THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM onest Diplomacy Dear Sirs: Does history have to go on repeating itself? Does the Congo have to become another China, Algeria, Vietnam, or Cuba? In every case named, the...
...Now, what has befallen Milton Mayer...
...remember, urban Florida, and St...
...I have received a letter from her in which she writes: "I have been enjoying The Progressive and I put every issue in the University library collection, where our statistics show that it is much read...
...Honest democrats and socialists are in prison while playboy Sukarno enjoys absolute power...
...Any donation, no matter how small, will be thankfully accepted...
...I found the tone remindful of something else: the Minute Ladies in Dallas, or None Dare Call It Treason, rather than an article in a magazine presumably for reasoning people...
...She read it and said the same thing, and then I read it again...
...Or take the article on the Birch Society, which you quoted, or staffer Jack Nease's six-part special on the right wing in Florida...
...Arthur and Helen Bertholf Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Lens on Southeast Asia Dear Sirs: Nowhere is the contrast between good points and bad ones made in Sidney Lens' article "Leadership for a World in Revolution" (January Progressive) more apparent than in his discussion of Indonesia and Malaysia...
...In other countries the spending of such an inordinate amount on defense, in the midst of poverty, would be denounced by Lens as reactionary...
...His article about the Kennedys was the dirtiest piece of journalism it has ever been my misfortune to read...
...History is on Franklin's side...
...Suppose John Kennedy had been the hypocrite Mayer thinks he was, the fact that the majority of American people and of our Western allies believed him a man of great courage, fortitude, and bigness of spirit made his life an inspiration rare in the realm of politics...
...Mayer in his old age begins to sound like Pegler-on-the-Left...
...Aside from the animus implied in Bron-fenbrenner's comment that "your readers get a double dose of Keyserling," his communication, despite its display of technical exactitude, is founded upon a glaring misstatement of my position...
...A. Camerlo Glendale, California Dear Sirs: Milton Mayer in his "November 22, 1963" stated that the voters, after looking them over, found Kennedy and Nixon to be of a size...
...In addition, calling a halt to the interest-rate spiral would contribute greatly to the restoration and maintenance of maximum employment and optimum economic growth...
...But even the most sacred bull, when it becomes sick and senile, must be relieved of decision-making public responsibilities...
...Contrast this with Malaysia, a multi-racial democratic state with competing parties and programs...
...Mrs...
...the visitors to the grave in Arlington who sometimes have trampled or even picnicked over the graves of other men who died for their country...
...Bobby N. Corcoran Jesse E. Raine Economics Department Middle Tennessee State College Murfreesboro, Tennessee Keyserling on Interest Dear Sirs In your December issue, Professor Martin Bronfenbrenner takes to task both your editorial and my letter in your October issue for voicing criticisms of Federal Reserve Board policies and rising interest rates, criticisms developed more fully in my August, 1964, study, The Toll of Rising Interest Rates...
...S. Miles Bouton, S...
...I do admire many qualities of the Kennedy family and think Mrs...
...But Indonesia is "progressive...
...This is entirely incorrect, and neither your editorial nor my letter implied any such proposal...
...Petersburg 'Times' Dear Sirs: As a St...
...The paper has long been associated, at least in Florida circles, with the New Deal...
...But this does not in any way discount my appreciation of what Mayer has done...
...It is not evident that the demonstration of the students threatened law and order to a degree that threatened "the country," or the university...
...It was well stated by the late Justice Robert H. Jackson that: "Paradoxical as it may seem, we are in an age of rebellion against liberty...
...While I sympathize with many of those who claim that the differences between the rhetoric and the reality of the Kennedy Administration were significant, I must take issue with Mayer's indictment of the now famous phrase, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country...
...Benjamin Franklin disagreed...
...The constitutional mandate . . . would be effectively frustrated and our great institution now dedicated to learning and a search for truth would be reduced to an organ for the propagation of the ephemeral political, religious, social, and economic philosophies, whatever they may be, of the majority of the Board of Regents, at that moment...
...Copies will be distributed on a first-come basis to any library applying and enclosing fifty cents to cover postage and handling...
...brigadier general, raised an interesting point regarding the correlation between the dates of the sightings of Soviet submarines and the dates of the Congressional consideration of military appropriations...
...Economic development has ground to a halt as a result of Sukarno's mad ambitions to become, next to China, the leading military power in Asia...
