Comment

...Jewish community...

...Why go over all of this again...

...All you have to do is go to one of those giant things and find out...

...But, hidden in the idea of therapeutic justice is a faith in technical experts and social and psychological engineering that now seems misplaced...

...Yes, yes—slow down and live...

...But in its zeal to punish, it left the defendant's rights unprotected...

...Do we need another "harvest of shame," more handwringing, a few more tax-deductible checks...

...He said he can't figure out who the groups represent but, heck, you've just got to wonder about any group that calls for unilateral rather than bilateral or multilateral disarmament...

...In this country, too, our troubled subscriber has more and more company in her determination no longer to give blind support to Israeli aggression...

...The psychiatrists worked long and hard to put on exhibit every thought and feeling he harbored...

...How do all these people get away from work and who are they...

...We aren't prepared to dismiss this unwonted spasm of populist ferment on Weinberger's part as a selfish exercise in worry over the well-being of the better cut of people he hangs around with in July and August...

...You read in the paper, 'under a coalition of church and civil rights groups.' Well, what are 'church and civil rights groups...

...Doug Fraser has even had the temerity to blame the U.S...

...In most cases, housing can be taken away from a migrant whenever he quits a particular employer, for whatever reason...

...Complain and you take on the boss as well as the landlord, and the alternative to the camp in most locales is the back of a pick-up or a tent in the fields...

...Desert selectmen have given qualified support to the petitioners, but insist Route 198 is not the death trail Cap and Jane Weinberger make it out to be...

...But the Palestinian people continue to exist, and no weapons can eliminate from their hearts and minds the aspiration to become a free, sovereign people and to put an end to their homelessness, dispersion, refugee condition, and oppression by others...

...Even at its best, migrant housing has nothing to do with meeting anyone's need for decent shelter...

...If made law, it would effectively set an import quota for such companies as Toyota and Datsun...

...It is a terrible illusion to think that the physical liquidation of the present Palestinian leadership will put an end to their struggle...

...The Idaho legislature, veering away from therapeutic justice, recently outlawed the insanity defense...

...transportation: We need more mass transit and more durable, fuel-efficient private vehicles, not trade sanctions and misdirected spite...

...Israel can win, due to its superiority in science, technology, and arms production, all the battles with the Arab world, but it is not weapons which determine the final outcome of national and social conflicts...

...For almost two months the American people witnessed the spectacle of John Hinckley on trial, ostensibly for attempting to assassinate President Reagan and, in the process, wounding three other men...

...Later, Fuller told the Deseret News that the U.S...

...In the long run, jobs will be saved only by restructuring U.S...

...But so long as that illusion is permitted to hold sway, there can only be more bloodshed and devastation in the Middle East, more menace to the peace of the world, and more likelihood that the goal Israel ostensibly seeks—national security—will be irretrievably lost...

...Each individual must conform his behavior to expected models, and if he does not he must be held responsible for his violation of the code...

...We want to weigh in on the side of the Weinbergers...

...On the day her note came in the mail we also received, from our friends and colleagues at the Israeli monthly New Outlook (2 Karl Netter Street, Tel Aviv 65202), a copy of the commentary by Editor Simha Flapan that will appear in the next issue of that publication...

...And auto workers will achieve these goals only by working in alliance with other workers on plant-closing legislation, transportation policy, and international labor organizing...

...I don't think we as a press are really testing the depth and sincerity that some of these organizations may represent...

...As retributive justice gives way to therapeutic justice," Christopher Lasch has observed in The Culture of Narcissism, "what began as a protest against moral oversimplification ends by destroying the very sense of moral responsibility...

...In effect, he is tried twice for the same offense—the first time by a psychiatrist without due process...

...Instead, housing is really part of a labor system that aims to leave the farmworkers as insecure, powerless, and isolated as possible...

...It has become an unconscionable burden to be a Jew in the United States...

...And setting import quotas on Japanese automakers would surely lead to retaliation...

...But we had postponed writing this editorial until the last moment permitted by our production schedule...

