Letters Letters
¡Baja Libre! for the Real Arizonans Thank you for noting our Baja Arizona movement [“Noted,” April 4]. One small quibble: since the term “secession” has some unpalatable history, we prefer “separation.” Our model is West Virginia, which separated in order to stay in the Union when Virginia seceded. We have a drink too, the Baja Libre. It’s tequila and Squirt. Don’t waste the boutique stuff in these; any cheap tequila blanca will do. ¡Salud! BILL MILLER The Insanity of the Nuclear Age Mineola, N.Y. As Japan reels from the cataclysm of earthquakes and the tsunami—and the greatest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl—Jonathan Schell’s linkage of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the folly of Fukushima should serve as a cautionary tale about militarism, the nature of war and the dangers of nuclear proliferation [“From Hiroshima to Fukushima,” April 4]. Although more than six decades have elapsed since President Truman ordered the atomic bombardment of two densely populated Japanese cities in World War II, we are still haunted by this mass incineration of civilians. When Italian physicist Enrico Fermi produced the world’s first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942, the objective was the disruption and elimination of Nazi Germany’s war machine—not the wholesale eradication of noncombatants. Nuclear energy is a fact of life in the Land of the Rising Sun, and Japan has borne the brunt of yet another atomic tragedy. ROSARIO A. IACONIS West Kingston, R.I. Jonathan Schell’s conclusions on the nature of nuclear crises are biblical. This is what we get for fooling with nature. We humans are tropical animals, akin to monkeys and chimps. It is not a great step from fireplaces to steam engines to nuclear power. Each of these methods of creating heat and fuel is severely flawed and unsustainable. If we are doomed for fooling with nature and taking on necessities too complex to handle, then we were doomed 1 million years ago when we conquered fire. The control of fire ultimately resulted in our taking over the planet. I suppose one could argue about whether that was a good thing, especially for the other living things on the earth. But the alternative was to remain in the tropics as just another group of quarreling smart apes. I think of the human species in classical Greek terms. Our nature contains our strengths, beauty and incredible creativity; also the seeds of our destruction through arrogance and greed. We can do nothing but appreciate this fact and try to overcome as we watch and suffer and feel sorrow for our fateful limitations. MARQUISA LaVELLE The Legacy of the Triangle Fire Brooklyn, N.Y. Joshua Freeman, in “Remembering the Triangle Fire” [April 4], did not mention a major change in worker protection inspired by the fire. The day before the fire the New York Court of Appeals declared the state’s first workers’ compensation law unconstitutional. It took until July 1, 1914, three years after the fire, before a new law would come into effect, after amending the New York State Constitution. RONALD BALTER New York City My grandfather, Benjamin Schlesinger, was president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1903, when he was only 27, then president in 1914–23 and again in 1928–32. At the time of the Triangle fire he was manager of the Jewish daily Forward. My mother often quoted him: “Live a life of social significance!” When his wife complained that they were living in a fourth-floor walk-up in the Bronx and she had to shlep carriages, etc. for three small children, Grandpa would say, “When all the workers live in an elevator building, we will live in one too.” So much has been written about the Triangle fire. Less known is the role of women in the history of the ILGWU. By and large, these very young women, girls as young as 14, came from Eastern Europe. Most were Jewish and lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Through these shared experiences the women developed a loyalty to one another, and, as Joshua Freeman notes, a passion to work together. One of them, Clara Lemlich, who had been beaten up on the picket line, called for a general strike. The “Uprising of the Twenty Thousand” followed. The kind of unity that developed among these women workers is, I believe, unique. Yes, today’s feminists work together and have accomplished much. And there are women today serving as mentors to younger women just beginning their careers. But we come from all over, speak different languages, have various levels of education—these differences make it difficult for me to imagine a feminist leader calling for a strike today that would be followed by a walkout of 20,000 women. Now and then, I wish I had lived at the time of Clara Lemlich, especially now when “labor” is a bad word and belonging to a union is treated as if it were a crime. “Labor” was a bad word then, too, and belonging to a union was a crime. But the women went on strike, and bit by bit the unions and the nation grew stronger. JUDITH S. ANTROBUS New York City My mother, Rhoda Rothman Gladstone, lived through the Triangle fire, 100 years ago, by hiding in a closet. MORTON GLADSTONE The F-word Highland, N.Y. I’m a retired teacher and after I finish reading your wonderful publication, I donate it to my former high school’s library. So that is the reason for this request; not for censorship. You do not use the F-word gratuitously, and I am not offended by it. But I fear a parent may complain and your valuable publication would be taken away from those youngsters, who would benefit from the progressive point of view. Perhaps you could print that word like this: f**k. JOE DiBLANCA We understand your dilemma, and also that well-intentioned but unenlightened parents sometimes call for censorship. But we also see “f**k” as censorship, a euphemism that weakens language and is a tool of hypocrisy. We’d like the kids to see this word used “properly.” If the parents remove the magazine, the kids will lose. But either way they lose. —The Editors No More Bottom of the Bird Cage Northglenn, Colo. How to recycle your Nation magazine: 1. Remove your name and address label to protect your privacy. 2. Place a sticker on the front instructing others to also recycle by passing the magazine along. 3. Make sure the subscription address and phone number are prominent. 4. Leave copies at the airport, and in your doctor’s, dentist’s and other waiting rooms so others can learn about The Nation. GARY COXA ‘Death to PBS and Planned Parenthood!’ St. James, Mo. While we supposedly fight to eradicate the Taliban and their oppressive Sharia law 
in Afghanistan, the “Tea-liban” and their oppressive law take over our country! DON THOMANN
Apr 13, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
‘Class Warfare!’ Our Rallying Cry! Hillsborough, N.C. Finally! Eric Alterman writes of the only issue that subsumes all the rest: class warfare [“The Liberal Media,” March 28]. When the right talks of class warfare, the left acts as if this distasteful topic should never be talked about. It won’t even use the term, as if it delegitimizes anything that follows. Ronald Reagan initiated the relentless organized assault on the middle class and the poor, carried on by every president since, with support from a paid-for Congress, the right’s think tanks and the usual demagogues. If Frank Luntz can construct frames that advance right-wing class warfare, it is time for the left to use this term as our rallying cry. We must illustrate with specifics what has been done to the middle class and the poor. I used to wonder how a decimated middle class would be able to buy goods when finally tapped out. Now I understand that business no longer cares about the domestic market, which after all is only 300 million. There’s a whole world of billions out there desperate to consume. We are marked down for clearance. Alterman laments that no one in the media challenged Rick Santelli’s disgusting comparison of public pensions and the slaughter of 9/11. Such a challenge will never happen, because our media are the problem. Consider the evening “news,” as formulaic as infotainment can be. Headlines, followed by the disease of the day and whatever “human interest” stories (Charlie Sheen? Baby in a well?) can be squeezed between the drug and car ads. If they can divert us with this garbage, no one will notice that we’ve finished second in today’s