THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Agnew a Genius Dear Sirs: In regard to Potomacus' May comment on the Republicans' claim that the Vice President is a "near-genius" with an IQ of 135, it should be noted that...
...It also serves the less obvious function of bringing together representative voices of all factions within the party for the purpose of selecting a leader who will guide and give direction to the party for the next four years and in whom all factions will be able to find a focal point for the interests they represent...
...They also have a new bottle crushing machine...
...boys who die may be saddened, and the boys themselves may have had a desire to live and a right to live, but this sacrifice is a small price to pay for "freedom...
...Even many who supported his nomination were dismayed at the way he had won it...
...At this meeting Karl Hess, Phillip Abbot Luce, and Carl Oglesby joined forces to fight the "monster establishment...
...Worse yet, why is he so naive as to underestimate them...
...We must never forget that the two issues are bound together, and both must be overcome if civilization is to survive...
...We intend to go on doing this subject to the standards cited above...
...As a minister, I found this the most nauseating phase of the march...
...Those Cong and gooks don't deserve to live...
...Amen...
...Another fact that makes Wechsler irrelevant is his Left-Right definition...
...Thomas Burton Charlotte, North Carolina That Bottle Blowers' Ad Dear Sirs: I'm so unhappy I could bawl...
...William H. Fisher Missoula, Montana U.S...
...I have friends in California who state quite vigorously that if Unruh beats Yorty in the Democratic primaries, they will then vote for neither Unruh or Reagan since Jess Unruh is not clearly a liberal...
...They "infest" the whole country of Vietnam (their native land) and like rats they have to be exterminated...
...Our freedom would be gone...
...Hubert Humphrey, failing dismally in those primaries he entered, took his case to the party bosses...
...In the Prologue by the Editors in the special April issue on the threat to our physical environment, The Progressive says many true things...
...New Right: the False Choice," shows his total lack of understanding of New Left politics...
...I reiterate: The kind of thinking I described in (3) above, if persisted in, could well bring the United States the most intense period of reaction it has ever experienced...
...Jerry D. Coffin Field Secretary War Resisters League New York, New York The four letters above represent a fair cross section of the largest volume of mail protesting an advertisement in the thirty years The Progressive has been published under its present stewardship...
...The disintegration of American society is the New Left aim...
...This cynical attempt of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association to slow down the pace of change is shameful...
...Wrong...
...Each contributor has given a full and carefully drawn picture of his field of human ecology with its political and economic overtones...
...If "we" didn't go to Vietnam and kill all those people, they would get in their sampans and row across the Pacific and storm the shores of California, and in short order we would be subdued...
...Pollution Bandwagon Dear Sirs: It is difficult for me to express the depth of my shock and dismay when I opened my April number of our old and responsible liberal Progressive and found that you, too, had climbed on the bandwagon of pollution with the myriad of politicians who hope to ride into office for which they are probably not qualified on a platform of "filth...
...Why, then, should Wechsler be surprised at Rubin's tactics...
...it lies, instead, in a radical reorientation and remaking of the very basis of our lives and civilization, from an attitude of competition to one of accommodation with nature and our environment...
...Unfortunately, the damage done by this type of advertising is immeasurable...
...Robert Kealy Oconomowoc, Wisconsin The Liberals' Dilemma Dear Sirs: In your May issue, V. J. Dougherty takes rather impassioned exception to what he has labeled my "impassioned argument" in a previous issue in which I oposed a third party movement...
...See, I'd say, holding high my copy of The Progressive like a banner, the Establishment is not a total loss...
...The same callous disregard of the nation's leaders for the quality of human life is seen here as was evident in your "The Power of the Pentagon" issue of last June...
...It is a sign of clear-sightedness on the part of the New Left to fear and denounce liberals with greater gusto than conservatives...
...You dedicated that issue to the young who are "rebelling against a tawdry culture," remember...
...But then liberals have a natural affinity for hypocrisy...
...We really don't have much time left...
...Wheel Now we can all face the Twenty-first Century with equanimity...
...While the liberals have been long on theory and short on practice, the opposite is the case with the New Right and the New Left...
...The Progressive is not a shuck...
...We published the advertisement not because of the pittance involved but because we had no valid reason to reject it on our basic advertising standards of taste, ethical considerations, and the laws of libel...
...What to do...
...It's going onto my library shelves, along with my collection of good books...
...For one thing, I'm thirty-six, and I'm a nice guy, right...
...Cora G. Chase Vaughn, Washington Dear Sirs: The April issue of The Progressive isn't going where most magazines go after I finish reading them...
...With this self image, it is indeed frustrating for most Democrats to observe the current political success of the Republican Party as well as the national disarray of their own party...
...Excellent...
...Joel Margolis Washington, D.C...
...It has been a valuable resource in preparing for the Teach-in and for future efforts to stop the threatening disaster...
