The St. Croix Review speaks for middle America, and brings you essays from patriotic Americans.
John A. Howard is a senior fellow at The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society.
All societies, primitive and advanced, Communist and free, have to provide education for the children to learn how to live responsibly in their own society. This is the central and totally essential element in education. Three-quarters of this speech is preliminary. The last quarter of it will attend to the title.
Choosing a college is not easy these days because there are so many of them and they are so expensive. Even more important - much more important - the ideals, the values, the priorities, the character of the friends, the pastimes in the life pattern, the importance of religion - all these aspects of the student's life at college are likely to affect the whole pattern of life after college.
Charles de Montesquieu was a Frenchman who is widely regarded as one of the wisest and most influential political philosophers since Classical Greece and Rome. His most important book was The Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748. It was well known to America's Founding Fathers, and key aspects of that analysis were incorporated into the American Constitution.
That book analyzed and compared various forms of government. Every government, like every other formal association of people, be it a kindergarten, a family, a business or a nation, has to have some means of influence over its members so that they will do what the group needs them to do to carry out the group's purposes.
A government in which one person is the ruler and decides what will and what won't happen in that country is a despotism or a tyranny. Fear is the human motive that causes the people to do and not do what the government requires of them. They know that if they refuse to follow orders, they are subject to imprisonment, torture or other severe penalties.
A self-governing nation, Montesquieu stated, is the best form of government, and the most difficult one to establish and sustain because it can only operate successfully with a virtuous population. Each citizen must voluntarily abide by innumerable standards of conduct: lawfulness, honesty, truthfulness, fairness, patriotism, respect for the rights of other people, the fulfillment of the obligations of being a marriage partner and raising the children and many, many other requirements. There is nothing in human nature which causes the individual to be virtuous and conscientious. Each new generation must be trained to be responsible citizens. Once the free society is well-established, the daily life of the family and the society is such that becoming virtuous is not a monstrous chore for the young people. It comes naturally, like learning to speak the language, but the virtuous life has to be continuously reinforced by the cultural elements of the society. I want to repeat that. Virtue must be continuously reinforced by the culture.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived three centuries before Christ. He also is widely considered one of the wisest and most influential thinkers of Western culture. With regard to government he said:
. . . Of all the things I have mentioned, that which contributes most to the permanence of Constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government.
The American nation was uniquely and overwhelmingly blessed in that the Pilgrim settlers of New England may have been the most virtuous group of people alive. They had dared to embark with their families on a relatively small boat to cross the dangerous Atlantic Ocean and settle in a wilderness, possibly inhabited by hostile natives, where there were no buildings, no stores, and certainly no medical facilities. During the year after they arrived, half of the hundred Pilgrim settlers had died. That treacherous venture was inspired by a determination to find a place to live in which they could carry on their Christian worship free from the persecution of the British Government. The degree to which Christianity dominated their lives is reflected in the following quotation.
The strict observance of the Sabbath was perhaps the most striking characteristic of this colony and of others of its time. Work ceased on Saturday after three o'clock, and the rest of the day was spent in learning the catechism and preparing for the Sabbath. [A catechism is a summary of Christian principles phrased in the form of questions and answers for teaching purposes.] The morning of the Sabbath was begun by home worship, and then at nine o'clock the Meetinghouse bell summoned every citizen to public service, only the sick and disabled being excused. The Meetinghouse was a crude, humble structure, built of logs chinked with clay or moss, with a thatched roof. It was surrounded by a stonewall or fort for protection against sudden attack by Indians. Every man above eighteen years of age brought his firearms to church, and sentinels paced their beat outside during the service. There were no pews, only benches, and the men and women sat on different sides of the aisle. . . . The service was long and solemn.
About two in the afternoon a second service was begun, followed by the baptism of children, which was an important ceremony, as Puritan babies were invariably taken to church for baptism on the first Sunday after birth, no matter how inclement the weather. At sunset the Sabbath was ended.
Stern and forbidding as that old worship appears at the present day, yet beneath it all we discover that simple, unswerving fidelity to Conscience and the Bible which compelled those men to make their Sabbath what it was. In that rugged spiritual soil were planted the seeds of a religious character which has exerted its influence on all their descendants, and we cannot help reverencing and respecting them for their consistency.1 [Incidentally this account of Pilgrim life was written in 1917.]
In the colonies, the church and the family trained the children in Christian behavior which incorporated the standards of virtue required for the free society. On through the centuries of the settling of the American nation, each new community built a church and a school to train new generations for responsible living in their society.
The education of pre-college students in the 19th century was dominated nationwide by the textbooks written by William McGuffey. He was a Presbyterian Minister who became a university president. Beginning in 1836, The McGuffey Readers were used in American public schools. By 1963, 125 million copies had been sold over a period of 117 years. They taught vocabulary and basic reading and writing skills, but the main purpose was to teach Christianity and moral behavior. The books were filled with little stories that illustrate a moral principle. Reinforcing the virtuous life was the theme of McGuffey's texts.
What follows is an excerpt from a 1979 report published by the Hastings Foundation. The author is Columbia University Professor Douglas Sloan.
Throughout most of the 19th Century the most important course in the college curriculum was moral philosophy taught usually by the college president and required of all students.
The full significance of moral philosophy in the 19th Century curriculum can only be understood in the light of the assumption held by American leaders and most ordinary citizens that no nation could survive, let alone prosper, without common moral and social values.
However moral philosophy did not carry the whole burden of forming the students' character and conduct; the entire college experience was meant above all to be an experience in character development and the moral life.2
Fast forward to World War II. At that time, American education still engaged in character education. I graduated from high school in 1939. In the public grade school and the junior high school I attended, the morning began with an assembly for all the teachers and students in the auditorium. First, there was a prayer followed by a talk about some famous American, or an event from American history, and then a patriotic song. After announcements, people dispersed to the classrooms.
During those years there were already powerful forces aggressively pushing for radical changes in the American nation and American schooling. In the 1912 election, the Socialist Party had a membership of 118,000. It received 900,000 votes that year and elected 56 socialist mayors. After World War II the radicalizing of American education proceeded swiftly and unceasingly. The profound turmoil of the radicals on the college campuses in the 1960s, spray-painting and burning campus buildings, shouting down speakers, defying the military draft, spreading the use of mind-altering drugs, celebrating the filthy speech and slovenly dress movements, occupying the offices of university presidents and so on, was so devastating that President Nixon appointed a White House Task Force on Priorities in Higher Education. The sixteen members included the presidents of the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt, Tuskegee Institute, and the University of Minnesota. I was then President of Rockford College and was a member.