...Beckert, on trial for his life before an underworld kangaroo court, is duly represented by enlightened defense counsel who argues, "Nobody can be punished for something which he is not responsible for...

...As a rule, psychiatry is simply out of place in the courtroom...

...They have roused the locals, getting them to sign a petition asking the Maine Department of Transportation for relief...

...By doing all it could to intimidate and silence the opposition, the Israeli government, in collusion with the major Jewish organizations, has tried to create the illusion of unanimous support for its belligerence...

...It's all there, and it is the norm, not the exception...

...Its principles contradict those of the legal system, which assumes individual responsibility and provides procedural protection...

...I mean that this man is sick...

...The campaign is all wrong because it assumes that Japanese workers are to blame for the U.S...

...Here are some excerpts: "The war against the few thousand PLO armed guerrillas in South Lebanon has been conducted in a way which has made a whole people its tragic victim...

...There are a million things I'd like to know about the anatomy of one of these giant things," he told the Mormon daily...

...Fuller said of the hundreds of thousands who gathered in New York in June, "I fear that these innocent people can be led into a trap, much like some of our children were during the 1960s...

...because of the insanity defense, Hinckley's psyche was in the dock, the center of attention, as prosecution and defense waged a war of psychiatrists...

...Weinberger, who has been nothing if not forthcoming in his contempt for the nuclear disarmament uprising in Western Europe and the United States ("You always have your fringe elements"), believes his country can "prevail" in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union...

...Many U.S...

...As Mike Parker, a leader of the UAW Workers Opposed to Concession, wrote in a recent issue of Labor Notes, the UAW's campaign is fostering ever more bitterness toward the Japanese...

...These are "visionary" items in the eyes of the labor leaders, who like to say that politics is the art of the possible...

...Guilt has never done migrants any good...

...It's not just their plight, it's ours...

...Ironically, UAW members in aerospace and farm implement industries— industries still strong in terms of balance-of-trade—would be among the first to go...

...press had not done enough to identify those organizing and orchestrating peace marches...

...The Couch in the Courtroom "I can't help myself" cries out Hans Beck-ert, a child murderer in Fritz Lang's classic 1931 movie, M. "I haven't any control over this evil thing that's inside me—the fire, the voices, the torment...

...In a draft of "Defense Guidance," the Pentagon's secret but weirdly cheerful strategy prospectus made public in May, Weinberger and company seem almost eager to fight the Russians on all fronts, and as long as possible...

...Israeli troops were poised outside west Beirut, and there were conflicting reports as to their intentions and those of the remaining leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...One child has been injured and two pets have been killed this year...

...Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, addressing the U.N...

...Apart from detailing the routine outrages of life in most migrant camps, it makes especially clear the abomination of the migrant housing "system...

...And how can dignity ever be restored to a human being whose private life has been dissected and paraded before the public in this fashion...

...What we usually witness—and witnessed in the Hinckley case—is the spectacle of expert witnesses selling their expertise to the highest bidder...

...They duly reported their observations, garbed in appropriate jargon, and reporters passed them on to a public thirsty for intimate detail...

...But for the rest of us this parting thought: Are these people merely the unfortunate few delivered up for our pity and delight...

...The legislation would affect any company selling more than 500,000 cars in the United States...

...We have all had a chance to read the wretched doggerel Hinckley wrote...

...Therapeutic justice, showing more concern for the criminal than for the crime or its victim, denies society's legitimate need to hold transgressors responsible for their offenses...

...And she elaborated, "Aggressors do not start wars because an adversary has built up his own strength...

...The insanity defense arose from the best of intentions—there's little doubt about that...

...We knew all that would happen because it had all happened before— every time we had uttered even the mildest criticism of Israeli policies or actions in this magazine...

...Unfortunately, that terrible illusion not only grips the governments of Israel and the United States, but also still enthralls a substantial part of the U.S...

...Fortunately, that is not the case...

...Mainly, we think, because the efforts give the illusion that the leaders— whose concessions to GM and Ford have already cost many union jobs—are now doing something to create jobs...

...Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and his wife, Jane, are spearheading a move to have traffic slowed down in front of their vacation property...

...We won't dwell on the details—the roaches, the barbed wire, the corrugated tin shacks baking at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the garbage rotting under the porches, the lines in the morning outside the woefully overtaxed privies...

...They start wars because they believe they can gain more by going to war than by remaining at peace...

...Instead, they rolled out their big guns once more in support of the unsupportable...

...Special Session on Disarmament in June, came up with her own twist: "We believe that wars are caused not by armaments but by the ambitions of aggressors and that what tempts them is the prospect of easy advantage and quick victory...

...In the name of protection and justice the court invaded the most intimate parts of his life...

...The brief flirtation with Federally controlled public housing for migrants in the 1930s (vide Grapes of Wrath) was effectively killed off in the postwar resurgence of private and local control over migrant housing...

...The intrusion of psychiatric testimony arose from humane interest in requiring the state to appreciate the complex motives behind criminal conduct...

...The petitioners are calling for a twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed along the stretch of 198 in question...

...Any evidence of a fair and righteous concern for the safety of children is affecting, especially from the most hawkish Pentagon chief in a generation...

...World Class Gun Lobbyist Remember the catchy slogan the gun lobby thought up a few years ago: "Guns don't kill people—people kill people...

...America now knows that a card to Hinckley on his twenty-fifth birthday was signed by his parents, "Moo and Poo and Tigger the Cat...

...Fury with the Fringe on Top Leadfoots planning to motor along the Maine coast this summer had better watch it when they hit Route 198 on Mt...

...It is not meant to...

...But when they get in line to sell out their profession , to enlist as spear-carriers in the American power opera, as the Associated Press's Keith Fuller has recently done in a most disgraceful way, well, we are driven to say something...

...The courts can better serve the individual and society by ushering psychiatrists back into their consulting rooms to attend to the relatively harmless neurotics within the law...

...To innocent people caught up in well-disguised foreign ploys I bear no anger," he said...

...Now that John Hinckley has been officially certified as sick and escorted to a hospital, how can society express its outrage against his crimes...

...Someone must be staying up late to handle the logistics for such huge efforts as New York saw on June 12...

...If any nation should understand that, it is Israel...

...We need not look too far for examples...

...With all this to worry about, why is the UAW leadership so eager to embrace local content bills...

...There is nothing new or radical in the New Federalism so far as migrants are concerned...

...But that was not our only reason for procrastinating...

...We'll sign Cap and Jane's petition...

...Look here...

...The law demands responsibility," psychiatrist Willard Gaylin has recently written...

...Did he mean to say that the anti-nuclear organizations are communist fronts...

...What is it that drives a man like Weinberger to such penny-wise, pound-foolish virtue...

...Now, a psychiatrist may declare a defendant insane without entering the courtroom, but when the defendant is pronounced "cured," he is put on trial for the crime...

...A pedestrian is a pedestrian...

...The crime itself, however, was strangely absent from the proceedings...

...Palestinian national aspirations can not be stifled by repeated attempts to impose a "final solution...

...The camps often resemble minimum-security prisons, and they provide just about as much privacy...

...True, the PLO suffered a very heavy blow, losing its territorial base, infrastructure, military strength, and manpower in South Lebanon...

...Another aspect of the migrant housing crisis worth pondering is the utter inadequacy of local solutions...

...So we hesitated and played for time, perhaps hoping subconsciously that Israel would somehow still make it possible for us to say a few words in mitigation—by a swift withdrawal from Lebanon, say, or by a show of consideration for the victims of its lightning war...

...In fact, I think they should be investigated with great fervor...

...Always with Us, Always Us While it's not exactly news, we think it worth observing that migrant farmworkers have once again been "discovered" living a sort of life in the same free-market hell they have known since the early Nineteenth Century...

...But what about the times when one country that claims it is only "defending its own people," its "liberty," and its "security," or even "preparing for legitimate self-defense," smells to another like an "ambitious aggressor" out for "easy advantage and quick victory...

