American Fears Research Articles

Immigration, Civil Liberties, and National/Homeland Security

INTRODUCTIONIn the wake of 9/11, the liberty-security conundrum in and the United States, as in most liberal democratic states, has once again come to the forefront of political life. With the quick passage of antiterrorist legislation,1 both countries have allowed for increased governmental surveillance and detention powers to thwart potential terrorists within their respective states. By having provisions such as preventive and sneak and peek, executive discretion has essentially taken precedence over judicial review. Reminiscent of the early Cold War years when the communist threat was perceived as emanating not only from the Soviet Union but also from subversives within, both countries have instituted measures that ultimately violate individual freedoms, from the right to privacy to the right to due process, in the name of national security. Redoubling the impact of policing on citizens, antiterrorism in the wake of 9/11, just like anticommunism in the immediate post-World War II years, has become a domestic affair.This does not mean to say that it is also not a bilateral affair. quickly passed its antiterrorist legislation not only to arrest and prosecute terrorists at home, but also to allay American fears about their northern border being an unguarded, porous barrier to terrorists. With nearly 86 percent of Canadian exports going to the United States in 2003, amounting to almost 27 percent of Canada's gross domestic product (GDP), any semblance of fortress would come at a great economic cost to Canada. The smart border declaration and action plan, signed in Ottawa on 12 December 2001, was negotiated to reconcile the Canadian priority for open borders with the American priority for security. The secure flow of goods and people, and at the same time a secure infrastructure and better coordination and information sharing, have become the principles governing border cooperation in the post-g/11 world. For some groups in Canada, like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), these measures, amounting to a sort of comprehensive incrementalism in border management simply do not go far enough to ensure uninterrupted access to American markets. Indeed, the CCCE talks about reinventing the border between the two countries and strengthening information-sharing. This will allow for successful risk management on both sides and the movement towards a common screening of travelers directed to entry points to North America as opposed to the Canadian-American border.2 Given the spectre of Ahmed Ressam, an asylee from Algeria living in Montreal who was captured by US officials with a trunk-load of explosive material as he crossed from British Columbia to Washington in December 1999, allegedly to blow up the Los Angeles airport, the notion of being soft on terrorists needs to be eradicated if the border is to remain open.For other groups in Canada, like the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Labour Congress, border cooperation in the post-g/11 world has gone too far and information-sharing has proved dangerous for Canadian citizens. They argue that the detainment, deportation, and torture of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian descent, on a stopover in New York as he was returning to in September 2002, must be considered in the context of the kinds of integrated border measures, information-sharing, and institutional arrangements that (may) have compelled Canadian officials to pass on to American authorities their information (and, as it turned out, false information) about Arar's connection to terrorism.3 These groups point out that increased border cooperation generates greater pressure to harmonize policies between the two countries, thus undermining Canada's ability to decide issues on its own. Reg Whitaker calls these two positionsthe first, a demand for greater integration with the United States, leading to support for American foreign policies; and the second, a demand for lesser integration, leading to the questioning of further security cooperationmade in Canada debates about the bilateral relationship. …

Coercive Diplomacy and an “Irrational” Regime

All conditions for the successful application of coercive threat clearly favoured the US to get its demands regarding the handover of the al Qaeda leadership and closure of the terrorist camps in Afghanistan accepted by the Taliban. However, American coercive diplomacy failed because of a potent combination of factors, namely, an extreme brand of Islam which the Taliban practised, the basic symbiotic relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban, the special religious role of Mullah Omar and the Pushtunwali code so profound to the Taliban’s sense of identity. The Taliban held an irrational and fatalistic view that was simply impervious to superior American military power or fear of regime change and even fear of loss of life. The implications for American foreign policy and the war on terrorism are worrisome: when dealing with terrorist groups or failed states in which the leadership has a radically different and highly destructive messianic religious and cultural referent, as was the case with the Taliban, coercive diplomacy is likely to fail.

For a White Revolution: John F. Kennedy and the Shah of Iran

The story of American relations with Iran during the Kennedy administration is one of misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi often manipulated and thwarted Kennedy's policy toward Iran and used American fears of Communism to gain increased financial aid and military support. Disagreements among US policy-makers also contributed to an inconsistent policy toward Iran. These factors resulted in the bolstering of a dictatorship out of touch with the Iranian people, inevitably leading to the revolution that occurred in 1978-79.

Dieu li Volt?

