THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
THE PEOPLE'S FORUM German Political Lesson We Americans would do well to take a lesson from the West Germans on how to conduct an intelligent and civilized election campaign. The deception,...
...Diplomacy must continue...
...All Orthodox Friends are divided into "Wilburite" or "Conservative" Friends and "Gurneyite" or "Progressive" Friends...
...In Quaker terminology, "orthodox" is a label claimed by the Gurneyite Yearly Meeting in California to which Mr...
...This has been done in many industries with success...
...No crisis justifies abandoning diplomatic contacts by which nations communicate...
...But apparently some of my against-the-grain ideas didn't sit too well with the company's Establishment...
...But if battle had been raging on land, these dead would have been hidden...
...It is a thoroughly immoral movie made from an atrociously written novel...
...Even if one shared his notion of what Quakerism should be (and in considerable measure, I do), this strikes me as borderline ethics comparable to (if not on the same order of magnitude as) the borderline ethics he sees in Mr...
...Only if he is a backsliding President does it become a public problem, and we should address ourselves to it...
...Nixon belongs, and is a label not claimed by most of the Friends closest to Milton Mayer...
...Gene Mitchell Dallas, Texas Blue Collar Youth I was extremely interested in reading Andrew Levison's "Rebellion of Blue Collar Youth" in your October issue...
...So if they died in an accident it would not be fair to count them in the casualties, would it...
...The nuclear nations must establish a mechanism for periodic summit conferences, preferably within the United Nations, to supplement regular diplomacy and intelligence and to advance tension reduction and disarmament...
...Has his reading been confined to Frank Merriwell novels...
...President, and the ultimate responsibility is yours...
...Archie Bunker is alive and frighteningly well in these United States...
...David J. Alpern Wichita, Kansas I was not at all surprised by the article, "The Blue Collar Youth Rebellion...
...It is all extremely more complicated than Mayer stated, and the sectarian language reverses that which he chose to use...
...This reverses the historical truth...
...The deception, maneuvering, sabotage, and Madison Avenue manipulation of the masses so characteristic of our campaigns are nearly absent here...
...Quakers should remember that as well as anyone...
...Here was a high officer clearly proven by his own admission to have directly violated orders directed by the highest level of the civil government, and to have falsified reports to conceal the violation...
...In this age of supposedly improved race relations, such attitudes frighten me...
...His appraisal of Brando's performance alone should, on sober reflection, induce Turan to retire from film criticism...
...Now: The Hicksites and Wilburites have retained worship on the basis of silence...
...This would seem to be important as we read of the car failures and recalls...
...Will we ever see the day when people will look at other people and not see colors or other physical traits...
...I learned much from the past summer...
...Mrs...
...I stand on the (to be sure, simplistic) distinction between "orthodox" (in the orthodox and not the special Quaker sense of the term) and "steeplehouse" Quakerism...
...It rather worries me to think how many Progressive readers, over the years, have imbibed their impressions of the Society of Friends primarily from Milton Mayer, who is entitled to his opinion, but is also opinionated and rather inaccurate...
...Brando's performance is "ham" in the true meaning of the word— the use of an acting bag of tricks to substitute for any felt and deep characterization...
...There are, at most, minor differences in the choice of religious language in which it is restated, and in the relative thrust toward a more pietistic or a more political emphasis...
...Thomas T. Taber Madison, New Jersey Consumers Union Not First In the editorial note, "A Bolder Consumers Union," by Judith Miller, in your September issue, one statement, that "CU . . . pioneered the American consumer movement," is totally erroneous and deserves correction...
...The action was taken by Air Force Secretary Seamans, but he is your appointee, Mr...
...It is slower, but the results are much better...
...Henry B. Hansteen Northville, New York Godfather 'Immoral' I cannot share Kenneth Turan's enthusiasm for The Godfather as expressed in your November issue...
...More serious, it gravely undermines civilian control of the military...
...The nation state's day is done...
...In this period Adlai Stevenson's nonconformist conscience reached its finest hour...
...I have long admired Milton Mayer and enjoyed his writing...
...Cheers for Milton Mayer and The Progressive...
...For an uninterrupted hour all four of them fielded questions from journalists and debated the most important campaign issues with each other...
...This racism applied not only to blacks...
...I was a victim of the violent tactics of the strikers and know whereof I speak...
...Any people so threatened, including ours, has the right of revolution...
...For example, the other night on West German television, during prime evening time, incumbent Chancellor Brandt and Foreign Minister Scheel appeared together with the leaders of the opposition, Barzel and Strauss...
...Meanwhile, every citizen, including anyone who wants to run for President, should be free to worship God—or not to worship God, or to worship God strangely—without fear of public harassment...
...It continues to draw much of its personnel from Friends of this faction...