...And on page seventy-one of the study, the following appears: "Of course, it would not be practical to turn back interest rates immediately to the 1952 level...
...Charles E. Maxwell Quaker Hill, Connecticut Dear Sirs: When I first read Milton Mayer's article, "November 22, 1963," I spontaneously cried out to my wife, "This is simply terrific...
...Petersburg in particular, have much in common with their northern counterparts...
...Patrick Campbell is reputed to have said that she didn't care what anyone did as long as he didn't do it in the street and frighten the horses...
...A few other examples to put the Times in the liberal fold: Witness reporter Samuel Adams' recent 5,000-mile swing through the South, testing the Civil Rights Act—as a Negro and a reporter...
...Martin J. Cole New York, New York Dear Sirs: While Milton Mayer writes for The Progressive, I shall continue to subscribe...
...When Mayer says that Kennedy and Nixon were "of a size," he either lies, or he has lost his senses...
...This used to be called imperialism...
...While the "big" magazines occasionally publish his thoughts in some areas, only The Progressive is willing to let him really tackle the myths by which men earn their livings and assuage their egos today...
...That he is not completely deficient in feeling is shown by his appreciation of Eleanor Roosevelt...
...support" to Malaysia, Lens says "we would do better to try to mediate this dispute rather than take sides...
...W. J. Moulder Knoxville, Tennessee Dear Sirs: I have given Milton Mayer's short historical sketch on John F. Kennedy a great deal of consideration...
...I voted for President Kennedy, and, of course, as with everyone not a monster, felt shock as his assassination...
...Some of the characteristics so bitterly caricatured in Mayer's article were indubitably there, and do not fit the haloed image revered by some uncritical worshippers who seem to see in Kennedy a combination of Sir Galahad and King Solomon...
...And what manner of distortions are those he used to diagnose a whole nation of people who had what Mayer apparently lacks—simple human compassion to weep for the brutal, untimely death of a man shot without a moment for defense, who fell bleeding and dying into his wife's arms, for two little children, for a proud family in the loss of their son and brother, and for the loss of the elected leader of our nation...
...In every case our war and economic pressure against leftists has driven them farther to the left...
...Applications should be sent to Mrs...
...It is no wonder that The Progressive needs money when it has someone like Milton Mayer writing for it...
...Helen S. Eaton Duxbury, Massachusetts Dear Sirs: The letter from Hugh B. Hester, retired U.S...
...This necessarily gives him a warped outlook on everything that might involve his profession...
...It is to be hoped that the non-retired military can sight submarines more accurately than the retired military, in this instance at least, can cite statistics...
...Faced, for the most part, with an actively hostile press, we urgently need some means with which to break through the communications lockout...
...a state trying to devote most of its attention to economic development and already enjoying the third highest living standard in Asia...
...In actuality, Indonesia is one of the most reactionary forces in Southeast Asia...
...Fred Grace Los Angeles, California Dear Sirs: I was deeply offended by Milton Mayer's article, "November 22, 1963...
...A perusal of the inaugural address reveals a document that is pregnant with humanitarian or humanistic concerns...
...Robert D. Kreigh Columbia, Missouri Mayer's 'November 22, 1963' Dear Sirs: I suppose you are to be congratulated on your courage in publishing Milton Mayer's tasteless comments on the death of President Kennedy...
...But I don't feel sympathy, perhaps because I am too filled with dismay...
...Margaret Price McLean, Pennsylvania Dear Sirs: I read Milton Mayer's article, "November 22, 1963," in The Progressive...
...Just as long as fear continues to be the basis of our foreign policy and we allow the armed forces to have a say in setting it, there is no hope for the attainment of any viable peace...
...In every case our opponents had the support of the people increasingly, and fought for years as guerrillas, using captured weapons, while they gathered strength to win in open warfare...
...Having read President Kennedy's inaugural address, I must say that Mayer gives no indication of having done the same, or, if he has, the evidence is not manifest that he understood what was said there...
...Much of what he said, particularly about the "deep social disorder" which plagues our nation, I felt was true and truly felt...
...But Sukarno's concept of mediation is capitulation...
...What possible good could an article like that do...
...The recent farrago of the lifting of the discount rate by the Federal Reserve, followed within a few hours by action in which eleven governments, including the United States, participated to reverse some of the consequences which followed immediately upon the Federal Reserve action, and the still more recent and widespread manifestation of concern about the effects of this latest Federal Reserve step upon our national economy, accompanied by a statement by the President urging banks not to lift interest rates even though such lifts are the foreseeable and natural consequence of what the Federal Reserve did, all add further strength to my position which is now shared by an ever-increasing number of responsible eonomists...
