Letters

Readers respond to an interview with Todd Gitlin. Plus: Two core members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity explain their July 15 resignation from the activist group.

Jul 23, 2003 | [Read "Anyone but Bush,"] by Laura McClure.

Todd Gitlin claims Democrats and Republicans aren't the same, but why did so many Democratic politicians -- contrary to the wishes of their own constituency -- vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution? Why in fact do so many Democratic politicians routinely vote alongside the GOP, on everything from military spending to drug laws to corporate regulation?

The problem seems to be that Democrats always feel a need to represent both sides of an issue, whereas Republicans -- outside a few moderates in the Senate -- never feel an obligation to represent anyone but Republicans. What we have then is a situation where blind support of the Democratic Party will result in a GOP majority on just about every issue outside the litmus tests of abortion and tax cuts for the wealthy.

What then is the incentive of the left to vote for Democrats?

-- Michael Ellenburg

Thank you for the interview with Todd Gitlin. If the Democrats and their handlers, along with the antiwar left, don't get their asses in gear, get some balls, toss the Birkenstocks, learn to talk to average Joes and vow to win at all costs -- even by making strange bedfellows if necessary -- then we will be stuck with another four years of disaster at the hands of our hollow-puppet president, with all the strings being pulled by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle et al. And God knows where that will lead us.

-- Lorraine Forte

I very much enjoyed the interview with Todd Gitlin. Many things stood out for me, but one of the things I particularly liked was his comments about how the left needs to reclaim its place as the "patriotic left."

I agree. I remember walking around D.C. in November 2001, when people went a little flag-crazy; I kept seeing American flags that had fallen off a truck or a pole, and I would pick them up and put them in my pocket and take them home and put them up somewhere, because that's what you're supposed to do with a flag -- you're not supposed to let them touch the ground. And my companions thought this was deeply weird and not a little creepy; after all, it's the flag, and we leftists get a little uncomfortable around the flag (and prayer, but that's a different matter). Which is unfortunate. Gitlin's right: We do need to reclaim the idea that we're patriots just as much as, if not more than, the right, because it gives us the confidence in our actions and the acceptability of our ideas that the left so desperately needs. And that particular ickiness about the flag -- which afflicts even practical leftists who have no qualms about power or working within the system -- is a big part of what's holding us back from that goal.

The process we've engaged in over the last 40 years or so of reexamining the darker aspects of American history has been a good thing, but it's unfortunate that it's led to such widespread anti-Americanism on the left. It seems like one of those "failures of imagination" that Gitlin talks about -- a failure to separate a justifiable distrust of American nationalism and the authoritarians who exploit it, from a justifiable love of the republic and the American experiment. The hallmarks of the left -- anti-authoritarianism, prioritizing civil liberties, localism, an intellectual approach to politics -- are far more deeply rooted in American thought and government than in Europe, which has made highbrow anti-Americanism so fashionable. We need to remember that, despite the way the right twists American thought into American nationalism, and despite the horrible things that American nationalism has done throughout the nation's history, expressing a leftist point of view is to express the point of view of not only a great number of living Americans but also a great number of our best and brightest.

We must have confidence in our vision, and we must use it to kick the nationalists out of the seat of power in this great democracy of ours.

-- Michael Barthel

Todd Gitlin's diatribe against ANSWER is outrageous. Equating the organization with a "cult" is such an enormous insult to the many activists and organizations who are involved in that coalition, and a gross attempt to downplay their important role in organizing several antiwar protests of hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, D.C.

Evidently Gitlin feels no reason to distinguish between the groups involved with ANSWER, which include IFCO/Pastors for Peace, the U.S. Partnership for Civil Justice, the Nicaragua Network, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and the International Action Center, or talk about the different points of view they represent. Instead he tars the groups involved in typical red-baiting fashion.

And what's with the accusation that ANSWER tried to make it look like they had organized the demonstrations in New York City because they had big signs? So what if they had signs? Didn't everyone else?

Not only did your interviewer allow this nonsense to pass as legitimate criticism, but then she goes and compares the coalition to the Weathermen! How on earth is ANSWER anything like that group? Because Gitlin claims they use "abstract language"?

It must be delicious to be Todd Gitlin, glory days long behind him, comfy professorship at Columbia University in hand, with nothing at stake, to sit back and wag the finger at people trying to make the world a better place in diverse ways, whether it's organizing in the streets or voting for Nader. Luckily there are people who are still pushing ahead despite the tut-tutting from on high.

-- Tamar Smith

Reading Todd Gitlin is depressing. Yet another so-called activist with a mind set in the concrete of existing political structures. His answer to everything seems to be that progressives have to vote Democrat forever to keep the Republicans out. Swap one one-party state concept for the other.

I've traveled. I've seen real multiparty democracies in almost every democratic country except the United States. Guys like Todd Gitlin would be doing everyone a favor if they advocated proportional representation for electing members of Congress. Then voters could vote Green, Libertarian, Democrat, Republican -- whatever -- and see those ideas represented directly in the Congress -- where they belong, if America is ever to be a true democracy.

Todd Gitlin's message is one of despair: the two-party, tweedledum and tweedledee slow dance into a poisonous, partisan future just as corrupt as the present. Nothing changes if you don't change anything. The winner-take-all, two-party gerrymander is what is wrecking America. It has to go. Voting Democrat forever, no matter what, is not the answer; look where that kind of thinking has gotten us today. The real hope now is electoral reform.

-- Steve Withers

I thoroughly enjoyed Laura McClure's interview with Todd Gitlin. He fully understands what modern liberalism is all about -- practicality and flexibility. Furthermore, he gives those of us dismayed with Mr. Bush some eye-opening advice, along with a recipe for success in 2004.

Gitlin is truly a mentor and a national treasure.

-- Frank Cocozzelli

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