ferocious class warfare. M. DAVID PRESTON Clara Zetkin & International Women’s Day Jackson Heights, N.Y. In a March 28 “Noted” item, Kate Murphy uses the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of International Women’s Day and the release of a report from the White House Council on Women to assess the economic inequalities women still face. She acknowledges the role of Clara Zetkin in initiating the celebration of International Women’s Day. But her description of Zetkin as a “German activist and politician” is too brief. Zetkin was a leader of the revolutionary wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany for nearly four decades spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her opposition to World War I led her, along with her close friend Rosa Luxemburg, to split from that party and help found the German Spartacist League. She became a founding leader of the German Communist Party and a Reichstag delegate representing that party. Zetkin died in exile in the Soviet Union shortly after the Nazis came to power. She is interred in the Kremlin wall. It is rare today in the United States for revolutionary voices like Zetkin’s to gain a hearing. But the role of revolutionary socialists in the growth of the international labor movement is an essential part of its history. Zetkin wrote, “The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women’s class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.” Perhaps such words deserve a hearing today, as attacks on the American labor movement intensify in a manner that will surely have a disproportionate ill effect on women. TOM TILITZ Get the L Out—APA, Not ALPA Denver Steve Early wrote in “Vermont’s Struggle for Single-Payer” [March 28] that Brian Dubie is a member of ALPA, the Air Line Pilots Association. Dubie’s union is the APA, Allied Pilots Association, not ALPA. As a liberal I am irritated that any union member would support the Republican agenda, and I do not want my proud union, ALPA, associated with him. By the way, many ALPA members came from across the country to protest with and support the people of Wisconsin. JAKE SANDERS
Apr 6, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
On Wisconsin! Ashland, Wis. I am resubscribing to The Nation because of your excellent coverage of the Wisconsin labor rallies. I am passionate about fighting Scott Walker’s dictatorial agenda and his desire to eliminate public unions in this state. I appreciate very much how you have supported this state that I love, and I feel it is important to support you in return. Progressives should stick together, and I will stick by you. TIM ZIEGENHAGEN Gig Harbor, Wash. I enjoyed John Nichols’s “The Spirit of Wisconsin” [March 21] as well as his appearances on Ed Schultz’s show. With all that has transpired there, I am amazed that the old custom of tarring and feathering has not been suggested for the governor and the Republican legislators. They need to be reminded of something that stuck in my mind after hearing it in the movie V: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” WENDY WEIDMAN Appleton, Wis. Walker the Stalker Takes from the poor, gives to the rich This lying, cheating, son-of-a-_ _ _ _ _. Walker the Stalker An odious man who attempts to invoke The will of his masters, the brothers Koch. Walker the Stalker His abuse of power we cannot condone It’s time this tyrant was pulled off his throne! THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL Does Abortion Make Us Brown? Pleasantville, N.Y. Bravo to Melissa Harris-Perry [“Sister Citizen,” March 21] for bringing up an important issue that has not been mentioned on either side of the abortion debate. Her discussion of the misogynistic and racial concern that white women are not having babies while women of color are harks back to the mid-nineteenth century, when abortion first became a contentious issue in the United States. There were a number of activists on the antiabortion side (including women’s rights activists, but that’s for another day). One group of key players were physicians, led by Dr. Horatio Storer, who wanted to outlaw abortion, except when recommended by a physician. Obviously they had a financial motive: in those days anyone could hang up a shingle and be an abortion provider. Dr. Storer had another concern, however, which echoes Harris-Perry’s allusion to today’s antiabortionists’ fear that our country will become more brown. Dr. Storer famously asked in 1868 whether the West would “be filled by our own children or by those of aliens.” He said, “This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.” Sound familiar? CAROL ROYE Secaucus, N.J. As an actress, I tour nationally with a 1912 script by suffragist Marie Jenney Howe, called Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire. Howe used a term now so obscure my audiences rarely even request a definition: “race suicide.” Having read Melissa Harris-Perry’s column “The War on Women’s Futures,” I plan to volunteer that definition at each future performance. I knew the early-twentieth-century white majority feared that women’s suffrage would reduce the number of “real” Americans in proportion to the more propagative immigrants. I hadn’t realized how frighteningly that fear is reflected in the rhetoric of today’s Tea Party members of the House. MICHELE LaRUE People or Gadgets? Los Angeles The March 21 issue presented two useful visions of how Internet freedom will or will not create more openness: Micah Sifry’s “The End of Secrecy” and Chris Lehmann’s “An Accelerated Grimace.” I am closer to Lehmann’s view. The Internet, however ubiquitous and sophisticated, is a widget. It is people, not gadgets, who create a free society and the culture and institutions that go with it. Missing from the articles, as well as most discussions of the WikiLeaks disclosures, is the role of freedom of information laws. Strengthening these laws seems more likely to result in a greater level of government transparency in the long run than hacktivism. NICK McNAUGHTON Copy That Glen Ridge, N.J. The Nation arrived and I looked, as always, to see if Stuart Klawans was in it. Yes!—reviewing Certified Copy [“A Signature Copy,” March 21]. I agreed with his analysis, especially that it’s “futile” to try to decide whether the two characters have just met or really go back. But unlike him, I didn’t like the film. I don’t think Kiarostami likes his two characters. I suspect he may not like his audience either. I’ve seen several Kiarostami features; this is the only one that’s so cold. The others have puzzles too. But in the Koker trilogy and all the others I’ve seen, he is interested in and respectful of his characters. A partial exception is the cellphone guy in The Wind Will Carry Us—an interesting exception, because that guy is portrayed as Westernized, almost rootless, like the Western, cosmopolitan leads in Certified Copy. When I leave the theater after a Kiarostami film, even Taste of Cherry, I feel good. Not this time. It all seemed like a game, one I didn’t care about. STEVE GOLIN Klawans Replies New York City Thanks to Steve Golin for such a thoughtful and kind dissent, and such a reassuring one. It seems he would have gone to see Certified Copy no matter what I wrote, so I won’t have to refund the price of his ticket. He is definitely onto something when he compares William Shimell’s character here to the character of the so-called engineer in The Wind Will Carry Us. But I don’t know where in Kiarostami’s previous work we could find an analogue to Juliette Binoche in this movie. Only in Ten—and really, not even there—has Kiarostami put on film a woman who is so emphatically present. To me, his attitude to the character is not cold at all, and goes beyond mere like or dislike. He’s enthralled by this woman, with her continually shifting desires, dissatisfactions, hopes and hurts, her strangely opaque outpourings and amusingly transparent little lies. That’s how I felt, anyway—and in saying it, I recognize that Golin and I may have an unbridgeable difference of sensibility here. So I’m grateful to him for registering another response, and also for giving me an opportunity to confess what I see as my biggest failure in writing about Certified Copy. I never mentioned that it’s often very funny. STUART KLAWANS Correction Ian Thomson’s “Scotland Yard” [March 28] made it appear that Haitian independence was declared in 1805. It was 1804.
