1
25
17
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
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Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628453761&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:59:14
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0156
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Michael Barrett and Theodore Sizer; "How Much School is Enough?," at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
15 November 1990
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Barrett, Michael J. (Michael John), 1948-
Sizer, Theodore R.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0156
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Education
Schools
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628457463&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:54
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0124
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Henry Kendall and Claudine Schneider discuss, "Global Warming: What can we do about the Greenhouse Effect," at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
12 November 1989
Description
An account of the resource
Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists Henry Kendall and US Congresswoman Claudine Schneider (R-RI) look at the consequences of the warming of the earth and how it can be averted through individual and collective action.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Kendall, Henry W. (Henry Way), 1926-1999
Schneider, Claudine
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0124
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Greenhouse effect, Atmospheric
Global warming
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Climate change
Environment
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628489425&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:59:07
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0120
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Pei Minxin, Shen Tong, Ding Xueliang and Yasheng Huang discuss, "The Future of the Democratic Reform Movement in China", at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
19 October 1989
Description
An account of the resource
Fours students involved in the demonstrations for democratic reform in China discuss the future of the movement after the government crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Shen Tong and Yasheng Huang deliver first hand accounts of the events at Tiananmen Square, while Pei Minxin and Ding Xueliang provide insights on US support for the demonstrators.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0120
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Tiananmen Square Incident, Beijing (China), 1989
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
China
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628515264&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:38
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0119
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Paul Szep and Mike Peters; "Satire: The Ungentle Art," at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
15 October 1989
Description
An account of the resource
Two Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonists, Paul Szep of The Boston Globe and Mike Peters of The Dayton Daily News, examine the ungentle art of satire and discuss their work in today's world: where to find inspiration, how to choose a target and how the public reacts.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Szep, Paul Michael, 1941-
Peters, Mike, 1943-
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0119
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Politcal cartoons
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Ford Hall Forum
Free speech
New American Gazette
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628527015&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:44
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0117
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Barbara Jordan and Betty Friedan at the Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
20 July 1989
Description
An account of the resource
This episode combines talks given by two prominent women in politics: Barbara Jordan, a former member of Congress from Houston examines the politics of exclusion in "One Nation Indivisible: Rhetoric or Reality?" and feminist Betty Friedan traces the recent history of American women and political power and sets goals for the future.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Jordan, Barbara, 1936-1996
Friedan, Betty
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0117
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Women -- United States -- Social conditions
Feminism -- United States
African Americans -- Civil rights
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Black history
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
Women's History
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628540590&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:43
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0112
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Mitchell Kapor discusses, "What's So Personal about Personal Computers?", at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Description
An account of the resource
Mitchell Kapor, the one-time teacher of transcendental meditation who became Founder and President of Lotus Development Corporation, surveys the future of technology and its implications for our society. Recorded at the Ford Hall Forum on 4/16/1989 and broadcast on the New American Gazette radio program.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Kapor, Mitchell
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0112
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Technological innovations -- Social aspects
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16 April 1989
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/628549278&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:49
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0109
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Ellen Hume and Linda Wertheimer discuss, "Covering the Presidential Campaign: Lessons for 1992", at the Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
6 April 1989
Description
An account of the resource
Did media coverage of the last presidential campaign influence its outcome? NPR political correspondent Linda Wertheimer and Ellen Hume, former political reporter for The Wall Street Journal, assess press coverage of the recent election and lessons learned for 1992.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Hume, Ellen
Wertheimer, Linda
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0109
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Presidents -- United States -- Election -- 1992
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
Political campaigns
Politics and government
US Presidents
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
<p> </p>
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Embedded Media
Add here the embed url for streaming audio or video files.
<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/615302895&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:58:20
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MS113.0057
Title
A name given to the resource
The New American Gazette: Marian Wright Edelman discusses, "Unprotected and at Risk: State of Childhood in America at the Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
23 October 1987
Description
An account of the resource
Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman describes the state of childhood in America, where one quarter of our nation's children live below the poverty line. Challenging the richest nation in the world to reexamine its spending priorities, she offers strategies for change.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ford Hall Forum
Edelman, Marian Wright
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0057
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound recording
Sound recordings
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
MP3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Child welfare -- United States
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
-
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New American Gazette: Transcript of Denise Levertov and Danny Glover Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: New American Gazette: “Poetic Vision and the Hope for Peace,” and “Hope and Healing
in a World of Horror” at Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Date: 29 October 1987
Speakers: Andrew Young, Denise Levertov, Danny Glover
Item Information: New American Gazette: “Poetic Vision and the Hope for Peace,” and “Hope
and Healing in a World of Horror” at Ford Hall Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013
(MS113.3.1, item 0110) Moakley Archive, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1991 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of an archived edition of the New American Gazette that featured segments from
two forums recorded at different times. The first featured poet Denise Levertov discussing
“Poetic Vision and the Hope for Peace.” The second forum featured actor Danny Glover
discussing “Hope and Healing in a World of Horror.” Levertov and Glover read several poems
and Levertov discusses how poetry can be used to achieve peace. The forum was broadcast as
part of the New American Gazette radio program and introduced by host Andrew Young.
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Transcript Begins
ANNOUNCER: From Boston, the Ford Hall Forum presents an archive edition of the New
American Gazette with guest host Andrew Young
[00:00:15]
ANDREW YOUNG: Peace on Earth, goodwill to men—a Christmas card greeting familiar to
many. But what is peace? An interim between wars? Lasting harmony among all nations? Unity
amongst all peoples? Exploring the state of peace this week is essayist, activist and poet Denise
Levertov. Later in the program, actor Danny Glover reads poetry of peace and justice from
around the world.
[00:00:45]
But first, in a world threatened by nuclear holocaust, environmental destruction and global
warfare, Ms. Levertov wonders what a truly peaceful society would feel like. This week, Denise
Levertov contemplates peace and how to achieve it as she reads her own poems on peace and the
work of others. Touching on the power of poetry to transform society, Ms. Levertov believes it is
poets who can infuse energy and strength into a movement for change. An activist for many
years on issues such as Vietnam, the environment, avoiding nuclear war, Denise Levertov is the
author of twenty-four books, most recently, Breathing the Water.
[00:01:27]
"Poets should present to the world images of peace," she says. "We need to imagine peace if we
are to achieve it." Join us for "Poetic Vision and the Hope for Peace" with Denise Levertov.
(applause)
[00:01:55]
DENISE LEVERTOV: Well I was asked to speak about poetry and peace. And I assumed that
that meant that I was to speak about the poetry of peace. So I have to begin with a question: Is
there a poetry of peace?
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A few years ago I participated in a panel at Stanford, on the theme of women, war and peace.