...He might have done well to have attempted to emulate Barry Goldwater who, in Mayer's own words, had the human grace not to "invade the sanctum...
...Since Bronfenbrenner misstates my position, it is unnecessary to deal in detail with the arguments he advances...
...I cannot see where the search for truth was served by Mayer's need to present John F. Kennedy as a cold, power hungry ham actor who used the Presidency and the nation for a sort of theater in the round...
...His comments about Indonesia show that you can still fool some people by merely flashing the word "revolutionary" around...
...Mayer, bless his brilliant mind, is not alone in penetrating behind the current facades of thought and what passes for wisdom...
...Mark Hansen San Francisco CORE 1686 O'Farrell Street San Francisco, California Jane Addams Book Offer Dear Sirs: We are distributing to libraries a limited number of copies of Jane Addams: A Centennial Reader...
...Leon H. Keyserling Washington, D. C. CORE'S Press Fund Dear Sirs: Through its rapidly growing membership and determined efforts, the San Francisco Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality has carried on the fight for equality and justice in the streets, the court room, and at the conference table...
...Steven J. Kelman Great Neck, New York Fearful of Hoover Dear Sirs: Mrs...
...Yet even this he sullies by a snide purpose: to reproach Jacqueline for not being Eleanor...
...Mrs...
...Instead of giving "unqualified U.S...
...But I have felt another kind of shock in the days and months since...
...Mayer is a discerning man, and if his other writings can be taken as a reasonable measure of the man, he is a man of integrity as well...
...I thought his analysis of the late President was sharply dissecting...
...Only genus homo superien-sis, otherwise known as Milton Mayer, and sometimes known as Murray Kempton, is capable of revealing to us, with such deep and gentle sorrow, what inadequate, insufferable little lice the rest of us are...
...That Mayer should want one in this case is a pity...
...But even if the upward spiral of interest rates (in prospect if the prevalent monetary policy continues) were now called to a halt, this in itself would provide enough money to cover a very substantical part of the cost of a full-scale war against poverty in the United States...
...a nation which formerly had a 25,000 man army now being forced to divert vital manpower and funds to defend itself...
...I have decided that what one learns from history is greatly dependent on the facts one chooses to enumerate as historically relevant...
...a federation approved by elections in each constituent part...
...I have welcomed all that he has had to say in the past, and have agreed with much of it...
...The bathos...
...It has negotiated and signed dozens of agreements opening up hundreds of jobs for members of minority groups...
...I know of no other advanced country that allows it...
...Eustace Lincoln Benjamin Santa Barbara, California Freedom at Berkeley Dear Sirs: Regarding the recent disturbances at the University of California, at Berkeley, I believe that the writ of the Constitution and its Bill of Rights runs as large on a college campus as it does elsewhere...
...Yet a case may be made that any man so gifted in the expression of ideas (though often not gifted in the ideas he expresses) should find a publisher when he wants one...
...Mrs...
...I wonder how anything in the hate literature of the extreme right could top it...
...In Indonesia book burning has become a favorite pastime...
...In every case the governments which we were backing had a huge, reluctant army (mostly armed by the United States...
...the constant harping on style without much thought for substance—all this has left me depressed and impatient...
...Vincent J. Hovanec Madison, Wisconsin Generals and Foreign Policy Dear Sirs: It is indeed gratifying to read in the December issue the letter from Hugh B. Hester, retired army man, on the "military mentality," mentioning the "abuse made of their power by the military top leaders...
...Even granting that there was disorder attending the protest of the students against a dictatorial policy of a university official, it does not appear that it justified the repressive measures used to stifle and suppress freedom of expression and assembly...
...Someone who has been known to speak wisdom in a clear and compassionate voice has taken to yelping like a jackal...
...Mayer expresses lucidly and cleverly the national phenomenon resulting from the assassination of Mr...
...This no more implied that interest rates should or could now be forced back to 1952 levels than an analysis of the damage done by rising prices since 1939 would imply that prices should or could now be forced back to the 1939 level...
...It is natural that a man trained in a profession wants to exercise that profession or at least looks at everything from that point of view...