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, there has been a significant increase in complaints to the EEOC about Muslim discrimination. With American fears of Islamic terrorism, there is no end in sight to this treatment. Because of the stringent requirements for bringing an employment discrimination case, many Muslims may get discouraged and decline to assert their rights. This pathfinder seeks to make the Byzantine world of employment discrimination more accessible to Muslim employees, many of whom will not have studied law.

Challenging Themes in American Health Information Privacy and the Public’s Health: Historical and Modern Assessments

Protecting the privacy of individually-identifiable health data is a dominant health policy objective in the new millennium. Technological, economic, and health-related reasons substantiate the development of a national electronic health information infrastructure. Through this emerging infrastructure, billions of pieces of health data of varying sensitivities are exchanged annually to provide health care services and service transactions, conduct health research, and promote the public’s health. These multi-purpose, rapid exchanges of electronic health data, far removed from the typical disclosure of health information through the doctor/patient relationship of yesteryear, contribute to heightened individual concerns about identifiable health data. Responding to American fears and perceptions of actual and potential privacy abuses, policymakers have recently developed new, modern privacy protections through legislative and regulatory laws, as well as ethical and industry codes.Modern health information privacy protections are reflected in federal regulations developed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The USA Patriot Act: Coming to Terms with Silenced Voices

Domestic and international issues of the 1990s form an incendiary combination of controversies that heightened American fears, anger, and sensitivity to the politics of difference and provide the background for the passing of the Patriot Act of 2001. The author argues that censorship occurs with the silencing of voices in a democracy and describes the control of voice in the post-USA Patriot Act era, where the danger of censorial power resides in secrecy combined with indeterminacy.

Pills in the Public's Mind

Abstract We investigate the sources of public attitudes toward RU 486 to determine whether the drug will change public attitudes toward abortion. Not surprisingly, public attitudes toward RU 486 are influenced by the same factors that influence abortion opinion more generally. Two other considerations seem to influence opinion toward RU 486. First, the fact that the drug is administered early in pregnancy increases support, for many Americans take an emergent view of fetal rights and oppose abortions in the last several months of pregnancy. Second, opposition to the drug is highest among those who insist on consultation about the abortion decision, suggesting that at least some Americans fear that the drug will allow women to make hasty decisions about abortion without consulting family and friends. This latter finding suggests that pro-choice advocates should emphasize that RU 486 is prescribed after consultation with a doctor

The Common Continent of Men": Visualizing Race in Moby-Dick

“THE COMMON CONTINENT OF MEN”: VISUALIZING RACE IN MOBY-DICK Cuvated by Elizabeth Schultz omprised of men from “all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth,”’ Melville’s Pequod reflects not Conly the demographic reality of the composition of 19th-century whaling ships but also our author’s passionate vision of a democratic society of diverse and equal individuals. Concluding his introduction of the ship’smulticultural crew in Chapter 27, Melville pronounces them democratically “the common continent of men ... federated along one keel” (121), interdependent in performing the business of whaling and in protecting one another from its perils. And, in case any “mortal critic” might dare to fault his vision of equalizing men from every region, race and class, in a proclamation tinged with defiance and a rapturous desperation, Melville allies himself with divinity, with “thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind!,”for he is certain that “thou great democratic God!” will “bear him out in” his great democratic vision (117). Writing Moby-Dick 150 years ago, in the decade prior to the Civil War, when the brutal realities of slavery were threatening the very existence of America, Melville had every reason to be disturbed about the success of democracy, as we, his heirs, conscious of racism’s ongoing ubiquity and inequities, continue to be disturbed. Out of Melville’s profound concern for democracy’s survival, it can be argued ’Herman Melville,Moby-Dick, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hei-she1Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern UP and the Newberry Library, 1988) 121. Subsequent references will be noted In parentheses in the text. ’Only a veiy few abstract repi-esentations attempt to address the complex issues of race as treated by Melville. Norman Ives’lithograph of Queequeg G Ramadan, which appears in his Illustrationsfor Moby Dick (19501, delineates a facial portrait of Queequeg behind a scrim of abstract symbols. Old Fleece Preaching to the Sharks (1985-86) by Walter Martin and the several versions of The Whiteness of the Whale (1986-87) by Tim Rollins + K.O.S. connect Moby-Dick to a range of questions related to race Particular works in Frank Stella’s that Moby-Dick may be understood as an examination not only of the dangers of democracy’s transformation into despotism, but also of its potential for creating a society where diverse individuals respect and care for one another. It is apparent that Melville’s opening strategy in Moby-Dick is to convince his readers of the possibilities of fulfilling such a vision through his representation of the developing friendship between Ishmael, his naive Yankee narrator, and Queequeg, the mature Polynesian harpooner. Moby-Dick’s readers are encouraged to grow with Ishmael, who, through ignorance and fear, at first perceives the tattooed Queequeg as “the devil himself” (22), but who soon comes to “see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them” (54). However, in his depiction of Fedallah, the Persian harpooner, and of the crew of Fedallah’s whaleboat, Melville himself lapses, associating them with 19th-century literary conventions of ghostly Gothic demonism and assigning them racial signifiers corresponding to 19th-century American fears of Asia and the Near East. Since the first illustrated editions of Moby-Dick at the end of the 19th century, the Pequod’s multicultural crew and the relationship between Queequeg and Ishmael have been prominently featured. With few exceptions, these characters have been realistically represented.2 However, realism itself, as a mode of Moby-Dick series (1985-19971, which includes a monumental and provocative abstract piece for each of the novel’schapters, often appear to focus on the racial discourse in the narrative. For detailed discussion of Stella’sworks, see Robert K. Wallace’sFrank Sietta’s Moby-Dlck Senas:Words md Shapes (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001); for detailed discussion of Ives, Martin, and Rollins + K 0 S., see Elizabeth Schultz, Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-CenturyAmencan Art (Lawrence. UP of Kansas, 1995).For further discussion of the importance of these few abstract works, also see my essay, “VisualizingRace in lmages of Moby-Dick...

