Year Book of Medicine 1962-1963 Series.

Abstract

The American Right Wing, A Report to the Fund for the Republic, Inc., in University of Illinois Library School Occasional Papers, No. 59, November, 1960. By Ralph E. Ellsworth and Sarah M. Harris. Price, $1. Pp. 50, with no illustrations. University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science, Chicago 12, 1960. The distribution curve of medical and political attitudes presents a fascinating spectrum with a bell-shaped cluster of the large majority near but not at the middle. But at either end far to the left and far to the right we have fringes, men who follow the one view or the other with such powerful passion that it distorts their thinking and confuses their attitudes. The distribution of the political and social views of physicians has an interesting hump towards the right. It is correlated in a general way with the natural conservatism of medical practice and the increased conservatism of older persons. The extreme right is characterized by reactionary elements who have failed to keep up with the shifting customs, the altered economic contexts, and the changed problems of contemporary existence. While the American Medical Association has often been the whipping boy for those who lean a little to the left, and many charges are empty, it is well to remember the equal but perhaps less obvious dangers which occur when those occupying the ex¬ treme right are willing to sacrifice constitu¬ tional guarantees of freedom in order to promulgate their own views, beliefs, and feelings. Professor Ralph Ellsworth and the late Dr. Sarah M. Harris have gathered together sources of all kinds indicating the activities, publications, and political pres¬ sures of both the orthodox conservative wing and the rabid and morbid edges where