...Don't widen the generation gap...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM Agnew a Genius Dear Sirs: In regard to Potomacus' May comment on the Republicans' claim that the Vice President is a "near-genius" with an IQ of 135, it should be noted that Mr...
...Say you're sorry and give the people back their ad money...
...The young today say it's all a shuck, you can't trust anyone over thirty, for they are the Establishment, and the cynicism of the Establishment is total...
...The threat is not a massive inundation of candy-bar wrappers, coke bottles, or "litter-bits...
...He never equivocated, but was always forthright...
...The Editors Survival Issue "Superb" Dear Sirs: In this day of "verbal overkill," the American people require voices that make sense as well as noise...
...Divided we fall...
...The American dream is projected here against the nightmare of a contaminated universe where man is destroying the basis of life itself...
...All must make an effort to change our civilization...
...Led by fundamentalist preacher Carl Mclntyre, the march doubtless further alienated many of today's youth from a church which, in the words of the late Harry Emerson Fosdick, "has come down the centuries too often trying to carry the cross of Jesus in one hand and a dripping sword in the other...
...Among these are leaders of the National Women's Democratic Club who are planning a meeting on the topic and who are inviting, I think, some of your authors...
...The New Left wants to keep liberals from being elected and to goad the New Right into extremes of repression which eventually will turn the stomachs of a majority of the people—a tactic that has had its successes where the Right rises to the bait and the liberals supinely enact Rap Brown legislation...
...The state of Vermont enacted legislation banning no-return bottles and found the law did not correct the litter problem...
...As usual, Ralph Nader gets to the crux of the trouble by pointing out the stumbling blocks to cleaning up the pollution mess: monopolistic industry intent upon profit at any cost...
...Jerry Rubin wants polarization in American society...
...O.K., children, turn to page sixty-one...
...The score cards will be misleading, but you will be able to tell the players by how willing they are to expand public controls designed to combat pollution and other environmental perils, spend the money needed to achieve desperately needed reforms . . . insist on the strictest possible enforcement of anti-pollution laws and propose even stronger measures to stop the wholesale pollution by industry, government, and individuals...
...It describes with insight and perspicacity what the crisis is all about and how many special interest groups are already exploiting it...
...Daniel F. Halloran Albany, New York Liberals Two-faced Dear Sirs: The article following James Wechsler's "New Left vs...
...Exactly...
...D. Ivan Fritts Ontario, Oregon // Mr...
...it is rather that we are being gassed, poisoned, and faced with famine...
...Representative Henry S. Reuss Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: My admiration for The Progressive was fully substantiated again by your great "Crisis of Survival" issue...
...Paragraph one tells us how glass bottle blowers have been working on the problem of waste disposal "for a number of years...
...It's a full page advertisement paid for by the Glass Bottle Blowers Association (AFL-CIO...
...this includes The Progressive, which should not accept such ecologically obscene advertising as that of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association...
...Our crisis of survival is in the gradual assumption of power over both industry and government by the industrial-military imperialism while our leadership blinds our eyes with the exaggerated story of filth...
...I now respond: 1. It is to your credit that you have a People's Forum that is considerably longer than most liberal magazines have...
...Comparing it with the Prologue was like rereading Orwell...
...For him the more Agnews, Mitchells, and McCarthys the better...
...Particularly revealing was the singing of Onward, Christian Soldiers by predominantly middle-aged marchers...
...He entered the Democratic convention with no evidence of popular support within his party, and left it, as he entered, the clear choice of the party bosses...
...Evjue founded, published, and edited The Capital Times (Madison...
...It is no longer Left against Right, but rather, Left and Right against the world...
...It is a humiliating irony that the Democratic Party—the would-be people's party of the nation—must look to the Republican Party for guidance in how the democratic process must be observed within a political party if it is to survive in a democratic society...
...The Progressive knows how to recognize a shuck...
...And then there's The Progressive, part of the Establishment, yes, but also a beacon relentlessly casting the glaring light of truth on all that is ugly, phony, and harmful in the Establishment...
...The solution to our problems does not lie in Susie Spotless or Lady Bird cleanup-beautification programs to make our Sunday afternoon drives more pleasant...
...This is the day we set aside for body counts...
...The parents of our U.S...
...An advertisement in your April issue by the Glass Bottle Blowers Association stated that Vermont had tried to ban non-returnable bottles and "found the law did not correct the litter problem...
...It proves his point...
...The recent Left-Right Festival of Liberation at the University of Southern California made this clear...
...Thursday is the day for finding out how much progress we have made in getting all those despicable enemies killed...
...The Progressive is part of the Establishment...
...Unfortunately the only thing I saw in the issue which has not already been discussed some time ago in the radical media was a new definition of "liberal...
