Letters

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

...The First Amendment means government cannot prohibit the expression of ideas which it finds distasteful or unconstitutional...

...It doesn't matter, but with the present posture in Washington, it doesn't appear likely that the United States will...

...PaulF...

...Those who doubt that a U.S.-Soviet reciprocal relationship could be sustained for sufficient time to reduce the nuclear stockpiles to zero should reflect that such reciprocation has been going on between the two nations for thirty years...

...As a lawyer and sometime ACLU cooperating attorney, though, I can tell you that Hentoff (not Hentoff, of all people...

...Boycotting speakers is likewise not a violation of free speech, although it may indeed be counterproductive to the purpose of a university...

...Do you recall how many members were lost to the American Civil Liberties Union because it supported the right of the American Nazi Party to march through Skokie, Illinois, residence of survivors of the Holocaust...

...See Arthur Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, for details...

...Faced with the real possibility of mutual destruction, any move by one side to reduce the tension would present a test of the sincerity of the other...

...The PLO officially supported an October 1977 Soviet-American statement calling for "termination of the state of war and establishment of normal peaceful relations" between Israel and its neighbors, with demilitarized zones and international guarantees...

...But Long never said that...

...Is Napalm"—to a teacher acquaintance...

...As Hentoff concludes, it may cause decent people to do dumb things, but don't citizens of this Republic have a constitutional right to do dumb things...

...Nat Hentoff should stick to his column, "Indigenous Music...

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

...I showed the inside cover of the March issue—"All I Want from the U.S.A...

...David Cutler Cambridge, Massachusetts Beyond the Freeze I refer to your January com-I ment, "Now That We Understand," and particularly to the last paragraphs, in which you sound a warning against such half-measures as the nuclear freeze...

...Michael K. Smith Fairfax, California Tiianks for Nat Hentoff's "When Nice People Burn Books...

...The serious, though unfortunately quite common, mistake was to include invective against nuclear power plants in an argument against war...

...Madison, Wisconsin Nuclear Arms and Energy It is unfortunate that the author of your January Comment, "Now That We Understand," inadvertently adulterated an otherwise strong message against the nuclear arms buildup...

...Censorship in any form is deplorable, but only when the censors enlist the aid of the government, be it Federal, state, or local, does the First Amendment come into play...

...Popular support for a freeze is mounting across the land, and opposition might seem counterproductive at this time...

...This would be a bona fide reduction of material already on line, not of weapons still on the drawing boards...

...As he pointed out, the present plan calls for the evacuation of designated "high-risk" areas, with the entire populations of these areas moving into "host areas" that are expected to feed, shelter, and protect their neighbors from radiation, wind storms, fire, and errant missiles—all with twenty minutes of warning...

...However, when I consider that right-wing ideologues are making headway in this country, must Hentoff be the standard-bearer for this group...

...Mary Engelberg North Bergen, New Jersey Nat Hentoff makes the classic liberal error in interpreting the First Amendment as a social principle as well as a legal one...

...Sadly for some narrow-minded people, censorship may be part of the barter...

...My alternative calls for people to occupy the high-risk areas instead, as a form of mass euthanasia...

...The PLO condemned "the tyranny of the veto," and according to Israel's U.N...

...It may be an exaggeration that our eyes in the sky can read Soviet license plates, but they certainly can detect any important changes in military activities...

...While it is a terrible crime that the U.S...

...The real need is for a thaw that will begin to melt away the massive accumulation of nuclear weapons...

...Justice William O. Douglas called it the marketplace of ideas, and as long as the government doesn't inhibit free enterprise in that marketplace, I'll trust it to decide whether Eldridge Cleaver, William F. Buckley Jr., or Phyllis Schlafly has the most salable commodity...

...Second, the process of inviting public speakers is inherently selective, and while we may justifiably hope that selections will be made with an eye toward the greatest possible diversification of ideas, we cannot compel such a policy, nor does the First Amendment require it...

...Government ignores the Vietnam veterans, who were also victims of the war, let us not forget that more than eight million tons of bombs were dropped on Indochina—the equivalent of one atomic bomb (of the sort dropped on Nagasaki) a week for seven and a half years...

...Fine...

...He was supposed to have made the remark to Robert Cantwell, but the latter, asked about it many years later, said, "It is not what Long said in his talk with me, but it is not basically opposed to what he said...

...If an uninvited speaker requests the opportunity to address a public symposium without compensation, the First Amendment protects his right to appear...

...How objective can you get when the gas chamber claims its victims...

...Finally, no speaker has the "right" to be invited to speak anywhere, let alone be paid for the appearance...

...The actual Long quote is more iconoclastic: "When the United States gets fascism it will call it anti-fascism...

...Hell, after a year or so, one might even find The Progressive in dentists' waiting rooms, right next to the Reader's Digest...

...If there were a significant response, a second, larger step could be taken with more assurance that it, too, would produce a similar reaction...