Mar 30, 2011 / Our Readers and Stuart Klawans
Letters Letters
Get Mad as Hell! Tehachapi, Calif. After reading “Indignez-vous!” by Stéphane Hessel [March 7/14], I was compelled to order his French original online. Looking at his photograph, I would never have guessed at his incredible depth and understanding of the world’s unceasing shortcomings. He looks embittered and hardened by his life’s experiences. Obviously, looks are deceiving. His life’s experiences have propelled the man to surpass himself time and time again. The “fight” has not gone out of him at the ripe old age of 93, which makes him practically a superhero. He should be the kind of man youth read about in comic books, admirable in his very tenacity to continue the fight for the universally oppressed. Thank you for making me aware that hope is still alive. MAXINE de VILLEFRANCHE Mayville, Mich. I was happy for, and envious of, the French, who have a person with the stature of Stéphane Hessel to call for outrage over the present course of government and to hark back to the Resistance and its members’ vision for society. Where are the American statesmen—in government and public service—who truly have the common good as their vision? Where are the large figures who will denounce our elected officials who serve the corporations and banks? Our middle-class and poorer citizens are bearing the brunt of taxes; who is there to represent us? Where are our statesmen who will sound the cry “No taxation without representation!”? It certainly applies today as much if not more than 235 years ago. JOHN R. WYSKIEL We Shall Overcome Mount Pleasant, S.C. Contrary to Gary Younge’s “Selling History Short in Mississippi,” the fiftieth anniversary reunion of the Freedom Riders is neither about Governor Haley Barbour nor about people with similar mindsets—those who would rewrite history, losing the truth in the editing [“Beneath the Radar,” March 7/14]. It is about a group of people and their supporters who set in motion, against all odds, a movement that changed the country. When the Freedom Rides began in 1961, Ross Barnett was the governor of Mississippi and John Patterson, the governor of Alabama. Both championed an oppressive way of life for people of color; we confronted them directly on their turf. Freedom Riders (the term was used interchangeably with “Freedom Fighters” by locals) were divided into two groups—those who rode the buses and the citizens of Alabama, New Orleans, Mississippi and other places who supported, trained and protected the riders. It was the latter group who did whatever they could to assist the riders viciously beaten in Birmingham and Montgomery. People by the hundreds faced angry mobs in Montgomery the night before and the day the riders left for Jackson. It was this latter group who sent riders from Nashville and New Orleans to join the rides in Montgomery. It was this latter group, in New Orleans, who provided training and support for about 40 percent of the riders who went to jail in Jackson. In addition to celebrating the event, the reunion of the Freedom Riders should also be about telling the whole story of the Freedom Rides. I understand why people might not agree to attend a reception sponsored by Mississippi’s Governor Barbour; however, I do think we should celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides in Jackson. We need to bring the focus back to Mississippi and let the local people who played a role in the Freedom Rides (and their children) speak. Our actions in 1961 motivated further actions that exposed and brought down many racial barriers and promoted the emergence of new leaders; they also resulted in great suffering and the deaths of many, such as Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and George Raymond, to name a few. I owe it to them to return to Mississippi for this reunion. I owe it to many whose names your readers will recognize who continued the struggle—Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, Victoria Gray, Amzie Moore, C.C. Bryant, the Rev. Clinton Collier, C.O. Chinn, the Castles of New Orleans, again to name a few. More than that, I owe it to all those people and their children and grandchildren in Mississippi, Alabama and New Orleans who provided support and protection to those who continued the work in Mississippi through the 1964 Freedom Summer and continue the work to this day. I owe it to these people to go back to Mississippi to say to their families, Thank you. I need to let them and the world know that there would not have been a successful Freedom Ride or a successful Freedom Summer without their support and sacrifice. I also want to stand with them and say to the world that the fight is not over. We fought it yesterday, we are fighting it today and we will fight it tomorrow. Failing to support the fiftieth anniversary reunion of Freedom Riders in Mississippi and giving the local people their place in history would most certainly be “Selling History Short in Mississippi”! DAVE DENNIS (See ms50thfreedomridersreunion.org) A Friend to Public Sector Workers Las Vegas Jane McAlevey’s “Labor’s Last Stand” [March 7/14] misrepresents my actions as former Clark County [Nevada] manager and my sentiments toward public sector unions. Specifically, she states that in 2003, I “aligned with the Chamber of Commerce and the Nevada Taxpayers Union” to blast “public workers for earning more than their private sector counterparts. With a Democrat as the messenger, liberals were confused.” Here are the facts: I never endorsed any report by the Chamber or the Taxpayers Union, and I never “blasted” public employees for making more than the private sector or questioned their collective-bargaining rights. Rather, my position was that by refusing to compromise on wages and benefits when Clark County’s population and service needs were increasing sharply, union leaders jeopardized the county’s ability to fulfill its core mandate: delivering essential services. In 2003 our employees were receiving pay increases double the rate of inflation and far ahead of growth in the CPI, making them among the highest paid in the nation, though we ranked at the bottom in number of public employees per capita. We were falling below acceptable levels for critical services. Since labor made up most of our spending, and we lacked authority to raise revenues, payroll reductions were unavoidable. But the unions’ unwillingness to make any concessions led to service cutbacks and, ultimately, to layoffs. I believe the majority of unionized public sector employees understand the need to compromise. Their leaders, unfortunately, are often less practical even when revenues are down, debt is up and demand for services is unrelenting. This hardnosed tack puts their own membership and vulnerable populations at risk and has cost the unions the broad