We were called to the White House and given our marching orders by the White House Chief of Staff, Dr. Arthur Berns. He said the President wanted us to make proposals about what the Government might do to calm things down on the campuses so the academic community could get on with its proper work. We met off and on for a year and a half and gathered at New York University, where the President, Dr. James Hester, was our chairman. He distributed copies of the report that had been prepared by the Task Force staff. It said the government could help by providing funds for six different aspects of college operations and for special groups of students, and by creating a National Academy of Higher Education. Dr. Hester asked what we thought of it. Everyone said it was just fine. I raised my hand. Dr. Hester said, "What is it, John?" I said I was astounded by the report and the reaction to it.
We are supposed to represent all the colleges and universities of America and there isn't one item in the report that attends to the request of the President.
"Explain your concern, John," said the chairman.
I said:
We seem to be fighting a war in Vietnam. People are raising a huge fuss on the campuses about the war's legitimacy. The government needs to provide a periodic and extensive reporting to the colleges and to the nation on what we are trying to do, and why, and how it is progressing. Faculty and student revolutionaries are causing us all kinds of trouble. What are the organizations that are engaged in the destructive acts and what can we do about them? We have a serious problem with mind-altering drugs.
One of the members interrupted:
John, all these things involve value judgments. We can't commit ourselves to policies involving value judgments.
The others agreed with him. I said if that's the case we might as well close the colleges. The report was adopted with one dissenting vote. Mine. That was 1970.
An institutional policy of value-neutrality, or non-judgmentalism, had already banished right and wrong on many campuses. Let me provide just one other instance of the earthquake that had laid waste to the marvelous academic program that had for centuries trained Americans in virtue. In 1968, the American Council on Education published a report on a study about the purposes of universities. A questionnaire was sent to 10,000 faculty members and administrators at 68 universities. They received more than 7,000 usable answers. The respondents were asked what are the purposes of your university and what should they be? The questionnaire included a comprehensive list of possible answers. The tabulated results showed that the number one purpose, outdistancing all others by a wide margin, was "To protect the faculty's right to academic freedom." That was also number one as to what should be the purpose. Number two was to maintain the prestige of the university.
Only one of the top seven goals involved the students. It was "Training the students for scholarship and research."3
Educating the students used to be the purpose of the colleges and universities. There couldn't be a more stunning proof that in universities, the professors place their own careers above everything else.
I am confident that college faculties, in contrast to universities, would have answered that questionnaire quite differently. Before offering my list of suggestions about college selection, here are a few generalities. The colleges and universities that are regarded as the very best in the country are almost all value-neutral and non-judgmental like those represented on the White House Task Force. It's my impression that at state universities, the schools of medicine, business administration, engineering, agriculture, etc. where sensible people are training themselves for careers, radicals have far less influence than at the Ivy League Universities. Also the junior colleges are primarily devoted to serving the students.
Now, here are nine suggestions about college choice.
1. Subscribe to the student newspaper of any college that interests you at least two months before it is decision time.
2. Visit the campus and have a meal in a college dining facility to sense the atmosphere.
3. Check out what is posted on the bulletin boards.
4. Ask about a campus policy regarding marijuana and other mind-altering drugs, and, if there is one, is it enforced?
5. Stop in at the chapel and find out if there are regular services and how well they are attended. Are the hymns traditional or contemporary? Visit with the chaplain if possible.
6. Learn who were the prominent guest speakers during the year and who gave the Commencement Address.
7. Are there co-ed dormitories?
8. Is patriotism important on campus, because it should be.
9. Read the statement of purpose in the college or university catalog before you visit and raise any questions you have when you get there.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.
1William J. Lamson, Descendants of William Lamson of Ipswich, Massachusetts (New York, NY: Tobias A. Wright, 1917).
2 Douglas Sloan, The Teaching of Ethics in the American Curriculum 1876-1976, The Hastings Center Report, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, NY, December 1979, pp. 21-23.
3 The book reporting in this study is University Goals and Academic Power, Edward Gross and Paul Grambsch, American Council on Education, Washington DC, 1968, pp. 30, 31. *
The grass is growing again after a long, hard winter. In Stillwater all through November, December, and January the snow that the plows pushed to the side made piles between five and six feet, so that we had to ease our cars slowly out of our driveways, as we couldn't see coming traffic.
Every morning at around 7:00 I find myself at Pioneer Park standing on a bluff overlooking a hollow by the St. Croix River. Old Stillwater resides in a hollow of limestone bluffs. Nineteenth century brick storefronts line Main Street. Numerous church steeples mark a sloping landscape, and an hours-long procession of cars pass west over the Stillwater lift bridge from the Wisconsin side through Stillwater, Minnesota.
The St. Croix River is quite wide at Stillwater, and it has carved a deep winding valley through the centuries.
The sun coming over the east side of the valley draws my attention. Each sunrise is different, varying with the cloud cover. When the winter wind is strong it isn't easy to be still and watch, but it's worth it. What was a black silhouette to the east becomes a steep bank of cottonwood, pine, oak, and maple.
In the spring the sun sparkles on the river and the air is full of the sounds of birds. The grass is wet with dew. In the fall the leaves are green, yellow, orange, and red.
There is nothing permanent about the river. The course of the river curves gradually. The species of fish and the flora are in flux. It is all a coming and going, one continual flow. And every morning is a different show of light. Pioneer Park overlooks a scene of constant change.
I can only afford a few moments in the park before I turn to the office. I walk down a hill and up a steeper hill on the way. Stillwater is full of hills. The physical activity of the walk clears my mind and prepares me for work.
The politicians are coming up with a plan to tax drivers by the mile; the new system would require each of us to install equipment in our vehicles, so that the government can follow our movements.
President Obama is pondering an executive order aimed at government contractors. He wants to force contractors to disclose which party or political action committee they contributed to in the 2010 elections. Such an executive order is an extremely partisan action and is much resented - though it reveals a ruthless political character, it will escape the notice of the vast majority of the voting public.
Washington, D.C., seems to be full of scheming egos eager to extend their influence over the whole country. Somebody has to keep an eye on what they're doing. My point is that watching power politics everyday is like looking at the world through a straw: I see only political strife. It's important for me to stop by Pioneer Park to maintain a sense of balance.
By the way, the Stillwater lift bridge is years beyond its estimated life span. The residents here have wanted a new bridge for 30 years, and millions of dollars have been spent by the State of Minnesota on plans. Homes have been condemned and razed in preparation for construction.
