headlines...

Sometimes headlines tell a whole story. 

These are clipped from the front page of the New York Times on two successive days, Monday and Tuesday of this week. (Click to enlarge.) And the headline to come on Wednesday? Here's the preview via digital news:         

Record High Close for Dow 

Who can take a look at what's happening and still be in denial? Nothing hurts the 1% — recession, sequester or "recovery"; the billions keep coming, no limit. No limit either to the burdens put on the rest of society, especially those who struggle the most. They take hit after hit from the skewed priorities and values of the obscenely unfair system that calls itself "free enterprise."

The problem is much deeper than can be understood as a political contest between the GOP and the Democratic Party. Major constituencies that favor the Democratic Party certainly want to change the miserable state of affairs. They are trying to move the country in a more progressive and humane direction, although the record and role of dominant Democratic leadership is often part of the problem, It is itself too cozy with and complicit in the enormous power that big money holds over Washington and all of the country's politics. Still, if we are to move forward, it's necessary to face up to the absolute need to break the GOP's stranglehold on Congress, its dog-in-the-manger blockade of government.  That's very hard to accomplish even though the GOP seems to be in desperate straits. Whatever progress can be achieved right now if public anger is brought to bear on Congress, it's not too early to look to next year's mid-term elections. Conventional wisdom says low voter turnout is inevitable in an off-year election, and shameless gerrymandering has the game fixed in advance.

Can the pundits be proved wrong (once again)? Given what the economic royalists have done to the country, is there enough public anger (and the will to organize) to beat the odds? 

What do you think?

Something Old, Something New

For first visitors, some background:

This website picks up where Leon’s Op-Ed left off when Mac closed down its website services a couple of years ago. The previous website was established soon after September 11, 2001 with the operational input of a computer expert, nephew Fred Taub of Seattle, who contributed all the technical know-how to keep it going. There were numerous postings over the years, and many of the commentaries written after 9/11 and during the first years of the second Iraq War were compiled in a book published in 2003.

This reincarnated website provides the tools with which even an amateur can run the whole thing, and that’s what I’m now doing.  As before, my themes will vary: current events, books, music, movies and some personal reflections on a long life — probably in that order. If I don’t change my mind, topics on the near horizon are drones, my reaction to Ian McEwan’s latest book, Sweet Tooth, and a beautiful movie, The Sessions.

For now, it’s two short items: about a statue on Treasure Island, San Francisco, and an email exchange of opinions about Harry Truman.

On Treasure Island, there is a huge and marvelous statue of a dancing woman. It’s called “Bliss”. It has been there since 2010, but we saw it for the first time recently and were bowled over by its beauty, size, spirit and imaginative design. We went over to the hangar where it was created and where different artists are working on very large sculptures of various kinds. Our luck was to find the creator of  “Bliss”, Marco Cochrane, in his work place. He’s a great person. He told us all about his work and his model for “Bliss.”  He told us of the life experiences that shaped his strong social conscience and his perception of women. He celebrates women’s capacity to overcome against age-old constraints and, for very many, personal encounters with extreme brutality. If you haven’t been to Treasure Island, the view of San Francisco and the Bay is one of a kind. And “Bliss is not to be missed.

   

* * * * *

Here’s a comment a friend emailed to me about Harry Truman and my comment in response:

Dear Leon,

I’ve been reading David McCullough’s biography of Truman and now have new respect for Truman.

 
Here’s a portion that really interested me.  It is just after the end of the war.  Speaking of Truman it says:  “His troubles had begun with his first postwar message to Congress, only days after the Japanese surrender ceremonies.  Sent to the Hill on Sept. 6, the message was 16,000 words in length and presented a 21-point domestic program that included increased unemployment compensation, an immediate increase in the minimum wage, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, tax reform, crop insurance for farmers, a full year’s extension of the War Powers and Stabilization Act, meaning the government would keep control over business and federal aid to housing to make possible a million new homes a year.”  And Truman added “We must go on.  We must widen our horizon further.  We must consider the redevelopment of large areas of the blighted and slum sections of our cities so that in the truly American way they may be remade to accommodate families not only of low-income groups as heretofore, but every income group.”

