THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Double Standard Dear Sirs: In a recent speech President Johnson complained about the "moral double bookkeeping" of Americans who criticize our bombing of North Vietnam,...
...I sincerely hope the Senator will keep up his fight and remain a symbol for those who pray for the fading possibility of peace...
...You are hereby praised lavishly for the follow-up editorial in May...
...Moreover, having observed firsthand the violence against Walter and Victor Reuther, and understanding the need to rid the UAW of strong Communist influence, I hardly subscribe to Mr...
...It was Norman Thomas and the Socialist Party who pointed out the evils of the Smith Act and who denounced its use against the Trotskyites at a time when the Daily Worker was approving the Supreme Court decision that the act was not unconstitutional...
...Johnson's Vietnam critics...
...Giving state-local government a stake in the Federal income tax will help preserve its power for the support of the public sector...
...When, at a future point in history, the hypocrisy and sham of the Johnson regime during these past few months are "objectively" documented, it can only be hoped that some assiduous researcher will ferret out these past numbers of The Progressive as testimony that at least some of us still knew the meaning of "deception...
...But would we not have resented such punishment for ourselves when we in our turn "subverted" Guatemala and Iran and there succeeded in overthrowing governments which we did not approve...
...The disgusting spectacle of that photograph of Humphrey embracing Lester Maddox cancels any credentials he may have left as a "liberal...
...Richard M. Dudley Cambridge, Massachusetts Praise for Kennan Dear Sirs: As an octogenarian who has always been challenged by the wonder and mystery of the world we live in, I was deeply appreciative of George F. Kennan's article on "Why Do I Hope...
...A. P. Gyving Los Gatos, California Coles on Psychiatry Dear Sirs: I have just read Robert Coles' article, "The Limits of Psychiatry," (May issue), aloud to our family, and we give three cheers to a professional who can view his own field with sane common sense...
...C. David Rota Elmhurst, Illinois Dear Sirs: I congratulate you for publishing the truly great article by Senator George McGovern in your May issue...
...Your answer hit right between the eyes, and he deserved it...
...The stereotype "poor small farmer" is today an inconsequential marginal producer, a vestigial remainder from the past...
...What goes on within the individual is just as important, and undoubtedly even more so...
...Johnson and Mr...
...While you mention higher cost of processing food, you might do deeper research...
...As the daughter of a psychiatric social worker, and with both myself and my husband being consulting engineers, utilizing the techniques of the natural sciences, we have long deplored the "attitudes" in psychiatry...
...Walter W. Heller University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota Humphrey and Maddox Dear Sirs: I have read many nice things about Hubert Humphrey in the pages of The Progressive...
...W. M. Lafferty Department of Political Science University of Florida Gainesville, Florida Dear Sirs: Your April lead editorial was excellent...
...No matter what we may think of issues, it is the United States of America that allows us to express our opinions on those issues...
...evidently your distinguished political scientist critic does not read, or does not believe, the Times...
...E. S. Goldman Plainfield, New Jersey Farmers and Prices Dear Sirs: I consider and have valued The Progressive the best of all the "small magazines" now published in our country...
...Lens rightly condemns the virulent anti-Communism which is all too common in this country...
...S. S. ScHINDLER Hewlett, New York Praise for George McGovern Dear Sirs: Congratulations to Senator George S. McGovern for his unrelenting effort to expose our errors in Vietnam...
...H, Eugene Wine Miami, Florida Lens' 'Faulty Memories' Dear Sirs: As a liberal, former democratic socialist (and still one by philosophy), and an active peace and civil rights worker, I find the rewriting of history by Sidney Lens as objectionable as he finds the liberalism of Arthur Schlesinger...
...In our minds it was right for the United States to send in 20,000 troops, in violation of solemn treaties and of our obligations under the U. N. Charter, to occupy Lebanon (under President Eisenhower) and the Dominican Republic (under President Johnson), but we hold it wrong for another power to so act...
...Elizabeth Weideman Dearborn, Michigan 'A Call to Greatness' Dear Sirs: Bless you for the May editorial, "A Call to Greatness," and the splendid answer you gave that "political scientist in one of the nation's great universities...
...Johnson is silent about our own violations of those accords, which forbade foreign intervention in Vietnam, and the violations by South Vietnam, under our pressure, including the refusal to carry out the Geneva stipulations for a plebiscite on reunification of the two Vietnams...
...The farm subsidies do not apply to the small farmer but go almost wholely to the corporate holdings...
...William L. Shirer Torrington, Connecticut Right to Freedom Dear Sirs: I am a sixteen year old high school student, and I intend to join the U.S...
...The flag that has been destroyed in some instances waves more brightly than ever in its pages as we read the truthful, stinging words of this spokesman of public opinion...
...It is true that farm income is far below the income level in business or industry...
...His letter in your May issue is full of bitterness and faulty memories of the 1930's...
...But it surely does not contribute to the cause of a rational and informed decision to misstate the assumptions and ignore the fundamental rationale of tax sharing, as Ulmer does in his article...