And during the question period, someone in the audience, whom I couldn’t see—someone whom
I afterwards learned in fact was the distinguished psychologist Virginia Satir, who is one of the
founders of family therapy—said that poets should present to the world images of peace, not
only of war; everyone needed to be able to imagine peace if we were to achieve it.
[00:03:03]
I was the only poet on the panel, so this challenge was evidently mine to respond to, and I had
only a lame and confused response to make. And afterwards I thought about it, and I remember a
few days later discussing the problem—the problem of the lack of peace poems—with some poet
friends, Robert Hass and David Shaddock. And what was said I have forgotten, but out of that
talk and my own ponderings a poem emerged for me, which was in fact my delayed response. It
was called "Making Peace." And it goes like this:
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
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if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
[00:05:48]
This analogy still holds good for me. Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an
interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on to the mind's screen.
Of course, one could seek out utopian projections, attempts to evoke the Golden Age; but these
are not the psychologically dynamic images Ms. Satir was hoping for, and I can think of none
from our own century, even of the nostalgic or fantastic variety, unless one were to cite works of
prose in the science fiction category. And these, particularly if one compares them with the great
novels of life as it is—with War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Middlemarch, Madame
Bovary, Remembrance of Things Past—are entertainments rather than illuminating visions.
[00:06:40]
Credible, psychologically dynamic poetic images of peace exist only on the most personal level.
None of us knows what a truly peaceful society might feel like. And since peace is indivisible,
one society, or one culture, or one country alone could not give its members a full experience of
it, however much it evolved in its own justice and positive peace-making: the full experience of
peace could only come in a world at peace. It's like the old song:
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(sings) I want to be happy,
but I can't be happy
unless you are
happy too!
[00:07:28]
Meanwhile, as Catherine de Vinck says in her Book of Peace, "Right Now":
Right now, in this house we share
—earth the name of it
planet of no account
in the vast ranges of the sky—
children are dying
lambs with cracked heads
their blood dripping on the stones.
Right now, messengers reach us
handing out leaflets
printed with a single word:
death
misspelled, no longer a dusky angel
death in the shape of a vulture
landing on broken bodies
torn flesh.
We look elsewhere
hear the buds sliding out of their sheathes
unroll voluptuous green leaves.
we fill the garden room with cushions
hang wind-bells in the trees
toss the word death
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to the flames
over which good meat is sizzling.
Messengers are sent away
but others arrive in endless procession
old women, weepy-eyed, speechless
young one with nerves exposed
they have crossed the sierras
they have sailed in leaky boats
they have trudged through the desert to say
our lives have no weight.
They are made of grass, of clouds
of stories whispered at nightfall
we are burning fields
we are fires fanned by the wind.
How can we mix this knowledge
with the bread we eat
with the cup we drink?
Is it enough to fill these words
these hollow flutes of bones
with aching songs?
[00:09:32]
And terror is what we know most intimately—that terror and the ache of chronic anxiety Yarrow
Cleaves articulates in "One Day."
When you were thirteen, thoughtful,
you said, "When
the bomb falls, I won't run, I won't
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try to get out of the city like
everyone else, in the panic."
When I was a child,
younger than you, I had to
crouch on the floor
at school, under my desk.
How fast could I do it?
The thin bones of my arms
crossed my skull,
for practice. My forehead
went against my knees. I felt
the blinding light of the
windows behind me.
I knew what the bombs did.
"I'll find a tree," you said,
"and the tree will protect me."
Then I turned away, because
I was crying and because you are my child.
What if you stood on the wrong side?
What if the tree, like me, had
only its ashes to give?
What if you have to stand one day
in blasted silence,
screaming, and I can never,
never reach you?
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[00:11:01]
What about the testimony of peace on a personal level? Yes, I do believe that poems which
record individual epiphanies, moments of tranquility or bliss, tell us something about what
might—what peace might be like. Yet because there is no peace they have, always, an undertone
of poignancy. We snatch our happiness from the teeth of violence, from the shadow of
oppression. And on the whole we do not connect such poems with the idea of peace as a goal,
but, reading them, experience a momentary relief from the tensions of life lived in a chronic state
of emergency.
[00:11:43]
Meanwhile, what we do have is poems of protest, of denouncement, of struggle, and sometimes
of comradeship. Little glimpses of what peace means or might come—might mean come through
in such poems as Margaret Randall's "The Gloves."
Yes we did march around somewhere and yes it was cold,
we shared our gloves because we had a pair between us
and a New York City cop also shared his big gloves
with me – strange,
he was there to keep our order
and he could do that
and I could take that
back then.
We were marching for the Santa Maria, Rhoda,
a Portuguese ship whose crew had mutinied.
They demanded asylum in Goulart's Brazil
and we marched in support of that demand,
in winter, in New York City,
back and forth before the Portuguese Consulate,
Rockefeller Center, 1961.
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I gauge the date by my first child
—Gregory was born late in 1960—as I gauge
so many dates by the first, the second, the third, the fourth,
and I feel his body now, again, close to my breast,
held against cold to our strong steps of dignity.
That was my first public protest, Rhoda,
strange you should retrieve it now
in a letter out of this love of ours
alive this—these many years.
How many protests since that one, how many
marches and rallies
for greater causes, larger wars, deeper wounds
cleansed or untouched by our rage.
Today a cop would never unbuckle his gloves
and press them around my blue-red hands.
Today a baby held to breast
would be a child of my child, a generation removed.
The world is older and I in it
am older,
burning, slower, with the same passions.
The passions are older and so I am also younger
for knowing them more deeply and moving in them
pregnant with fear and fighting.
The gloves are still there, in the cold,
passing from hand to hand.
[00:14:26]
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In that poem, focused on a small intimate detail—gloves to keep hands warm—and raying out
from it to the sharing of that minor comfort, and so to the passing from hand to hand, from
generation to generation, of a concern and a resolve, peace as such is a very—it’s very far offstage, a distant unnamed hope which cannot even be considered until issues of justice and
freedom have been addressed and cleared. Yet a kind of peace is present in the poem, too—the
peace of mutual aid, of love and communion.
[00:15:09]
Our own Mel King here in Boston sent out a calligraphed Christmas greeting a couple of years
ago to people who have supported his various campaigns. Peace, it reads, on this planet between
nations; on the streets between people of mind; within ourselves. A longing, a prayer, not a
vision.
[00:15:35]
John Daniel, in his book Common Ground, writes of the mystery of there being anything at all,
and of love for the earth. In a poem called "Of Earth":
Swallows looping and diving
by the darkening oaks, the flash
of their white bellies,
the tall grasses gathering last light,
glowing pale gold, silence
overflowing in a shimmer of breeze—
these could have happened
a different way. The heavy-trunked oaks
might not have branched and branched
and finely re-branched
as if to wave—to weave themselves into air.
