THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Jesus on Prayer Dear Sirs: Let those who have expressed outrage over the Supreme Court's decision because they believe in public prayer and piety turn to the teachings of Him...
...We should know the enemy...
...If such were the case in this country, it would be hard to claim that we had a representative democratic government...
...I read with interest Thomas N. Bethells June issue article concerning the coming Senate race in Massachusetts and was glad to see the comments on Stuart Hughes, who is running as an Independent...
...The vast majority of them are not nearly so concerned about politics as they are interested in getting enough to cat and wear...
...This is not said from any ideological tenderness towards the leaders of the Communist Party—Americans for Democratic Action was combating Communist totalitarianism at a time when many who have subsequently blossomed as professional and noisy anti-Communists could not distinguish a Stalinist from a Parsee—but because we believe that the Communist Control Act is both unconstitutional and unworthy of a free people...
...Ruth Walton Silver Springs, Maryland Amen...
...No doubt, as long as we have sovereign nations, each must have a voice in the United Nations...
...I know what a twenty per cent deduction from dividends at the source will do to me...
...Clergymen in the district divided almost evenly on the issue...
...They were also on the Herricks school board...
...My whole point is this: The case may not have been initiated at all, or not for some years, if this fear of religious encroachment on the public schools had not been developed because of the Ten Commandments fight plus continued attacks upon the public schools emanating from some leaders of some Catholic groups...
...It was not surprising then that this became the area in which the test case was initiated...
...Further, this examination does not mark the end of something, as we assume most examinations do...
...Shocked and Resentful Dear Sirs: I was shocked to read your attack upon opponents of the proposed twenty per cent withholding tax on dividends in "Notes in the News" in your June issue...
...is the cause of . . . German rearmament...
...Paul F. Albright South Gate, California Food for China Dear Sirs: Premier Khrushchev has criticized the United States for intervening in Southeast Asia with military forces...
...I have received not one single piece of mail from a savings institution...
...Whatever may be the legal sophistries, it is criminal to be an active Communist and if the Fifth Amendment does not protect such militants from registration, it has become meaningless...
...I have always paid whatever income tax I owed...
...The only abject thing is the general fear to propose unilateral disarmament as a rational move—regardless of how unlikely it may be...
...and since advertising plays so important a part in directing our aims and desires it should be recognized as an important factor...
...Not only is it the Christian, the humanitarian thing to do, but the long-range results of such a policy would surely be much more to our advantage than a policy of hostility to the most populous and potentially the most powerful nation on earth...
...Even unilaterial disarmament is preferable to nuclear war, because it would save more lives, more property and damage freedom no more than would the war...
...R. A. Brown Baltimore, Maryland...
...Perhaps the General Assembly could be reconstituted to provide one vote for each nation, with additional votes based on the population of the nation...
...This is hardly fair...
...one vote...
...As President of the Nuclear Information Committee of the Greater Delaware Valley, the objectives of which are to provide accurate scientific information easily understandable to the public, from scientific sources, it disturbs me to see a non-scientific, non-medical, and non-technical group agitating for "health measures" (i) ". . . refraining from using fresh milk for at least eight days following any explosion producing nuclear fallout "; (2) "Fresh dairy supplies that are produced immediately after testing are the most contaminated.'' Statement (I): If you refrain from using fresh milk because of fear of iodine 131 you may provide your child with a more contaminated source of strontium 90, in the form of powdered milk, which comes from all parts of the United States...
...Prayer Case Background Dear Sirs: Your readers might be interested in some background to the recent Supreme Court decision on the New York public school prayer case, especially the probable reason the test case originated in the Herricks school district, next door to the New Hyde Park school district where I lived for fifteen years...
...The New Hyde Park school board voted to post a "non-denominational" version of the Ten Commandments in the classrooms...
...testing of nuclear weapons," along with such things as U-2 spy flights...