A couple of pages further, there is this:  “For those Republicans and conservative Democrats who had been happily claiming that the New Deal was as good as dead, that the “Roosevelt nonsense” was over at last, because they “knew” Harry Truman, it was a rude awakening.  Not even FDR had ever asked for so much  “at one sitting,” complained House Minority Leader Joe Martin, and many of Truman’s own party in Congress were equally distressed, equally disinclined to go along with him.  The same conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats that had stymied Roosevelt since 1937 stood ready now to block his successor.  The House Ways and Means Committee, with 14 Democrats and 10 Republicans, voted to reject the unemployment compensation proposal, and shelved any further consideration of aid to the jobless.”

Sound familiar?

J. R.

Dear J.R.

I've just read what I wrote in the paragraphs below in answer to your comments on Truman. I fear I'm in my new blogging mode, thinking a little more of some abstract general audience rather than carrying on a conversation with you. Writing op-eds is something I like to do, but a face-to-face talk would be a lot more comfortable.

Relying on my memory (not very good, especially when pushed back some 65 years), I think there is a strong parallel between Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Both took on the presidency suddenly and unexpectedly. Both were conservative Democrats and both surprised everyone by championing significant domestic policies in the New Deal tradition. Although both were Southerners and neither had previously been considered unfriendly to the racist Dixiecrats, both were associated with important reforms that seriously challenged Jim Crow, and it was Truman who banned official segregation of the US military. Truman's embrace of liberal domestic policies became particularly pronounced in the 1948 election campaign in response to Henry Wallace's challenge from the left. 

Lyndon Johnson's presidency ended in dismal failure because his administration became defined by its stubborn commitment to the Vietnam War, its "anti-communist" rationale and false domino theory. However, Truman's reputation as a successful president has actually been embellished over time, even though he did things in the name of "anti-Communism" that should never be forgotten or, in my opinion, forgiven. We can't know what was uppermost in his mind when he ordered the atomic cremation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How much weight was given to preventing the potential loss of American lives (in exchange for masses of destroyed Japanese civilian lives)? How much was political, acting before the Soviets could join in an invasion of Japan and stake a claim to a significant role in post-war arrangements? Whatever... to justify the use of the atomic bomb back then would be to suggest that there may be circumstances that justify the use of nuclear weapons in the future.
 
With the beginning of the Cold War, which both sides fueled, Truman's Administration ushered in the National Security Act of 1947 and the Attorney General's list of "subversive" organizations. This was the beginning of the far-flung "red scare" that did so much damage to civil liberties and reached its peak in McCarthyism. 1947 was also the year of enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act, which set the foundation for the union-busting crusade that reaches new extremes to this day. Truman opposed Taft-Hartley and it passed over his veto, but he used it twelve times as President.

As you see, I can't cheer for Truman. But life is complicated. Somehow we're compelled to get our heads around the fact that some presidents, political leaders and even movements may do some good things and some horrible things as well. 

Best,

Leon

The Blog is Back

After a long lay-off, I've decided to go back to blogging on a more or less regular basis. I need something to challenge me in my 10th decade. Since I'm not an artist or a poet and I can't sew or make quilts, blogging will have to do. Please bear with with me as I fiddle around for a while trying to make this website a bit more attractive and interesting. I hope that as the new blogs start appearing, my friends and others will sign in, comment on my comments, and send in some suggestions.

Ladies of the Lake

To begin with today, I want to learn to insert photos now and then. Here's a try...
This past Friday there was a ribbon cutting ceremony for the big upgrading project around Lake Merritt in Oakland. Highlighting the celebration was a fleet of boats - dragon boats, kayaks, a gondola and two surf boats from the Oakland Women's Rowing Club. At stroke, in the front facing the camera, is my wife, Gail Weininger. The bond-funded project is making Oakland strikingly beautiful and a first-class people's park area. It has also provided jobs and a good example of public policy for the rest of the country.