...Instead, almost every Israeli word and deed has amounted to a new display of cruelty and arrogance...

...What started out as an effort to protect his rights ended up destroying them...

...that they would cancel their subscriptions and tell us how deeply they regretted their past support of The Progressive...

...And even if they become law, they will hurt, not help...

...Thatcher did have a few kind words for disarmament, conceding that "reduction of armaments . . . can reduce the economic burden of military preparation for legitimate self-defense...

...disarmament movement from top to bottom...

...Well, no, Fuller said...

...The antidote for all this is not charity for the poor, but active solidarity with them...

...This procedure should and probably will be declared unconstitutional, but progressives should recognize that the legislature's action reflected widespread and legitimate public resentment...

...Local content laws, though, while possible, are far from a sure bet for passage...

...An AP News Analysis It is part of our job to beat up on our colleagues in mainstream journalism when they seem more timorous in the face of official evil than absolutely necessary...

...The lives of our children are endangered by the present forty-five-miles-per-hour limit," reads the document...

...Limits would be set on U.S...

...In Israel, thousands have rallied and demonstrated against the invasion of Lebanon...

...Fuller, AP's president and general manager, actually bucked the line in June when, before a bunch of Salt Lake City Rotarians, he red-baited the U.S...

...that they would accuse us of anti-Semitism (or worse...

...After a two-year phase-in time, 90 per cent of the labor and components in the cars would have to be American...

...I see a lot of newspaper articles that are just glossing over these things...

...Meanwhile, as the laws pushed the cost of cars higher and higher, a wedge would be driven between the UAW and other American workers, further dividing what remains of the labor movement today...

...What is happening to America's poor in an age of retrenchment differs only in degree from what is happening to many others...

...But the effort is only an illusion...

...Job-saving efforts like this one are doomed until the union realizes that an auto industry of "world cars" that can play workers in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan off against each other is at the heart of the problem...

...That's why it's important to talk about migrants...

...camps are grower-owned, but even those in public hands are frequently controlled by local growers' associations, which in turn dominate local public housing authorities in the rural areas where migrants come to work...

...Daily life turns more insecure, docility prevails in the labor markets, and a more predatory, survivalist mentality dominates social life...

...Hinckley won the easy notoriety that the psychiatrists tell us he wanted and lost the privacy to which even a would-be assassin is entitled...

...But query: What profit it a man to press for the enforcement of horse-and-buggy speeds past his broad lawns and at the same time endanger all the world's children and dogs and ocean-front views as Caspar One-Note, the assertive centerpiece of a militaristic Administration...

...Who are they and who's putting up the money...

...They were abandoned to 'local initiative" decades ago, and the results are plain to see...

...The Israeli ambition to play the role of a 'mini-superpower' is seen as a result of the special relationship with the United States and breeds anti-American feelings even in the most conservative and pro-Western Arab countries, where the fear of Israeli expansionism replaces even the fear of communism and Soviet penetration...

...Such reasoning has been dogma to generations of reformers who have clung tenaciously to a therapeutic model of justice...

...We've just seen a report that says as much: It's Homes for the Brave, by Richard J. Margolis, a study of migrant housing conditions conducted for the Farmworkers Housing Coalition and published by Rural America...

...For the migrant there is no refuge, even at "home," from a system of labor discipline that is un-relievedly harsh...

...The Jewish organizations seem to support Begin no matter what he does...

...Proper functioning of society requires the assumption of its existence...

...It is the reasoning that jurors in the John Hinckley trial apparently found persuasive as they deliberated in June and returned to court with a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity...

...For one thing, the situation in Lebanon was still quite volatile, and could change drastically at any moment...

...Such a demand is no more than protectionism of the most vengeful and pointless kind...

...We will not replay here the despair, the pornography of pity and concern...

...Weapons cannot liquidate people's aspirations for freedom and independence...

...Whether there is such a thing as true or absolute responsibility is irrelevant...

...auto workers' plight...

...Clearly, it is the likes of Fraser and others pushing local content bills—not the Japanese—who are the biggest problem for the auto workers...