Guardians of Democracy or Cultural Storm Troopers?: American Catholics and the Control of Popular Media, 1934–1966

In 1936 the Nation attempted to warn its readers about an insidious infiltration of American culture. the New York Times hired a lieutenant of Hitler's to blue-pencil its European news, there would be cries to high heaven; if the Soviet Government should presume to decide that no books criticizing the Russian revolution could be sold in the United States, the air would be filled with thunder. If in 1936 these were not yet quite the fighting words they would be fifteen years later, they were nonetheless strong stuff. What dire threat deserved comparison to the century's worst villains? The Nation was reacting to the 1934 establishment of the Catholic Legion of Decency, which by 1936 had achieved considerable influence over the making of motion pictures.What the non-Catholic moviegoers are entitled to decide, the editors asserted,. is whether they wish to have their films censored in advance by the Catholic church.1 A similar alarm was raised less than a decade later by Drew Pearson in his Post column, this time about another Catholic group, the National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL).Efficient General Frank Walker, Pearson wrote in his Washington MerryGo-Round on March 25,1943,has got himself into a situation whereby certain zealots of the church to which he belongs have become unofficial censors of American magazines. And Frank is playing into their hands. The column goes on to detail the requests from the NODL that Walker investigate whether certain publications on its disapproved list should be deprived of second-class mailing privileges. Postmaster General Walker, Pearson notes, . indignantly denied that members of his own religious faith were influencing his policy in barring magazines from the mails. However, the Acolyte [sic], organ of the National Organization for Decent Literature, gives him full credit.2 These warnings exhibit already old but persistent American fears that Catholics were intent on infiltrating and controlling crucial social and cultural institutions. In organizing opposition to certain kinds of popular entertainment, Catholics were often accused of stepping over an implicit boundary demarcating the sphere of influence acceptable for a partisan group. At the same time they were eliciting such protest, however, Catholics were also gaining allies in their efforts from among the very Americans whose boundaries they were supposedly transgressing. The existence of both critics and allies suggests what was in fact the case-on the issues in question, no cultural consensus existed, and the field was open for action. Multiple, often competing, groups contributed to defining attitudes toward censorship and control of media. The differences among these groups, while many, were perhaps never so marked as in their differing beliefs about the nature and function of art. As a variety of recent work has suggested, the first half of the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented growth in and differentiation among the institutions of culture and entertainment, and their various stewards and guardians.3 The emergence of the middlebrow, the persistence of the genteel, the demise of the gentle reader, the disillusion of the avant-garde-a bewildering interplay of critical narratives attempted to render an account of artistic and cultural phenomena burgeoning beyond the ken or control of any one viewpoint. While modernists asserted a new freedom for art in both form and subject, middle-class reformers sought new mechanisms to implement old values in the perplexing realm of mass media.4 While left-wing defenders of American democracy sought to maximize American freedom as a safeguard against the growing threat of totalitarianism, conservative defenders of the same system hoped to temper freedom-or license, as they would have said-with moral safeguards against the relativism that they believed permitted totalitarianism to take root. In this volatile atmosphere, Catholic efforts at controlling motion pictures and magazines, not surprisingly, elicited mixed reactions. …