public support they used to enjoy. Rather than dig in their heels, I would suggest—as I have for years—that they learn to be more flexible. THOM REILLY McAlevey Replies New York City Thom Reilly’s “facts” don’t add up. When I arrived in Nevada in early 2004, the Democratic county manager was almost daily attacking the wages of the workers. In the many news articles from that time in which Reilly is quoted blasting public employee wages for being out of line with those of the private sector, he never chose to distance himself from the attacks officially launched by the Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Taxpayers Union or the bruising Review Journal cartoons that ridiculed the Clark County workers. In the April 5, 2005, issue of In Business Las Vegas, Reilly states, “There isn’t any justification for government workers getting higher cost-of-living increases than what everyone else gets out there.” In the May 12, 2004, coverage of the county executive making his case to gut workers’ wages and benefits, the reporter states, “Reilly and Finance Director George Stevens returned to well-traveled ground while describing the long-term financial situation of the county to the commission. The pair have argued that the growth in rank-and-file salaries has exceeded the wage growth in the private sector and inflation, and has undermined the ability to create new positions to serve the rapidly growing county population.” Reilly’s letter to the editor underscores many of the points I make in my article about the attack on government workers. Far from jeopardizing the county’s “ability to deliver essential services,” as Reilly claims, the government workers in Nevada in fact offered up many ideas of ways to alter the revenue stream and dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against potentially devastating cuts to needed government services. Perhaps most insidious, Reilly raises the false choice of “needed services versus workers.” The problem with Reilly’s narrative, then and now, is that liberals have accepted this antiworker logic rather than outright rejecting the idea that we have only two choices: either destroy some of the few remaining decent middle-class jobs left in America—especially for African-Americans and women, who hold a disproportionately high number of government jobs—or defend needed services. It’s a choice invented by corporate America and its neoliberal allies, who seek to distract us from the many real choices we have as a nation—starting with taxing the rich and corporations. JANE McALEVEY
Mar 23, 2011 / Our Readers and Jane McAlevey
Letters Letters
Gotcha Covered Allentown, Pa. Keep the table of contents inside the magazine. The new covers are a jumbled mess. Please bring back Avenging Angels or a similarly edgy and creative agency. DENNIS MICHAEL FURST Barton, Vt. The new cover format—a touch of horizontal voyeurism?—displays the contents more clearly. It’s cleaner, and I like it. MARTHA GORDON Kept the Home Fires Burning Prescott, Wis. Ah, yes! Michelle Goldberg’s “When Fiction Becomes Fact” [Feb. 28]: in early 1942 the US military received a civilian report that one Ransaku Saito (a Japanese immigrant) had installed a searchlight in his chimney in Aberdeen, Washington, which helped direct Japanese aircraft to Aberdeen. Never mind that Saito had died in 1936. Indeed, history does repeat itself. WILLIAM KRUBSACK Jack the Gipper Manchester, Md. Alexander Cockburn’s acerbic and brilliant prose has never been used to better effect than in “Dishonoring Reagan” [“Beat the Devil,” Feb. 28]. “Malign vacuity” is an inspired description. I experience an involuntary shudder when I see footage of Reagan, much like what happens when I drive over a crushed animal on the road—minus the pity. KRISTIN KOLARIK Jacksonville Beach, Fla. Bravo, Alexander Cockburn! I sometimes feel like I am living in someone else’s bad acid trip—until a writer like Cockburn rekindles the light of reason and clarity and reminds us of the true legacy of a man who did more to damage our political and socioeconomic landscape than anyone in the twentieth century. PATRICK NOLAN San Jose, Calif. Thanks to Alexander Cockburn for doing the deed on poor, dumb Ronnie Reagan. I have had it up to here with PBS et al. trying to turn this sappy fascist into an elder statesman. This guy bought arms for terrorists. Isn’t that a criterion for treason? TIM RYAN Brandon, Iowa Thanks to Alexander Cockburn for a burst of reality. Amid all the hoopla over the Reagan centenary, I had begun to suspect mass amnesia. Cockburn’s brief review of the sordid record of his presidency is a sorely needed reminder of what it was really like. We must admit that he did have an enormous impact on public attitudes and discourse: almost single-handedly, he made unabashed greed acceptable. The Great Prevaricator was able to convince the poor and the middle class that they deserved no better than what they had. WILLIAM REEDY An Apple for the Mentor New Orleans Re David L. Kirp’s “The Kids Are All Right” [Feb. 28]: it would be great if there were enough stable adults (and money) for every troubled child in America to have a mentor, but as Kirp points out, it’s impossible. Friends of Children provides something rapidly disappearing in the schools of poor communities (where the number of troubled children is disproportionately high): teachers who stick around. With the rise of programs like Teach for America, teaching has become less of a career and more of a two-year stint for fresh-faced college grads to use to beef up their résumés. Growing up, I visited my second grade teacher after school all the way through high school. She was always in the same room with the same posters on the wall and the same sunny disposition I’d known when I was 7. That consistency meant the world to me when other parts of my life became unstable. Mentoring depends only on an adult’s willingness to stick around and to care. SOPHIE LUCIDO JOHNSON Who Are You Calling ‘Socialized’? Portland, Ore. Paul Goode states incorrectly [“Letters,” Feb. 21] that “single-payer is socialized medicine: the state owns and operates a healthcare system financed by taxes.” “Single-payer” refers only to how healthcare is financed, not how it is delivered. Medicare is a single-payer system. The Veterans Administration is socialized medicine; its doctors are on the federal payroll. Every state single-payer bill I know of, as well as the national legislation (HR 676), allows free choice of providers, whether public or private. PETER SHAPIRO Oregon Single Payer Campaign Read It and Leap Seattle Charles Taylor, in “The Ballad of John and J.D.” [Feb. 14], seems to be arguing two things at once. One is that John Lennon and J.D. Salinger represent some sort of opposing poles in American culture. The second is that reading fiction can