A New Beginning
Editorial
A New Beginning It is a singularly joyless nation, this A America that has been summoned to celebrate, in a few short years, the bicentennial of its birth. It is a nation that seems to have lost...
...There is still time, if we will seize it, to celebrate a happy birthday in 1976...
...Welfare rolls are larger...
...Note the tone of despair in the National Ur- ban Coalition's report on "The State of the Cities," an assessment of devel- opments since the 1968 report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: "Housing is still the national scandal it was then...
...And, with few exceptions, the relations between minority communities and the police are just as hostile...
...Five—There must be a critique of the old civilization-as-sanction, or a vindication of individual freedom...
...A United Press International poll of political leaders found them "worried about signs that voters are losing faith in the capacity of the American Gov- ernment to govern...
...Our own reviewer of Without Marx or Jesus, William L. O'Neill, believes (Page 51) that Revel has succumbed to "wishful thinking" and "manic op- timism...
...It is perceived by a for- eign observer, the French pamphleteer Jean-Francois Revel, who writes in his controversial new book, Without Marx or Jesus, that "the revolution of the Twentieth Century will take place in the United States...
...George III had not crossed the seas to fasten a foreign yoke on us...
...There is still time for those who dream the dream to make it real...
...We have found that our most flag- rant domestic injustices and inequities are remarkably resistant to even the most palliative efforts at reform...
...Four—There must be a critique of culture: of morality, religion, ac- cepted beliefs, customs, philosophy, lit- erature, art...
...One such revolutionary sets forth his views in this issue of The Progressive...
...George III and his dynasty had established and nurtured us and all that he did was by no means oppressive...
...Kenneth B. Lee, Republican leader of the Pennsylvania House, offered a typical comment: Cit- izens, he said, "have almost completely lost faith in the capacity of our system to solve the necessary problems of survival...
...Today there is no lack of signs that many of us—most of us, perhaps—have lost that faith...
...In this context, revolution is seen as the liberation of the creative personality and the awakening of per- sonal initiative, as opposed to the 'closed horizons,' the climate of frustra- tion and despair, which prevail in re- pressive societies...
...Jeremy Rifkin's essay, "The Red, White, and Blue Left" (Page 14) is a provocative proposal to capitalize on America's revolutionary bicentennial as the occasion for a new, real revolution...
...And yet...
...It is a nation that seems to have lost its way even while it has amassed more wealth, de- veloped a higher level of science and technology, attained more power than the world has ever known...
...But a vast restructuring of laws and institutions was necessary if the people were to be content...
...It was glimpsed by the authors of the National Urban Coali- tion's report, who found "people band- ing together, speaking the language of brotherhood, and reaching for the lev- ers of power...
...In discussions with residents of half a dozen major American cities, the authors of the report encountered a fa- miliar theme: "The most disturbing point most of those we spoke with made was that they had no faith at all in 'the system'—the Government and the private wielders of power— as a protector or as a provider...
...and he may well be right, but we are not so sure...
...Jeremy Rifkin is the youngest con- tributor to this issue...
...Schools are more tedious and turbulent...
...Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know...
...We find persuasive Revel's thesis that this country now meets what he calls "the five prerequi- sites for revolution": "One—There must be a critique of the Injustice existing in economic, so- cial, and racial relationships...
...We believe that growing numbers of Americans—people of all races and ages and classes—are ready now to propound these critiques, or some var- iant of them, and to translate them in- to action...
...We must realize that today's Estab- lishment is the new George III...
...The hallmark of America was its ineluctable faith that problems could be solved, that institutions could be built and bent to serve the purposes of man, that no obstacle could long im- pede the steady drive toward better- ment of the human enterprise...
...The oldest is Justice William O. Douglas, whose tribute to the late Justice Hugo Black appears on Page 22...
...We have learned that the technology in which we placed such confidence and trust can not only be perverted to the cause of dealing out death and devas- tation to our hapless "enemies," but can also pollute and poison our own land, our air, our water...
...Justice Douglas was serving on the Supreme Court be- fore Jeremy Rifkin was born, yet their thinking is remarkably attuned...
...In the past decade, our people have been led by stealth and subterfuge into a criminal war and have discovered, when they finally came to recognize that war's true nature, that they were powerless to extricate themselves from it...
...Match- ing this frustration with the way pro- grams imposed heavy-handedly from afar disrupt or demean people's lives is another kind of frustration, also shared by people of all ages and races and in- comes, with what they feel is the ex- orbitant price they must pay for a ticket of admission into the American mainstream...
...This critique is aimed at the relations be- tween society and the individual...
...One recent survey of public attitudes, conducted by the non-profit foundation, Potomac Associates of Washington, concluded that Amer- icans believe their country is in far worse shape now than it was a few years ago, and that at best it will only recover lost ground in the years ahead...
...The point is important: It is not just the poor, not just the racial minorities, who feel they have been betrayed by the American dream...
...Three—There must be a critique of political power, directed against its source and principles as well as against its exercise, the conditions in which it is exercised, distributed, or monopolized, the localization of decision-making powers, the relationship between the consequences of these decisions for the people, and the difficulty (or the im- possibility) for the people of participat- ing in these decisions...
...The new American pessimism is readily understandable...
...of the ideological attitudes which underlie these things...
...and society is regarded either as a means of developing or distorting the proper worth of each individu- al...
...We hope readers of The Progressive will ponder his appeal and respond to it...
...Two years ago, in Points of Rebellion, the Justice wrote: "George III was the symbol against which our Founders made a revolution now considered bright and glorious...
...That restructuring was not forthcoming and there was revolution...
...In it, the individual is considered as a sensi- tive and original being, rather than as a citizen...
...Disappointment and alienation reach into the man- icured suburbs, into the rural villages, into the heartland of Middle America...
...And yet there is some- thing else stirring in this country—a new, realistic optimism born of despair, a new determination to make America America again...
...The rates of crime and unemployment and disease and heroin addiction are high- er...
...And it has al- ready begun...
...Two—There must be a critique of management, directed against the waste of material and human resources . . . the orientation of technological progress toward goals that are eithei useless or harmful to man...
...A New Beginning It is a singularly joyless nation, this A America that has been summoned to celebrate, in a few short years, the bicentennial of its birth...
...If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution...
...There is still time to make a new be- ginning on what the world used to call "the American experiment...
...We have re- membered what many of us had for- gotten in our entrepreneurial zeal: that what is good for General Motors is not good for America...
...It is a na- tion born in promise and suffused for most of its short history with an op- timism that was the envy of all others, yet many of its people have abandoned hope...
Vol. 35 • November 1971 • No. 11