...Anna D. Rhodes Palo Alto, California 'Rumor Mongering' Potomacus Dear Sirs: Potomacus (whom I usually admire) writes in the May issue: "There have been reports that before the Senator's trip to Vietnam he was invited to the White House...
...It is the first real attempt we have come across to define the psychiatrist's function...
...He urges the restoration of the democratic course that we are blindly ignoring every day as we devastate that unhappy country...
...Josephine Webb Rockford Bay, Idaho Dear Sirs: I do not agree with Robert Coles' contention in the May issue that what goes on between people is virtually the only important thing in diseases which are now assigned to psychiatry...
...That being the case, let us throw the money and effort to biomedical research, where we are most likely to make significant discoveries in the future which will be helpful in the treatment of those diseases which, for want of anything better, are now assigned to psychiatry...
...The reduction in food costs from twenty-two to eighteen per cent of the family budget only indicates that the character of what constitutes our standard of living has changed...
...We are punishing North Vietnam by bombing, the President said, because "of her flagrant violations of the Geneva accords" (which we refused to sign...
...It is plain that, both by precept and by action, he fully understands the Vietnam situation and our reprehensible part in it...
...Is it not precisely the kind of rumor mongering—the credibility gap—which we resent when the hawks indulge in it...
...Let us examine some facts...
...At no time have I suggested—nor has Joseph A. Pechman—that state-local taxing power is exhausted...
...Lens' thesis that Communists led the sit-down strikes...
...There is unconfirmed speculation that the President pressed upon Brooke . . that it would be a great mistake for the first Negro member of the Senate since Reconstruction to align himself with Mr...
...We feel ourselves perfectly justified in regarding the Caribbean as our sphere of influence, but we oppose China taking a similar attitude toward the area near her borders...
...I suggest that Potomacus holds his tongue until he has a reasonable amount of evidence to back his charges—charges, in this case, against both of the men involved...
...The President is also said to have implored Brooke to be a 'statesman...
...in your May issue...
...That which is most true about agriculture as an industry today is that it is dominated and carried on by large landowners, mostly by huge corporate holdings...
...For example, Ulmer claims that "underlying the idea of tax-sharing is the basic assumption that the fifty states, in general, have more or less exhausted the sources of tax revenue now available to them...
...In his article Senator McGovern has articulated all this better than could any professor of social science on this campus...
...Coles that we are probably already close to the ultimate in psychoanalytic technique...
...It was only when Russia and Hitler had their falling out and the United States went to war on Russia's side that the U. S. Communist Party gave its support to the Roosevelt Administration...
...Rusk are extremely silent...
...The supreme reason for hope is the phenomenon of love of family, friends, persons of the opposite sex, neighbors, or those in our work, and some of us rise to love of all mankind...
...Grants-in-aid, whatever their theoretical attractions, have proved to be a disappointing instrument on this score...
...William E. Finok Westfield, New Jersey Dear Sirs: It seems totally absurd that any professor from any university, great or small, could take such umbrage at your lead editorial in the April issue...
...As he indicates, we are all actors in this scene as well as spectators...
...Your appraisal of Ho Chi Minh's offer was certainly correct...
...What some of my fellow liberals apparently fail to see is that unless a slice of the Federal income tax is made available to the states—preferably through tax-sharing, though income tax credits would be a good second best—too large a share of the "fiscal dividends" of future years is likely to take the form of income tax reductions rather than vital support of the public sector...
...The statement that the consumer is subsidized at the expense of the farmer is in my opinion invalid...
...I, for one, don't believe this...
...You may not agree with the way I think, but therein is the beauty of our country...
...Finally, we consider it right for us to bomb a country which never attacked us, never declared war on us, and on which we have never declared war—a point on which Mr...
...Marine Corps as soon as I graduate, because I feel that I owe my country something for all the benefits and privileges I've received from it...
...Lee Grant Detroit, Michigan...
...I salute you...
...Is it not rather the President and our Government which indulge in "moral double bookkeeping...
...The prospect of failure or success is not the determining factor as to our participation in the struggle for what we realize is right...
...Maybe we are beginning to take the high standards of The Progressive for granted...
...Mike Feiner Berkey, Ohio Heller on Tax-sharing Dear Sirs: In his zeal to discredit tax-sharing in his article in the May issue of The Progressive, Melville J. Ulmer mistakes its advocates' position on some points and ignores explicit answers to others that have been spelled out in such writings as my New Dimensions of Political Economy...
...Our identification with a nature larger than ourselves is a source of strength, solace, and hope...
...William H. Fisher Texas Western College El Paso, Texas Dear Sirs: Again The Progressive does itself proud in the May issue with the publication of Senator George McGovern's article on "The Lessons of Vietnam...
...My preference for tax-sharing over the allowance of a Federal credit for income taxes paid to the states is based mainly on its ability to accomplish interstate equalization...
...The corporations in between hold the power...
...One quibble: LBJ demanded stopping of infiltration as a precondition for stopping the bombing, not for discussions per se...