...Milton Mayer Hadley, Massachusetts Kissinger 'Dishonest' The New York Times' praise for Henry Kissinger's "remarkable achievement" in negotiating the apparently impending armistice in Indochina displays the ease with which liars can dupe even our best newspapers and the consequent need for independent publications like The Progressive...
...Mrs...
...I share his feelings about Mr...
...The authors have written a searing indictment of apartheid which is both factually accurate and easy to empathize with at the individual, personal level...
...But his and my acquaintance with the complications does not entitle either of us to burden a non-Quaker readership with them unless they affect (as they do not) the central issues under discussion...
...And I know (and I said) that no Quaker body has ever departed from or watered down the historic peace testimony of Friends...
...Attempting to talk politics with them was a disillusioning exercise in futility...
...W. E. Barnett Dallas, Texas Milton Mayer's article, "Friend Nixon," in the October issue, on Richard Nixon's sickening affirmations of his alleged Quakerism probably will be reacted to by most members of the Society of Friends privately, except for a few who may write strong letters of praise or blame...
...I agree with Friend Mayer's assessment that the many public statements on Mr...
...As a citizen and lawyer, I am also concerned that ultimate control of military policy and action be in civilian hands, which ultimately means in your hands as Commander-in-Chief...
...He drew the line, properly, I think, at an analysis of the intricacies of Quaker history for a non-Quaker readership...
...But the rate of absenteeism is almost nil and the pride is great...
...The reason: the older workers...
...One might lament the loss of John and Robert Kennedy, who learned quite a lot in the agony of decision, and of Nikita Khrushchev, who had the guts not to plunge into thermonuclear war...
...There is no Quaker body anywhere (except for the Free Quakers, a paper body since about 1814) that has ever formally departed from or watered down the historic "peace testimony" of Friends...
...The total loss of American life has been more than 55,000 men, but the media accept President Nixon's word that thousands of young men suffered accidental death in Vietnam...
...According to Chapter 1, Article 1, of the Geneva ceasefire agreement concluding the French phase of the Indochina War, the demilitarized zone separating the northern and southern parts of Vietnam is "a provisional military demarcation line . . ." —not, as the Nixon Administration argues, an international boundary...
...The work was not boring, in that no two jobs were exactly the same...
...I found it enlightening...
...We have fallen on evil times...
...Tom Burke San Francisco, California Friend Mayer Richard Nixon may be a "backslidden Quaker," but Milton Mayer is a cranky one...
...I love thee anyway, Friend Milton, but please try to do it more carefully next time...
...Yet his retirement at two-star rank and at $27,000 annually is said to be punishment enough...
...It is hard to know where to begin in undistorting this picture...
...Mayer suggested rather strongly that the American Friends Service Committee is a product of silent-Meeting Quakerism, and that the Gurneyites have never supported it...
...During the summer I worked for a natural gas company...
...But simplistic, rosy, and inaccurate explanation of any organization is self-defeating...
...About our agreements with the DRV, Kissinger refers to "the two countries" (italics added...
...Carleton P. Cheney Pottstown, Pennsylvania Lessons from Cuban Crisis As I begin this letter, it is ten years to the hour since President Kennedy's fateful television address on the Cuban missile crisis...
...I hope you will reconsider...
...As Friend Tucker says, it is all very complicated...
...there are many semi-programmed Meetings...
...I am left with a feeling that Milton Mayer has used a perfectly legitimate issue, Mr...
...Avis C. Fleischer Washington, D.C...
...And, if anything, I think Mayer did not state the case against Mr...
...I was paid slightly more than $4 per hour with time and a half for overtime...
...The Information Please Almanac catalogues a total of more than 32,000 during the term of President Nixon...
...And because only one was killed on land, these had to be reported...
...I am sorry that Friend Tucker is uncomfortable with the American Friends Service Committee...
...I am a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, fully aware of the need for adequate military strength...
...A card is affixed to the object giving the names of those who did the work...
...This point matters a lot in any discussion of Mr...
...Another idea would be to utilize the somewhat mentally retarded...
...Recognizing the public-spirited stature of the man, his erudition, his obvious dedication, and his exposure to the problems of our times, one wonders "where his years have flown" before voicing such obvious conclusions...
...In recent years many of these divided bodies have reunited...
...A single repetitive job would drive anyone with intelligence to distraction...
...Consumers' Research was organized nearly a decade before, following the publication of two outstanding consumer books, both co-authored by F. J. Schlink, the present technical director of Consumers' Research: Your Money's Worth, written with Stuart Chase, and 1,000,000,000 Guinea Pigs, with Arthur Kallet...
...Nixon in its Quaker dimension strongly enough...
...Handicapped individuals are another source that might be considered...