Born in the USA—Importing American Fears of Random Crime

Criminologists generally accept that ideologies of crime control are constructed (and packaged) for both domestic and export markets (Cohen 1972; Israel1997). Americans, of course, have played a key part in this trade. However, the export of American fears of crime has been a less recognized phenomenon. In this short paper, we argue that contemporary American culture has a tendency to stimulate panics about lesser matters. In following the American lead, not only are Australians scared about problems that may not exist in Australia, but many are scared about problems that barely exist in America. Countries with lesser crime problems, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom watch American television shows, read American books, see American politicians, and seem all too frequently to develop an American desire to panic about crime

The execution of innocence

Generally, Americans know very little about who is executed and why. And they are blissfully unaware of the potential dangers of executing an innocent person. The U.S. judicial system relies on a burden of proof called “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is intended to protect the innocent. But it is not foolproof. As the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once wrote, No matter how careful courts are, the possibility of perjured testimony, mistaken honest testimony and human error remain too real. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can be certain that there were some. No issue posed by capital punishment disturbs the public more than the possible execution of an innocent person. A recent nationwide poll found that 58% of Americans fear this might happen.

Interests Not Passions: Mexican-American Attitudes toward Mexico, Immigration from Mexico, and Other Issues Shaping U.S.-Mexico Relations

As Mexico has become more significant to the United States in the past decade, political leaders on both sides of the border have raised questions regarding the role that the Mexican-origin population of the United States will play in U.S.-Mexico relations. Will they become, as many Americans fear and Mexican officials hope, an ethnic lobby mobilized around policy issues affecting Mexico? Or will they abandon home-country political interests while maintaining a strong cultural identity? This article examines Mexican-American attitudes toward Mexico and toward the public policy issues that shape United States-Mexico relations. Our analysis suggests that Mexican Americans have developed policy attitudes that diverge from those of Mexico. Yet, the relationships of Mexican Americans to the United States and to Mexico are sufficiently volatile to suggest caution in concluding that Mexican Americans will take no role in shaping relations between the two countries.

Ethical and legal issues in the care of demented people

This paper addresses the ethical and legal issues which arise in the UK in the care of demented people, updating and revising the 1993 review in this journal. In 1993 the ‘end of medical ethics’ had recently been suggested, an American fear that the doctor‘s responsibility and authority would be fatally eroded by administrators and cost controllers, concerned only with budgets. These concerns persist.

Imag(in)ing Africa

Despite the lament that there is little press coverage of Africa, there are many stories about Africa in the U.S. media. Why is so much written detailing “unimaginable” horror and suffering about a place we imagine is ignored? Perhaps the dire tone that characterizes the coverage facilitates Africa's marginalization or paves the way for “benevolent” interventions into Africa. Perhaps these imaginings are not so much about Africa as they are about the United States—American identity, history, dreams, and fears—in a multicultural society increasingly ill at ease with itself.

Southeast Asian prospects and realities: American hopes and fears

Abstract We present and consider five alternative scenarios of development — past, present and future — for Southeast Asia. Longitudinal data on foreign direct investment, trade, and currency valuation provide our basis for understanding the relations among the countries in this region as well as their relations with major external powers, especially the United States, Japan, and China. Our analysis suggests regional diversity rather than uniformity, with considerable flux and heterogeneity in the external economic ties of the countries resident in this area. Moreover, we argue that it would be overly simplistic to view changes in these ties only in bilateral terms of US or Japanese gains or losses. Instead, the Southeast Asian themselves, the other newly‐industrializing countries, and the constituent parts of Greater China are all increasingly making their presence felt.

Review of Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food.

Review of Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food.