Because the bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the St. Croix River is listed as a Wild and Scenic Riverway, there is much opposition to the construction of a new bridge. Twenty-four environmental groups are involved in efforts to block current plans. Lawsuits have been ongoing for decades and Congress is presently hearing testimony on the new Stillwater bridge plan.
But I don't spend much time thinking of the bridge controversy when I'm at Pioneer Park.
I just imagine poor little Ken Harycki, mayor of Stillwater, who has a mop of black hair that makes him look like an overgrown teenager, giving testimony before a congressional committee - what did their eminences think? In Stillwater we just want the Big Shots to decide what to do about the bridge before it falls apart with cars on it.
The lift bridge has been raised to national prominence, but it is not prominent enough for the Big Shots to solve the problem. The state governments of Minnesota and Wisconsin aren't allowed to meddle.
Washington, D.C., must have the biggest collection of educated narrow people in the nation. *
In Pioneer Park
Old people
Freeing balloons
Empty sky
The following is a summary of the April, 2011, issue of The St. Croix Review.
Barry MacDonald compares the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan with the dissolution of marriage in America in "What's Important?"
Norm Swender responds to Jigs Gardner's first "Letters from a Conservative Farmer" in "Letters to The St. Croix Review."
Mark Hendrickson, in "The Debt-Ceiling Dance and the Annual Budget Ritual," explains why the big spenders always win; in "Wisconsin Unions vs. Governor Walker: A Battle for the Soul of America," he says the outcome will determine whether government force or individual freedom has the upper hand; in "America's Debts: Even More Calamitous Than We Thought," he details why the official debt of the federal government, $14 trillion, doesn't begin to tell the tale; in "Hu's in Town, Time to Talk "'Money,'" he says that a well-run, international financial system is impossible because governments always debase their currencies; in "The New-Old Barack Obama," he describes the changed rhetoric of a president seeking reelection; in "The Economics of the State of the Union," he says President Obama revealed an ignorance of basic economics and history; in "Honoring Reagan's Memory in the Most Honorable Way," he writes Reagan produced prosperity because he understood economics better than any other president. It's a tragedy that so few elected officials share his understanding.
Herbert London, in "Egypt and the Obama Administration," comments on unfolding events and the effectiveness of the Obama Administration; in "Coptics Under Siege," he sees the targeting of Christians in Egypt, and throughout the Muslim world, and notes the unconcern of UN authorities; in "Abbas Reveals His True Agenda," he shows that Abbas' vision of a Palestinians state is one without one a single Jew; in "Multiculturalism in Retreat," he believes the British Prime Minister's words signal a long-overdue demand that Muslims in Europe learn to respect and assimilate with their host nations; in "What Are Undergraduates Learning?" he cites a study concluding that many college students aren't learning cognitive skills.
Allan Brownfeld, in "The Need to Curb the Role of Public Employee Unions Is Clear as Bankruptcy Looms for Many States and Cities," writes public-sector union workers are paid a third more than private-sector workers, and they also receive much more generous pensions; in "Up from the Projects: The Life of Walter E. Williams," he relates the experiences of the black economist who became a proponent of the free market; in "A Thoughtful Look at Christianity as the Lifeblood of the American Society," he reviews a recent book by John Howard that records the prominent part Christianity had in America from the first colonies.
Paul Kengor, in "Changing the Mood: Two Inaugurals - JFK and Reagan," tells how both presidents changed the self-confidence of the nation; in "Ronald Reagan: The Anti-Nixon/Kissinger," he shows the contrast between the two in strategy, and in concern for the persecution of Soviet Jews; in "The Truth About Ronald Reagan's Mind - and Memory," he relates an anecdote that shows Reagan's mind to be razor sharp; in "Reagan and Alzheimer's: What the Public Doesn't Know about the 40th President," he relates a little-known example of Reagan's kindness.
In "A Tribute to Mihajlo Mihajlov," Rusko Matulic writes about his friend, on the first anniversary of his death. Mr. Mihajlov was a staunch anti-Communist and Yugoslavian patriot.
The editor has republished from 1988 Mihajlo Mihajlov's "Liberalization Within the Soviets." Writing during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Mihajlov describes what happens when totalitarianism collapses, and draws upon then emerging historical facts to point at the evil heart of "real socialism."
Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin have started a new series: "Conservative Magazines: A Survey." In this issue they discuss Commentary, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, and First Things.
Jigs Gardner, in "Letters from a Conservative Farmer - Significant Knowledge," writes that environmentalists would have us return to a primitive, impoverished life, and abandon the slow, painful acquisition of knowledge that makes civilization possible.
Jigs Gardner, in "The Greatest Stories Ever Told," reveals the subtleties in the Book of Ruth of the Bible.
Joseph J. Horton marvels at the technological brilliance of computers, but believes we must think for ourselves in "'Jeopardy!' Champions: Humans Are Still the Masters."
Robert Wichterman provides samplings of President Obama's outsized ego in "Our Narcissistic President."
In "Five Lessons I Learned from a Successful New York Entrepreneur," Joseph Fulda tells a story about his friend Joel, who owns a shop in New York City.
Joseph Fulda is a freelance writer living in New York City. He is the author of Eight Steps Towards Libertarianism.
I met Joel before his shop even opened as he was preparing his entrance into the world of business while still in his twenties, and explained to him my penchant for fountain soda over reading and writing, which is what I do. I asked if he could extend the courtesy of a free refill for each soda, and he agreed. That was in 2004; now as 2011 has already begun, I realize how much one can learn from a successful businessman. It was William E. Simon who said in his landmark book, A Time for Truth (New York: Berkley Books, 1979, p. xiii,) that businessmen generally have far more open minds than do academics, because a single mistake can bankrupt them, whereas there are no such consequences for a wrong idea never implemented into practice - a point with which Joel has told me he is in agreement.
So, here are five lessons I have learned from someone younger and wiser than I am:
(1) Consumer preferences have truly little to do with logic. Early on, Joel and I had a conversation after he insisted that his employees clean the outer glass of the case in which his food is sold. I said, naively, "Isn't that the wrong standard? The inside glass must be kept clean; the outside glass is mere, and literal, window dressing." He chuckled and replied, "My customers are unlikely to see it that way!"
Joel also sells freshly baked cookies, and asks his employees to keep the cookie trays full. I queried him on that one, too. He told me that an almost empty tray suggests little interest. I replied that it could be seen the other way around, too, couldn't it? That the cookies simply are flying off the tray. Another chuckle, and the same reply as just above.
Sure, I know all about subjective values, irrational consumer preferences, and such, and have even written on the subject. But Joel doesn't merely know this; he groks it, to use Robert A. Heinlein's word.