...Bradford Sales Graduate Student University of Southern California Los Angeles, California William T. Evjue Dear Sirs: With the passing of William T. Evjue, Wisconsin and the nation have lost a great friend and protagonist...
...During the 1968 pre-convention period, Richard Nixon took his case to the Republican rank and file, winning most of the primary elections he entered...
...Senator Birch Bayh Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: In "The Crisis of Survival," The Progressive examines the challenge of our survival as a jeweler examines a valuable gem...
...Therefore the Establishment is not a total shuck...
...We sure are showing the world who is the champion killer...
...This misrepresents the facts...
...Speaking of the police-state law under which the Chicago Seven were tried, William Chapman noted that "liberals put up little opposition, fearing they would endanger the civil rights package for which they hid struggled so long...
...His May issue article, "New Left vs...
...I would like to suggest that the political success the Republican Party is currently enjoying at the expense of the Democrats is largely a vindication of the democratic process which the Republicans followed in the selection of their party leadership...
...It ought to be in red on the calendar...
...Congratulations on gathering together these excellent articles by this distinguished group of authoritative writers...
...This issue deserves to be widely read, and I hope it will be...
...Fritts can spare the time to re-read (or read for the first time) the Prologue to our special issue and the articles of many of the writers who contributed to it, including Nader, Nelson, Hayes, Inglis, and Commoner, he may learn that we sought to emphasize in a variety of ways that an immediate end to involvement in Vietnam and the equally immediate reversal of our national priorities from the present emphasis on military profligacy to social and economic progress at home are indispensable ingredients of any meaningful campaign to combat the pollution of our environment...
...The Crisis of Survival" is a fitting sequel to "The Power of the Pentagon...
...Whether we can prevent civil war will depend on whether we can forge together a sufficiently numerous group which can successfully put theory and practice together, and do it within the limited time left...
...He entered the Republican convention with strong popular support and emerged from it as the unquestioned majority choice...
...And paragraph three gets down to the nitty which is very, very gritty: "The solution does not lie in legislation [ring a bell?] which will ban glass containers, plastics, tin cans, or newspapers and eliminate jobs of workers in these fields...
...The evidence is irrefutable that in recent times liberals have been more two-faced than conservatives about sacrificing the Bill of Rights to put down radicals and Communists because as liberals they feel more vulnerable to charges of being soft on Communism and law and order...
...Walter Gustafson Glen Flora, Wisconsin Cross and Sword Dear Sirs: That was a cogent statement by Poto-macus in your May issue about the April 4 March for Victory: "This was the Old America assembled in protest against the New...
...The Democratic Party now stands bereft of any credible leadership toward which its many interests can look with confidence and trust for purposeful and unified direction...
...There seems to be as widespread pollution of the minds of the people as of the environment in which they exist...
...I congratulate you and your staff and writers for their good work...
...Melville J. Ulmer Professor of Economics University of Maryland College Park, Maryland Dear Sirs: Your "Crisis of Survival" issue is superb...
...However, I was dismayed to find a full-page advertisement for the Glass Bottle Blowers Association, replete with the sort of ideas that irresponsible, blind industry usually presents us, without consideration to anything but continuance of profit...
...Unfortunately, the fact that the New Left correctly points out that the liberals are sell-outs does not relieve their own tactics of a lack of realism...
...Finney Briggs Valparaiso, Indiana Fly from Reality Dear Sir&: Considering the state the world is in today, shouldn't you change The Progressive's motto from "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" to: "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you flee...
...I really don't want to give up on you...
...Over the years The Progressive has published advertisements promoting the sale of books which were not only in conflict with the position expressed in editorials or articles in the same issue but also in collision with our fundamental social and political philosophy...
...Our crisis of survival is in the millions of children around the world who go to bed hungry and cold while American farmers produce the food to supply that need but are unable to sell it on a world market because of lack of statesmanship in Washington...
...Perhaps his finest memorial will be his enlightenment of men's minds, those who have picked up his banner and press forward...
...They point out their paving of a parking lot with a crushed glass mixture made from discarded glass bottles...
...But then craft unions have been reactionary since Gomp-ers wed the AFL to capitalism...
...It gives us a great feeling of red-white-and-blue patriotism and pride when we hear that our brainwashed boys killed nineteen hundred of those subhuman Cong—mixed with gooks—last week, and they killed only ninety-seven of our boys...
...Senator Clifford P. Case Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: "The Crisis of Survival" is viewed in these pages through the eyes of some of our nation's most perceptive and informed authorities on man and his environment...
...Our crisis of survival is in a foreign policy that attempts to police the world, that is wasting our resources and destroying a generation of our young men in a war of our own aggression...
...Vermont did have such a ban but it was rescinded by the legislature not because it was found to be ineffective but due to pressure from the very industries that it was affecting...