...Can it be that Togoland, a United Nations member with a population of about one million, is entitled to equal voting power with India, for example...
...No amount of military aid and "advice" can make them resist Communism if they themselves do not strongly oppose it...
...These millions of poor, unfortunate people are our brothers...
...I resent your calling the protests of elderly persons like myself a "tear-jerker...
...Although the pro-posting candidates won, the leading candidate opposed to the posting received about forty-four per cent of the vote...
...A free and fearless journal would (1) print a defense of unilateral disarmament, and (2) scotch some of our myths and hypocritical pretensions, as above...
...Thomas Broderick Schenectady, New York Role of Advertising Dear Sirs: It seems to me that Leon H. Keyserling's article, "Two-Fifths Of A Nation," in the June issue of The Progressive, neglects some of the intangibles that should be considered in relation to our economy...
...The mood of a nation and the influences that contribute to it are not to be ignored...
...Or put in another way—the prayer test case was not an independent action, but a reaction to what had gone before...
...I do think, however, that more attention should be paid to the question of how many people are represented by each vote...
...However, the subject cannot be analyzed in a straightforward way while imbued with the pleasent myth that the mass of men are basically moral, reasonable, and exceedingly precious...
...The fear and resentment aroused by their growing power and the way in which they began to use it, developed an extreme sensitivity among many non-Catholics...
...armed forces," and "U.S...
...Many new members of the United Nations became separate sovereignties not because their natives were different from the natives across the border, but merely because the border represented the area claimed by the nation's former colonial master...
...The author is certainly correct in noting the numbers of women who are supporting and working for Hughes as the peace candidate...
...If our approach to full employment and a proper living standard must include deceit and an appeal to our lower instincts, it is time to give our social and economic institutions a good hard look...
...Pitkin on his challenge to each one of us, and wish that reprints of his article could be sent to every home in the country...
...If Hitler had not been of this opinion, he would have marched right through to get additional direct communication with Italy...
...As a God-fearing, church-going Christian, I welcomed as long overdue this Jefferson-ian declaration by our highest tribunal that "it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by the government...
...The employment of so many workers in the area of life's trivia, glorified by blandishing advertisements with their appeal to "glamour" and "luxury," has created an imbalance of services which reveals itself in shortages of workers in schools, homes, and hospitals...
...He may be right...
...Lillian Ott Los Angeles, California Lens Excellent Dear Sirs: Sidney Lens' article on Latin America and the Alliance for Progress in the June issue is excellent...
...If something like this were done, the United Nations might, just might, become a body wise enough and responsible enough to turn jeers, if not to cheers, at least to impartial silence...
...Barth, nor am I imputing originality on his part to the quotation...
...Most, in fact, resent any kind of public protest, or suggestion of any response other than that ancient one: "Arm to the teeth and scare hell out of the enemy...
...I suggest that The Progressive go and say likewise...
...This is indeed a frightening examination...
...That would be a lie...
...David L. Graham Freeport, Maine Mayer's 'Distortions' Dear Sirs: With an air of having made a great discovery...
...It is a measure of the true religious beliefs of some of the more violent critics of the Supreme Court's decision that they made extensive use of the mails and the telephone to pour out unprintable obscenities, anonymously, of course, on those who dared carry their case to the Supreme Court...
...One can, I suppose, get a certain amount of juvenile glee from the spectacle of the Communist attempting to evade one horn of the ambush only to impale himself on the other...
...D. F. Fleming Nashville, Tennessee Women for Hughes Dear Sirs...
...The community was badly divided on the issue with Catholics (almost entirely) and some Protestants in favor of the posting and Jews and some Protestants opposed...
...All this may throw some light on the community conflict and social pressure from which the test case came...
...Another sentence is open to misinterpretation...
...It is a matter for all of us to live with and understand as part of our total environment...
...Our spending is not being directed entirely by needs that are considered legitimate and rational in a civilized society, but an appeal to our gullibility, our greed, and our vanity...