There is no necessity
that any creature should fly.
That last light should turn
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the grasses gold, that grasses
should exist at all,
or light.
But a mind thinking so
is a mind wandering from home.
It is not thought that answers
each step of my feet, to be walking here
in the cool stir of dusk
is no mere possibility,
and I am so stained with the sweet
peculiar loveliness of things
that given God's power to dream worlds
from the dark, I know
I could only dream Earth—
birds, trees, this field of light
where I and each of us walk once.
[00:17:23]
This is a clear example of the kind of poem, the kind of perception, which must for our time
stand in for a poetry of peace. It is an epiphany both personal and universal, common to all
conscious humans, surely, in kind if not in degree. Whether they remember it or not, surely
everyone at least once in a lifetime is filled for a moment with a sense of wonder and
exhilaration. But the poem's poignancy is peculiar to the late twentieth century. In the past, the
dark side of such a poem would have been the sense of the brevity of our lives, of mortality
within a monumentally enduring Nature. Eschatology, whether theological or geological, was too
remote in its considerations to have much direct impact on a poetic sensibility illumined by the
intense presentness of a human—of a moment of being.
But today the shadow is deeper and more chilling, for it is the reasonable fear that the earth itself,
to all intents and purposes, is so threatened by our actions that its hold on life is as tenuous as our
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own, its fate as precarious. Poets who direct our attention to injustice, oppression, the suffering
of the innocent and the heroism of those who struggle for change, serve the possibility of peace
by stimulating others to support that struggle.
[00:19:03]
Yesterday it was Vietnam, today it is El Salvador or Lebanon or Ireland. Closer to home, the Ku
Klux Klan rides again, the Skinheads multiply. Hunger and homelessness, crack and child abuse.
There are poems—good, bad, or indifferent—written every day somewhere about all of these,
and they are a poetry of war. Yet one may say they are a proto-peace poetry; for they testify to a
rejection which, though it cannot in itself create a state of peace, is one of its indispensable
preconditions.
[00:19:46]
For war is no longer—if it ever was—a matter of armed conflict only. As we become more aware
of the inseparability of justice from peace, we perceive that hunger and homelessness and our
failure to stop them are—stop them are forms of warfare, and that no one is a civilian. And we
perceive that our degradation of the biosphere is the most devastating war of all. The threat of
nuclear holocaust simply proposes a more sudden variation in a continuum of violence we are
already engaged in. Our consciousness lags so far behind our actions.
[00:20:31]
W. S. Merwin has written in a poem called "Chord"—that's c-h-o-r-d—which is included in his
book, The Rain and the Trees, about this time-lag. “Chord”:
While Keats wrote they were cutting down the sandalwood forests
while he listened to the nightingale they heard their own axes
echoing through the forests
while he sat in the walled garden on the hill outside the city they
thought of their gardens dying far away on the mountain
while the sound of the words clawed at him they thought of their wives
while the tip of his pen traveled the iron they had coveted was
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hateful to them
while he thought of the Grecian woods they bled under red flowers
while he dreamed of wine the trees were falling from the trees
while he felt his heart they were hungry and their faith was sick
while the song broke over him they were in a secret place and they
were cutting it forever
while he coughed they carried the trunks to the hole in the forest
the size of a foreign ship
while he groaned on the voyage to Italy they fell on the trails and
were broken
when he lay with the odes behind him the wood was sold for cannons
when he lay watching the window they came home and lay down
and an age arrived when everything was explained in another language
[00:22:20]
The tree has become a great symbol of what we need, what we destroy, what we must revere and
protect and learn from if life on earth is to continue and that mysterious hope, life at peace, is to
be attained. The tree's deep and wide root-system, its broad embrace and lofty reach from earth
into air, its relation to fire and to human structures, as fuel and material, and especially to water
which it not only needs but gives—drought ensuing when the forests are destroyed—just as it
gives us purer air. All these and other attributes of the tree, not least its beauty, make it a
powerful archetype.
[00:23:08]
The Swedish poet Reidar Ekner has written in "Horologium," in his own translation, as follows:
Where the tree germinates, it takes root
there it stretches up its thin spire
there it sends down the fine threads
gyroscopically it takes its position
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In the seed the genes whisper: stretch out for the light
and seek the dark
And the tree seeks the light, it stretches out
for the dark
And the more darkness it finds, the more light
it discovers
the higher towards the light it reaches, the further down
towards darkness
it is groping
Where the tree germinates, it widens
it drinks in from the dark, it sips from the light
intoxicated by the green blood, spirally it turns
the sun drives it, the sap rushes through the fine pipes
towards the light
the pressure from the dark drives it out
to the points, one
golden morning the big crown of the tree
turns green, from all directions insects, and birds
It is a giddiness, one cone
driving the other
Inch after inch the tree takes possession of its place
it transforms the dark into tree
it transforms the light into tree
it transforms the place into tree
It incorporates the revolutions of the planet, one after the other
the bright semicircle, the dark semicircle
Inside the bark, it converts time into tree
The tree has four dimensions, the fourth one
memory
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far back its memory goes, further back than that of Man,
than the heart of any living beings
for a long time the corpse of the captured highwayman hung
from its branches
The oldest ones, they remember the hunting people, the shell mounds,
the neolithic dwellings
They will remember our time, too; our breathing out,
they will breathe it in
Hiroshima's time, they breathe it in, cryptomeria
also this orbit of the planet, they add it to their growth
Time, they are measuring it; time pieces they are, seventy centuries
the oldest ones carry in their wood
[00:25:40]
Ekner causes us to perceive the tree as witness; and when we are stopped in our tracks by a
witness to our foolishness, the effect is, at least for a moment, that which A. E. Housman
described when he wrote:
But man at whiles is sober.
And thinks, by fits and starts;
And when he thinks, he fastens
His hand upon his heart.
[00:26:08]
What of a religious approach to the state of war in which we live and to the possibility of peace?
The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas, an Anglican priest, whose skepticism and pessimism, however,
often seem more profound than those of secular poets, offers in "The Kingdom" a remote and
somewhat abstract view of it and a basic prescription for getting there. “The Kingdom”:
It's a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
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Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is
Healed; mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It's a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you will purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
[00:27:24]
Catherine de Vinck, from whom I quoted earlier, a Catholic writer, all of whose work expresses
her deep faith, adds to that prescription the ingredient of action: we must act our faith, she says,
at the end of the last poem in her Book of Peace, by practical communion with others, offering
up and sharing our bodily nourishment, the light of our belief, the living-space we occupy. The
time for peace, the title of this poem makes us recognize, is now. "A Time for Peace":
We can still make it
gather the threads, the pieces
each of different size and shade
to match and sew into a pattern:
Rose of Sharon
wedding ring
circles and crowns.