influence your behavior. This is a topic that I think goes back to Plato, who wanted only inspiring literature in his republic. It is the theme of Don Quixote. It is evidenced by Goethe, when thousands committed suicide after reading one of his early works. And it is explored in a similar way by Chekhov, who notes that some women end their lives after reading about Ophelia. Mark Twain makes fun of the notion but writes about it frequently. In the case Taylor is writing about, Mark David Chapman read Salinger intensely before killing Lennon. I would like Mr. Taylor to answer the following: Can fiction actually induce entirely new behavior? Or does the tendency to look to fiction as an unerring guide already exhibit a pathology? MAHLON MEYER Taylor Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. We tend to think of art’s influence in one of two naïve ways: either as a wholly benign force that can spread only understanding and enrichment, or as a force that has the power to unhinge the unstable, one that elites (the government, school boards, the MPAA ratings board) must vet for the lower orders. We have a hard time accepting that art is neither completely benign nor directly poisonous, that part of its power, and its horror, is that it can stir up all sorts of unpredictable feelings. I sense the same either/or approach in Mahlon Meyer’s questions. My piece clearly answers his first question: I stated that J.D. Salinger did not inspire Mark David Chapman to murder John Lennon. But Meyer’s second question turns Salinger’s fiction into a powerless entity and thus misses my point. That The Catcher in the Rye didn’t direct Chapman’s behavior does not make it impossible for Chapman to have found in Salinger’s elitist moralism an echo of his belief that the corrupt and phony dirty the world, a belief he decided to act on with a gun. CHARLES TAYLOR
Mar 16, 2011 / Our Readers and Charles Taylor
Letters Letters
David—1, Goliath—0 La Jolla, Calif. Congratulations on your February 21 issue—most stimulating! Egypt, a left-wing Tea Party, feminism in Iceland and Marshall Ganz teaching us David sometimes wins! TANJA WINTER Vacaville, Calif. The Egyptian protester shown carrying a cellphone instead of a gun?—it worked! ROCCO J. COLELLA Corporate Citizens: Pay Your Taxes! Port Townsend, Wash. Johann Hari’s “The UK’s Left-Wing Tea Party” [Feb. 21] is huge. Has anyone picked a target corporation and commenced action that we here in Washington can join? Let’s get it going! MARK STEVENSON Brooklyn, N.Y. Johann Hari’s article on protests against tax dodgers in England presents a great example of creative tactics largely using social media. What Hari does not present, however, is a credible organizing model for a progressive equivalent to the Tea Party. First, the Tea Party may be odious and destructive, but it has a comprehensive political vision—eliminate social programs, shrink government, deregulate big business and let individual Americans do whatever the heck they want. Because of this clear vision, the Tea Party not only cast doubt on healthcare reform but pushed both parties to attack deficit spending, shifting the terms of debate. The British protesters Hari describes are against corporations and the rich dodging taxes. But what are they for? Do they represent a pro-tax “movement”? Do they defend taxes for everyone, or even call on the government to raise taxes? Unlike conservatives, US progressives have long been hobbled by their lack of a vision on this and other issues. Organizing protests on Twitter doesn’t change this. Second, there is a fundamental difference between mobilizing and organizing. “Mobilizing” means inspiring or provoking people to participate in an action. “Organizing” is a more sustained process that builds individual and group power to identify goals and engage in sustained action to achieve them. Mobilizing is thin and narrow. Organizing is thick and transformational. Both are important, but to suggest that some oppositional protests—albeit creative tactically—are the same as a more sustained ideological movement is like suggesting that going to a McDonald’s is equivalent to cultivating a farm. Empty calories can feel satisfying, but… Mobilizations can become transformational movements—but that takes deep organizing and a positive long-term vision. SALLY KOHN, founder, chief education officer Movement Vision Lab Hari Replies London Mark Stevenson: you can find a map of all planned US Uncut protests at usuncut.org/actions/list. If there isn’t one in your area yet, it’s very easy to arrange one and add it to the map. Let me know how it goes! Sally Kohn: UK Uncut has a very clear vision. The British government says every day that the only way to deal with its budget deficit is to dismantle public services and make the middle class and poor pay. UK Uncut says that the government should instead collect the £120 billion the superrich are currently avoiding and evading in taxes every year. What could be clearer? Make the people who caused this crisis pay for it—starting by collecting the taxes they already owe, and by (yes) increasing them. Kohn asks, the protesters “are against corporations and the rich dodging taxes. But what are they for?” It’s there in my article and in everything UK Uncut says: preserving and extending the welfare state that has been built up by centuries of activism and preserving all the things we value about our country—from publicly owned forests to good schools—by making the people who crashed and trashed our economy finally pay their share. Isn’t that a positive vision? She also asks, “Do they represent a pro-tax ‘movement’? Do they defend taxes for everyone, or even call on the government to raise taxes?” Yes, yes and yes, as she could have seen if she’d looked at UK Uncut’s website before insultingly comparing the group to a political Happy Meal. If the UK Uncut agenda—which commands majority support, according to polling—succeeds, hundreds of thousands of people being forced out of their homes, and millions of public workers being fired, will see their terrible suffering vanish. I think you’d find it hard to tell those people this amounts only to “empty calories.” I agree that “‘organizing’ is a more sustained process that builds individual and group power to identify goals and engage in sustained action to achieve them.” If Kohn wants an inspiring model of that, she’s welcome at a UK or US Uncut meeting anytime. JOHANN HARI Clarification Gary Younge’s March 7/14 “Beneath the Radar” column, titled “Selling History Short in Mississippi” stated that “[Diane] Nash and other original freedom fighters will not be attending” a reception honoring Freedom Riders being hosted by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. To clarify: some Freedom Riders, including John Lewis and Bob Filner, will be in attendance.