(2) If at all possible, avoid the courts which are slow, laborious, and in which even winning is normally a pyrrhic victory. Early on, workmen fixing up his place owed him some money. He chose not to sue, nor even to enter into a dispute and demand his money back. Instead, he asked them to do some additional work to earn the money. They produced a lighting fixture right outside the store that beckons all comers in winter's early mornings, and at nighttime. Everyone ended up winning, especially the customers!
(3) Turnover is expensive; hire well and you'll hardly ever need to dismiss anyone. Joel now has four stores, which follow much the same practice. I personally know of only two outright dismissals, one for theft, one for serious and repeated lateness and other serious matters. Joel believes in second chances.
But I also know of something else that speaks even more highly of this businessman: No less than three employees who upped and left, only to come back. This speaks well of Joel in two different ways, first and obviously, that they wanted to come back, and second, and perhaps less obviously, that he wasn't beset by false pride and just took them back. Not-for-profit institutions and large, apparently successful corporations which are in reality in stasis and soon to undergo what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction" have a lot to learn in this regard.
(4) Don't ever solicit anonymous feedback. This is a recipe for disaster for the most obvious reason: If you don't know who is giving you feedback, you are completely precluded from taking the feedback from whom it comes. As the reader has already no doubt figured out, Joel does hear out customers, although he often surprises them by how he uses what they tell him, but he avoids those radio-button forms, suggestion boxes, and the other nonsense that are so popular in some quarters - again, typically, not-for-profit organizations and large corporations that are in stasis.
(5) Flexibility is critical. Joel is very flexible. For a variety of reasons, it seemed to no longer make much sense for my soda habit to be precisely metered. So I approached Joel with a proposition: Could I pay a lump sum monthly amounting to what I had been paying, with a contract duly signed by us, for unlimited drinks? He said "Yes."
Joel, stand up and take a deep bow, for making it in New York and for making a new friend. *
Joseph J. Horton is an associate professor of psychology at Grove City College and a researcher with The Center for Vision & Values. This article is republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
I have been using computers since 1982 and still recall a simple artificial intelligence program that ran on my Commodore 64. I was mindful of that this week as I watched IBM's computer - named "Watson" - compete on "Jeopardy!" against two human "Jeopardy!" champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
I was quite impressed by the computer, which easily beat the two most successful "Jeopardy!" players of all time. Some might see this victory of a machine over human champions as a cause for concern, perhaps thinking of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. While there may be some cause for concern, it is not of the "Space Odyssey" variety. In truth, humans are firmly in control of any dangers.
Think about it: Technically, we did not see a machine beat human champions. We saw a team of IBM computer programmers and engineers - all humans - beat two human champions. Calling the computer "Watson," we have a tendency to personify and humanize what is only a machine. Watson is not a conscious being. When watching Watson play this game, we witnessed a machine that follows rules that were programmed by people. The set of rules that Watson follows is incredibly complex, and the speed at which the rules are executed is nothing short of awesome. However, we did not witness a machine that thinks for itself.
Watson did not create any new knowledge during the exhibition. Indeed, it did not appear to me that Watson had access to more trivia than either of the human competitors. What was amazing about Watson's programming was two things: First, there was Watson's ability to search for the correct answer given the sophisticated questions posed. "Jeopardy!" questions often require contestants to make use of things such as humor and idioms, for example. To search for the answer to the questions thus required a sophisticated analysis of language. The second amazing thing about Watson's programming was the speed with which the decisions could be made sorting through vast quantities of data faster than the fastest humans.
During the three nights of the show, viewers were given glimpses of how the computer's programming skills might be put to practical use. One application I found particularly intriguing was medicine. A physician might soon be able to enter a patient's medical data into a computer like Watson. This computer would be able to rapidly compare a patient's data to all known medical resources. No one person can keep up with all new medical research. I know people with unexplained medical problems. A diagnostic tool like Watson would allow my friends' physicians to essentially collaborate with every medical researcher in the world. More diagnostic mysteries could be solved.
Here is where the danger of a Watson-like computer lies: The final "Jeopardy!" question of the first game in the two-game match went something like this: "What is the name of the U.S. city whose largest airport is named for a WWII hero and its second largest is named for a WWII battle?" The answer was Chicago. Watson's program came up with Toronto. Toronto? A U.S. city? A Watson-like computer has great promise for helping physicians, but physicians must still use their human judgment. The medical equivalent of a wrong answer to a trivia question could be deadly.
If we get to the point where people accept - or are required by law to accept - the decisions reached by our decision-making machines, bad things will happen. We have all heard the occasional story of the person who does something crazy like driving the wrong way down a one-way street, or through a closed construction zone, because it is what the GPS said to do. As long as we remember that even amazing machines are still machines, and that human judgment is still needed, we have nothing to fear from Watson or his progeny. Education and human judgment will always be needed. The computers of tomorrow hold great promise as tools humans can use to improve our lives. Have no fear; we are still the masters. *
Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review from this issue. Jigs Gardner writes on literature from the Adirondacks where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
[Written soon after it happened, in the late 1980s]
Imagine the scene: I am shoveling shavings into the team wagon, stooping over in my patched overalls and faded flannel shirt to scrape the barn floor clean, now and then climbing into the wagon to tread down the mounting heap. The sleek young man who owns the new barn, the new tractor, the new hydraulic log loader, the new portable saw mill, the used planer (only ten thousand dollars) that made the shavings - the young man who owns all these sophisticated machines and who is something of a hippie, belated celebrant of the sixties - nods at my horses and says:
"Pretty soon we'll all be using 'em," adding the explanation, "Global Warming."
"Oh, baloney!" I answer forcefully, continuing to shovel.
He looks reproach; I have failed to play my part. He moves away to the back of the barn to admire his expensive machinery while I finish cleaning up the shavings.
It is a scene rich in irony, and I think of that as I sit atop the load, driving the team homeward, but what really strikes me is the young man's ignorance, something he shares with other Greens. They appear to know nothing, literally nothing, about their situation in this material world, where we are all wholly dependent on an unfathomably complex, pervasive structure composed of things and thoughts, matter and spirit, called "Civilization," as old as the first tool-using man, as new as a hydraulic log loader. As individuals we choose or reject bits and pieces of that structure (most of it becomes part of our lives without our conscious knowledge) but in the history of the species such choices are meaninglessly trivial. We create, maintain, and add to the structure, and it sustains and carries forward the life of the group. It is not possible for an individual or a group to dismantle a significant portion of it, and were that to be tried, our lives would be catastrophically disordered and impoverished. Quite innocent of the ramifications of Civilization, innocent even of the incredible implications of what he is saying, the young man fatuously predicts the resurgence of horsepower.