We can still listen:
children at play, their voices
mingling in the present tense
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of a time that can be extended.
Peace, we say
looking through our pockets
to find the golden word
the coin to buy that ease
that place sheltered
from bullets and bombs.
But what we seek lies elsewhere
beyond the course of lethargic blood
beyond the narrow dream
of resting safe and warm.
If we adjust our lenses
we see far in the distance
figures of marching people
homeless, hungry, going nowhere.
Why not call them
to our mornings of milk and bread?
The coming night will be darker
than the heart of stones
unless we strike the match
light the guiding candle
say yes, there is room after all
at the inn.
ANNOUNCER: From Boston, you have been listening to an archive edition of the New
American Gazette presented by the Ford Hall Forum.
[00:29:41]
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DENISE LEVERTOV: Muriel Rukeyser, in a poem begun on the trip to Hanoi she and I made
together with one other woman in 1972, shortly before Nixon's Christmas carpet-bombing of the
North, wrote of the paradoxical presence of peace that we felt there in the midst of war. "It Is
There":
Yes, it is there, the city full of music.
Flute music, sounds of children, voices of poets,
The unknown bird in his long call. The bells of peace.
Essential peace, it sounds across the water
In the long parks where the lovers are walking,
Along the lake with its island and pagoda,
And a boy learning to fish. His father threads the line.
Essential peace, it sounds and it stills. Cockcrow.
It is there, the human place.
On what does it depend, this music, the children's games?
A long tradition of rest? Meditation? What priest—peace is so profound
That it can reach all inhabitants, all children,
The eyes at worship, the shattered in hospitals?
All voyagers?
Meditation, yes; but within a tension
Of long resistance to all invasion, all seduction of hate.
Generations of holding to resistance; and within this resistance
Fluid change that can respond, that can show the children
A long future of finding, of responsibility; change within
Change and tension of sharing consciousness
Village to city, city to village, person to person entire
With unchanging cockcrow and unchanging endurance
Under the skies of war.
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[00:31:46]
On that journey I had felt the same thing—the still center, the eye of the storm. "In Thai Binh
(Peace) Province":
I've used up all my film on bombed hospitals,
bombed village schools, the scattered
lemon-yellow cocoons at the bombed silk-factory,
and for the moment all my tears too
are used up, having seen today
yet another child with its feet blow off,
a girl, this one, eleven years old,
patient and bewildered in her home, a fragile
small house of mud bricks among rice fields.
So I'll use my dry burning eyes
to photograph with in me
dark sails of the river boats,
warm slant of afternoon light
apricot on the brown, swift, wide river,
village towers—church and pagoda—on the far shore,
and a boy and small bird both
perched, relaxed, on a quietly grazing
buffalo.
Peace within the long war.
It is that life, unhurried, sure, persistent,
I must bring home when I try to bring
the war home.
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Child, river, light.
Here the future, fabled bird
that has migrated away from America,
nests, and breeds, and sings,
common as any sparrow.
[00:33:48]
Yes, though I've said we cannot write about peace because we've never experienced it, we do
have these glimpses of it, and we have them most intensely when they are brought into relief by
the chaos and violence surrounding them. But the longing for peace is a longing to get beyond
not only the momentariness of such glimpses but also the ominous dualism that too often seems
our only way of obtaining those moments.
[00:34:18]
Although the instant takes us out of time, a peace in a larger sense experienced only through the
power of contrast would be as false as any artificial paradise, or as the hectic flush of prosperity
periodically induced in ailing economies by injections of war and arms industry jobs and profits.
[00:34:40]
No, if there begins to be a poetry of peace, it is still, as it has long been, a poetry of struggle.
Much of it is not by the famous, much of it is almost certainly still unpublished. And much of it
is likely to be by women, because so many women are actively engaged in nonviolent action, and
through their work—especially at the peace camps, such as Greenham Common and elsewhere
in England or Germany, or here at the Nevada Test Site, or the Concord, California railroad
tracks—they have been gathering practical experience in ways of peaceful community.
[00:35:17]
Ann Snitow, writing about Greenham in 1985, said that, quote:
“When I describe Greenham women, their lives in these circumstances, I often get the
reaction that they sound like mad idealists, detached from a reality principle about what
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can and cannot be done, and how. In a sense, this is true. The women reject power and
refuse to study it, at least on its own terms. But the other charge, that they are utopian
dreamers, who sit around and think about the end of the world, while not really living in
this one, is far from the mark.
[00:35:49]
In a piece in the Times Literary Supplement last summer—which was the summer
of '86 or '85 that she's talking about—a piece called, "Why the Peace Movement
is Wrong," the Russian émigré poet Joseph Brodsky charged the peace movement
with being a bunch of millenarians awaiting—waiting for the apocalypse.
Certainly there are fascinating parallels between the thinking of the peace women
and that of the radical millenarian Protestant sects of the seventeenth century.
Both believe that the soul is the only court that matters, the self the only guide,
and that paradise is a humble and realizable goal in England's green and pleasant
land. The millenarians offered free food just like the caravans now on the
Common: "Food," says one sign. "Eat Till You're Full."
[00:36:37]
But the women are not sitting in the mud waiting for the end, nor are they—as
Brodsky and many others claim—trying to come to terms with their own deaths
by imagining that soon the whole world will die. On the contrary, the women
make up one of the really active anti-millenary enforcers around. President
Reagan has told fundamentalist groups that the last trump ending human history
might blow at any time now. The women believe that the dreadful sound can be
avoided, if only we will stop believing in it.
[00:37:07]
Greenham women see a kind of fatalism all around them. They, too, have
imagined the end, and their own deaths, and have decided that they prefer to die
without taking the world with them. Nothing makes them more furious than the
apathy in the town of Newbury, where they are often told, "Look, you've got to
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21
�MS113.0061 Transcript
die anyway. So what difference does it make how you go?" Those are the real
millenarians, blithely accepting that the end is near.
[00:37:29]
In contrast, the women look very hardheaded, very pragmatic. They see a big war
machine, the biggest the war has known. And rather than sitting in the cannon's
mouth hypnotized, catatonic with fear or denial, they are trying to back away
from the danger step by step. They refuse to be awed or silenced by the war
machine. Instead they say calmly that what was built by human beings can be
dismantled by them, too.
Their logic, clarity and independence are endlessly refreshing. Where is it written,
they ask, that we must destroy ourselves?”