...But those of us who have been engaged in promoting a freeze must come to realize that it could be a dead end...

...Some twenty years ago, during the first general wave of concern over the possibility of nuclear war, Charles Osgood, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, presented a plan that attracted considerable attention, though it had little chance of adoption in the tense period of the Cuban missile crisis...

...Let's bring in the ACLU whenever a public university, no matter how enlightened its administration, refuses to let a Ku Klux Klansman speak...

...John Kenney Oakland, California Israel and Palestine Noam Chomsky's fundamental distortion ("America and Israel," December issue) is the claim that the Palestine Liberation Organization has "officially accepted the idea of establishing a state in any territory of the former Palestine evacuated by Israel, though they refuse to abandon their dream: a unitary democratic secular state to be achieved, they assert, through a long-term process of peaceful interaction with Israel...

...After denouncing the concept of a West Bank state in 1973 as a conspiracy, and following a bitter factional struggle, the PLO in 1974 accepted the idea of establishing "an independent combatant authority for the people over every part of the Palestinian territory that is liberated...

...A unique virtue of the procedure is that it does not demand that adversaries trust one another...

...Security Council Resolution (vetoed by the United States, denounced by Israel) calling for a two-state settlement on the pre-June 1967 borders with security guarantees and recognized borders...

...Neither, by implication, can government mandate the expression of an official wisdom by individuals or private institutions...

...I gave a series of examples concerning the further evolution of this position, including official PLO support for the January 1976 U.N...

...And, in 1981, the PNC condemned "any contacts that take place with [Israeli] parties that support Zionism in ideology and practice...

...Even censorship, as practiced by individuals and private institutions, is a First Amendment right...

...H. Elder Pullman, Washington Faustian Bargain Iam greatly saddened by Samuel Day's "Faustian Bargain" (March issue...

...representative, Chaim Herzog, it not only supported the resolution but indeed "prepared" it...

...After all, who wants to witness, let alone participate in, the messy spectacle of untold millions dying of radiation, starvation, disease, and injuries...

...It accepted, in other words, a West Bank state in order to destroy Israel...

...First, it would be impossible for any public institution to exhaustively represent a virtually infinite ideological spectrum, even if it were inclined to do so...

...I, for one, am not ready to toss the Pentagon that kind of bone...

...There have been some signs of movement within the PLO toward mutual recognition and accommodation with Israel—signs which should not be ignored or underestimated but encouraged...

...Let's condemn censorship wherever we find it...

...The real question for us is whether we should continue to support Israeli rejectionism, or should join the international consensus and try to bring about a settlement that recognizes the national rights of both parties to the conflict in the former Palestine...

...A nuclear war would leave nothing...

...Rabid anti-Semites might have used this qualification to refuse to deal with the Zionists, just as their counterparts today desperately seek some phrase that will permit them to persist in their rejection of the national rights of the Palestinians...

...A conventional military confrontation would leave enough survivors to work for the ultimate elimination of war, poverty, and exploitation...

...Boiler Jr...

...Noam Chomsky Cambridge, Massachusetts Whose Freedom of Speech...

...Stuart Elliott Towanda, Kansas The author replies: What I wrote was accurate, indeed understated...

...No, I would rather, in the event of nuclear attack, drive to the nearest high-risk area, put Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus on the tape deck, and make a flagrant gesture at each of the capitals that have hastened my demise...

...As Stuart Elliott concedes, by 1974 the PLO accepted the idea of an independent state in any liberated area of Palestine...

...Fort Worth, Texas Correction Because of a printer's error, data about Crisis...

...John E. Bleck Hillsborough, California As a Unitarian, I can agree with Nat Hentoff that the good people of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, like the students of Wisconsin, Vassar, New Mexico, and Kent State, as well as the faculty of Wabash College, are illiberal hypocrites when it comes to the censorship of ideas...

...If there were no reciprocation within a reasonable time, the world would clearly understand its meaning...

...Social censorship and private institutional censorship of ideas are constitutionally protected...

...Leonard Rifas San Francisco, California Friends and Lovers Shame on those who cancel their subscriptions at the first disagreement with one of your writers...

...Paul Fairbanks Brooktondale, New York What Huey Long Really Said AComment in the March issue of The Progressive quotes Huey Long as having said that if fascism ever came to the United States, it would be called 100 per cent Americanism...

...I thoroughly agree with the present policies...

...Does every disagreement require the end of the relationship...

...Far from evading this issue, I emphasized it, noting the similarity to the pre-state Zionist movement, in which Mena-chem Begin's rejectionists declared partition illegal, while the mainstream around David Ben-Gurion accepted it but without abandoning the longer-term expansionist "vision...

...A free exchange of ideas would not guarantee that truth would prevail, but the suppression of unpopular and vicious opinions elevates force over reason and ultimately feeds the power of those who control the most violence...

...Although reciprocal response from the opponent would be expected, the initial action would have no strings attached...