The obvious ironies - that an affluent owner of sophisticated machinery should condescend to remark my use of horses as a prophetic gesture; that I, to all appearances a rare specimen of the nearly extinct race of hippie-homesteaders should be granted Green approval by a veritable apotheosis of inappropriate technology - are not the cream of the jest by any means. There is a deeper irony: my wife and I, who have been living the much-touted simple life for so many years, are ardent champions of everything Greens deplore, preaching the virtues of capitalism, technology, nuclear power, and so on. Our life has taught us by the kind of hard experience unknown to any Green the importance of the forces of development in the modern world. When you cut twenty-five cords of firewood by hand, you appreciate a chain saw; when a cow is down with milk fever, you are thankful for up-to-date medical research; when you own woodland, the knowledge of contemporary forestry is a boon. And we know that behind those specific things is the structure of civilization, that neither the saw nor the medicine nor the forestry are isolated entities, that they are fruits of human reason and imagination impelled and energized by a dynamic civilization.
We, too, once were Greens, but knowledge, along with the realism of our life, cured us.
The specific incident grew out of a conflict over the use of herbicides in the forests. We had always supported the Greens in their continuing battles with the local pulp mill over forestry practices, but on this occasion I noticed, in one of the group's mailings, citation of a study that had long been discredited. I was uneasy. What did I really know about the herbicide? Or even about forestry? Beyond the glib slogans of the Greens what did I know? That was the beginning of the end of my Greenism, a point of view so ignorant and irrational that it can only thrive in a closed atmosphere of cocksure ignorance.
So I began my search for knowledge, and that led me to the forest ranger for our area. How many books and technical articles Mike brought me to study over the next years, how many miles of highway and dirt road and logging trail I traveled in his company, I cannot guess, but it added up to a lot of knowledge, scientific and technical. As I thought about the kind of knowledge Mike had, and the kind I had, I began to see a hitherto unobserved distinction: I shared with the Greens class status (middle and upper middle) and a similar education (college, major in the humanities or social sciences). I like to think that when I went to college sixty years ago, liberal arts education was a discipline of the mind, a training in mental rigor and clarity, but we know that today it is little more than a prolonged exposure to fashionable attitudes. Mike the forest ranger, however, came out of the working class/technician tradition; he had a good high school education plus a one-year course in forestry school. Furthermore, there has been a parallel divergence in the fields of technical and liberal arts education, because knowledge in practical areas has burgeoned; to understand forestry work today, requires a mastery of technical detail almost unimaginable a generation ago. As liberal arts education has become ever more nebulous, forestry (or agriculture or mining, etc.) studies have become more rigorous and complex. It is not surprising, then, that Greens should have fanciful notions about how to manage endeavors like forestry, nor is it remarkable that middle class people in general, those who do not do the technical work of the world, should be taken in so easily by their absurd claims.
Mike's knowledge was a revelation, and I stress it here because I don't think it is widely recognized: we do not realize the knowledge and competence that the farmer, the forester, the fisherman, et al. in their millions must have for society to function as smoothly as it does. We are all familiar with the form of knowledge that lies behind this: theoretical science. We know that in highly complex affairs we require expert guidance from people who have worked long and hard to acquire and develop knowledge about matter that is so abstruse that it must be translated for us. We value science and, despite some ambivalence, we trust scientists. But we don't know enough about, we don't appreciate enough about, the knowledge of the people who do the work of the world.
I have put so much emphasis on this issue because when I saw how knowledge functioned in forestry, I remembered an obvious truth that had been suppressed, even denied, during my Green years: all civilization is ultimately based on our control and manipulation of nature. The story of mankind's ascent from the cave dwellers can be told in terms of that growing mastery. Of course, nature is so vast and so complex that whatever control we achieve is always partial and tenuous. Wishing always to improve our lives - making them longer, healthier and freer, less burdened by labor - we must ever work for the knowledge that will extend our control, although that is not quite the right word. The more we study crops and their pests; for instance, the more refined our methods become for promoting the crops and diminishing the pests, our intervention becomes more selective and effective. Instead of control, it should be more precisely defined as a growing ability to use nature for our own ends. Perhaps the best way to put it is to say that in struggling against entropy, against the natural tendency to let things slide, in struggling for a more orderly, more productive world, we strive against nature, but in the tactics, the details of how we go about it, we can only work with nature.
When Greens demand that we remake our societies "in harmony with nature," they reveal their ignorance; everything we do is in harmony with nature - how could it be otherwise? What they want is the abandonment of sophisticated knowledge in favor of primitive forms.
The wealth created in the West since the end of World War II made us care about clean air and water, and it also gave us the means to fulfill such desires. Knowledge, wealth, and improved practices go hand in hand. Actual improvements in the environment are solely due to growing affluence. Greens, however, believe that wealth is the problem, not the solution. They say that we must lower consumption, dismantle modern industry, and retard technological development. In other words, it is only by reversing the tide of knowledge, it is only by becoming poorer that we can live environmentally pure lives!
And that's why the sleek young man with the expensive machinery could feel enlightened when he told me everyone would be using workhorses soon.
In the next issue: In the Land of Cockaigne. *
Fayette Durlin and Peter Jenkin write from Brownsville, Minnesota.
We have long thought that an ongoing survey of conservative publications would be useful and interesting: useful because it would alert readers to noteworthy articles and also make editors aware of critical opinions of their product; interesting because it would help readers to think about what they read in a more conscious way. The plan is to describe each magazine fully and then to comment from time to time on especially good issues or articles.
Without more ado, let us consider Commentary, the premier neoconservative monthly. It must be said that it is no longer the intellectual feast it was before Norman Podhoretz retired some years ago, but it may be that the highly serious men and women who wrote for and read the magazine have all passed from the scene. The Letters section in those days was unparalleled. When John Podhoretz took over we expected a decline, and we got it. But we are happy to say that there have been great improvements lately. Even the Letters column is better.
The February issue (72 pages) contains six articles, six book reviews, two columns, an editorial, a story, and a Jewish joke told by Joseph Epstein. A good way to measure a magazine is to note the proportion of duds to live articles, and this issue comes off very well: an essay on the Tea Party movement says nothing new or penetrating, but the next three, on Rush Limbaugh, Irving Kristol, and terrorism and piracy, are excellent, and the one on Kristol by his widow, Gertrude Himmelfarb, is a profound exposition of his thought, worth reading and rereading. The next piece, on the anti-Western and anti-Jewish nature of Middle Eastern literature, is platitudinous and much too long. The last article, on the roots in the thirties of Lefty dominance in the arts, is good, but mistaken: Lefties began infiltrating artistic culture before World War I. Commentary is the only conservative magazine that publishes fiction, so it's a shame that this is always so bad, quite devoid of feeling or meaning. The book reviews and columns (one on music by Terry Teachout, and one about the press by Andrew Ferguson) are very good. This issue is worth a year's subscription if only for the essay on Kristol.