Now, changing the subject, I want to remember Leon Taub, my brother-in-law, who died last month. He was a beautiful character, gentle and kind, exemplifying shared ideals of social justice in the way he lived his 87 years. His obit appears at the end of this blog. Here is a picture of him with Roz, my wife of many years, who died in 2009:

                                          * * * * * * 

To include some politics in this experimental post, Julie Mandel, Leon's loving companion for the last twelve years of his life. wrote to me after listening to Rubio's GOP rebuttal to the State of the Union speech:
I just finished reading Paul Krugman’s column today about Rubio’s speech the other night, and about the path the Republicans seem to be taking.  I’m really puzzled.  The Republicans can’t be that stupid.  Why don’t they seem to learn from their mistakes?  Didn’t the last election tell them anything?  I really don’t understand why they don’t change their tune.  Do they really think the American public is that stupid?

I tried to come up with an answer to Julie's question:

I had just finished reading the Krugman column when I opened my email to find your note...As usual, I agree with Krugman. As for Rubio and the Republicans, the main faction seems to think that by tinkering a bit to soften the GOP image on a few social issues (immigration, gays, etc.), they can become more acceptable while not giving an inch on their economic ideology. Unfortunately, there still are an awful lot of Americans whom they've convinced that government debt and spending are our biggest problems.

Why won't they give ground on the economic front?  I can think of a few reasons: 1) Their bottom line really is their absolute commitment to the "free enterprise" system of inequality where the rich get richer, no matter the consequences for the rest of society. 2) They see the great recession as their best opportunity to dismantle the social programs (sneeringly labeled  "entitlements") which the GOP and the plutocrats have hated and fought since the beginning years of the New Deal. For this purpose, blaming "big government" and busting trade unions are crucial. 3) They are afraid that if they compromise on the debt and budget front, the Tea Party  caucus will explode and split the GOP beyond repair.

It's interesting that the election results and the demographic changes in the country have convinced some GOP pundits to try to appear a bit more reasonable on some social issues, while they hold fast to their "austerity" mantra. After all, the recession hasn't hurt the 1%, far from it, as profits exceed all-time highs; nor has it altered the insatiable greed that's in Wall Street's DNA.

You ask whether the Republicans "really think the American public is that stupid."

Who can tell when so much that's irrational is pumped out by the highly financed right-wing  propaganda media? At least the elections gave ground for hope that things may be moving toward a more rational course. Before the elections, I had a more negative feeling about the probable outcome than Leon and you. Thank goodness, the "public" proved that I was too pessimistic."

Future blogs will not be so long — just experimenting.

LEON JEROME TAUB

1925-2013

Leon Taub died after a short illness on Thursday, January 17, 2013. He was 87.

Leon was an engineer, a teacher, and a musician. He never retired, remaining fully engaged until the short illness that took his life. He had a deep lifelong commitment to civil rights, equality and social justice. He was lovingly devoted to family, not only his own, but extended by his warm and remarkably wide outreach.

Leon was born in the Bronx, the son of Chaim and Mollie Taub.  His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, laboring long hours in a small tailor shop while caring for Leon and his older sister, Rosalind. They instilled in both children a love of learning and a rich appreciation of music.

Leon was a graduate of the High School of Music and Art, where he formed lifelong friendships and met his future wife, Rena. He also studied at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1950, he became the first Music Editor of Sing Out Magazine, which was a major promoter of the upsurge in folk music that became so vital a part of the emerging civil rights and peace movements. Leon composed songs over the years, even more in the last years of his life. He put poems that he loved to music, translated some to Yiddish, a language he became increasingly fond of. He wrote music to accompany the publication of children’s poetry and art of Helen Webber, a friend since they were students at the High School of Music and Art. Leon left a beautiful memento of his music and of his own sweet self in a website: http://staff.washington.edu/fredtaub/Leon_Taub/Home.html

Leon graduated from CCNY (now CUNY) with an engineering degree. During World War II, he served four year in the US Navy. After the war, he got a Master’s Degree in Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology.  For many years, he was Chief Engineer designing air conditioners for the Welbilt Company. He gave up work in private industry in 1978, preferring to take a job he loved, teaching mechanical engineering at SUNY Farmingdale. Until his death he was still active as Professor of Engineering at Farmingdale and his students were devoted to him. His textbook, based on the courses he taught at Farmingdale, was published in 2012.

After leaving the Navy, Leon married Rena Richter, an artist and children’s therapist. They had two sons, Paul, now a music professor and flutist, and Fred, a computer specialist, both living with their families in Seattle. Rena died in 1998. Leon leaves a grandchild, Dana, daughter of Fred and Beth.