[00:38:03]
There can be, then, a poetry which may help us, before it is too late, to attain peace. Poems of
protest, documentaries of the state of war, can rouse us to work for peace and justice. Poems of
praise for life and the living earth can stimulate us to protect it. The work of Gary Snyder, of
Wendell Berry, comes to mind, among others. Poems of comradeship in struggle can help us—
like the thought of those shared gloves in the Margaret Randall poem—can help us to know the
dimension of community, so often absent from modern life. And there is beginning to be a new
awareness, articulated most specifically in the writings of Father Thomas Berry, the talks and
workshops of people like Miriam MacGillis or Joanna Macy, that we humans are not just
walking around on this planet but that we and all things are truly, physically, biologically, part of
one living organism; and that our human role on earth is as the consciousness and self-awareness
of that organism.
[00:39:13]
John Daniel, who almost certainly had not read Thomas Berry, shows how this realization is
beginning to appear as if spontaneously in many minds; perhaps rather on the lines of the story
of the hundredth monkey. A poem of Daniel's says, and I quote it only in part:
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
A voice is finding its tongue
in the slop and squall of birth.
It sounds,
and we, in whom Earth happened to light
a clear flame of consciousness,
are only beginning to learn the language—
who are made of the ash of stars,
who carry the sea we were born in,
who spent millions of years learning to breathe,
who shivered in fur at the reptiles' feet,
who trained our hands on the limbs of trees
and came down, slowly straightening
to look over the grasses, to see
that the world not only is
but is beautiful—
we are Earth learning to see itself
[00:40:23]
If this consciousness—with its corollary awareness that when we exploit and mutilate the earth
we are exploiting and mutilating the body of which we are the brow—brain cells—if that
consciousness increases and proliferates while there is still time, it could be the key to survival.
A vision of peace cannot be a vision of a heaven in which natural disasters are miraculously
eliminated, but must be of a society in which companionship and fellowship would so
characterize the tone of daily life that unavoidable disasters would be differently met. Natural
disasters, such as earthquakes and floods do, anyway, elicit neighborliness, briefly at least; a
peaceful society would have to be one capable of maintaining that love and care for the afflicted.
Only loving kindness could sustain a lasting peace.
[00:41:31]
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
How can poetry relate to that idea? Certainly not by preaching. But as more and more poets
know and acknowledge—as I believe they are already starting to do—that we are indeed "made
of the ash of stars," as the poem said, their art, stirring the imagination of those who read them—
few, perhaps, but always a dynamic few, a thin edge of the wedge—can have that oblique
influence which cannot be measured. We cannot long survive at all unless we do move towards
peace. If a poetry of peace is ever to be written, there must first be this stage we are just
entering—the poetry of preparation for peace, a poetry of protest, of lament, of praise for the
living earth; a poetry that demands justice, renounces violence, reverences mystery.
[00:42:24]
I would like to end with this Native American invocation of the powers. It's from the Hako:
Pawnee, Osage, Omaha. "Invoking the Powers":
Remember, remember the circle of the sky
the stars and the brown eagle
the supernatural winds
breathing night and day
from the four directions
Remember, remember the great life of the sun
breathing on the earth
it lies upon the earth
to bring out life upon the earth
life covering the earth
Remember, remember the sacredness of things
running streams and dwellings
the young within the nest
a hearth for sacred fire
the holy flame of fire
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
[00:43:45]
Thank you.
(applause)
[00:43:51]
ANDREW YOUNG: A human rights activist for many years, Danny Glover is best known to
audiences around the world as an actor, portraying a wide range of leading roles in such films as,
The Color Purple, Lethal Weapon, and a documentary on Nelson Mandela. On Broadway, he
starred in Master Harold ...and the Boys, by South African playwright Athol Fugard. Through
his work with the African Liberation Support Committee and Amnesty International, Mr. Glover
has campaigned for human rights, justice and freedom.
[00:44:25]
Today, he reads the words of those who have struggled and continue to struggle for change in
Latin America and Africa. The poets explore themes of exile, freedom from oppression and the
dignity of the human spirit. Participating in a Ford Hall Forum program on "Hope and Healing in
a World of Horror" is actor and activist Danny Glover.
(applause)
[00:45:00]
DANNY GLOVER: I'm going to read from some poetry of a personal friend of mine, Abena
Busia, who's a professor of English at department—English department at Rutgers University.
She was born in Accra. She spent the first years of her childhood at home, as well as in Holland
and Mexico, before her family finally settled in Oxford Uni—England, where she had all her
secondary and university education before coming to the U.S. to teach in 1981.
[00:45:39]
Ms. Busia's sister is a dear friend of mine, and in fact we performed in The Color Purple
together, Akosua Busia. Ms. Busia's father, Kofi Abrefa Busia, was prime minister of Ghana in
the early seventies, before the military coup. I'm going to read some of her poetry.
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
“Freedom Rides Quiz”:
Can you tell me where Dien Bien Phu?
I'll give you a clue;
Kent State is the place you must ride roughshod through
How’d you reach D.C. on the Freedom Trail?
It's quite a tale,
You boycott Montgomery, pass through Birmingham jail
Can you tell me what took place in Sharpeville?
I'll tell you who will;
Ask the children of Soweto if the answer rhymes with still
The histories of nations
are in the end spelt out
only through the dying breaths
of succeeding generations
And of those now laboring to be born,
the first of these generations must weep
and bear a heavy burden
from age to hopeless age
on age that the children's children's
embittered children
may at the last first learn
to laugh, among the ripening fruits
they will silent tears now sow
Another poem:
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
I can’t—“And Anyway, I Can't Go Home”:
Suddenly I recall that yesterday I was going to write a poem
Something about lost children and forgotten souls
And being a long way from home.
I don't know that I'll write it.
All my friends are exiles,
Born in one place we live in another
And with this sophisticated—sophistication rendezvous
In most surprising places,
Where we would never expect to find us.
Between us, we people are the world
With aplomb and a command of language,
We stride across continents with the self-assurance
Of those who know with absolute certainty
Where they come from.
With the globe at their command.
We have everywhere to go, but home.
[00:48:34]
I am part of an educational film festival. And the film—a year ago, the festival's best film was a
film, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. And it was such an incredible experience for me to see the
film and to present the award at the time. This is by Pablo Neruda.
“So is My Life”:
My duty moves along with my song:
I am I am not: that is my destiny.
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
I exist not if I do not attend to the pain
of those who suffer: they are my pains.
For I cannot be without existing for all,
for all who are silent and oppressed,
I come from the people and I sing of them:
my poetry is song and punishment.
I am told: you belong to darkness.
Perhaps, perhaps, but I walk toward the light.
I am the man of bread and fish
and you will not find me among books
but with women and men:
they have taught me the infinite.