The Weekly Standard is another neoconservative magazine, a weekly of forty pages, and that's its problem. National Review also began as a weekly, but Buckley soon saw the impossibility of bringing out a magazine of ideas of any quality every week, and changed to a bi-weekly. So too much of the magazine is filler. The issue of 1/31 opens with the "Scrapbook," a couple of pages of satiric comment on incidents of the day, followed by a one-page "Casual," in this case a rueful look at our cultural change over the last fifty years. Then there are three strong editorials, often the best thing in the magazine. Five articles follow, dull fillers about Obama and one about a new congresswoman, and only the last, about government healthcare rationing by Wesley Smith, stands out. The two feature essays, one about Green success in banning phosphates from cleansers, the other about the Justice Deprtment's harassment of big city police departments, are very good. Four of the five reviews - about Yeats, Galileo, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Prohibition - are fine, but one, about the career of Michael Jackson, is a waste of three pages. The "Parody page," supposed to be amusing, is rarely so.
The Weekly Standard's strength is its focus on foreign policy (not evident in this issue), too often slighted these days in conservative magazines, and its weakness is its desperate need for filler, hence the low quality of many articles and indulgence of some dreadful, prolix writers. Compared to National Review, it's a lightweight.
The American Spectator, an eighty-two page monthly, is a very mixed bag, but it contains so much (twenty-six entries in the February issue), and so many of its writers are superior, that it offers the most sumptuous and varied fare of any conservative magazine. R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder and editor, who once fancied himself as Mencken redevivus, is ever present and tiresome, and he gives space to turkeys like Ben Stein and Conrad Black, but in this issue there's an excellent piece on liberalism by James Piereson, one of the best essays of the month in any magazine on Greenism in California by George Gilder, and thoughtful essays by Roger Scruton, Tom Bethell, James Taranto, and James Bowman. Two of the book reviews, one by Aram Bakshian about V. S. Naipual's latest book on Africa, and one by Dan Peterson about Nancy Pearcey's book on the intellectual undermining of society over the past two hundred and fifty years, are first-rate. The magazine is not so closely edited as Commentary, so the individual voices are more apparent, enlivening its pages.
Because the range of interests is so wide, readers are sure to find some satisfaction.
First Things, a seventy-two page monthly published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life, was founded by Richard Neuhaus to bring religion into the public conversation. Its orientation is generally conservative, emphasizing religion and culture. Marriage and abortion, for instance, are constant concerns. Neuhaus, a prolific writer and very sharp critic, was the genius of the magazine, and his column, "The Public Square," was a closely reasoned meditation on a religious issue, while the accompanying "While We're At It," paragraphs about topical events, sardonically observed, crackled with his acerbic wit. The magazine has not yet recovered from his death, but it is improving.
It has a good "Letters" section, full of serious argument. After the editorial and two short articles, (in the February issue) one on evangelicalism, and the other about yoga (very stupid), there are five essays, three about religion, one about Alisdair MacIntyre's faulty economics, and a searching essay on Heidegger by David Bentley Hart, the eminent theologian. The book reviews, mainly about religious books, are generally pedestrian, and "While We're At It" quite lacks Neuhaus's wit.
We found the essays on MacIntyre and Heidegger worth the price of admission, and anyone interested in religious and cultural issues would enjoy the magazine, but there is no question that, with the passing of its founder, it is a sadly diminished thing.
In the next issue of The St. Croix Review we shall discuss National Review, and we shall again deal with a magazine suffering from the departure of its founder, a seemingly perennial problem with conservative magazines. *
Having spent more than seven years in the Yugoslavian, Communist prisons of President Josip Broz Tito, Mihajlo Mihajlov is qualified to speak about the changes in Soviet life. He is glad for what he sees, but he is not convinced that the USSR is about to become a liberal democracy.
Editor's Note: Mr. Mihajlov wrote for the St. Croix Review in the 1970s and 1980s. This article was published by the St. Croix Review in August 1988, and is republished now to honor Mr. Mihajlov's life, and to recall a time fewer and fewer of us lived through or remember.
No sooner had the all-powerful state eased its pressure on society than it became suddenly apparent that browbeaten souls no longer able to think for themselves were not the sole occupants of the wide expanse of the Soviet Union. Like mushrooms after a good rain, there emerged unofficial associations and clubs; encouraged by the official policy of glasnost, newspapers and magazines took to printing thousands upon thousands of extremely interesting letters-to-the-editor - visible proof that the solid oneness of Soviet society is a piece of fiction; a clamor arose to revive the long-forgotten compassion, spiritual values, even prevention of cruelty to animals.
Time and again, as each new liberalization wave rises, it transpires that the free human spirit has braved decades of enormous totalitarian pressure and survived intact under the ice of the "personality cult" or "stagnation." I remember the astonishment of many Western observers during the few heady months of the Prague Spring of 1968 marked by a similarly tempestuous reemergence of an independent society. The same process accompanied the rise of Polish Solidarity. Everywhere, all of a sudden and within a very short time, many thousands of men and women appear out of nowhere with well thought out, closely-reasoned ideas and realistic plans of democratization. The West is usually struck speechless, because the evolution of social consciousness in the democratic world is a gradual process, undisturbed by successive thaws and frosts.
The weaker the pressure exerted by the monopoly party with its sole "correct" ideology, the more the countries of "real socialism" come to look like normal democracies. The gray uniformity immediately dissolves, giving way to a multitude of ideological and political currents spanning the entire spectrum from the far right to the far left. Who could imagine a few short years ago that the Soviet Union would harbor quite a few followers of the Oriental Hare Krishna cult, or hippies, or collectors of World War Two-vintage Nazi memorabilia - so commonplace in the West as to pass unnoticed? Needless to say, the explosive process of liberalization brings forth negative as well as positive phenomena inherent in democratic societies. But it only goes to prove that the problems confronting the democratic world are of a universal nature and that totalitarianism is incapable of solving a single serious problem, merely exacerbating the social ills that surface with explosive force at the first opportunity.