...I have been a supporter of the Union of Concerned Scientists for many years, in all its aspects...

...Have they never disagreed with a mate or a close friend...

...Article 9 of the 1977 Palestine National Council resolution proclaimed the PLO's commitment to "regain the eternal national rights of the Arab Palestinian people without any conciliation or recognition...

...In November 1978, Yasser Arafat issued a statement that the PLO would accept a West Bank-Gaza state, "and in that circumstance will renounce any and all violent means to enlarge the territory of that state," reserving the right to pursue diplomatic means towards unification...

...The Osgood plan simply calls for moving the machinery into reverse...

...Jon Persson Old Saybrook, Connecticut Vietnam Remembered Iwant to commend you for publishing Lawrence Walsh's courageous "Vietnam for a Thousand Years...

...As you observe, a freeze is only a cosmetic solution...

...Yes, Hentoff, fight for First Amendment rights, but, for God's sake, don't go overboard for these reactionary elements in our society...

...It struck me that if each subscriber were to show The Progressive to two people every month and give them the order forms bound into the magazine, more and more people would come to know about the world and the complexities we face...

...Samuel Eppstein Kalamazoo, Michigan The author replies: Ithank Samuel Eppstein for capturing better than I did the essence of the dubious assumption on which the Union of Concerned Scientists' tactic is based—the belief that "nuclear disarmament cannot succeed unless we toss in the bone of conventional rearmament...

...Government should start helping the Vietnamese recover from such a devastating war...

...I, too, would prefer universal disarmament—but how satisfying will it be for the few survivors of the nuclear holocaust to be able to say, "I told you so...

...failure to give patronage to a particular speaker is not...

...Free speech for right-wing extremists...

...Arthur F. Greenwald Palm Springs, California want to compliment you on the continuing and outstanding quality of your/our magazine, and I would like to issue a challenge to other readers, based on my recent experience at a local school...

...The Labor government rejected any negotiations with any Palestinians on any political issue, refusing to deal with the PLO even if it renounced terrorism and recognized Israel...

...Those who support nuclear arms and nuclear power (which, while I personally am opposed to it, is after all a peaceful use of the atom) and who might otherwise have been persuaded by the core argument, were given the opportunity to discount a page of otherwise clear thinking...

...What he had to say in "When Nice People Burn Books" (February issue) turned me off...

...We no longer have to worry about not being able to trust the Russians...

...But let's not cry "First Amendment" when it is We, the People, and not the government, who are practicing censorship...

...Who might be expected to start this process...

...But Long never said that either in so many words...

...They remain portents, however, not actual positions...

...There was no exchange of words at this meeting—only gunfire from the guns of the Klansmen...

...The Progressive used to quote it a lot in the old days...

...Crisis, by Hamilton Jordan, was published by Putnam at $16.95...

...these days, we can watch them without "sending over our inspectors...

...If Day really believes in the threat of a nuclear holocaust, he should bend all his energies to preventing it—even if that means building up conventional arms...

...The Last Year of the Carter Presidency were scrambled in last month's Books section...

...Either side could begin with no risk except for the side that failed to reciprocate...

...Whatever one's feelings about PLO pronouncements, it is a simple and plain fact that Israel's rejectionism has been total and unambiguous...

...Moreover, since college students subsidize university forums through taxes or student fees, they have the right to decide which speakers will make compensated appearances...

...In short, active suppression of speech is a constitutional violation...

...There is something ludicrous about this discussion...

...Again, no speaker has the right to invitations or fees...

...Ralph H. Brock Lubbock, Texas While I share Nat Hen-toffs passionate concern for the protection of the First Amendment, I cannot agree that intellectual boycotting and selective ideological representation are violations of free speech...

...True, the PLO still insists on its "dream" of regaining the "eternal national rights" that it is unwilling to forfeit...

...I have just viewed a television documentary, "Eighty-eight Seconds in Greensboro," proving what tolerance of Ku Klux Klan activity can lead to—the murder of demonstrators peaceably assembled—in Greensboro, North Carolina...

...The U.S...

...Osgood's proposal was a policy of graduated unilateral disengagement: One of two adversaries, after preliminary announcement of its intent, would destroy a substantial portion of its nuclear arsenal...

...It is about time someone had the decency to remember the millions of dead and severely injured Vietnamese, many of whom were civilians...

...Upon further browsing, he asked for a subscription form...

...is wrong, wrong, wrong when he accuses those parishioners, students, and academicians of First Amendment violations...

...Hentoff s sense of justice overwhelms me when, for example, he equates the Klan with a high school debating society where the proper amenities and decorum will be observed...

...While one can applaud the social principle of toleration of free speech, and level charges of intellectual hypocrisy and mendacity on the basis of this principle, it is a serious error to say that social intolerance of certain ideas is an assault on the First Amendment...

...December issue...

...Samuel H. Day Jr...

...Day should realize that nuclear disarmament cannot succeed unless we toss in the bone of conventional rearmament...