Letters

...As a "far-leftist," I would argue that the Left as a matter of both principle and political practice would do better to energetically debate and discredit the right wing— which may, at times, include the tactic of organizing to boycott them, also a form of free expression—than trying to have right-wing speakers barred...

...Parker and Hansen offer compelling evidence that employer gimmicks such as "quality-of-worklife" and "employee involvement circles" are nothing more than company unionism tricked out in more seductive garb...

...Is it not the duty of a scholar to add that near the end of his life Ben-Gurion completely reversed himself...

...Sharm El Sheikh...

...Just listen to Muhammed Ali try to talk, and you'll see what I mean...

...I doubt that he'd like to share his oil wealth and old school ties to promote the newspaper and television careers of radical journalists...

...are subject to more serious injuries than participants in other sports" is simply wrong...

...Here, Hen-toff is on firmer ground in attacking the myopia of the Left...

...It seems to me that the destabilizing factors are similar in both societies but are more intense in the Soviet Union, where fear of war feeds on recent experience...

...Nobody hates existing socialist states quite so much as embittered leftists do...

...In doing so, he set himself in opposition to the Labor Party, which had rejected just such a proposal by Anwar Sadat (with no mention of Palestinian national rights) only a few months before the statement that Res-nick quotes, and has kept to this rejectionist position since...

...Sid Resnick New Haven, Connecticut The author replies: Contrary to Sid Resnick's conclusion, I made no mention of David Ben-Gurion's 1971 statement because it was irrelevant to my discussion of the evolution of Israel's two major political groupings...

...Mike Messner Berkeley, California The Kremlin's Stodgy Course Beau Grosscup's infuriating article ("The Kremlin Stays the Course," January issue) condemns the Soviet Union for not being revolutionary enough to suit his tastes...

...In the pre-state period, Labor, then led by Ben-Gurion, accepted partition while not abandoning its longer-term vision, while Menachem Begin's Herut rejected partition outright...

...role in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Zaire, the Philippines, South Korea, and other areas of the globe...

...Marie Hall Los Angeles, California The central impediment to developing a rational view of the Soviet Union seems to be the issue of political opposition...

...If I were still prime minister, I would announce that we are prepared to give back all the territory occupied in the [June 1967] Six-Day War except East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights—Jerusalem for history's sake, the Golan for security...

...I agree to a large degree with Beau Grosscup's description of the present problems facing the Soviet Union, but I am astonished that he had "new hopes of a revival of revolutionary fervor" following Brezhnev's demise...

...To get it we must return to the borders before 1967...

...I know that Hentoff would answer yes, because he is a moral absolutist on the free-speech question...

...On the other hand, the cases of the college lectures by Eldridge Cleaver and Phyllis Schlafly are genuine free speech questions...

...The eager participation of much of the union leadership in such sordid enterprises isn't surprising...

...Does she really need to appear at a Wabash College forum in order to make her voice heard...

...If a "National Rape Party" were to insist on its right to hold rallies and display insignia asserting that the rightful role of women is to be raped by men, should that be accepted as a form of free expression of ideas...

...He has his own magazine...

...To be sure, some of Chomsky's criticisms of Zionism are valid, and Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon are utter scoundrels...

...Gaza...

...If so, don't his less well known detractors have the right to boo him off the stage...

...Instead of examining its merits and demerits and judging it objectively, we side with the Pentagon and choose a subjective approach that involves blanket denunciations and little else...

...In these respects, Soviet society differs from ours, and perhaps that is why we have not yet learned how to think about the Soviet Union in a rational way...

...With deadly accuracy the article zeroes in on the dangers posed by attractively packaged "quality-of-worklife" schemes that threaten the very existence of the labor movement...

...This article should receive the broadest distribution among shop workers...

...a boxer, the certainty of it...

...Many have suggested various palliatives to correct boxing (heavier gloves, headgear, etc...

...Why shouldn't two men who relish trauma mix it if they wish...

...LETTERS to the Editor Company Unionism Tie Circle Game," by Mike Parker and Dwight Hansen (January issue), is the finest expose to date of perhaps the oldest and most sophisticated weapon in the corporate anti-union arsenal...

...The ritual burning of "sexist" religious texts in a Unitarian Church is a juvenile exercise, to be sure, but has nothing to do with censorship...

...Chomsky writes: "The 'boundaries of Zionist aspirations' in Ben-Gurion's vision encompassed southern Lebanon ('the northern part of western Israel'), southern Syria, today's Jordan, cis-Jordan (Mandatory Palestine), and Sinai...

...Our own society is based on political opposition (effective or otherwise...

...but these amount to replacing the whorehouse's water glasses with Dixie cups as a sanitary measure, and in any case would not be countenanced by the crowd...

...True, but irrelevant...

...Plato probably was right in asserting that any recourse to physical force is an indication of meager intelligence, but it's even worse if men fight without anger simply for money, promoters, and the ephemeral plaudits of the crowd...

...The West Bank...

...Furthermore, your point that "there is no evidence that boxers...

...Jonathan Piper Chicago, Illinois Thank you for reminding us once again that the First Amendment applies to all—or to none...