...As for those who condemn the faculty for supporting the students by a vote of eight to one, and who pray that the Regents will override their recommendations, it may be recalled that in the notorious loyalty oath case of the early 1950s, when the Regents dismissed a number of professors for holding "dangerous thoughts," the Supreme Court of California, in a unanimous opinion, ordered their reinstatement with the assertion that...
...Elvira Brown, 7325 Bryan Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19119...
...It has succeeded in desegregating many of San Francisco's larger rental agencies...
...With the passage of Proposition 14, legalizing discrimination and racism in California's housing, CORE, along with other civil rights organizations, faces a hard struggle in the months to come—a struggle in which the means of printing leaflets, newsletters, and broadsides inexpensively and quickly will be an invaluable aid...
...John F. Kennedy a remarkable woman...
...Kennedy...
...Elizabeth Bruce Charlottesville, Virginia Dear Sirs: One more article like Milton Mayer's December piece and I will cancel my subscription...
...Unlike many Dixie newspapers it has stayed in the Democratic Party's mainstream...
...Kennedy...
...He says that I propose "to force interest rates down to 1952 levels...
...But he is very nearly alone, today, in being able to get his iconoclastic truth published...
...You may believe there are no liberal newspapers in the South...
...Even where I have not agreed or fully understood, I have found some food for thought and a message deserving respectful attention...
...Richard C. Entenmann San Diego, California Dear Sirs: Only the incomparable genius of Milton Mayer could psychoanalyze, at one shot, the pathetic, ignorant 190 million of us who, for stupidly wrong reasons, wept at the destruction of a piece of ice labeled John Kennedy...
...There are enough conservative Southern newspapers in the traditional vein without lumping the St...
...There also appears to be some degree of inconsistency on the part of General Hester...
...But when every fault and failing is exaggerated, distorted, held up to scorn, and when the greatness and goodness of the man are subtly derogated even when, at last, they are mentioned, a grave injustice has been done...
...John F. Kennedy was not a saint, to be sure...
...John A. Dron, Sr...
...Has he been badly infected by that very illness he so deplores in our culture...
...But the December issue carrying Milton Mayer's opus of personal prejudice, intellectual arrogance, and snobbery left me stunned with disbelief—not because there are people who think and write as does Mayer, but because The Progressive would publish it...
...That the management of The Progressive could let a destructive article like Mayer's appear is a matter for genuine regret...
...The outcry by much of the press and many politicians as well as citizens, against the actions of the students in asserting their constitutional rights, seems to indicate, that he was right...
...Well, J. Edgar Hoover was wearing his official FBI topper when, in an unprecedented press conference, he viciously maligned our country's most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and it frightens me to know that an important part of the public trust is in such hands...
...Privately, President Johnson is entitled to show the deepest concern and compassion for his friend of many years...
...They are the conventional arguments in favor of Federal Reserve Board policies, and the answers to them are well known to those familiar with the subject...
...Katharine M. Arnett Associate Director Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Liberty and Security Dear Sirs: Edward Bennett Williams believes that "even the most dedicated civil libertarian must agree that individual liberties must be subordinated to our security as a nation...
...Petersburg Times in the fold...
...Somehow, I find it hard to see Milton Mayer as a liar, so I suppose I should extend my sympathy...
...It might not even be practical to get back to the 1952 level even in the longer run, although some substantial downward movement is both feasible and urgent...
...As The New York Times reports, Indonesians are facing famine for the first time in ages in such a potentially rich land...
...In every case named, the United States and/or France backed rightist governments fighting leftist forces, whose primary objective was national self government...
...This is entirely contrary to our traditions...
...A sound criterion for separating the "men" Presidents from the boys may be this matter of "cronyism...
...They are few and far between, and we need them...
...One of the basic causes of our stupid actions in foreign affairs is that representatives of the armed forces are allowed to sit in on policy-making...
...I was surprised to see Mayer, a good pacifist, using a loaded gun...
...Mrs...
...Hester states that this is necessary to persuade the people of the United States "to bear the heaviest tax burden of any nation anywhere...
...How can one better help one's country than by internalizing humanitarian or humanistic values and by the complete engagement in the process of self-development...
...In the light of the concern which was manifest in the address, I believe the phrase in question can only be read figuratively...
...And since no saint could be elected, or could run a government if he were elected, sainthood be damned...
...Specifically, the policy recommendations of my published study contain no proposal that interest rates be forced back to the 1952 level...
...John Whitten Pasadena, California Dear Sirs: The Mayer article in the December 1964 issue continues the peevishness of The Progressive against President Kennedy that characterized the issue which reached us so soon after his death...