...The theological point is that it is rank liturgical-ism to define legitimacy in terms of a form of worship...
...The retarded do not mind a job which is to be done over and over and when they eventually learn they do a consistently good job...
...George Koski Rockford, Illinois 'Searing Indictment' I was attracted by the article, "Sexual Politics in South Africa," by Ian Robertson and Phillip Whitten, in your September issue...
...As a judge advocate, I am particularly aware of the need for discipline in the military...
...The Gurneyites depart from it in varying degrees—some Gurneyite Meetings in fact are on the basis of silence, others cannot be distinguished from Methodists or Pentecostalists, and most are somewhere in between...
...R. W. Tucker Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Mayer Comments The Editor of The Progressive let me run on at unconscionable length in "Friend Nixon...
...I share Mayer's zeal to present Quakerism as attractively as possible to as many people as possible, and to dissociate it from Mr...
...The action in this case will create bitter cynicism about military justice among lower ranking servicemen, as well as skepticism among the public about the fairness of the military system...
...If President Nixon is a backsliding Quaker, that's his problem...
...He writes: "Now, with more realism and honesty, I see the tragic failure of domestic policy in America...
...The recent action refusing to court-martial General John Lavelle was a shocking blow to Air Force discipline as well as to civilian control of the armed forces...
...Obviously it would depend on the type of handicap, but many are able to do simple jobs and are pleased to find work...
...The two Quaker groups that oppose it consist, on the one extreme, of those Gurneyites whose Protestantism has evolved into fundamentalism and Pentecostalism...
...Most of the company's employes (all are union members) are a generation ahead of me...
...Many thus accused have been dishonorably discharged, imprisoned, or both...
...he too is missed...
...Nixon...
...While there are a goodly number of blacks employed by the company, their relationship with the whites reeks of superficiality...
...Nixon has many qualities which have offended me for years—none more than his occasional posturing as a Quaker...
...After this experience, I'm not holding my breath...
...Kissinger's October 26 statement announcing the peace agreement convicts him once again of intellectual dishonesty on crucial issues—in this instance, whether the Vietnam war stems from "foreign aggression" or from U.S...
...If National sovereignty with its accompaniment of unilateral decision making urgently needs to give way to world government...
...K. Mubigo Nairobi, Kenya Administration's 'Emptiness' Seldom in recent years has one issue of any magazine given us more to think about concerning the career and policies of Richard Nixon than your October issue...
...The armed forces have rightly brought court-martial proceedings against thousands of young men for violation of orders or false official statements...
...The Nixon gang has succeeded in hiding almost ten thousand cadavers...
...What I (and I suspect multitudes of other Friends) strongly object to is Mayer's misleading discussion of matters that he ought not to have discussed in the way he did, namely, Quaker factional differences...
...The article is one of the best I have ever read in the non-African press on the subject of that racist country...
...Mind you, I'm no wild-eyed radical bent on creating a revolution of the working class...
...Mrs...
...These are the lessons I draw from reading The Cuban Missile Crisis, edited with commentary by Robert A. Divine: If No government, including ours, has a right to bring its own people, let alone humankind generally, within the shadow of nuclear death...
...Nixon—in fact, I am the Friend who several years ago discovered a historical precedent for Friends Meetings other than the one in East Whittier, California, to issue statements of disownment of Mr...
...Walter R. Rauskenbush Professor of Law University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin The Hidden Dead The American losses in Southeast Asia are greater than reported in the editorial note, "For This We Kill," in your October issue...
...Nixon's Quakerism, first because it makes the case against him much stronger, second because it legitimizes the protests against him by Quaker bodies in other parts of the country...
...In "fact, there are no full-bodied characters in The Godfather despite Turan's claims...
...I was dismayed to hear some of the whites say they would rather quit than work under a black foreman...
...In connection with the excellent analysis of our country's ills as delineated by Benjamin Spock in his "Open Letter to George McGovern" in your October issue, one is prompted to question where the noted pediatrician has been these many long years during our country's continuing disintegration...
...it is also bad journalism and bad Quakerism...
...The incisive corollary to this observation, of course, is to ask what can be expected of our average American's appraisal of our problems and future when we make allowances for his level of education and political consciousness...
...Rewriting history, like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984, Kissinger refers to a mythical "Democratic Republic of Vietnam," the ludicrous misnomer applied to the puppet dictatorship maintained by the United States in the southern part of Vietnam...
...He is obviously as intellectually dishonest as his chicken-hawk boss...
...intervention in a civil war...
...C. W. Griffin Denville, New Jersey Where Has Spock Been...
...But a salient point is that California Yearly Meeting, to which Nixon's East Whittier Meeting belongs, has a strong statement against war in its Book of Discipline, probably stronger than Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's...