...Add to that the ethnic diversity in the Soviet Union and the lack of inhibiting democratic traditions and it becomes obvious how the expansion of bureaucratic centralism is encouraged by objective conditions while also feeding upon itself...

...The First Amendment limits the law, not the audience...

...Bill Buckley hds a right to speak at Vassar...

...Among Hentoff s examples, only the instance of the black student who successfully sued his high school for allowing KKK costumes at a Hallowe'en party involved the law...

...He confuses the issue again, however, by treating the alleged "right" of high school students to wear Klan costumes to a Hallowe'en party as if the question were the same as having Cleaver or Schlafly on campus...

...In all the instances cited by Hentdff, the audience was in the right...

...Rather than simply blaming capitalist greed, we should examine the culture of masculinity (alive and well on the Left as evidenced by your editorial position) which continues to give the "thumbs down" to our modern-day gladiators (mostly minorities and poor) who risk life and limb for our dubious entertainment...

...William F. Buckley's invitation to give a commencement speech at Vassar is, it seems to me, a struggle between the students and the administration which, I assume, invited him...

...Yet he describes, in the same article, the enormous pressures to which the Soviets are subjected by the adversary superpower...

...It is worth almost any sacrifice...

...You state that there is no evidence that boxers are subject to more serious injury than participants in other sports, citing the hazards of a non-sport, coal mining...

...Ben-Gurion's "vision," which was not only his, remained alive in one or another form within the Labor Party, as in mid-1950s plans to take over southern Lebanon, or in Ben-Gurion's own proclamation of "The Third Kingdom of Israel" after his conquest of the Sinai, or in a post-1967 move toward integration of occupied territories...

...Bernard Forer Sarasota, Florida After Leonid Brezhnev there is still Ronald Reagan...

...It's a good thing that Hen-toff raises these questions in a way that forces the Left to confront them...

...Though I am not a Zionist, I was angered at the less than candid way in which Chomsky presented the views on Israel's boundaries of the former Labor Party leader and prime minister, David Ben-Gurion...

...his being bankrolled by the Moonies and trotted from campus to campus is a privilege very few of us enjoy...

...And even after Reagan, the global confrontation for raw materials and markets will remain...

...David Finkel Detroit, Michigan Eldridge Cleaver's right to "free speech" is guaranteed by the Constitution...

...His extremism is a disservice to those of us in the Jewish community who work for Arab-Israeli reconciliation and peace...

...Robert W. Smith Bethesda, Maryland Your point that boxing deaths bring about a call for the abolition of boxing while a death in distance running or polo does not is the same sort of logic that is used by those who claim that the Vietnam war wasn't so bad because more people were killed on the nation's highways than by the war...

...He has several books in print...

...Because boxing is a business, a bestial business, exploiting and staining all it touches...

...Banning boxing—morally on the side of the angels and not too distant from domestic gun control and international disarmament— should be the choice of The Progressive, as it is of the conservative Roman Catholic Church, which favors its abolition...

...Was Stalin acting on whim or expressing Russian chauvinism, or was he responding to hostile encirclement from without...

...Black people (among others) rightly regard the Klan costume as outright, direct incitement to murder...

...The Progressive should not reinforce the anti-Soviet obsession of the Reagan cabal...

...Available data demonstrate that on a per-participant basis, boxing is the most dangerous sport...

...Charles Obler Boston, Massachusetts ARNOLD ROTH Israel and Palestine Noam Chomsky's profoundly negative attitude toward Israel prompts him to dwell almost exclusively on the seamy side of Israeli politics ("America and Israel," December issue...

...The issue is not First Amendment protection...

...Overconcen-tration on war-related industry and science hits the weaker economy hardest...

...He is in the newspapers every week...

...Tim Klass Seattle, Washington The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...

...William Buckley is on television every week...

...Promotion of company unionism, strikebreaking, and concession campaigns isn't a new role for them...

...To blame serious and widespread injuries and occasional deaths in the ring on the "lust for profits among sleazy promoters and greedy broadcasters" makes some sense, but it also deflects any sense of responsibility from ourselves...

...His analysis of Soviet economic problems is typical: At a time when Russia is the largest oil-producing nation in the world (it even exports small amounts to NATO countries), he would have us believe that it is bent on world conquest...

...You reinvent the wheel when you say that deaths occur in long distance running and other sports...

...He is consistent, at least...

...This sterile intentionality is what stamps this remnant of primitive savagery as unfit for human beings...

...She pours antifeminist junk mail on everyone who is on her mailing list...

...There is a large Soviet peace movement, but no legal opposition peace movement...

...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...

...Is it not important to those who work against the Begin-Sharon government and for an Israel-Arab peace settlement to know that this foremost Zionist leader turned against the Israeli expansionists...

...S. G. Jones Madison, Wisconsin Bonker's Gone "TTianks for bringing us I "Apartheid's Baton Twirl-ers" (Datelines, February issue), but it must come as a shock to voters in Washington state's Third Congressional District that after reelecting Don Bonker to the House last fall, they now find him to be a "New York Democrat...

