...
...I am opposed to Kennedy, but I do not think that not-voting in November is the most effective way of registering protest...
...Voting for the SLP candidates, Eric Hass for President, and Georgia Cozzini for Vice President, at least offers a positive and concrete way of showing our faith in socialism...
...so any effort to present him as a liberal should be viewed with suspicion...
...Presumably Mr...
...One more U-2 disaster and we're through...
...But at that date Constantine was still Pontifex Maximus of the sun-worshipping pagan religion and his Sunday law was not a Christian institution at all...
...Thank you, no...
...This was Shaw's bitter comment: "When I think of my own unfortunate character, smirched with compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expediency, dragged through the mud of borough council and Battersea elections, stretched out of shape with wire-pulling, putrified by permeation, worn out by twenty-five years pushing to gain an inch here, or straining to stem a backrush, I do think Joe might have put up with just a speck or two on those white robes of his for the sake of the millions of poor devils who cannot afford any character at all because they have no friend in Parliament...
...Harry R. Dick Denton, Texas Schlesinger's Brilliant Essay Dear Sirs: Thanks for giving us Arthur Schlesinger's brilliant essay, "The Big Issue...
...Schlesinger would investigate the program of the Socialist Labor Party, he would find that it fits the times we live in because it calls for the collective ownership of the tools of production by all of the people...
...If his argument is simply that the Federal government is the most eflicient tax collector, and therefore it is easier to get money from the citizens via this route, why doesn't he say so...
...Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and in response to the Pharisees who were angry at His refusal to ignore people's needs on Sundays, He told them plainly that the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way aroundl Our world is sick unto death today because of the attitudes and practices of these same pharisaical people who trot busily around proclaiming convenient bits of the Gospel while totally disobedient to the basic commandment to love one another...
...But even here there are liberal Catholics active in political life (such as the outstanding Senator Claro M. Recto) who publicly resist the anti-democratic encroachments of Rome just as strongly as do the most ardent Protestants...
...Together, they have robbed me of my right to vote...
...Kennedy's public record shows that he would certainly resist the pressures of his church as much as Baptist President Truman who appointed an ambassador to the Vatican, or Presbyterian President Eisenhower who recently showed his hearty agreement with the Catholic bishops' statement on birth control...
...The space age has changed a lot of things...
...It is part of the weary, depressing old refrain joined in by members of both parties, but sung most enthusiastically by the liberal Democrats...
...R. V. Brandborg Little Falls, Minnesota Masterly Analysis Dear Sirs: The Progressive has performed another great service in giving us Arthur Schlesinger's masterly analysis, "The Big Issue...
...Mrs...
...He told them he would support such a position if this risk had to be taken in order to avoid further Communist expansion...
...Part of loving consists of allowing others to enjoy the freedom God gave them to work when they choose, rest when they choose, and worship God in private...
...Mayer Arrogant Dear Sirs: Why do so many active libertarians who espouse causes similar to Milton Mayer's find him annoying and boring both in his writings and on the lecture platform...
Vol. 24 • November 1960 • No. 11