Industrialized social control

The American war on crime now spans at least three decades. Yet greater crime and a vastly expanded social control apparatus constitute its most glaring accomplishments. Fear of crime greatly exceeds the risk faced by most people, but it combines with contemporary political rhetoric and television spectacle to create an explosive feedback loop that drives the U.S.’s dangerous and irrational tough‐on‐crime public policy. Young, inner‐city minorities face the greatest danger from violence and criminal victimization. Yet legislators not only abandon these Americans; they further victimize them in the process. Rather than recognizing these people as disproportionately victimized, most Americans focus on their own fear of criminals and drug users. A black face tends to be the explicit or implicit image of these “scary people.” This gives the fear of crime and the war on crime and drugs an undeniable racial slant. White Americans fear black people. Thus, under the guise of crime policy, the protective measures taken in response to this fear devastate black communities. An unprecedented use of prison and repression imposes a facade of tranquility on the inner‐cities. This fear's intensity creates an escalating social control industry, and an environment where people gladly trade money and freedom for the promise of security. Our exaggerated fear of crime further victimizes those who are already hurting. It also threatens to further imperil our freedoms in the future.

Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972-1990 , and: China and Japan in the Global Setting (review)

190 SAIS Review WINTER-SPRING 1994 infrastructure problems thatwould have prompted the building ofdie Trans-Siberian railroad, had that decision been truly economic in nature. This book makes few, if any, references to contemporary history, though it anticipates recent events, giving the reader an eerie sense that Russian history, in particular, is prone to repeating itself. For instance, the concerns of the Siberian regionalists over the construction of the Trans-Siberian in the late 1800s closely parallel Siberians' fears today. They are exasperated with die continued preeminence of non-Siberian interests in every decision made concerning die region. They are afraid that tying the region more closely to Moscow will only perpetuate the center's political and economic stranglehold. In short, Marks' work is most timely. At the turn ofdie century, the Siberian "Road to Power" was seen through a purely political prism. Now die end ofthe Cold War and die dawn ofa new century have redefined just what constitutes "power". Siberia and its exploitation may indeed be the road to economic prosperity, which lies at the root ofpower today. As the Pacific Rim region becomes.more and more economically integrated, and with Siberia and die Far East holding tremendous potential as emerging markets, it will become ever more important to understand the region, its historical experiences and economic legacy. Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972-1990. By David Shambaugh. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. 326 pp. $39.50/Hardback, $16.95/Softcover. China and Japan in the Global Setting. By Akira Iriye. Cambridge, MA: Hatvard University Press, 1992. 156 pp. $22.50/Hardback. Reviewed by Matthew Flynn. Mr. Flynn holds a BA from the University of Vermont and is an MA candidate at SAIS. The end of the Cold War has generated considerable debate about the appropriate pradigm in which to organize the images of the new world disorder. Unfortunately, such inquiries often use American fears or wishful thinking as a point ofdeparture. As the United States turns its gaze towards the Asia Pacific region and considers how to construct "a new Pacific Community," Beautiful Imperialist: China Perceives America, 1972-1990 by David Shambaugh and China and Japan in the Global Setting by Akira Iriye are invaluable aids to understanding the dynamics ofthis new center of political and economic power. These studies are unique because they move away from the question of.how die United States perceives China and Japan. Instead, Shambaugh and Iriye focus on some of the salient issues in Japan and China's foreign relations. By considering the power, cultural and economic aspects of international relations, Iriye, the director of Japanese Studies at Harvard, presents a periodization that sets Sino-Japanese relations in a new light. After the Meiji resoration in Japan and the Opium Wars in China, the most important question for both countries was BOOK REVIEWS 191 how to achieve the power diat Western nations possessed. During this era in which power was paramount, Japan strengthened itself by building industries with the reparations it received after China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese Wat (1894-5). The unequal treaties that Japan negotiated also kept China's tariffs low and thus created a matket for Japan's exports. As he has long argued, Iriye dien discusses how Sino-Japanese relations bewteen World Wars I and II are best understood in economic and cultural terms rather than purely military ones. As economic matters deteriorated, culture became the salient feature ofinternational relations, and fot die Japanese, war became a way of restructuring society and redefining culture. Iriyedoes not discount the importance of land, power and resource accumulation as an explanation forJapanese expansionism, but instead atgues diat culture was the key element that sparked the untenable war on the continent. Not culture in the sense ofinherent aggressiveness, but rather die desire to harmonize all five races of Northeast Asia: Han, Mongol, Manchu, Korean and Japanese. With the apparent failure ofliberalism and capitalism, Japan's sacred war was launched to purge Asia of die West and create a new cultural consciousness in Asia. China responded to Japan's aggression by championing Western values of personal emancipation and unity in opposition to tyranny. It was in response to the...

Dennis v. United States: Great Case Or Cold War Relic?