I would liken today's situation in the world to that in the field of public health. While the highly developed nations of the so-called First World have for decades been spending enormous resources to fight cancer or to develop techniques of transplanting the heart and other vital organs, Third World doctors are still preoccupied with epidemic diseases long since forgotten in the First World. Most diseases ravaging underdeveloped countries are no longer a medical problem, but have everything to do with social and political factors. By the same token, most problems of the one-party system, above all its seemingly intractable economic woes, are in no way caused by economic or technological factors, but are of a purely political nature.
Of course, the democratic world has quite a few problems of its own, some of which have begun to crop up in the Soviet Union, such as drug addiction, all but non-existent in Stalin's time. However, diagnosing the ills inherent in any modern society, not just capitalist countries alone, makes it possible to fight them openly, as Soviet propaganda has insisted for years. And again a medical comparison: a triumph over all sorts of epidemics in the Third World will not amount to the defeat of First World diseases. If the one-party system in the Soviet Union does eventually evolve into genuine pluralism, political and social democratization will most certainly fail to usher in an earthly paradise. However, it will enable all Soviet citizens to gear up for a fight against the worst modern diseases of mankind, instead of the innumerable epidemics of the "stagnant" totalitarian World.
In his classic research into the Stalinist era, The Great Terror, British historian Robert Conquest repeatedly laments the fact that Soviet society is so closed and secretive that historians have a much better idea of the facts and events of the ancient past than those of a few decades ago. The titanic work done by Conquest was in fact based on circumstantial evidence and indirect statistics; the author of The Great Terror himself acknowledged on more than one occasion that the whole truth would not be known until the Soviet archives were opened and eyewitness accounts made available to researchers.
The light of glasnost is beginning to illuminate, if not the whole past of the Soviet Union, then at least some of the mystery surrounding Stalin and Beria. After the defendants at the so-called "Rightist-Trotskyist Center" trial were rehabilitated earlier this year, the Soviet press exploded with dozens of materials describing and condemning the nefarious deeds perpetrated by Stalin, Beria, and Vyshinsky. It goes without saying that almost all the facts being disclosed by the Soviet press have long been known in the West and described by Robert Conquest and other historians in the democratic world; yet, from time to time, Soviet periodicals do come up with tidbits of information and eyewitness accounts showing in an even more lurid relief the bloody crimes that have accompanied Soviet rule throughout much of its history.
Item: Anatoly Golovkov's article in issue #7 of Ogonyok rehabilitation Komsomol leader Aleksander Kosarev, who was executed on Stalin's orders. Kosarev's widow relates that shortly before her husband was arrested and shot, they were invited to a spectacular party to honor Papanin's polar expedition on the occasion of its safe return. During the festivities, Stalin embraced and kissed Kosarev, but after the party was over the Komsomol leader told his wife that Stalin had whispered in his ear: "If you betray me, I'll kill you."
Item: Nikolai Zhusenin's article in issue #8 of the weekly Nedelya under the title "Beria: A Few Episodes from a Criminal Career." Zhusenin discloses that a select group of army officers who arrested Beria at a Politburo meeting was smuggled into the Kremlin, through the Borovitsky Gate, by Bulganin and Zhukov in their limousines with darkened windows. Bulganin and Khrushchev "explained the assignment" to the men: on a prearranged signal, they were to enter the room where the Politburo would be in session. Here is the account provided by the sole surviving participant of the event, as told in Nedelya:
So when the bell rang, we entered in pairs, pistols drawn, through all the three doors. Some comrades, obviously frightened, started to rise from their chairs - as it happened, not all Politburo members had been briefed in advance about what was going to happen. Well, the rest was simple. Malenkov gave a brief explanation and asked: "Who is in favor of arresting Beria?" Everybody raised their hands, whereupon Georgy Konstantinovic approached Beria who was frozen in his chair and said: "Hands up. You are under arrest."
The Soviet press often castigates the West for not placing enough trust in the positive processes currently under way in the USSR. However, it is easy to understand why the West is wary. The above-described episodes, like Stalin's kiss followed by Kosarev's execution, or Beria's ambush-style arrest at a Politburo meeting resembling a scene from an American thriller, smack too much of Mafia mores. It would take a big leap of imagination to picture the Speaker of the Parliament and the Minister of Defense of a democratic country smuggling a group of armed men in their limos to a cabinet meeting, and the hitmen, on cue, nabbing a third member of government, with some people in the room taken unawares and having to vote at gunpoint. Scenes like that seem to come straight out of Godfather or any other American movie about organized crime. Besides - who knows? - maybe similar episodes occur nowadays behind the Kremlin walls but will not be made known to the world until a half century later.
Disclosure of historical events is a welcome development even if it comes half a century too late. Yet, world public opinion has every right to withhold its trust until the shroud of secrecy still enveloping the life and activities of the monopoly party's ruling elite has been torn off. After all, even Yeltsyn's speech at the Central Committee session where he was demoted has not been made public. How long will the Soviet press go on disclosing the truth, and not all of it at that, about the days of yore, while maintaining the very same degree of secrecy about what is going on today?
It is a rare treat to read Soviet newspapers today, particularly after the judicial rehabilitation of the Bukharin-Rykov group. The past few weeks have seen a massive torrent of articles about that third Moscow show trial describing in considerable detail the beatings administered to the defendants; the absence of any proof of their guilt; the pre-trial hounding of Lenin's loyal lieutenants by the Soviet press; the villainy of the prosecutor, Vyshinsky. To be sure, we who live beyond the Soviet borders have long known the whole truth - and not just from Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon inspired by Bukharin's trial. A substantial body of literature has been devoted to the show trials of the 1936-38 period, and of course the Soviet press has so far failed to reveal anything new. Still, one especially relishes reading about those trials in Izvestia, Nedelya, or Literaturnaya Gazeta. The fact they print such materials eliminates, as it were, yet another barrier between the two worlds, a barrier due to the man-made information famine in the country of the Soviets.
And yet, alongside truthful facts about the Stalinist trials revealed to the Soviet reader for the first time, all of these articles try to put across a spurious notion undercutting the enormous moral curative power inherent in any disclosure of the truth after decades of organized mendacity. While describing in lurid detail the lawlessness of Stalin's times, the Soviet press spares no effort to blame the ugliness of Soviet reality still painfully in evidence today on Stalin's "personality cult" alone and to portray the pre-Stalin era as one of the rule of law, glasnost, and self-financing, thereby implying that a return to Lenin is the real cure.