...In the last analysis, much of the opposition to such devices as tax-sharing or block grants (viewed as supplements to, not substitutes for, categorical grants) seems to stem from a fundamental distrust of the states, from an apparent belief that they are outmoded relics of another era in our federalism that cannot (or should not) be revitalized...
...Have we not in fact for some time insisted on a double standard for conduct in world affairs—one for ourselves and quite another for others, not only in Vietnam but elsewhere...
...What sort of groundless, back-biting kind of reporting is this to admit to the columns of a periodical dedicated to a better quality of life in this world...
...That we are following in the well-trod footsteps of history is small consolation...
...The New York Times made it quite clear that the "acceptance" of U Thant's cease-fire plan by the United States was conditional...
...Also I think that the people of South Vietnam have as much a right to freedom as we do, and that it is our right and duty to make sure that they get that chance...
...Gerald Barnes Denver, Colorado Dear Sirs: In "The Word from Washington" in your May issue Potomacus uses language like this: "There is unconfirmed speculation...
...f Tax-sharing to help support the general fabric of Federal-state-local government and particularly those functions which are not the beneficiaries of Federal aid, indeed, are often undernourished because the matching requirements of Federal grants draw funds away from them...
...The urban family has become even more dependent on services and commodities other than food...
...But is not this a serious charge, timidly qualified by escape phrases: a speculation likely to be repeated as a fact...
...Should the subsistence farmer disappear tomorrow, it would make no difference in the industry...
...But we condemned Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Tojo's Japan for just such unprovoked acts of violence and undeclared war...
...With the apparent "shut up" campaign of Johnson, Rusk, and Westmoreland, with the obvious intent of blaming our failures in Vietnam on dissension, it takes a person of strong convictions to disagree with the "administrative elite...
...At the same time, to the extent that this greater reliance on the Federal income tax substitutes for heavier reliance on regressive property, sales, and excise taxes, it will maintain a more progressive over-all Federal-state-local tax system...
...But Mr...
...I can well understand the disappointment with Brooke, the suspicions of Presidential pressure, and the wish to implement both with this plausible rumor...
...It was right to subject North Vietnam to bombing, the President has also said, because she sought to "subvert" South Vietnam and overthrow its government...
...Beyond this, Ulmer does not recognize that different aspects of the state-local fiscal problem require different treatments: ^[ Increased and rationalized categorical grants-in-aid to finance specific programs that are infused with the national interest and characterized by strong spill-over effects...
...We have held great power for so short a time and we have come so quickly to abuse it...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Double Standard Dear Sirs: In a recent speech President Johnson complained about the "moral double bookkeeping" of Americans who criticize our bombing of North Vietnam, accusing them of remaining silent about the Vietcong atrocities while loudly protesting the slaughter of civilians by our bombing...
...For thirty years I have been urging greater tax efforts at the state and local level and suggesting ways and means to implement that urging...
...Let us hope that the citizens of South Dakota will next year have the good judgment to return him to the U. S. Senate...
...We can afford honest men on all sides of public questions better than we can afford contemptible allies...
...Indeed, I am sure that if more of your readers had had the slightest notion that anyone would consider your fine piece anything other than a highly perceptive and truthful commentary, you would have been inundated with letters of praise...
...The small farmer does have a legitimate case...
...It is all right, we hold, for us to send troops and guns to help one side in a civil war, but wrong for another country to do the same, though its intervention is far more feeble than our own and deals with its own kindred people...
...A real statesman such as Senator McGovern belongs to all of us and not just to the people of South Dakota...
...When all the facts and arguments are in, the country may decide to reject tax-sharing...
...But I have memories of meetings in the Thirties when the Norman Thomas Socialists were trying to find ways to support the New Deal and to make social reform more effective—meetings which were disrupted by Communists trying to obstruct, delay, or whip up conflict...
...They administer the ultimate selling price to consumers, and they control and dictate the price they pay the farmer...
...The Lessons of Vietnam" in the May issue is another indication that Senator McGovern has become one of the truly great leaders in the struggle to end the atrocities in Vietnam...
...Only one blinded by narrow patriotism could fail to see it...
...The President is also said...
...Emphasis added...
...The critic you quote early in your May editorial is, as you point out, wrong to call the President's offer to Ho Chi Minh "generous...
...The conclusion that the consumer is having a free ride at the expense of the farmer is a faulty conclusion based on questionable premises...
...Direct your finger of accusation to this—¦ rather than to the victims, the housewife and the "poor farmer...
...Does devotion to LBJ and the Democratic Party require this...
...It is certainly becoming more difficult for a man with a high political position to condemn our policy without being shunned by the Administration, as well as by public opinion, as being "un-American...
...I do agree with Mr...
...As Athens, before the attack on Syracuse, as imperial Germany before 1914, and Nazi Germany and imperial Japan before 1939, the United States, it seems to me, is today displaying the arrogance and the irresponsibility of power...
...However, I am disturbed by the editorial comment in the May issue, "Free Ride on the Farm...
...rather than a 'demagogue...
...Those who do and who oppose tax-sharing on this ground should say so frankly...
Vol. 31 • July 1967 • No. 7