Leon was a resident of Valley Stream, Long Island since 1957. He was President of the Valley Stream Board of Education during the tumultuous late sixties and early seventies.

During his last twelve years, Julie Mandel Dachs has been Leon’s loving companion. Julie is a composer, and they enriched each other’s lives in musical projects and in every way, including the shared embrace of family and friends.

Listing facts doesn’t tell the whole story. Some things about Leon were special almost to the point of being unique. To appreciate him fully, you would have to have seen him with children. In his presence, they would be laughing and joyful, immediately responsive to his interest in them, his gentleness, playfulness, humor and whimsy.

Beneath Leon’s self-effacing ways, there was also an unusual measure of personal courage and perseverance.  He kept his trademark optimism despite political disappointments and personal ordeals. He never accepted gloom and doom, not when McCarthyism reigned nor when the Tea Party raged. Colon and prostate cancers and two open-heart surgeries did not keep him down. Moreover, he won a struggle with depression when he was a young adult and never turned back. He attributed his success in that battle to help he sought out from psychologist Alfred Adler. Leon and Rena became active in the Adler Institute, and contributed original papers at its conferences.

Few people can keep going strong, not slowing down, until death at 87. Few people gave and received more love in a long and admirable lifetime.

Romney’s Choice

The GOP-Tea Party ticket is set.  With the Ryan pick, any supposed distinction between the GOP and the Tea Party falls away. Given recent results in Senate primaries and, now, the successful ultra-right pressure on Romney to choose Ryan, the Tea Party is in control. The GOP belongs to the Koch brothers, Adelson and the super-pacs of Karl Rove and assorted extremist reactionary multibillionaires. They decided to throw down the gauntlet, to avoid ambiguity that might attach to a choice less provocative than Ryan.

The issues are even more defined now than they seemed before the GOP ticket was settled, but those who want to see the GOP defeated in November should hold back the cheers. In the present economic and political environment, it is unwise to view the Romney-Ryan ticket primarily as a move of rightwing desperation. It is an audacious high-stake bid to capture full and unequivocal control of the government and the direction of the country.

Something to Think About

In past difficult times, some Marxist analysts have made dire predictions of imminent economic depression, world war and fascism that proved to be wrong or at least decidedly premature. Famously during the time of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, such predictions overlooked the complexities and remaining potential of capitalism. As well, they underestimated democratic influences and the underlying capacity for popular struggle for civil rights and liberties and against war.

Would it again be crying “wolf” to sound the alarm of fascist danger in today’s political environment?

The term “fascism” should not be used lightly. It’s not a label that describes the capitalist system in general, even as its evils in this time of crisis spread extreme inequality and misery everywhere. History has defined fascism in all its brutality as dictatorship that destroys democratic rights and institutions, including trade unions and opposing political parties.  Where there is fascism, there is a direct alliance of the ruling political party with the most reactionary sections of corporate and financial power.

Taken as a whole, politics and government in the United States have moved to the right in this new century. That is the reality despite the hopes that came with the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008. Not to overlook some hard-won progress in health care, Gay rights, and (to a lesser extent) immigrant rights, progressive gains are outweighed by the assault on jobs, education, unions, social services, and civil liberties. Even as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approach a messy ending, executive powers have been seized for waging CIA wars and assassinations anywhere at the President’s command. Against the backdrop of the “Great Recession”, futile wars in the Middle East, and the decline of  “superpower” control in world affairs, Wall Street’s multi-billionaires are more aggressive than ever in using unlimited financial power to corrupt politics, the media and “public opinion.”

While big money influence taints the political process at all levels of government and in both major parties, something special is on the horizon that does indeed raise the alarm about nascent fascism. It is possible that the GOP, powered and controlled by the most extremely reactionary moguls of finance capital, could take over the presidency and the Congress. They already dominate the Supreme Court and most courts, most governors and state legislatures.