...By turning the Soviet Union into some sort of demonic barbaric scapegoat, you seem to be saying to the Pentagon that even profoundly antiwar people would like to see the Soviet Union eliminated...

...Chomsky claimed that though Ben-Gurion accepted the United Nations partition proposal of 1947, he had more grandiose ambitions for the Jewish state...

...Grosscup does not tell us how objective conditions have changed since the 1920s to favor what he calls "a new opportunity to raise basic questions about the relationship between revolutionary Marxism and the Soviet Union...

...If they choose to confront anyone wearing it, then they are accused of starting violence...

...Almost 500 have been killed in the ring since 1918...

...Students surely have a legitimate political right to organize against a commencement speaker they find repulsive...

...The good church people weren't trying to stop anyone from reading anything, they were merely exercising their own First Amendment right of expression...

...The fact is that information in this country is oligarchically controlled, as are a great many other things, and it is difficult to muster much sympathy for people who, possessing vastly disproportionate access to the sources of "paid speech," have certain built-in advantages in disseminating their particular points of view...

...A pro footballer faces the risk of pain and sometimes serious injury...

...Phyllis Schlafly is often on television or in the press...

...But those who would not go along with the unconditional freedom to advocate rape cannot go along with the unconditional freedom to advocate genocide, either...

...Had I been writing a biography of Ben-Gurion, it would have been appropriate to add that long after his political fortunes had faded, he called for a peace settlement on the pre-June 1967 borders...

...However, he has somewhat muddled things by throwing together a number of issues that are, in principle, quite different...

...Instead, he writes that "the Kremlin leaders resume the relentless pursuit of power for the sake of power...

...Studies by neurologists have shown that boxers are likely to suffer brain damage from the constant pounding...

...Actually, they have been in bed with management for thirty years—and management has the pictures...

...But Chomsky's cranky and venomous attitude to the whole Israeli enterprise, to Israel as a Jewish state, simply turns off too many people...

...Within Israeli politics, Ben-Gurion's 1971 position was a marginal one, unfortunately in my view, and had no influence...

...however, there are no legal opposition trade unions...

...The inept logic you adduce in favor of this wretched practice is appalling...

...We don't need the territory...

...Hentoff appeals to "free speech" as an abstract principle in judging these matters...

...As it happens, this is not all there is to Israel...

...It is not "revolutionary democratic socialism at the height of perfection," it is not up to our standards—therefore scrap it, start over...

...Boxing should be banned because it is too brutal for civilized societies: It is the only sport that has injury as its aim...

...John Fields Madison, Wisconsin Nat Hentoff is right to point out that progressives can be irrational...

...Doesn't an audience ever have a right to boo knaves and fools off the stage...

...Apparently the idea that other societies might differ from our own continues to be too large for us to grasp...

...Let them go...

...Ronald Reagan would be proud...

...Now, just as heartily, I must take issue with your wrong-minded support of the brutish so-called sport of boxing ("A Hard Right Below the Belt," Comment, February...

...Does he really need the exposure of a Vassar graduation speech to fully express himself...

...Your argumentation is thin as poor-house toast...

...Sinai...

...We should appeal instead to a concrete goal of democratic discussion, in which all participants can throw in their two cents worth, and in which no pundits, lecturers, or even distinguished Progressive columnists merit special protection from their captive audiences...

...Picturing the Soviet Union in Grosscup's terms can only impede the nuclear freeze movement and the reduction of arms by the two superpowers...

...The trade union membership is awesome...

...The issue is how to balance the rights of the speaker with the rights of the audience...

...Peace is more important than real estate...

...But where does he draw the line...

...Noam Chomsky Cambridge, Massachusetts The First Freedom Nat Hentoff's provocative "When Nice People Burn Books" (February issue) poses important questions of civil liberties that the Left tends to ignore...

...Here is what Ben-Gurion told correspondent John Mc-Cook Roots {Saturday Review, April 3,1971): "Peace, real peace, is now the great necessity for us...

...Charles Dewey Secretary, Independent Skilled Trades Council United Auto Workers East Detroit, Michigan Brutish Boxing Ihave applauded your lonely stands for the underdogs down the years...

...Grosscup writes that "in the 1920s Stalin began to give Russian national interests priority over those of international communism...

...As for security, militarily defensible borders, while desirable, cannot themselves guarantee our future...

...Grosscup writes about the Russians as "collaborators in the process of human misery," conveniently ignoring the U.S...

...If they choose to ignore it, they are signaling to the racists that they are intimidated...

...That fragile bowl of porridge, the brain, is battered endlessly, producing cumulative and irreversible brain damage that follows the boxer when he retires from the ring...

...Hentoff, as an intellectual and writer, does not face this dilemma, but black students in that high school do...

...Grosscup echoes the propaganda whipped up by the CIA in his assessments of everything from Afghanistan to Poland...

...Soviet society, of course, is not...

...Real peace with our Arab neighbors—mutual trust and friendship—that is the only true security...

...For years, such leaders have identified themselves as labor brokers whose assigned task is to provide management with a cheap, docile supply of labor...