...the most frightening aspect being its endurance...
...Jo Ann Gardner Northern Berkshire Voice of Women Williamstown, Massachusetts Unilateral Disarmament Dear Sirs: Is there no hope that some journal will discuss the war threat in a realistic way...
...Damn, dirty Jews" was one of the mildest of the epithets—although, just as a matter of record, two of the five petitioners are Jews, one is a Unitarian, one is a member of the Ethical Cultural Society, and the fifth is a non-believer...
...It would appear that the people in countries like South Vietnam and Laos are much less opposed to Communism than we are...
...The Ten Commandments issue, and the way it was exploited by a McCarthy type of leadership among local Catholic organizations, the American Legion, and kindred groups, threw a considerable scare into those of other faiths in New Hyde Park, in the Herricks district which borders New Hyde Park, and in a number of other Long Island communities...
...If they don't, then the next death dance will indeed wipe the planet clean of a species too stupid to recognize the requirements of survival...
...Elinore M. Herrick Orford, New Hampshire It is difficult to understand what Subscriber Herrick is so incensed about...
...Barbara Spili.er East Brunswick, New Jersey 'Tired Liberal' Dear Sirs: Who needs Joe McCarthy if a letter from a reader on Cuba can produce such a long and shuddering spell of genuflection before the anti-Communist gods on the part of the Editor as was manifest in your July issue...
...If repeal is not possible, can this undemocratic momento of legislative jitters not be allowed to rest quietly in desuetude, to become an exhibit in the museum of legislative abberations along with the concentration camp provisions of the Internal Security Act of 1950...
...Also, I know that it is not a "new tax" but an extension of the long existing withholding tax on wages and salaries taken out weekly or monthly depending on the schedule on which wages or salaries are paid...
...Secrecy augments suspicion and distrust, thus making war more probable...
...It does not evaluate (or pretend to evaluate) what we have done...
...Instead it rightly asks what we are prepared to do...
...Man, however, will keep fiddling around with bombs until he has wiped out much of the tribe...
...Moreover, there is something demeaning about this cunning Rube Goldberg mechanism...
...Neither Russia, nor the U.S., nor any nation, is "the enemy...
...In such cases there is no reason inhering in either race, language, or geography why the nation should be sovereign...
...The Communist Control Act of 1954 is a statutory relic of the McCarthy period, an era when lack of faith in the capacity of free men to deal rationally and morally with internal totalitarian led to the proliferation of internal insecurity legislation...
...it is seeking to protect religion from the infinitely various, confusing, and non-spiritual forms into which school boards and other governmental units might otherwise shape it...
...But it does not take much imagination to foresee a time when China will have nuclear weapons and retaliate against the West—and Russia—for interfering in Asia when she was too weak to prevent either American or Russian intervention on that continent...
...If this seems extreme you must remember that fifty-three per cent of Americans have placidly accepted the probability of atomic war within five years, and ninety-nine per cent of them are obviously doing nothing about it...
...The Swiss army is one of the best equipped and led and is much more than a police force...
...However, there will probably be survivors, and these should have sense enough to realize that anything is preferable to war—even disarmament and a strong world government...
...Matt, vi 5-6) If those who cried out most passionately against the Court's decision would read and live by the Book they profess to venerate, ours would be an altogether different and happier country...
...Perhaps they are more like a band of monkeys playing with hand grenades...
...I am over sixty-five, but I could never in honesty file an exemption certificate stating that I would have no taxable income...
...Several taxpayers appealed to Commissioner of Education James Allen, who ruled that the school board could not post the Ten Commandments...
...ADA, I am proud to say, called for its veto in 1954 and has ever since urged its repeal...
...For there will be no moment in your life when you can put down your pen and say, "I have finished...
...Marilyn LeVine Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Representation in the U.N...
...Dear Sirs: I must confess I will never understand the libera...
...Khrushchev...