This is not just the traditional back and forth exchange that has characterized elections under the two party system. The GOP has moved to the extreme right, further even than under Reagan, Nixon and the Bushes. Above all, the Koch brothers, Adelson, and other fascist-minded oligarchs are wielding their colossal wealth to control and advance the fortunes of the GOP. With the injection of the Tea Party into its midst, there is no tolerance for even “standard” Republicans like Bennet, Lugar, and Snowe. Within the fold, there is room only for those who agree to fall in line. Empowered are race haters, gun idolizers, science deniers and warriors against women, unions, the poor and the elderly. The centerpiece of the agenda is to demolish Medicare and reverse every social gain (“entitlement”) achieved during and after the New Deal.  

The point is not that the results of the November election could usher in fascism. Democracy cannot easily be destroyed, and the more it is under assault, the more certain is a rising struggle to preserve civil liberties and constitutional rights. It’s no small consideration, however, that the type of reactionary political and financial alliance characteristic of fascist regimes would have unprecedented control over the levers of power. That’s scary in this period of turmoil, imperial decline, and deep economic insecurity. Brutality is the hallmark of fascism, and recent history affirms that popular uprisings often meet ruthless police, military and vigilante violence.

Even a defeat for the GOP in November will not produce a fundamental progressive change of course. That can only happen as millions of people embrace struggle for their vital interests, against the greed and privilege of the 1%. It would be no small step, however, to thwart the fascist-prone alliance that aims in November to complete an historic monopoly over all branches of our government.

THE BOOK OF ESTHER
by Edith Chevat
(Sedna, May 2012)

This is a novel, I have to be reminded, and a good one. There is such a feeling of authenticity, of honesty, in Esther’s telling of her life’s story. Absent highlights of extraordinary adventure or achievement, the experiences she recounts are fascinating, and so is Esther.

For thirty years, Esther has been under FBI surveillance. The book is punctuated throughout with copies of highly redacted FBI reports garnered through the Freedom of Information Act. It all began when she went to the historic Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill in 1949, made infamous by vigilante mobs that violently attacked and injured hundreds as they were leaving the concert. Throughout the decades of FBI interest in her, suspicion is focused on one main observation: Esther, who is white, “lives in a mixed neighborhood. She has several Negro friends who come to the house. Subject seems unusually friendly to Negroes.”

Esther has a social conscience that is inescapable in everything she does or doesn't do. It permeates her view of friends, how she tries to bring up her children, her marriage and eventual divorce. It's present in the way she sees herself as a secular Jew. It's as much a part of the "personal" as of the causes that move her, primarily the civil rights and peace movements. Yet it doesn't keep her from being honest with herself and with others, seeing her own ambivalence and confusion on many problems. This is noteworthy in her attitudes and relationships involving race, where honesty and self-understanding are not common.  

A strong conscience is not completely a blessing. We see that in the way she sometimes pushes her priorities on her reluctant children, and in judgmental attitudes toward the foibles of friends. Still Esther is remarkable in her adaptability to changing circumstances, unexpected change in her children and family as well as in the whole wide world. There is little if any bitterness, a lot of insight, and the courage to keep growing.

Chevat's writing is best in the latter half of the book. Highlighted at the end of most chapters are capsule stories in italics of heroic women, often not well known, who capture Esther's imagination. The selections are inspired and are integral to a full appreciation of the book.

Esther's attraction to Jewish roots and experience, especially heightened by the horrors of the holocaust and the heroism of the Warsaw ghetto, is an evolving part of her story. For the deep love of a son, Esther adjusts to his conversion to an ultra-orthodox Jewish religious sect, but she has a visceral aversion to the ritual separation and humiliation of women.   

The first part of the book may seem somewhat strange to many readers. They may wonder, "What was that all about?" when Esther and her husband hosted a "safe house" in the early 1950s, the time of McCarthyism. With literally millions of Americans deemed subversive, liberals and leftists alike, some feared that fascism and war were imminent. In such times, there are individuals and families who seek refuge, and dissident groups who seek to preserve their organizations by hiding those who may be targeted for arrest. People going in and out of "safe houses" were trying to carry on the same activities for civil rights and world peace that they were engaged in before they felt forced temporarily to go "underground."

As an organizer for the Labor Youth League, I personally experienced something similar at that time, including months of difficult separation from wife and children. But Esther's experience was different and worse than mine. She chafed, with very good reason, at being used essentially as a housekeeper, excluded from consultation and consideration. Bringing up very young children in such circumstances was painfully complicated, afraid that they might say or do something to attract unwanted attention to the "safe house."