...Harry I. Potter Castro Valley, California Dear Sirs: While we agree that the blame for the environmental crisis is hard to place, we do not feel that those industries which are contributing to that crisis should twist the facts...
...Evangeline McAllister Bayard, Nebraska...
...Alan Jenkins Asheville, North Carolina Wechsler 'Irrelevant' Dear Sirs: James Wechsler may not be dead, but he certainly is irrelevant...
...The Crisis of Survival" ought to be required reading for all of our high school and college students, as well as recommended reading for adults...
...We must learn to give up short-term monetary gain for the long-range good of mankind...
...The Editors Democrats in Disarray Dear Sirs: The Democratic Party has long regarded itself as the natural majority party...
...James Wechsler—where have you been...
...But I refused to accept that totally negative estimate, despite the bleakness of the view...
...2. Most of my friends—from the Left —-thought I was foolish for voting for HHH in 1968 rather than for Nixon ("Things have to get worse before they can get better") or for someone "way out" such as Dick Gregory...
...They may have paved the lot with glass bottles, but they still paved it to make it easier for automobiles, the prime polluters of our air and one of the greatest trouble-makers in existence today...
...The national conventions which each of the two major parties holds every four years serve to choose the two candidates for the Presidency...
...Champion Killer Dear Sirs: Thursday, the fifth day of the week, has come to be a special day in the United States...
...Or does it use coal or some other fossil fuel, causing more junk to be poured into the air...
...It needs a lot of fixing, but it doesn't need to be destroyed...
...I still have the legislature of Vermont, which had the courage, in this instance, to fight mindless waste and defilement, apparently in the face of opposition from a vocal special interest group, but I wonder if that's enough to sustain my faith in the Establishment...
...Agnew is really a genius since you have to include the bonus ten points he gets for his veteran's status...
...And "The Crisis of Survival" ought to be an "instant topic" for discussion by every teacher, minister, club president, government official, and public speaker during the coming months...
...Senator Walter F. Mondale Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: Your study of the environmental crisis is an excellent reference work and an urgent call for comprehensive and effective programs for environmental enhancement...
...How on earth can they consider that a constructive effort...
...Paragraph two tells us about how they've had all these "community-wide drives to eliminate litter...
...Does it use electric power, thus creating a greater demand for new polluting electric plants, dams, or reactors...
...First, throughout, the Glass Bottle Blowers speak of the "litter" problem...
...He exposed the rabid and virulent political machinations of Senator Joseph McCarthy and was a leading factor in bringing about his downfall...
...True, pollution is a problem and should be controlled, but certainly it is no crisis of survival...
...The "humbug is piled high...
...They mercilessly shoot down our U.S...
...It is a shame that the Glass Bottle Blowers Association cannot see beyond the narrow interest of keeping their craft union members employed in pollution manufacturing...
...Conversely, it has smugly viewed the Republicans as the party of big business and vested interests and, accordingly, the natural minority party of the nation...
...The various facets of the problem are scrutinized with sharp concern by men distinguished by their recognition of the threat facing us and their unwillingness to be overcome by it...
...I have been lending my copy to others around town who have not seen it...
...Your special issue, "The Crisis of Survival" brings together voices that do just that—and make a book worth reading for anyone truly concerned about the worsening quality of our environment...
...New Right" in the May issue shows why liberals are discredited today...
...Senator Edmund S. Muskie Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: "The Crisis of Survival" is an ecosystem all by itself—and an impressive decalogue for the Environmental Decade...
...Secondly, the Glass Bottle Blowers mention some of their attempts to rid us of "litter...
...Arthur C. Holmberg Nome, Alaska Dear Sirs: I would first like to thank you for your excellent April issue, "The Crisis of Survival...
...The 1968 Democratic convention had nominated a Presidential candidate, but failed in its second function, the selection of national leadership until the next convention in 1972...
...Senator George McGovern Washington, D. C. Dear Sirs: The special April issue of The Progressive is an important contribution to the campaign to make America realize the extent of the environmental crisis...
...We would hope that The Progressive would, as far as possible, be able to require its advertisers to present factual information...
...Right...
...Barry Commoner estimates we have ten years at the most to save ourselves...
...It's a shame The Progressive should contribute to pro-polluter propaganda...
...his pen and voice gave support to progressive causes...
...A liberal is someone who sheds tears about the environment and sells advertising to polluters...
...His opinions were widely read and quoted, his radio talks eagerly awaited...
...3. I hold definitely to my position that in times such as the present, we liberals cannot attain a clear choice...
...airmen in helicopters and airplanes who are only doing what has to be done—destroying the villages and burning to death the inhabitants...
...It should be Flag Day every Thursday...
...Mark Blucher Arlington, Vermont Dear Sirs: It was with interest I read your special issue, "The Crisis of Survival...
...Ah, come on, Progressive...
Vol. 34 • June 1970 • No. 6