...It is remarkable that one man could amass so much evidence in a short time and it is a model of effective writing...
...john P. Roche National Chairman Americans for Democratic Action Chairman, Department of Politics Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts Civil Defense Issue 'Unique' Dear Sirs: I have just read "The Case Against Civil Defense," by Sidney Lens, in your February issue and I want to congratulate you on the publication of this unique study...
...Then they can Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition with clear conscience...
...The Editors...
...We have little time left in which to realize that we are headed toward oblivion at the end of a final arms race, and that history will indeed end unless we work quickly to make peace, to disarm, and to find better reasons for living than hate, fear, and arms...
...Moral preachments in this situation are about as worthless as they always have been prior to and during every war...
...Fresh dairy supplies are not the most contaminated foods immediately after testing as compared with some other foods...
...I want the government to collect all taxes due...
...Finally, there is no examiner who, in his certainty of the answers, feels qualified to attach a grade of passing or failing...
...mind...
...jamfs j. macdona1.d New York, N. Y. 'A Sense of Shame' Dear Sirs: It is deplorable that Attorney General Kennedy has yielded to the clamor of those who quiver with fright at the mention of Communists and launched legal proceedings against Gus Hall and a dozen others for refusing to register under the Communist Control Act of 1954...
...Anything that increases the likelihood of war increases to just that extent, not our security, but our insecurity...
...In fact the Court is not only protecting minorities by this decision...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Jesus on Prayer Dear Sirs: Let those who have expressed outrage over the Supreme Court's decision because they believe in public prayer and piety turn to the teachings of Him whom they profess to adore...
...I am not attempting to downgrade the excellent article by Mr...
...It is unique in several ways...
...I do not see how anyone can read it and ever doubt again that the whole idea of building "fallout'' shelters is a dangerous delusion, designed to harden us for a nuclear war which would destroy us...
...the contamination varies with season and wind change and a number of factors...
...But unless one accepts the premise of "people's justice"—that bad men have no rights—he must feel a sense of shame at the government of this great Republic thus playing cat-and-mouse with the leaders of the bumbling, FBI-ridden, ideologically bankrupt American Communist Party...
...Tired Liberal would more aptly describe what now goes under the name of Progressive...
...if you decrease the amount of fresh milk and keep the same gram weight of calcium in the total diet, you will raise the proportion of strontium 90, according to the Health & Safety Laboratory figures...
...Firstly, one can hardly call Switzerland, one of the oldest democracies, and certainly more efficient than the United States, a Communist country...
...It has placed one more obstacle in the way of those who desire eventually to use the power of the state to enforce conformity to religious or political ideas...
...They have provided Hughes with ready made supporters and workers...
...You are grossly misinformed...
...He was merely trying to show, we think, that even the most conservative countries in Europe have the kind of public ownership that most Americans regard with honor.—The Editors...
...However, in a recent article in The Progressive this proposal was characterized as "abject...
...As far as it goes, this may—or may not— be true...
...And can he not see that the mutual responses of arms buildups and nuclear tests—along with incessant suspicion, recriminations, and bomb-rattling—are responsible for the "creation of tension...
...And the Court reaffirmed the bond between Man and God by removing government as a sort of "middleman" between them...
...Maurer to see German rearmament as a response to something, is it not possible for him to see that "a vast network of Soviet armed forces" and "Soviet testing of nuclear weapons" did not evolve in a vacuum—that they, too, are a response to, say a "vast network of U.S...
...Jesus urged his followers not to pray in public, "but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...
...By the same reasoning, which enables Mr...
...Senator whom I know personally opposing it...
...Surely you have good writers to do this...
...He ends with this: "The maintenance of a vast network of Soviet armed forces, Soviet testing of nuclear weapons, and the creation of tension provide the dynamics for West German rearmament . . . Mr...
...At this stage of the game, allocating blame seems to be a somewhat useless and even dangerous exercise...