Mar 10, 2011 / Our Readers and Johann Hari
Letters Letters
Scrap the Constitution? New York City; Austin, Tex. In “Stealing the Constitution” [Feb. 7], his fervid attack on right-wing constitutionalism, Garrett Epps writes that the Constitution has grown “more democratic and egalitarian” over time. Not quite. Enormous strides have been made in the direction of racial and sexual equality, but other trends have been in the opposite direction. Where it took five states representing as little as 15 percent of the population to veto a constitutional amendment in 1789, for instance, it takes thirteen states representing as little as 4.4 percent of the total to do the same today. By the year 2030, according to Census projections, it will take just 4 percent. When it comes to the people’s basic right to alter their mode of government, the United States is growing less democratic. Similarly, forty-one senators representing as little as 11.5 percent of the population can veto any bill, a figure that is expected to drop over the next three decades to 10.1 percent. Today a voter in Wyoming, which has a nonwhite population of 14 percent, has seventy-three times as much clout in Senate elections as a voter in California, the first “minority majority” state. By 2030, he or she will have eighty-nine times as much clout. Wyoming voters also have three times as much power in presidential elections, which means they have at least that much extra leverage when it comes to judicial appointments. If the federal judiciary leans more and more heavily to the right these days, this clearly has something to do with it. Thanks to the rule by which an amendment requires the concurrence of two-thirds of each house plus three-fourths of the states, the US Constitution is the hardest such document to change on the face of the globe. Thanks to the principle of equal state suffrage—which Article V says cannot be modified without the unanimous agreement of all fifty states—the Senate is the most unrepresentative legislative chamber in the putative democratic world. Yet that is equally unchangeable. As we saw with Bush v. Gore, the Electoral College allows a determined minority to steal the White House, and it, too, remains as unyielding as the Rock of Gibraltar. What the Constitution giveth in terms of the occasional progressive judicial opinion, it more than taketh away by augmenting the power of Wyoming, the Dakotas and other rural white bastions. The result is a pitiless dictatorship of the past over the present that grows more constrictive with each decade. Constitutional intractability of this sort is a powerful sop to the right, which explains the growing potency of the ultraconservative movement. Perhaps the Tea Partiers understand the Constitution better than Epps realizes. DANIEL LAZARE SANFORD LEVINSON Ashland, Mass. If the left spends its time trying to “take back the Constitution,” as Garrett Epps recommends, then it is in a very bad place. The right’s claims about the Constitution are indeed absurd, but is refuting them the best the left can do? Instead, progressive lawyers and legal scholars would be well advised to begin creating model constitutions and new amendments and laying the groundwork for a constitutional convention, with all the difficulties and perils that it would entail. A constitutional convention is in our future, and the left and “ordinary people” are completely unprepared. BERNARD GILMAN Epps Replies Washington, D.C. Daniel Lazare and Sanford Levinson take me to task because, they say, one part of the Constitution, the Senate, is not “more democratic and egalitarian” than it used to be, and is arguably less so. This would be a well-placed objection if I had said, “All parts of and institutions under the Constitution have become more democratic and egalitarian.” But I did not. I dislike the Senate gerrymander as much as Madison did in 1787, when he fought desperately against it. But I think it is mistaken to suggest that because the Senate gerrymander remains undemocratic, we cannot celebrate the major democratic strides represented by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Amendments. These are tremendously important changes. Far-right “constitutionalists” minimize or ignore them. For progressives to remain silent about them is to collude with those who wish to strip them of their value. To regard the ongoing existence of the Senate gerrymander as somehow negating all those accomplishments is wrong, and all the more so because this critique ignores the fact that in one important respect the Senate is more democratic and egalitarian than it was in 1789. Today, because of prolonged, disciplined popular agitation, senators are elected by the people. I would have thought Professors Lazare and Levinson might at least note that in passing. It strikes me as important. Bernard Gilman says that a constitutional convention is “in our future” and that instead of defending the progressive features of our current Constitution we should be preparing to rewrite the entire document. I suspect that he is wrong; indeed, considering what could happen at a constitutional convention in the present climate, I profoundly hope so. But I am confident that if we do not defend the proper interpretation of this Constitution, there will be no need for a convention; the far right will simply strip the current Constitution of its many valuable and progressive features. Senate or no, “model constitutions” or no, I am not willing to be silent while that act of theft takes place. GARRETT EPPS Print the FLAME-ing Ads! Columbia, Md. I have been reading the objections [“Letters,” Feb. 28] to the Nation’s printing of ads for FLAME (an acronym for “Facts and Logic About the Middle East”). I agree that the ads are disgusting, but still I think you should print them for the remuneration you get from them. I put this in the same category as the Christian Zionists giving money to the Israelis on the basis that it will be used to get rid of the Palestinians so that Israel can take over all of the Holy Land and thus enable the Second Coming of Christ. The hitch is that Jews will then either all be converted to Christianity or will be killed. If Jews took this seriously, they would not accept the donations, but they know it is silly, so why not take the money? I doubt that Nation readers will be influenced by the FLAME ads. Hopefully, they have learned enough from reading The Nation that they realize this is propaganda. DORIS RAUSCH
Mar 3, 2011 / Our Readers
Letters Letters