...We ask those readers who are able to donate what they can toward our Press Fund...
...While I agree that the statement, if taken out of context and read literally, has antidemocratic overtones, I would like to suggest that such a separation is not intellectually honest...
...Charles J. Wilhelm Glenview, Illinois Dear Sirs: That was a fine article by Milton Mayer in the December issue of The Progressive...
...He has been known as a man of principle, however quixotic...
...I think only a man of small incentives would use his talents to try to debunk Mr...
...It was all unspeakably brutal and ugly, and there was nothing but weeping left for any human being with normal sensibilities...
...Now he reveals himself to be alien to the grief of the nation—not merely incapable of sharing our feelings but also ignorant of the high degree to which such feelings for the President existed even before death...
...Petersburg Times reporter, now on leave for graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, I must comment on your labeling the Times "a conservative Florida newspaper" (in "John Birch's New Suit," in the December issue...
...Why did Mayer see this as a "manifestation of deepest social disorder": Is Mayer something more or something less than human...
...Wouldn't honest diplomacy, inside and outside United Nations, best help Africans to work out African problems—with technical help available when asked for...
...As a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, which urges that society "undertake an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right," why is he so concerned with the high level of taxes...
...Any objective analysis would lead one to think that in Malaysia Lens would find just the type of nation which America should support—in lieu of the reactionary dictatorships—to take the lead of the world revolution...
...Our public relations committee is presently engaged in a campaign to raise funds for the purchase of a small offset printing press...
...This is not to say that some of the other points which were made by Mayer were not well and forcefully taken...
...Dorothy Samuel Lawrenceville, Virginia Dear Sirs: I have been a subscriber to The Progressive less than a year, but in that time I had come to accept it as dedicated to "a fight for a more liberal society" with a dispassionate search for the truth...
...To voice even a small protest was to feel something of an outcast...
...Checks should be made out to Public Relations Committee, San Francisco CORE, and sent to the address below...
...It fought for two-party politics in Florida, and against one-party rule, long before the Goldwater bandwagon began playing Dixieland...
...Blessings on you both...
...Clementine M. Miller Seattle, Washington Dear Sirs: Please cancel my subscription...
...Mrs...
...Doing anything else would involve surrendering to that very principle of expediency and power politics rejected by Lens...
...Ellen Peters New York, New York...
...The Indonesians openly and shamelessly engage in aggression and infiltration against a neighbor, Malaysia...
...It's all right to fight the McCarthys and the Goldwaters—but allow us our heroes, please...
...Ojai, California The St...
...Yet Sukarno spends his foreign aid money on prestige projects such as a sports stadium and a luxury hotel in Jakarta...
...Indeed, the time has come to take sides...
...The United States did try, in the Robert Kennedy mission to Indonesia, to "mediate" the dispute...
...The book, published by Macmillan at $6 and edited by Emily Cooper Johnson for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in honor of the centenary of Jane Addams's birth, contains significant portions of her books now largely out of print but still relevant to the problems of our day...
...Our chapter would like to ask the readers of The Progressive for help...
...My published study computed the costs of rising interest rates between 1952 and 1963, and estimated the costs in the future if the prevalent monetary policy persists through 1970, for the purpose of indicating the magnitudes involved, and to develop the theme that the amount of money involved in rising interest rates could have been used in the past and should be used in the future for much more useful economic and social purposes...
...He forgot to mention, however, that Nixon's scale was weighted with 5,000,000 anti-Catholic votes...
...Jamestown, New York Progressive in Nigeria Dear Sirs: Some months ago I sent an introductory gift subscription to a friend at the University of Nigeria...
...The semantics of liberal and conservative are often confused, but a closer look at the Times will do much to erase the apparent misconception...
...He who trades liberty for security," he said, "gets neither...
...According to testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, in preparation of the Economic Report of the President, there are ten nations—West Germany, France, Austria, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain—which collect taxes equal to a higher percentage of Gross National Product than in the United States...
...The right of free speech, political or otherwise, to assemble peaceably, and to petition for the redress of grievances cannot be limited or constrained by any ukase of an administrator or Board of Regents, unless it "so imminently threatens immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country...
...As for Mayer's article, I wouldn't change a word...
...They are hardly likely to be helpful to The Progressive in any popularity contest...
Vol. 29 • February 1965 • No. 2
