Friday, November 26, 2004

Letter from my dad about activism

So I was going to post something about Thanksgiving (even though it's over now). It being past two a.m., I was going to title it something witty like "the thankful insomniac," but posting about my dad made me go dig up some old papers, and despite the fact that it is very long and also personal, one of his letters is worth sharing. It's written in 1967 to my sister who was 20 at the time (I was two and apparently on my dad's lap when he was typing because at one moment there is a line of gibberish with "Travis' interjections" typed after it). By the time I was 20 my dad was way too sick to write such letters, and so my sister shared some of hers with me, which is how I come to have a copy.

I am delighted that you are deeply involved in the current peace demonstrations. The curse of the sixties is the commonly-encountered attitude that "I don't want to get involved." We are in danger of becoming a nation of voyeurs. I would much prefer to see you get involved and stay involved. I hope you don't lay down your protest placard until you are too weak to carry it. Believe me, at the Peace March in D.C. I was overwhelmed to see the number of grey-haired garment workers from New York whose feet started hurting when they paraded against Sacco and Vanzetti's execution for criminal syndicalism a half century ago.

Some people feel one is not worth his salt unless he is a radical at 20 and a conservative at 40. This is a vile canard propagated by the pusillanimous. One need not become a fat cat at forty. See e.g., Norman Thomas whose big manly voice, turning again to childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sounds, to quote the Bard, but who preaches the same revolt against oppression that he sounded with stentorian speeches at the turn of the century. See also Bertrand Russell, William Douglas, and Jake Podofsky. (Jake runs the delicatessen at 14th and Irving Sts.)

I would not suggest that you espouse every random cause that you are asked to join. You will, through life, find people anxious to demonstrate for or against anything that comes along. Some people would try to make an agnostic out of a praying mantis. It is much more effective to be a high powered rifle than to scatter your fire like a shotgun. But I hope you will not shrink from raising your voice whenever injustice is obvious to you, even at the risk of money, prestige, or person.

I do not hold with those who attack all our institutions. I am not blind to the virtues of other ways of life but I personally feel that what we have in this country is the best way of life thus far evolved by man as a functioning society. I am 100% American. But I am not like those Southerners who loved the Confederacy so much they would not wear a union suit. I want my country to present a favorable image, to maintain a posture that I find admirable, and will not yield my right to criticize it when I think it is wrong. I want America always to be the land of the three "P's"--Peace, Prosperity, and Pfreedom, for myself and my pfosterity. I want America to stay healthy because I know that when the United States sneezes much of the rest of the world catches pneumonia.

You will find another pleasant incidental benefit from a course of political activism: A deep sense of comradeship or camaraderie with those with whom you manned the ramparts. A sense of spiritual kinship develops between people who have faced a common foe or danger. I well remember how close I felt in my Army years to the other men who had bivouacked with me or shared a watch on guard duty with me. You also build up a store of exciting memories. I don't remember any particularly successful business deal I made in 1964, but I well remember marching in the Civil Rights demonstration with R. and 100,000 others. One of my vivid memories of my own college days was the time when the Nazi German Ambassador to the U.S. was a guest speaker at a tea sponsored by the German Dept. and we in the then American League against War and Fascism (spiritual ancestor of your own SDS) picketed on campus.

Finally, let me only remind you that you ought not get yourself so involved that you jeopardize yourself in your studies. It is essential that you get decent grades, continue your education, and work assiduously toward your career. Sorenson in the Saturday Review last week did not say anything much different from what many other pacifists have said in the past few weeks but his article was read by millions because he achieved such eminence in his field that his voice was effective. At the big peace march we listened intently to what Dr. Spock said largely because more than half the people there had taken castor oil when Spock told their mothers to administer it. On the other hand, I'll bet you didn't hear one word Tillie Gockenheimer said, did you? And Tillie has been marching in protest demonstrations since Kemal Pasha besieged the poor Armenians in 1916 or whenever the hell it was. But that is because Tillie Gockenheimer dropped out of high school in Pottstown, Pa. when she was 16 and has been working in a brassiere factory in High Point, N. Car. ever since.

It's funny. Before rereading this letter and without calling it to mind, I was thinking tonight about how one of the things I am most thankful for is that all of those prognostications from my youth have not come true. I am not a conservative. I have neither found god nor lost my ethics. I can't think of a reason worth compromising the principles of liberty, equality, or justice. And I am cynical only because of my frustrated idealism.

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