From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!poli-sci Newsgroups: fa.poli-sci Title: Poli-Sci Digest V2 #133 Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7221 Posted: Mon May 17 20:25:22 1982 Received: Tue May 18 02:23:37 1982 >From JoSH@RUTGERS Mon May 17 20:16:52 1982 Poli-Sci Digest Tue 18 May 82 Volume 2 Number 133 Contents: Solidarity on the Left Decision to Build the Bomb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 May 1982 00:35-EDT From: James A. CoxSubject: Solidarity on the Left Your message amused me. So "fear keeps alot [sic] of 'moderate leftists' and 'liberals' from casually making their opinions public." Interesting. Perhaps I have been too long here at Harvard, where political dominance (among students and faculty) has long been in the hands of the left. Here, it is the conservatives who suffer social ostracism by the majority when they reveal their beliefs. Liberalism has long been entrenched as the dominant ideology, and liberals dispense their opinions freely and often. Naturally I dislike being ostracized (to whatever degree) because of my beliefs. But there isn't a hell of a lot I can do about it. People are people, and that is the way people behave. Likewise, if liberals are afraid to speak out because the conservative majority would ostracize them, well that's too bad but there's not much anyone can do. You don't come right out and say it, but you seem to imply that leftists have something to fear from the government if they make their beliefs too well known. I reject this. If this actually is your implication, I think you're being paranoid. In this country, leftists and rightists alike have freedom to expound their beliefs without fearing recrimination. This freedom has limits, of course, for example one may not advocate the overthrow by violence of the Government, but that leaves quite a bit of room. My impression of unanimity on the left does not come from small but vocal groups of Young Sparticists marching in formation protesting whatever issue happens to be in fashion this week. It comes rather from an observation of politics on the Harvard Campus. Hold a conference on gay rights here and who do you get supporting it? The Gay Students Association, of course, but also the Committees on Central America and South Africa. Protest U.S involvement in El Salvador and in addition to the Central America group, you get the SDS and the Black Students Association. It is really monotonous to read the list of supporting organizations for leftist events, because the list is always the same. I confess that politics here at Harvard are different from those in the "real world." There is dissonance within the ranks of the left, an example is leftist opinion on the Falklands conflict. Some leftists support Britain because of their fanatical hate of repressive right-wing regimes like Argentina's. Others cry out for "proportionality" because of their profound faith that wars in a far-off place are always unwinnable. But really, there is a lot more agreement between Ted Kennedy and every leftist subscriber of this list (excluding the lunatic fringe) than there is between me and either Milton Friedman or Jerry Falwell, both of whom could be called conservatives. And as you go even further left you find still less difference. Marxist-Leninist disputes tend (to me anyway) to have about the same import as the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. ------------------------------ Date: 17 May 1982 1033-EDT (Monday) From: Robert.Frederking at CMU-10A (C410RF60) Subject: Re: Decision to build the bomb Actually, I think almost anyone would have approved building the bomb at the time, since there was good evidence that the Nazis were conducting nuclear experiments, and it was a widely known (among physicists) theoretical possibility. So the U.S. went about building a nucear bomb while we concentrated our bombing on research facilities and heavy water manufacturing sites. In fact, even as deeply pacifistic a person as Albert Einstein urged the U.S. to do this, since the Nazis clearly would have used them if they had gotten them built. Now, if you're going to claim that a decentralized government in the U.S. would have prevented the rise of Nazism in Germany, I'm not interested in discussing it. (Note that this doesn't excuse the U.S. for using the bomb on Japan, after the Nazis were gone). ------------------------------ End of POLI-SCI Digest - 30 - -------