...Meanwhile, I look at the faces of the graduates of this year, and sadly wonder, to how many of these people does the word "humanity" designate a group of studies (as opposed to that other group labeled "science") from which they had to choose some courses...
...Why is it not quite correct to say, "one county...
...2) She accepts the principal point of our editorial comment—that this is no "new tax" but a different method of assuring collection of a long-existing tax—more than 800 million dollars of which, although legally due, is not paid each year in the absence of withholding...
...Milton Mayer tells us that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia polled thirty-eight per cent of the vote in the free election of 1946, glossing over the fact that there have been no elections since then— thanks to the Communist version of "democracy...
...Unlike many examinations, this is not one you take at a certain place, in a certain specified amount of time, covering certain areas of thought encountered in a certain course of study...
...No, they are less intelligent than monkeys in this respect, because after a monkey or two had pulled the pin, the rest would leave the damned things alone...
...It amounts to far less than twenty per cent of my dividend income...
...Richard Bosch Atwater, Minnesota Mayer on the Swiss Dear Sirs: In your May issue Milton Mayer refers to the "comic little army" of the Swiss...
...A mirror image of what the enemy is thinking...
...Elizabeth Carson Wembley Park Middlesex England Mr...
...Nor is it a test for which you can prepare by cramming yourself with coffee, cigarets, and classroom notes...
...Perhaps your readers may be interested in a few excerpts from editorial comment in America's leading Protestant journal, The Christian Century, which may help balance the hysterical reaction of men like Cardinal Spellman and Billy Graham: "Private prayer, the kind of prayer honored in Scripture and most often practiced by religious people, remains untouched . . . In our view the Supreme Court has rendered a service of the greatest importance to true religion as well as to the integrity of a democratic state...
...The parallel to our federal system should, I think, engage the attention of the friends and critics of the present United Nations...
...Bruce Stewart Assistant Professor Department of Natural Science Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan Pitkin's Challenge Dear Sirs: I am in the process of taking the most difficult, stimulating, and vital examination of my life...
...I refer to Royce S. Pitkin's "College Exit Examination" in the June issue of The Progressive...
...But this is a stupid and brutal way to go about it...
...Parochial school leaders dominated the New Hyde Park public school board...
...Only those things that make for trust and therefore tend toward peace, arc "indispensable to our national security...
...1 congratulate Dr...
...Certainly, it would appear there is no reason why such a sovereignty should have a vote equal to the vote of a sovereignty one, two, or three hundred times as populous...
...Most humans have little more rational control over animal urges than a pair of dogs snarling over a bone...
...one vote...
...I do not acknowledge that in this nuclear age any secrecy is indispensable to national security...
...1) The building and loan associations have made no bones about the fact that they have solicited their customers' opposition to the withholding feature of the tax bill...
...Based solely on news reports in the New York Times as to the proposed withholding tax I have written to every U.S...
...This dance of death is, of course, insane and will surely destroy the very things for which we claim to fight in order to preserve—liberty, real free enterprise, and the American Way of Life...
...In "The Attack on the United Nations" (May issue), Adlai Stevenson states the fundamental principles of the United Nations is "one nation...
...Khrushchev may have been thinking along these lines when he said—almost wistfully, it seemed—that it would be best for us not to get involved in Sautheast Asia...
...See Edward P. Morgan's article on Page 11.—The Editors...
...the poised armaments (on both sides), the warhawks (on both sides), the distorted definitions of reality (ours and theirs), the deadly sequence of responses, war—they are "the enemy...
...Back in 1957, New Hyde Park was the most turbulent battleground in New York State, if not the country, on the issue of religion in the public schools...
...A school board election was fought over that issue...
...Christians will, as usual, manage to rationalize with sufficient ingenuity to square Jesus with extermination...
...radioactive levels elsewhere may be considerably higher than in your own locale...