[00:49:52]
Dennis Brutus is a South African writer and poet, who's been in exile, who was in prison in
South Africa, and has been in exile in this country. There have been many attempts by the State
Department to have him exported back to South Africa. His poem, "Dear God":
Dear God
Get me out of here
Let me go somewhere
Where I can fight the evil
Which surrounds me here
And which I am forbidden to fight
But do not take from me my anger
My indignation at injustice
So that I may continue to burn
To right it or destroy it
Oh, I know
I have asked for this before
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
In other predicaments
And found myself most wildly involved
But it is—but if to be possible and comfortable
To your will
Dear God, get me out of here
[00:51:11]
"In This Country":
In this country,
In this air;
Where these trees grow:
Where clear air flows
Before, behind, above
And through the throat
Flows a cool and crystal stream
To where the milk white domes
In all-embracing curve.
In this country,
In this air;
Where these trees grow:
Poised and moving
As a flame intruding
Projects through rings of encircling dark
Where sweet air flows
And the slim tree grow
In this country
Festers hate in fetid wounds
Infection floats on fluid air
Anger roars in the placid night
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�MS113.0061 Transcript
And the dark is drizzled with our tears.
[00:52:15]
"We Survive, If Nothing Else Remains":
We survive,
if nothing else remains
in assurance of affliction, pains
For you and I, by this affliction,
each on each,
a private agony
the certainty of suffering
knows something of the heart's immortality
and through—though we die,
each day we know, too, in the heart of each
remembrance survives
this pain we suffer.
We inflict, we cherish and enjoy
knowing that in this way, somehow
we keep alive something of the love we knew.
[00:53:02]
I am going to read another poem by Abena Busia. And I was talking to Akosua, and she said this
poem was written when they were, they were in exile, and there were assassins after her father,
and they had just moved into this empty house. Her father placed a suitcase against a door as a
barrier, and they were about to have a meal. There was no furniture in the house. They were
on—they were running. "The Meal":
You wonder what it is
that makes them pray
regardless of the presence of strangers
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30
�MS113.0061 Transcript
to think what distracted God
for this hasty meal prepared in flight
eaten cold
in alien rooms in foreign lands.
Where not assassins, not friends
can find them with names not their own
wearing clothes not their own
in rooms not their own.
They say grace that they are not forsaken
and mean it.
[00:54:21]
And I'm going to read one more poem before—I'm getting kind of used to this. "British Boarding
School Blues":
Rainbow after rainbow
I waited for you
to leap through the arch
and save me and my toys
from the downpour
and the cold.
I cling to your memory
for warmth
In my heart and in my dreams.
Sister says, "Pa is in hiding"
but you will return.
16 weeks ago
they let us see your—our brothers.
We hang on
hang on.
I beg you, Mama, do not leave us
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31
�MS113.0061 Transcript
fragmented
in this foreign land.
[00:55:10]
Akosua wrote this when she was nine years old.
Okay. I guess questions.
(applause)
ANNOUNCER: You have been listening to an archive edition of the New American Gazette
from Boston's Ford Hall Forum. The New American Gazette was produced by Deborah Stavrow
with post-production engineers Roger Baker, Brian Sabo and Anthony Debartolo. The New
American Gazette was produced in cooperation with the nation's presidential libraries, the
National Archives and Northeastern University. To purchase a copy of this program or receive
information about the 2006 spring season of the Forum, please call 617-373-5800, or visit
www.FordHallForum.org. Thank you for joining us.
END OF RECORDING
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The New American Gazette: The New American Gazette: Denise Levertov and Danny Glover, Ford Hall Forum [audio recording and transcript]
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29 October 1987
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Glover, Danny
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Poetry
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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The New American Gazette: Barney Frank and Warren Rudman; "Election 88 A Review and Forecast," at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording]
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Two seasoned politicians, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH), debate the winning factors, missing ingredients, lucky breaks and decisive moments of what should be a tight Presidential race. The forum was broadcast on the New American Gazette radio program.
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Text
Ford Hall Forum: Transcript of Beyers Naudé Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: Reverend Beyers Naudé “South Africa,” at Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Date: 27 October 1985
Speakers: Reverend Beyers Naudé, Paula Gold, Donald Tye
Item Information: Ford Hall Forum: featuring Reverend Beyers Naudé on, “South
Africa.” Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, items 0036 and 0037)
Moakley Archive, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at:
http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1985 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary: Reverend Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner and General Secretary of
the South African Council of Churches, discusses the future of apartheid in South Africa.
�MS113.0036-0037 Transcript
Transcript Begins
PAULA GOLD: Good evening, and welcome to the Ford Hall Forum. I'm Paula Gold,
and I'm president of the Forum. Tonight, we are very fortunate to have a distinguished
visitor from South Africa to discuss the situation in that country with us.
This program has been made possible through the cooperation of a great many
organizations, including the New England Circle.
Before we begin, since I know that many of you are new to the Forum, I would like to
briefly mention our upcoming programs. We have two programs remaining on our fall
schedule. Both of them are part of our series on health and politics. Eleanor Holmes
Norton, who served in the Carter administration, the first black woman to serve as a
cabinet officer, will speak on the nationwide crisis of teenage pregnancy. That's next
Sunday night, November 3rd, at Faneuil Hall. The following Thursday, Dr. Paul Starr will
be speaking on the dilemma of healthcare costs and availability.
One final thing I'd like to mention before we begin is that these free lectures are
supported by people like you who become members of the Forum. Without the help of
our members, programs like tonight's would not be possible. So if you can, please join
the Forum using the form in the green brochure or by signing up at the desk as you leave.
By becoming a member, you will help ensure that programs like this continue.
It's now time to begin our program. Our interpreter for this program is Michella Slaytek
[?], and our moderator this evening is Donald Tye. Don is in general trial practice in
Boston, specializing in family and mental health law, and is a member of the Forum's
board of directors.
Ladies and gentlemen, tonight's moderator, Don Tye. [applause]
[00:02:30]
2
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�MS113.0036-0037 Transcript
DONALD TYE: "I think for the first time, the average young Afrikaner is confused and
uncertain about the future, especially since the government announced the state of
emergency on July 20, 1985. A lot of Afrikaners simply don't understand why there is
rioting. The press is one-sided. Television is tightly controlled. People aren't exposed to
reality so they have misconceptions of color."
[00:02:55]
These are the words of Anami Oosthuizen, a 23-year-old law student and the only woman
among the Stellenbosch Eight, a group of eight Afrikaner students from the leading
Afrikaans university in South Africa, who this week shocked South Africa's ruling white
minority and the world by accepting the invitation of the outlawed African National
Congress to go to the group's headquarters in exile in Lusaka, Zambia, for informal talks.