Moneybags to Middle Class: Drop Dead San Francisco There is only one element missing from William Greider’s stellar analysis of the state of American capitalism, “The End of New Deal Liberalism” [Jan. 24]. The capitalist class has figured out that it no longer needs demand from our middle class to sustain production or profits. It is more profitable to produce overseas and then, with the cheap dollar, sell the products to the burgeoning middle classes of India, China, even the Middle East. Customers here number only 200 to 300 million. Customers there number 500 million or more, and growing. Whatever motive impelled Henry Ford to pay a living wage or others of his status to tolerate government subsidies of middle-class life (the GI bill, mortgage deductions, college tuition aid, union protection), it’s gone now. We’ve all thought such subsidy is what America is about. Not. It was about maintaining demand for extraordinary productive capacity. Don’t need that demand anymore. The policies that enabled its growth are nothing but a diversion of profit to the undeserving. I hope Mr. Greider will write in his inimitable way on this consequence of globalization for civilized life (here, that is). LUCY JOHNS FLAME Out Accord, N.Y. I strongly object to The Nation’s regular inclusion of the FLAME advertisement. Is this an attempt to be ironic? STEVEN LANCE FORNAL New York City I fail to understand by what logic you find it reasonable to run the biased FLAME ad in your otherwise respectable publication. If your magazine is so desperate for money that you accept ads from an organization that misconstrues “facts” and blatantly promotes the violent right-wing Israeli state, then you might as well give up publishing. I’d rather see ads from porn sites. In fact, cancel my subscription. RACHEL SIGNER Escondido, Calif. The latest FLAME joke, in the January 24 edition, almost produced a fit of apoplexy. A few years ago I canceled my subscription to The New Republic because of its clear pro-Israel bias, which negated any claim it might have had to journalistic integrity. I was tempted to cancel over the FLAME ad in The Nation a couple of months ago. I forwarded a copy of my letter to you about the ad to Gerardo Joffe, the president of FLAME. He had the effrontery to call me and inquire whether I was an anti-Semite. I laughed at him and suggested he was nothing more than another Abe Foxman. After reading his latest screed, I calmed down slightly when I noted you had placed it on the last page. I suggest you not only place the ad on the last page but that you perforate the page along its edge so it can be easily detached and taken to the lavatory to be used appropriately. JACK LOVE Brace yourselves for the FLAME ad appearing on page 23 of this issue. As our readers know, very few American publications challenge Israel’s policies and its treatment of the Palestinian people as The Nation does. We often publish articles that controvert the distorted rhetoric in FLAME ads. However, we accept advertising not to further our views but to defray the costs of publishing. The Nation’s advertising policy (TheNation.com/node/33589) starts with the presumption that “we will accept advertising even if the views expressed are repugnant to the editors.” We do impose limits on commercial ads, barring, for example, the lurid, patently fraudulent, illegal or libelous. But ads that present a political point of view fall under our editorial commitment to freedom of speech, so we grant them the same latitude we claim for our own views. We do reserve the right to denounce the content of such ads, which we frequently do. —The Editors Point of Historical Fact Southampton, N.Y. I came to New York from Lisbon in May 1940 as a small child on the San Miguel, a small cargo ship. My mother and I shared the captain’s cabin; my father, the first mate’s. The ship, about the size of a Staten Island ferry, carried cork but no passengers on this two-week maiden voyage to New York. Of course, we all feared German submarines, but with a child’s belief in magic, I thought that if we were torpedoed, I would be able to save my parents by swimming to a big hunk of cork, pulling them up on it, and then floating to shore. If the owner of the cargo ship line had not been a great fan of my father (a world-famous athlete), we would have been stuck in Lisbon perhaps until the end of the war. As far as we knew, there was no more transportation out of Europe. Certainly not out of Lisbon. I wonder, therefore, where Maria, the wife of Gen. Francisco Aguilar González, Mexican ambassador to the Vichy government, found a steamer bound for New York from Lisbon—indeed, one with space for “twenty trunks of their belongings” [Dan Kaufman, “A Secret Archive,” Jan. 24]—in a time when hundreds, no, thousands and tens of thousands, of Europeans, especially Jewish refugees, were willing to pay anything to get away from the Nazi Holocaust; when hundreds, no, thousands and tens of thousands, of Europeans, especially Jewish refugees, had trouble renewing their three-month visas, which permitted them to stay in the relative safety of Lisbon. Otherwise they would be transported to the prisons of Tangiers, from which few returned alive. Could you explain, please? EVELYN KONRAD Kaufman Replies Brooklyn, N.Y. Maria Luisa Boysen de Aguilar, General Aguilar’s wife, traveled with the couple’s trunks from Lisbon to New York on the SS Drottningholm in the spring of 1942. Her voyage was confirmed by a telegram sent from the Mexican Embassy in Lisbon and received in Mexico City on June 9, 1942. I am extremely grateful to filmmaker Trisha Ziff for uncovering this detail and for providing me with much of the background on General Aguilar and the journey of the suitcase that appeared in my article. Ziff has recently completed La Maleta Mexicana (Mexican Suitcase), a documentary due out later this year, which explores the rediscovery of the lost negatives and the important, but often overlooked, role Mexico played in the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. DAN KAUFMAN Beyond the Palin Key West, Fla. Sarah Palin followers should be known as “Palindrones”: they’re becoming increasingly monotonous, and they never could tell backward from forward. JIM STENTZEL Shibboleth Somers, Mont. Re Trillin et seq. [“Letters,” Jan. 31, Jan. 3, Nov. 29] on the pronunciation of Speaker Boehner’s name: you, Karl Schoeppe (pronounced Shep-ee), say “tomahto,” I say “tomayto.” Let’s call the whole thing off. FRANKLIN SCHROETER, (pronounced Shray-ter) Not a Member of the Club Because of a fact-checking error in Frances Richard’s “The Thin Artifact: On Photography and Suffering” [Dec. 13], it was stated that James Nachtwey was a member of the Bang-Bang Club, a group of photographers who worked in South African townships in the 1990s. Although Nachtwey did photograph in South Africa, he is not considered to be one of the four members of the Bang-Bang Club.