Esther's Book is a good read, an intriguing novel. Beyond that, it tells a story that is more than a memory of times gone by. Today, in an age where surveillance has outstripped the imagination of Orwell's 1984, it's worth gaining perspective. Amazing as it may seem, preoccupation with race and color has always been cardinal for the "security" establishment —  from the Dixiecrats and Joe McCarthy, to the FBI spying on Martin Luther King and civil rights activists, to the timeless and current stop-and-search police practices against Black and Brown.

I must confess a warm feeling of kinship with Esther. Her first FBI entry was Peekskill. The first entry on my FBI file was a sentence from a letter sent to me while I was in the Army in 1943, in which a friend bemoans the fact that the Armed Forces are still segregated.

Borrowing a page (173) from Esther's Book:  "How many people were there in the world who shared the same history? No matter how far apart they were, they'd always be tied.... because of their past, their old dreams, who they were."

Basic Human Rights — Are They Sustainable?

The powers that be, masters of high finance and the politicians beholden to them, have had no effective response to the devastating economic crisis. But they do have an ideological response, in fact an all-around offensive using the very crisis they created to promote hostility to any idea of social responsibility for the general welfare. They reject established government programs to meet human needs as "unsustainable".

This is the "Shock Doctrine" at work, the phenomenon described in Naomi Klein's so-named book, where the turmoil of natural or human-made catastrophes is exploited as an opportunity to advance the interests of a selfish elite.

There is a glossary of terms that go with the ideology of  "unsustainability". “Entitlement”, given a derogatory connotation, is the label pinned on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Universal health care is “socialism”, the hallmark of a “welfare state”.  These are times that require “austerity”; we have to “live within our means”. Nothing is exempt from the chopping block — not education, not public assistance to the disabled, aged, jobless or homeless.  We simply can’t afford it. It’s unsustainable.

This ideology moves beyond Wall Street and the GOP, swallowed in part by advocates of the elusive “rational center”.  “Centrist” pundits bemoan the lack of political courage to achieve a “bipartisan grand bargain” and “structural reform” that would drastically curb “entitlements”. 

The question society cannot evade is: what is sustainable and what is not? The champions of austerity obviously find grotesque income inequality sustainable; so, too, record corporate profits in the midst of economic crisis; also, enormous military expenditures and human sacrifice in war. 

What they deem unsustainable are basic human rights, defined most clearly in FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights” address at the end of World War II. These rights, only partially implemented through persistent struggle, include: the right of every person to a decent livelihood, health care, and education, as well as “adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment” (FDR). 

There is no justification for the USA, the wealthiest country in the world, to lag behind in access to health care, to fall precipitously in educational opportunity, to accept governmental paralysis in the face of devastating unemployment, homelessness and poverty. No justification — but there is a fundamental explanation. As the Occupy movement has forced to public attention, most of the country’s wealth is sucked up at the very top, at the disposal of financial and corporate oligarchies whose nature is to strive for profits and power regardless of the public interest and the country’s welfare. That wealth buys lobbyists and super-pacs; it dominates and corrupts the political process.

While super wealth rests a heavy hand on both major parties, the GOP has finally become exactly what the most reactionary multi-billionaires like the Koch brothers have ordered and paid for. Having bank-rolled the Tea Party uprising, they now have a party completely beholden to Wall Street, the National Rifle Association, the war hawks and all the social bigots united in uncontrollable racist hatred for Barak Obama — no room anymore for Dick Lugar or Olympia Snowe; no room for compromise in Congress or the Supreme Court. To win the election, they will present Mitt Romney as a traditional conservative like George H. W. Bush, and hope that people will forget the tragi-comic primary debates. But Romney as president would be as “independent” of the Koch brothers and their GOP as Boehner is of the T Party’s bloc in the House.

Whatever the difficulties now or to come, austerity for the many and obscene wealth for the few is the road to hell. FDR could have been imagining today when he said in his “Bill of Rights” speech: “Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the socalled 'normalcy' of the 1920's—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.”

Preserving hard-won commitments to basic economic human rights depends on whether millions of Americans fight through the thickest of ideological-propaganda fogs. Human rights, civil and economic, are sustainable if, as a society, we get our priorities right.