[00:03:28]
Our speaker today, Reverend Beyers Naudé, a white Afrikaner, 49 years ago also
graduated from the University of Stellenbosch and has spent much of his adult life
accepting a similar challenge. Joseph Lellyveld, in his 1985 book, Move Your Shadow,
published by Time Books, compares Reverend Naudé to the dissident Soviet physicist,
Andrei Sakharov. Naudé's apostasy, like Sakharov's, he says, was especially galling and
unforgivable because it occurred at the very heart of a power elite. Once he had been the
most highly Afrikaner clergyman of his generation. Any position his church or people
had to offer could have been within his reach. Now, or so the top security officials
contend, he is an agent of the underground, as Sakharov had illicit ties with the
Americans. Where Reverend Naudé came from, a white who believed in black power,
had to be at least a communist if he wasn't even more depraved.
At the age of 48, for the first time, Reverend Naudé actively engaged in viewing firsthand
life in black townships, speaking to blacks about being black in white South Africa. In
1963, as senior minister of the most prestigious Dutch Reformed Church congregation in
Johannesburg, he was chosen as a representative to an ecumenical conference on
apartheid, sponsored by the World Council of Churches.
3
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�MS113.0036-0037 Transcript
[00:05:15]
Refusing to recant, as all others did, from the group's position of conscience, that all
racial groups have an equal right to share the "responsibilities, rewards and privileges" of
citizenship, he was becoming undependable by the church leadership, a political
dissident. At this time, he began publishing an ecumenical journal called Pro Veritate,
addressing itself to the church's role in society and the questions the church was evading.
In the late 1960s, Reverend Naudé gave up his pulpit to found the Christian Institute as
an ecumenical movement aimed primarily at influencing the white churches. His own
church, as others, soon formally proscribed his institute as a heretical organization.
Although never having talked politics with a black nationalist, nor having dined in black
homes, by the age of 50, Reverend Naudé was condemned as a traitor, isolated wholly
within Afrikandom, isolated by his community and by even members of his immediate
family, including his two sisters who have become permanently alienated.
[00:06:36]
After offering organizational support to Stephen Biko and other blacks flaunting black
consciousness, political authorities stepped up pressure. By 1968, his passport was seized
and the Christian Institute was declared affected or subversive, curtailing its ability to
raise funds from overseas. After Stephen Biko's death in 1977, the Christian Institute was
banned as an organization. Until September 26, 1984, Reverend Naudé was banned as an
individual. It was illegal for him to travel within South Africa, enter black areas, attend
any public meetings or be quoted in any publication, even if he were to die.
Despite restrictions, Reverend Naudé's circle of contacts among black churchmen and
activists was expanding wider than any white in South Africa. His example demonstrated
that it could be done.
[00:07:43]
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At the age of 68, Reverend Naudé is still regarded as dangerous. In 1984, along with
imprisoned Nelson Mandela, he was named a patron of the United Democratic Front led
by Reverend Allan Boesak, and composed of 600 affiliated organizations, as an alliance
against apartheid. In November 1984, Reverend Naudé was invited to become successor
of Reverend Desmond Tutu as General Secretary of the South African Council of
Churches and assumed that position on February 1, 1985.
[00:08:23]
I am pleased to introduce the recipient of four honorary degrees, including one from our
own Notre Dame University; University of Chicago's Reverend Niebuhr's Prize for
Human Rights, together with Dr. Sakharov; the Bruno Kreisky Award for the Defense of
Human Rights granted by the president of Austria; and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Four Freedoms Award for freedom of worship, which he was not allowed even to accept;
and the person who Reverend Desmond Tutu has described as the most resplendent
sound of hope in South Africa today, Reverend Naudé. [applause]
[00:09:27]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: Mr. Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, may I be allowed to make
two introductory remarks before I share with you something about the situation in our
country, the crisis and the prospects of hope; first of all, to say that I understand that this
building was the building where the Revolution started, leading to the Boston Tea Party
and the overthrow of an unjust rule of the people of America. When I heard that, I
immediately said, Well, then, this is a dangerous place to bring a guy like Beyers Naudé
because I may start another revolution in what I may be saying to you or to others
tonight.
[00:10:13]
The second remark would be to say that this reminds me very much of one of our oldest
congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, where I had to preach, and
where the minister told me and said, "Look, Beyers, we want you to know the benches
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are upright, the seats are hard. If you don't say anything which is worthwhile, shut up."
And I'm aware of that in what I am eager to share with you tonight.
[00:10:54]
I assume that most of you are here tonight would be reasonably well informed about what
is happening in South Africa. In more than one respect, I find it incredible, although
deeply gratifying, that there is so much interest in our country because there are so many
other concerns and problems that America faces from day to day. I think that you, during
the last six months, through your media – screen, radio, publications – have certainly
been able to gain much more information and insight and a visual conception of what has
happened in South Africa than the vast majority of the inhabitants of the country. I have
seen footage of what you have been able to view on your screens and in comparison with
what has been shown, or not been shown, in our country.
[00:12:21]
I had some time ago when somebody asked me where it would be possible to get a wide
and a varied and an objective picture of what is happening, I had to say to that person, "If
you wish really to know what is going on inside South Africa, you've got to go outside."
That is partly true because of the fact that our television is state-controlled. Our radio is
state-controlled. Our press is mostly government-owned, or also strongly controlled by a
number of very serious restrictions with regard to publication. Especially as far as the 36
magisterial districts which have recently been declared as emergency districts in South
Africa, where nothing can be published without having been put first of all to the police
for their reaction or that respective department.
[00:13:29]
So I'm not going to deal in detail with specific incidents and happenings and events in the
country. I think it would be more worthwhile for me, in the half an hour or little more
than half an hour at my disposal before you have the ample time for asking questions, I
think it would be more helpful if I could try to summarize and pinpoint the essential
nature of the crisis in which we find ourselves.
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I believe that there is none of us who would gainsay or would dispute the fact that we are
a country in crisis. I would go further and say that we are definitely a country which finds
itself in a state of civil war. And I would be prepared to go even further by saying, if the
situation continues to be handled the way it is being handled by the authorities up till
now, we certainly are on our way to a revolution.
[00:14:41]
Having said that, I think I should explain why I'm saying this. First of all, because if I
were to reply to the question – what is the nature of the crisis? – I would immediately
point to the educational situation in our country and say that black education in the
country, for all purposes, is lying in shambles. Thousands and thousands of black
schoolkids are in and out of school, are for a specific period in the classrooms busy with
some form of education. The school is closed. The children have got to go home. And
shortly afterwards it's tried again. The same applies to the majority of your black state
universities.
And we've created a situation, or a situation has developed where, for all practical
purposes, regular school and university education amongst the blacks, and now
increasingly also amongst the colored– and forgive me for using these racial terms, but
that's the only way in which I can describe a deeply divided society as such is South
Africa – blacks being those of African ethnic origin; coloreds being those of so-called
mixed blood; and the Indians or Asians, those who have come from India. And where for
all practical purposes, any form of regular education amongst the African and the colored
sectors of our community is simply not taking place.