...best of all, we know from sophisticated X rays that Hinckley's brain was once larger than it is today—hardly a surprise considering his headshrinkers...

...Fuller, you're a journalist...

...What does it take to see that pastoral, child-mindful speeds on Route 198 are of little ultimate avail on a planet hurtling down a one-way road to history's final fender-bender...

...Jane Weinberger was, at press time, reportedly taking the petition and a demand for some re-sited stop signs to the state highway authorities...

...We hoped, too, that the powerful organizations that claim to speak for the Jewish community in the United States would, for once, abandon their obligatory stance in defense of any action taken by the Israeli government, no matter how obnoxious—if only to ease that unconscionable burden now borne by so many American Jews...

...Nothing remains private for Hinckley or his family...

...Sanctions and Misplaced Spite If any remain unpersuaded after last spring's contract negotiations that the United Auto Workers union has lost the militant spirit of its founders, let them consider this: The union is now trying to reverse its misfortunes by supporting "local content" bills before Congress...

...Desert Island...

...The gun lobby's catchy slogan notwithstanding, people kill people most often with guns—and if there were fewer guns there would be fewer killings...

...We had decided long before receiving that note, of course, that we would have to comment here on the latest series of tragic developments in the Middle East...

...The trade wars could cost millions of workers their jobs...

...I hope," she wrote, "you will say something editorially about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon...

...When psychiatrists do enter the courtroom, neither the defendant's interests nor society's are likely to be served...

...goods sold in Japan, which would in turn prompt more American spleen, more American clamp-downs, and on and on...

...The Margolis study should be noted nonetheless...

...The terrible destruction brought about by this strategy, reminiscent of the American strategy in the Vietnam war, which raised a wave of moral revulsion and condemnation all over the world, has contributed more validity and truthfulness to the image of Israel as an aggressive military state trampling down, without mercy, the Palestinian people...

...disarmament without advocating a parallel Soviet action could not be taken seriously...

...Not only does therapeutic justice injure the individual, stripping him of privacy as well as of responsibility for his actions, it also injures society's moral sensibility...

...So, too, with Thatcher's simplistic formulation: If aggressors did not have easy access to weapons of mass annihilation, they would not be in a position to threaten the very existence of human life on the planet...

...Amazingly, Fuller's topic was to be freedom of the press, but laying aside even the institutionalized pretense of journalistic neutrality, he criticized "the well-intentioned naivete" of anti-nuclear demonstrators...

...We knew exactly what we had to say about the Israeli attack on Lebanon and the attempt to "pacify" the Palestinian people by devastating their leadership: We had to describe it as we would similar actions by any other nation—as -criminal and aggressive war, waged once again with the active assistance and tacit support of the Government of the United States...

...But individual Americans and groups calling for U.S...

...But will they sign ours...

...It is a sad irony that an operation called 'Peace for Galilee' has meant the wholesale destruction of beautiful cities by indiscriminate bombardment from the Israeli Navy, Air Force, and heavy artillery, rendering homeless 600,000 people, creating a monstrous flow of refugees, and causing thousands of victims among the civilian population...

...The psychiatrists for the defense kept their eyes trained on the defendant to catch any sign of schizophrenia, while the prosecution's psychiatrists searched for narcissistic disorders within the borders of "sanity...

...auto industry's problems on Japan's relatively low military spending...

...We also knew, however, that some of our readers would react to our judgments with fury...

...It was conceivable that by the time this magazine reached its subscribers, the PLO would, in effect, have been destroyed...

...It is precisely the terrible losses and sufferings they have experienced now in Lebanon which will produce, sooner or later, a new generation of fighters for the PLO—if no solution based on recognition of their national rights is found...

...And such profound findings the psychiatrists made...

...For, grace period or no, how could they possibly be expected to relocate the bulk of their facilities here...

...Isn't housing in crisis for millions of others, and don't we all suffer now from a deterioration in the quality of public and private succor, those things that give us all some resilience against marketplace realities...

...And a sick man should be handed over, not to the executioner, but to the doctor...