Perhaps the most eloquent exposition of this idea is contained in a major article by Arkady Vaksberg printed in Literaturnaya Gazeta on January 27. While describing in minute detail Andrei Vyshinsky's trial strategy and the many violations of the judicial procedure that ran counter even to Soviet legality, unencumbered as it is by "bourgeois formalities," the author of the article titled "The Queen of Proof" hammers home the point that all the ills and lawlessness of modern Soviet society are rooted in Stalin's times. Vaksberg admits that nowadays, too, whenever a defendant complains of illegal third-degree tactics used by the investigators, a typical Soviet court, instead of looking into the allegations, is likely to dismiss them as slander. "Where does it come from? From those times, from those times . . ." exclaims Vaksberg. When facts are mercilessly twisted at the trial, again he exclaims: "Where does it come from? From those times, from those times . . ." The author of this otherwise remarkable article time and again asks the same question and posits the same answer: So where do these ineradicable criminal practices come from - From those times, from those times. . . ."
The trouble is, though, that Vaksberg's theory flies in the face of known facts. Again, the Soviet reader is fed a lie, albeit in a new, somewhat camouflaged form. Vyshinsky and the Big Three Moscow show trials had been preceded by countless instances of judicial and extralegal terror that served as a laboratory and a proving ground for the whole gamut of illegal techniques of which Andrei Vyshinsky subsequently was to become an unsurpassed practitioner. But he was not the one who invented them. They had been developed when Lenin was still alive, and the 1922 trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries' leaders has a legitimate claim as the opening act of the show trial era, with then-Minister of Justice Krylenko playing the role later assigned to Vyshinsky, and with equal success. That's where it came from, not from Vyshinky's time. From those times, from those times. . . . *
Rusko Matulic is a retired an electrical-power engineer, born in Yugoslavia. He spent five years in a refugee camp in Egypt, lived in Chile and England, and reached the U.S. in 1952. He met Mr. Mihajlov in the U.S. and collaborated with him in the publication of CADDY's Bulletin. Currently he is working on the third volume of Bibliography of Sources on the Region of Former Yugoslavia.
Editor's Note: Mr. Mihajlov wrote for the St. Croix Review in the 1970s and 1980s. He spent seven years in the Communist prisons of Josip Broz Tito, president of Communist Yugoslavia. The article following this article was written by Mr. Mihajlov and was published by the St. Croix Review in August 1988.
On this the first anniversary of Mihajlo Mihajlov's passing in Belgrade on March 10, 2010, it is appropriate to remember him by one little-known accomplishment he initiated and sustained. It is the formation of the Committee to Aid Democratic Dissidents in Yugoslavia and its publication, the CADDY's Bulletin. A brief history follows.
In July 1979 in New York the founding meeting of the Committee was held with some twenty persons from all parts of Yugoslavia and interested American friends. It was decided to publish a bulletin in English to publicize violations of human rights in Yugoslavia. The biggest problem in editing the Bulletin was the gathering of reliable information on human rights violations in Yugoslavia.
The first Bulletin, two pages, was published in July 1980, and the last in November 1992, sixteen pages. Each issue was mailed to over 600 addresses.
Over thirty special reports were issued in the same period and these as well as the Bulletin were sent free of charge. This was possible because all the work was done by volunteers who also provided needed office materials. Acknowledging Mihajlov's commitment to democracy, human, and civil rights, the President of the AFL-CIO and his right-hand man, Tom Khan, offered duplicating and mailing assistance. With the changes in the AFL-CIO and the untimely passing of Mr. Khan, CADDY was deprived of this essential help.
Apart from Mihajlov's unceasing activity - lectures, articles, interviews, as well as the publication of the Bulletin itself - the Committee participated and cooperated in other activities associated with human rights.
In August 1982, the Helsinki Committee, U.S.A., published a 30-page booklet Yugoslavia, Freedom to Conform. Included were 25 biographies of political prisoners and of those who were actively working against the "people and the state" - the information was provided by CADDY.
Committee member Dr. O. Gruenwald and K. Rosenbaum-Cale coauthored a 670-page book: Human Rights in Yugoslavia. Mihajlov wrote the preface while, among others, a number of Committee members contributed.
Yugoslavia, the Failure of "Democratic" Communism is a book published by New York's Freedom House as a result " . . . of a conference which brought together fourteen migrs and dissidents from Yugoslavia." The conference was held in June 1987 and the 88-page book was published the same year.
The U.S. State Department contended, and verbally communicated to Mihajlov, that Yugoslavia would be on the way to disintegration if the U.S. aid were made conditional to the improvement of human rights.
The chairman and the editor of the Bulletin sent a joint letter (March 2, 1994) to the members, friends, and readers advising that Bulletin 73 was the last to be issued. The entire letter was published in Paris-based Dialogue (v. 3-9, 03/1994, p. 64). The difficulties with official America are well-expressed in the following paragraph of the letter:
While others have done so before us, since 1980 the CADDY Bulletin has been advocating democratic reforms in former Yugoslavia as the only way to avoid conflagration. On September 5, 1980, The Congressional Record published a partial list (furnished by CADDY) of political prisoners in Yugoslavia. This was the first time an acknowledgment was made of the repressive nature of the Titoist regime. It was such a shock that it brought the U.S. Ambassador flying in from Belgrade to lecture State Department officials on the merit of fossilized pro-Titoist U.S. policy. Since then and until the former Communists started slitting each other's throats, a period of ten years, not a single forceful gesture towards democracy was made by the State Department.
For Mihajlo Mihajlov's efforts and dedication in organizing and promoting CADDY, he has earned our eternal gratitude. May he rest in peace! *
"If we forget what we did, we will forget who we are." --Ronald Reagan
Mr. Gardner,
I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading the installment of "Letters" in the February issue of Norm Swender St. Croix Review, especially the part about combining.
I was born and raised on a Michigan farm, and spent many a July day riding around the field on my Dad's old Allis-Chalmers combine. The bags filled with wheat and secured by a miller's knot were, in the beginning, heavier than I was, and I struggled mightily to get them stacked around the platform. It seems you may have enjoyed this work a bit more than I did. I also had to grease the machine at the start of the day. It seemed to have dozens of grease zerks, every one of them all but inaccessible, resulting in contortions, skinned knuckles, and grease on shirt, jeans, and in the hair.
As I rode around the field I knew that this was only the beginning, because in a day or two we would be clipping the stubble, raking it into windrows and then baling it up at the first opportunity. And, yes, the "chaff flies up golden in the sun," and then down the back of my neck, it seemed.
The farm is long gone, but, like you, I often think back to those far off days, and can almost smell the wheat and the straw, and see my Dad, with his farmer's tan, guiding the tractor around the turn and into another swath of grain. Like the line from the movie ". . . How Green was my Valley then. . . ."
With best regards . . .