Feb 10, 2011 / Our Readers and Dan Kaufman
Letters Letters
WikiLetters: Pollitt on Assange Susanville, Calif. I was delighted with Katha Pollitt’s “The Case of Julian Assange” [“Subject to Debate,” Jan. 10/17]. She dared to challenge the consensus view of the left media, namely, that because Assange leaked information that the public has a right to know, he must also be innocent of rape. Pollitt not only decisively proved her point, she also shook her finger at fellow progressives, including Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn. She has renewed my faith in The Nation’s editorial policy. CANDACE TOFT Maple Glen, Pa. Being attacked by Katha Pollitt is an honor, but she misrepresents me and the points I made regarding the dubious sex charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Pollitt accuses me of making light of rape in my article—specifically of the Swedish charges against Assange. In fact, as I wrote, I take the charge of rape, including date rape, very seriously, but Sweden isn’t charging Assange with rape. Pollitt repeatedly makes the journalistically inexcusable error of talking about Assange as if he is guilty, as when she says, “It’s been known for some time that Assange was accused of using his body weight to force sex on one woman.” That’s pretty slippery wording—not saying it’s “known” that he did such a thing, just that it’s “known” that he’s been accused of it. But Pollitt goes on to say he penetrated a second woman without a condom while she was asleep, conveying the clear impression that it is a fact. It is not a fact; it is an allegation by the alleged victim. Furthermore, this woman said the alleged (a word Pollitt doesn’t seem to like using) act happened not while she was asleep but while she was “half-asleep.” Initiating intercourse with a sleeping woman might be offensive and perhaps criminal. But what the hell does “half-asleep” mean? Could a guy know whether he’s hearing yes or no? What if Assange was “half-asleep” too? Is anyone culpable? Remember, this is two adults in bed who had already had consensual sex, making it all the more likely that Assange might have misunderstood his “half-asleep” partner’s level of enthusiasm. As for “sex by surprise” (not my terminology), which referred to the other alleged victim’s claims that Assange deliberately sabotaged a condom and continued having sex after it “broke”: on what basis does she know he deliberately damaged it, and how would she know he knew it broke? These are two pretty sorry cases of “rape.” In fact, the leader of Women Against Rape, a British feminist organization, ridicules the charges (I quoted her). I also made the point, ignored by Pollitt, that my investigation of Interpol’s records showed Sweden had sought only two Interpol red alerts for detention of people on sex charges in all of 2010. One was a Swedish national facing multiple charges of child sex. The other was Assange, wanted only for questioning on the two women’s complaints. Calling in Interpol was a remarkable case of overkill and raises questions of political motivation, particularly given the US government’s venomous antipathy toward Assange. Furthermore, a female municipal prosecutor initially dropped the case after discovering that both women had tweeted friends after having sex with Assange to brag about their conquests. The case was reopened by a national-level prosecutor under suspicious political conditions, a point Pollitt ignores. Pollitt can attack me but should at least meet basic journalistic standards. Assange, never before accused of a sex crime, is innocent of these accusations, which are of a “he said, she said” nature, unlikely ever to go to trial or lead to a guilty verdict. DAVE LINDORFF Pollitt Replies New York City One of the Swedish charges against Assange is indeed rape: the penetration (without a condom yet) of a sleeping woman. That would be rape under US law as well. If you’re unconscious, you can’t give consent. My editor and I were careful to avoid language implying that Assange was guilty: I simply recited what was known of the accusations. As for Interpol, we do not know how many people Sweden asked it to pursue because only some of the names are public. It may well be, as Lindorff argues, that Assange’s case is being pursued with special vigor because of who he is. That doesn’t tell us, though, whether he is guilty. We’ll just have to wait until the trial. KATHA POLLITT Honor Roll 2010 Lincoln, Neb. I applaud John Nichols’s “The Progressive Honor Roll of 2010” [Jan. 10/17]—with one exception. Ed Schultz is a fine showman, full of bluster and passion. But “most valuable TV voice”? No way. OK, he’s for the working man. He’s for unions. He’s for real healthcare. Fine. All good. But his voice is shrill, and he paints the political picture in black and white, good guys and evil, much like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. We don’t need a lefty Glenn Beck. Leading progressive voice? No. That’s Rachel Maddow, hands down. She is rational, she appreciates a good argument, she gives her opponents their due, she lets the arguments fall where they may with ultimate faith in reason. JOHN WALKER New York City I agree that Ed Schultz belongs on the Honor Roll. Schultz brings an anger and a passion to radio/TV lacking in most progressives. He speaks the language of working-class/middle-class wage earners. When I hear him, I believe he is speaking for me. Missing on the honor roll is Paul Krugman, the only true liberal who writes for a mainstream publication. REBA SHIMANSKY Dexter, N.Y. The Honor Roll ignored the person who contributes more to liberal issues than the fun-time show people getting your attention: longtime activist Amy Goodman. She gets interviews with the most recent headline-makers before the “professionals” can get off their butts! STEWART MacMILLAN Redmond, Wash. John Nichols refers to “the single-payer ‘Medicare for All’ approach rejected by the Obama administration.” But Medicare for All and single-payer are two different things. Medicare for All amounts to national health insurance: people purchase health insurance from the state and are treated largely by private sector providers. Single-payer is socialized medicine: the state owns and operates a healthcare system financed by taxes. PAUL GOODE Puzzled! Wilmette, Ill. I cast my vote for continuing to reprint the older puzzles by Frank W. Lewis. My wife and I have been doing them together since we met twelve years ago and would miss them terribly if they disappeared. DAVID FERSTER Portage, Wis. When I receive The Nation I turn first to the puzzle! Once I’ve done it I read the magazine. I find the older Frank Lewis puzzles difficult—context seems important. I look forward to the new puzzle master you announced you will be choosing. SUE BRADLEY A Confusion of Carolyns In Katha Pollitt’s January 31 “Subject to Debate” column, it was Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4), not Carolyn Maloney (NY-14), who proposed a bill to ban the sale of large ammunition clips.
Feb 2, 2011 / Our Readers and Katha Pollitt