Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor Rosen a Hero Nir Rosen's article, "Making Enemies," in your December issue is a fantastic piece of reporting, though it is horrifying in the extreme. Rosen is a hero in my...
...One complained about the so-called liberal left for the level of its disgust with the Bush Administration...
...He also suggested that today's divided America resembles the "Old Europe" of the 1980s...
...In the book, I argue that a coherent left in the United States has not existed since about 1920, when the loosely decentralized Socialist Party provided the basis for shared universal principles that gave a common bond to a wide range of reform programs—movements for such things as Social Security, unemployment insurance, the eight-hour workday, civil rights, protected free speech, and even "free love" and birth control...
...I, for one, find his type of humor stupid, childish, and a pathetic attempt to create "controversy" by being "edgy...
...Please include your city and state...
...I do not believe that any Democrat is better than Bush...
...Progressives must hold the Democrats' feet to the fire and push for a progressive platform...
...We need to rise up now, once and for all time, and say no more...
...Note to Kristof: This war is sick...
...Instead, he posits one of his own: that the Soviet experience and the Cold War comprised just one of several detours...
...Rothschild ignores this central theme of the book...
...War is not a game...
...I wrote that "the Cold War seems more like an end—or rather a detour from history—a time when the left was disoriented and the political life of the nation became one-dimensional...
...In other words, while traditional Socialist ideas had entered the mainstream of American political discourse by the '30s, the idea of socialism was increasingly identified with the Soviet Union's industrial development and its brutal political culture...
...Rosen is a hero in my eyes...
...In a more recent column, Kristof ran a contest to name the war—as if it were a new carnival ride at the local amusement park...
...Doreen Mitchum Seattle, Washington Molly Ivins's column is the first thing I read when your magazine arrives here...
...And thank you for redeeming, in part, the state of Texas...
...At the same time, I feel that the "anyone but Bush" logic is very flawed and dangerous...
...War is sick...
...But even as it entered the mainstream of American politics, the party's limitations became apparent...
...But Rothschild does not discuss this assertion...
...So I hate to seem nitpicky, but she has made a small error...
...I love Hightower's courage in declaring that he supported Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and his reasoning behind that support...
...But most of these have been movements of one or another sector of our society fighting for its particular rights...
...And after World War I, the Soviet experience disrupted the left, stood the public meaning of socialism on its head, and made the party unable to focus on the changes of this new era...
...Of course, we should work together to elect a progressive, but don't ask me to stop being angry about the Nader vote...
...And it would be great if a few of you who voted for Nader could admit that it was a spoiler vote...
...Lorry Bond Madison, Wisconsin Thomas Friedman and David Brooks aren't the only New York Times columnists callous enough to make the reader ill ("Saving Lives or Face," by Matthew Rothschild, December issue...
...His main point was that the left's rage impedes understanding...
...Other detours, he writes, included such things as Weathermen violence in the late '60s, identity politics after that, and, more recently, left love of third parties...
...Young soldiers are learning how to be brutal, courtesy of our government...
...He didn't mention that this less-polarized Europe is also much more polarized against the United States...
...Some, like the civil rights and women's movements, were consistent with the universal principle of equality of opportunity, but in the absence of a coherent left, these, like all others, have tended instead to become lobbies for their own "special interests" within the established priorities of corporate America...
...I feel that the progressive agenda is the only hope for change in this country—and maybe the world...
...G. L. LeBlanc Rogue River, Oregon Chappelle Is a Fool I am disheartened by The Progressive's glorification of Dave Chappelle ("Ask a Black Dude," by Nick A. Zaino III, November issue...
...David Blum Tuscaloosa, Alabama You Go, Molly...
...Success, I write, was possible because the Socialist Party's ideas were in tune with American capitalism's developmental path as it emerged from the fiercely competitive years of the late nineteenth century to one of corporate bureaucracy...
...It is real life...
...And therein lies the long detour from a coherent left that espouses universal principles and includes us all...
...Martha Ferger Dryden, New York It was very disturbing to read Rosen's article...
...I loved your article ("Call Me a Bush-Hater," Molly Ivins, November issue...
...Dave Chappelle appeals to the lowest common denominator and does nothing...
...Dover AFB is located in Dover, Delaware, not Maryland ("Not a Winning PR Ploy," December issue...
...My argument, however, is that all these things are aspects of the seventy years of disorientation, which made it impossible for the American left to pay appropriate attention to capitalism's changing reality and rendered it unable to develop a coherent political vision or program...
...Letters may be e-mailed to: editorial@progressive.org...
...Since then, he says, Europe has matured and become much less polarized...
...Mary Emanuelson Dover, Delaware The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Joel Gillman Bellingham, Washington Weinstein Responds After a few perfunctory kind words about me, Matthew Rothschild proceeds to review The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left with breathtaking disregard for what I actually wrote ("An Unheroic Left," October issue...
...Recent pieces by Nicholas Kristof have had the same effect on me...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness, and may appear either in the magazine or on its web page...
...But more important things impede understanding, like backroom deals, false information, manipulative rhetoric, and an inability to listen to other points of view...
...I assert that Socialist education and agitation succeeded in bringing these ideas and programs into the mainstream of American life during the Progressive Era, and thereby helped to humanize a brutally corrupt American capitalism as it emerged into the era of giant corporations that we know today...
...You go, girl...
...I also voted for Nader in 2000...
...Jim Weinstein via e-mail Hightower on Nader The Jim Hightower interview was great (November issue, by Matthew Rothschild...
...Lie down and take it...
...Linda Whipple Hallandale, Florida While I like most of what Jim High-tower stands for, I find it hard to believe that he still thinks it was right to vote for, and to encourage others to vote for, a man who was running around saying there was no difference between Bush and Gore...
...Yes, it would have been great if Gore had a better campaign...
...What is it that Kristof expects those with a conscience to do...
...She is quite right, however, about no photographs or other media coverage of flag-draped coffins arriving here...
...Progressives have never had a better time to push their agenda...
...Courageous Progressive pieces like Nir Rosen's ride with the 1st Squadron ensure we don't forget that...
...I am a Bush-hater, too, and so is everyone else I know...
...By the New Deal years of the 1930s, when the labor movement and other radical movements developed independently, both the Socialist and Communist parties were relegated to the sidelines...
...They are not playing a live action video game or laser tag...
...I really believe that our President is a dangerous and corrupt man and needs to be voted out of office...
...True, as Rothschild says, there have been many lefts in our country...
...I do not believe that things would have been significantly better—or even different—if we would have had President Gore...
Vol. 68 • January 2004 • No. 1