...Nixon's Quakerism, to get across to a non-Quaker readership his own pet notion of Quakerism not as it is but as he would like it to be...
...I have no zeal to present Quakerism attractively...
...The AFSC is a large and excellent social agency which came into being, in a standard social agency organizational form, under the leadership of Gurneyite orthodox Friends who, being Protestantized, were moving toward Protestant liberalism and the ideas of the social gospel...
...The fact that a comparable scene is impossible in the United States speaks volumes about the low level of American political life today...
...As a twenty-year-old college student with blue collar work experience, I offer a few comments of my own...
...The cardboard cutouts are simply larger and more garishly colored...
...But I find it is extremely difficult to be optimistic, after I heard some of the younger workers parroting the attitudes of their parents...
...I cannot believe that more than a handful of those cases inr volved conduct nearly as serious as La-velle's...
...A large number of them remember the Depression...
...Nixon's Quakerism in the press, something that ordinarily would be thought of among us as bad ordering...
...Carl Goldberg Hamburg, West Germany The Lavelle Case I have addressed the following letter to President Nixon: I am a law professor who has been an Air Force Judge Advocate, active duty and reserve, for more than nineteen years...
...Nixon...
...The entire German public benefited by this forthright, direct discussion of the issues by Germany's top political leaders, who will take part in two more such television programs before the elections on November 19...
...Millions of people watched the give and take, and the next morning all the papers reported it in detail...
...First off, he described half the Quakers in the country as "steeplehouse Quakers" who have run out into Protestantism and given up pacifism and such things, and he described all the "silent Meeting" Friends as "orthodox Friends...
...Nixon issued by various Quaker bodies have liberated him or any Friend to discuss Mr...
...any non-WASP was seemingly unworthy of recognition as a true human being...
...It is instructive to me that Turan and many Americans can find the actions of a company of savage murderers entertaining...
...It is my fervent hope that my generation will transcend the senseless bigotry I repeatedly encountered...
...Albert Erlebacher Associate Professor Department of History De Paul University Chicago, Illinois...
...J. K. Gal-braith, in Saturday Review, July 1, 1972, wrote, "The education of Richard Nixon cost $150 billion plus over thirty thousand American lives...
...It is fair to discuss internal Quaker differences in this endeavor, though rather unnecessary...
...Nixon, and caused a ruckus by proposing that this be done...
...Karen Heckman Ruidoso, New Mexico Weighty Friends might not express their opinion concerning President Nixon's Quakerism in the same satirical vein as Milton Mayer, but Mayer's article, as well as those of others, in the October issue of The Progressive explains why so many Quakers supported George McGovern...
...CU, in fact, was a Johnny-come-lately on the scene, being a splinter group that broke away (following a long and bitter strike) from the parent organization, Consumers' Research, Inc...
...There are many ways to mark this anniversary...
...still, they do exist, and the existence is public and sometimes should be explained to the public...
...But Vietnam, north and south, is still technically one nation...
...The articles by Robert Curran ("Lure for Catholics"), Arlie Schardt ("The Nixon Court: Just One More Vote"), and Milton Mayer ("Friend Nixon") accurately summarized the absolute emptiness of the Nixon Administration...
...The explosion on the cruiser Newport News cost twenty lives...
...I have read of an experiment in Europe where instead of an assembly line, a team is set up to do an entire job...
...The monotony of the assembly line is deadening...
...there are unprogrammed Meetings with pastors who may or may not preach on a given First-day...
...A small point of language and a large point of theology: All Friends are divided into "Hicksite" or "Liberal" Friends, and "Orthodox" Friends...
...As Ronald Steel has observed, "Kennedy showed his skill in throwing down the gauntlet, but it required greater courage for Khrushchev to refuse to pick it up...
...The training of course is lengthy and the pace is slower...
...It is perverse to describe silent-Meeting Friends as "orthodox...
...I'm writing about it for a somewhat different reason, in terms probably more typical of the non-letter-writing majority...
...I am puzzled that Turan finds the plot intricate...
...The so-called Immorality Act is just one way in which the South African regime brutalizes and dehumanizes its non-white citizens...
...by any of the differing definitions of Quaker identity, a form of worship is not what Quakerism is all about, and may be what it is against...
...Let me hasten to explain that I do not mean immoral in any Protestant Sunday school sense but, rather, in the sense that all life has been made cheaper...
...and on the other extreme, of Wilburites like me who feel it is structurally incongruous and not the way Friends go about organizing things, and who feel it is not radical enough...
...However, despite the salary and diversity, it was a depressing experience...
...It is incredible that Professor Kissinger, so fastidious in correcting the minor errors of his opponents, can be ignorant of this overwhelming, elementary fact...
Vol. 36 • December 1972 • No. 12