Dennis v. United States: Great Case Or Cold War Relic? Michal R. Belknap “Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason oftheir real impor­ tance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of im­ mediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.” Justice Holmes dissenting in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 (1904). “[T]he most important reconciliation of lib­ erty and security in our time,” the Washington Post called the decision when the Supreme Court rendered it in 1951.1 Forty-two years laterDermis v. UnitedStates2 continues to occupy aprominent place in constitutional law casebooks.3 Butshould it? When the Courtdecided Dennis, the Cold War was at its most frigid, and the anticommunist hysteriaknownas McCarthyism grippedthe coun­ try. The decision reflected well the frenzied temper of those times, and it is certainly among the mostprominentlegalproductsofthe McCarthy era. The Cold Warhas ended, however, and today the doctrinal significance of Dennis v. United States is minimal. Far from the “big case” it once seemed to be, Dennis now looks like little more than a legal relic of a bygone era. The time has come to ask whether it is just a twentieth century Dred Scott decision,4 truly important only to historians and those fascinated by the Supreme Court. Whatever its current significance, the Dennis decision clearlywas, as Thomas I. Emerson noted in 1970, “one ofthe most influential in the post­ warperiod.”5 “Everything,” as Harry Kalven, Jr., has observed, “conspired to make Dennis a great moment.”6 Reaching the Supreme Court at the height of the country’s preoccupation with do­ mestic communism, the case “involved the crimi­ nal prosecution ofeleven leaders ofthe Commu­ nist Party,” and was an outgrowth ofwhat Kalven called, withouttoo much exaggeration, “the great American political trial.”7 Thattrialwas in turn, as PeterL. Steinbergand I have demonstrated, the product of a blatantly political prosecution.8 When the World War II alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated into a postwar confrontation over the future of Central and Eastern Europe, President Harry S. Truman sought to rally the on the campaign trail in Fargo, North Dakota in 1948. 42 JOURNAL 1993 American people behind costly international ini­ tiatives designed to check Soviet expansionism by characterizing what was essentially a conflict of interest between two powerful nation states as a struggle between communism and democracy. Capitalizing on the traditional American ten­ dency to define international issues in moral terms and playing on traditional American fears ofradicalism, Truman managed to enlist biparti­ san support for his anti-Soviet foreign policy, but at ahigh politicalprice. In 1944 some Republican conservativeshadattemptedto discreditTruman’s Democratic party by linking it to communism. Votershad displayed little interest in such charges then, but by 1948, with the aid ofsome spectacu­ lar revelations of Communist espionage during the 1930s and early 1940s, a threatening interna­ tional situation and the president’s inflated rheto­ ric had made what was once a non-issue into a compelling concern. Itwas not a worry ofTruman and his advisers, who considered communism an international problem, not a domestic one. The president dismissed the Communist Party of the United J. Edgar Hoover (left) with Justice Hugo Black in 1965. As Director of the FBI, Hoover suggested that the Justice Department use the Smith Act against the CPUSA. States of America (CPUSA), which had only 60,000 members in 1948, as a “contemptible minority in a land offreedom.” Many Americans did not find his position persuasive, for if what menaced America was communism, then surely Republicans were right in claiming that Reds in New York City, and especially in the federal government in Washington, were a threat to national security. By April 1947, sixty-one per­ centofAmericansfavoredoutlawingthe CPUSA, a percentage thatrose in succeeding months. Led by the House Committee on Un-American Ac­ tivities (HUAC), Republicans hammered away at the Truman administration for not doing more to combatthis Red menace. Endeavoring to protect itself against GOP charges that it was soft on subversion, the administration initiated a loyaltysecurity program for federal employees. But Republicans and conservative Democrats...

European land defense

Abstract The number one problem confronting Europe is the prospect of invasion by the Soviet Army. Unfortunately, because of the American fear of nuclear escalation, NATO defense, following the principle of flexible response, has been built around the use of conventional forces. Given the available alternatives of defending Europe with nuclear weapons, however, such a strategy is not only stupid, it is criminal. The availability of enhanced radiation weapons, in particular, provides NATO with the ability to defend its territory even against forces that are vastly superior numerically. A united Europe could have the means of such a defense on its own within ten or twenty years, but so long as the United States promises to protect those supporting its line of thought, the majority of the countries in NATO will not agree to this. In that case, rather than follow a European strategy that is doomed, France will attempt to redress the balance for herself.