...Roberta Philips Berkeley, California 'Pious Outcry' Dear Sirs: I have been greatly offended by the pious outcry that greeted the U. S. Supreme Court decision on the separation of church and state in the New York public school prayer case...
...But since the "membership clause" of the Smith Act was sustained by the Court, can one seriously maintain that mandatory registration, particularly of Party cadres, does not involve compulsory self-incrimination...
...Many small towns, like Wil-lianistown, where I live, contain women active or affiliated with the VOW...
...one vote...
...Statement (2): Fresh milk is the safest supply of calcium in a child's diet...
...I believe that they and the Court reaffirmed a great central principle of our civil liberties...
...Let us see where this principle takes us, as applied to Georgia...
...Anyone who has not read this issue of The Progressive is not fully equipped to save his life by resisting the whole idea of nuclear war...
...Poverty and hunger, disease and ignorance are still the causes of most human suffering...
...As an American and a small "d" democrat, I was revolted by the hyprocrisy of so many of our "statesmen" in Congress, especially those who deny God in their daily lives with their un-Christian acts of racial intolerance to their fellow children of God who have darker skins...
...In my view, the concept of one nation, one vote, is the real trouble with the United Nations today...
...secondly, almost all European countries, including Great Britain, have the same system...
...This principle is drawn on the analogy, "one man...
...The courage of those who stayed with the case is only matched by the courage of the Supreme Court majority...
...Jacob J. Leibson Halcott Center, New York Secrecy Dear Sirs: "Everyone acknowledges that some secrecy on the part of government is indispensable to national security," wrote Alan Barth in the June issue of The Progressive in his article, "Freedom and the Press...
...At present the United States and Russia can feel quite safe from an angry or belligerent China...
...The day may come, he said, when we will regret that we took this action...
...Perhaps John Todd, whose letter, "Liberal Sham," appeared in the July issue, is right...
...The True Enemy Dear Sirs: It is quite disturbing when categorical views such as those expressed by Marvin Maurer ("The People's Forum," May) come from supposedly knowledgeable persons—members of the academic community...
...The Swiss Postoffice—which, as in all Communist countries, also operates the telephone and telegraph systems...
...When the Supreme Court upheld the registration provisions of the bill, it carefully refused to come to grips with the self-incrimination aspect which is the other half of this legal mousetrap...
...This situation, created by highly stimulated and unwise spending, brings us not a higher but a lower standard of living, despite higher average income...
...Mayer was spoofing, of course, wlien he referred to Switzerland as a "Communist country...
...My schooling is done and now I am free to go...
...However, this support is not simply spontaneous approval coming from individual women, but rather the result of several active women's peace groups in the Massachusetts area, specifically The Voice of Women...
...Mayer takes a dim view of the "American press," but in general, from the standpoint of objectivity, it compares favorably with Mayer's own distorted contributions...
...It was a heavy vote and since the district's Jewish population was not more than ten per cent, it was obvious many Protestants and possibly some Catholics opposed the posting...
...Walter Gustafson Glenn Flora, Wisconsin Radioactive Milk Dear Sirs: With respect to the letter by Erika Muhlenberg of Women for Peace, Berkeley, California ("Protest by Boycott," in the June Forum), I have some comments to make...
...The United Nations might be compared to a United States having a Senate, but no House cf Representatives...
...He is one of the few American writers who understands Latin America and is appreciated there...
...Well," you say, "it is easy to condemn both sides in such general terms, but is there anything that we could do if we were rational?'' Sure...
...May I suggest that those of us who are really interested and concerned about radioactive hazards and the radiation safety programs of our local and state governments learn all they can about the problem before making rash public statements...
...but, in any case, let us carry this line of thought a bit further...
...We could demonstrate real Christian charity by sending large quantities of our surplus food to the starving in China and other countries regardless of their Communist identification...
...It should not be surprising if eventually they all turn against us...
Vol. 26 • August 1962 • No. 8