[00:16:36]
And I'm convinced, if my reading and if my analysis of the situation is correct, that
except if drastic measures are taken by the government to meet the legitimate demands on
the part of the people, there will be no meaningful, relevant, regular black or colored
education in South Africa until a total fundamental political change takes place.
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Now, how is it possible that a country could allow this to happen? If this were to have
happened to white schoolchildren and to white students, the whole country would have
been up in arms and immediate changes would have been made. The fact that it hasn't
happened is an indication of the nature and the seriousness of the problem.
[00:17:30]
But our crisis is also a political one. In that respect – and I want to pinpoint the essential
nature of that because of the lack of time – we are dealing with a situation where in
November 1983, the white community of South Africa had the opportunity in a
referendum to accept a newly proposed constitution which would make provision for a
three-cameral parliament – one for whites, one for coloreds, one for Indians – but in such
proportions that the whites would always be the dominant voting factor, but with the total
exclusion of any blacks in the political decision-making process of the country. 4.7
million whites; 2.7 million coloreds; .75 million Indians, and 22 million blacks, and the
22 totally excluded from the right to determine their own political future.
Sixty-six percent of all the white voters of South Africa approved that constitution. It was
from that moment, a moment of historic watershed in the history of South Africa, where
the whole black community, with the support of the major sector of the colored and the
Indian communities, said, "Enough is enough. We're not going to take it. We're never
going to subject ourselves to this." Because what the whites essentially were saying to the
black community was, through that action, "You've never been part of South Africa. We
don't see you to be part of South Africa. You will never be part of South Africa in
future."
[00:19:35]
That was the reason for the birth of the tremendous growth in popularity of an
organization like the United Democratic Front. That was the reason why 450
organizations affiliated to this body, this umbrella – political movement for change in
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South Africa. And that crisis will never, to my mind, be resolved as long as the present
constitution remains in operation.
[00:20:13]
That's the second serious crisis. The third one is the economic one. And I don't want to
burden you with so many facts and figures because I do not believe that I need to
convince you in this regard. I would just wish to summarize by saying that economically
the situation in South Africa has taken a turn, very serious turn for the worse. For many
years, South Africa prided itself on its wealth, its growth, its gold production, diamonds,
minerals, raw materials sold to the outside world, in every respect. South Africa was
proud to pay its debts because it had money enough. In fact, South Africa was so rich that
it could afford a system of apartheid, run so many institutions parallel, highly privileged
on the part of the whites, and where blacks, to a large degree, paid the price for the
comfort and the luxury of the white minority.
A number of events in the last two or three years brought us into a crisis situation with
regard to the economic position of South Africa – the high defense budget, a long
drought, the drop in the price of gold, the weak exchange value of the rand, rising
inflation, growing black unemployment, not only the rural, but also in the urban areas.
All these brought South Africa to the point where for the first time the white community
in South Africa began to discover the high cost of apartheid. And still they don't fully
understand. But it's enough to let you realize how serious the situation has become.
[00:22:07]
South Africa's external debt has been stated by the government to be 40 billion rand. In
fact, it is not 40 billion; it is 55 billion rand. Now, I know that for Americans dealing with
much larger figures, this may not sound to be so impressive or so difficult. But in the
context of South Africa's economy, that is a tremendous amount of money. Of that 55
billion rand, 35 billion has got to be repaid within the next 12 months. And according to
all the information at my disposal, and I believe this is very reliable information, South
Africa is not able to repay that debt.
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[00:22:59]
And that is why, when Chase Manhattan Bank told Gerhard de Kock, the governor of the
Reserve Bank, the ex-governor now, that Chase Manhattan was not willing to supply the
bridging funds for the repayment of the short-term loans, it created a major crisis in South
Africa and our stock exchange closed for five days in order to help the whites in the
country in general to adapt itself to that tremendous emotional shock. And now South
Africa is desperately trying to find the bridging funds, either from Swiss or German or
other banks. And it'll be very interesting to note what those banking institutions are going
to do.
So for all practical purposes, South Africa can be termed to be bankrupt. Because those
short-term loans cannot be repaid. Not with the form of production of South Africa at the
present moment. And with the increasing number of short- and long-term strikes, because
the workers are demanding their rights and higher wages, which they deserve, and with
the ongoing crisis and unrest in the country, and with the growing instability which this
has created, we at least have come to a point where to a certain degree the whole
discussion about divestment – to which I would like to return in a moment – or sanctions
is in a certain sense being overtaken by the decisions of many overseas companies and
businessmen looking at South Africa, looking at its growing instability, deciding for
themselves: "It may possibly be better for us to get out while the going is good. Not
because the churches in America or the universities or the institutions are pressuring us to
do so, but because we ourselves have discovered that it may not be helpful any longer to
let our capital remain in the country."
[00:25:17]
Therefore, I cannot see that crisis can be resolved. Certainly not in the foreseeable future.
And especially if you have thousands and thousands of young blacks in the urban areas of
South Africa, unemployed, those completing their schooling, even half-completing their
schooling, finding themselves without any form of income or of employment, or the
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possibility of meaningful employment, then certainly that is a recipe for resistance and
for revolution.
[00:25:52]
But could I just for a moment point out that the crisis, I think, runs even deeper. All
countries experience such forms of crises in the course of its development. But when that
crisis itself goes to the very root of society – namely, the moral and the ethical concepts
of justice, of human rights, of human dignity, denied to the majority of the people of the
land – then we have reached a point where no other solution is possible than to attack that
malady, that illness at the grass roots.
That is where the problem lies that the majority of your white community still wishes to
support the system of apartheid. Yes, they would like to have it changed, they would like
to have it amended, they would like to have certain reforms being presented, but the
majority of them, of the white community in South Africa is not prepared to face, to meet
the legitimate challenge and the legitimate demands of the majority of the people of the
land by saying, "Basically, we want to share the same rights and the same responsibilities
as you have. You have the vote? We also want it. You have certain economic rights and
privileges? We also want it. You have a fairly good system of education? We also want
it."
[00:27:30]
What is revolutionary in that? What is undemocratic in that? Think of your own history.
Think of the heritage of American pride in the institutions of your democracy, of your
Bill of Rights, of the civil rights movement, which brought the message to the people of
the United States, that basically every person is equal before the sight of God. That is
what it is all about in its deepest essence. And as long as that is denied, the crisis will
continue and will increase.
[00:28:19]
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Where has this brought us, friends? I think I would wish to summarize it by saying that it
has brought us to the point of an increasing rebellion against the present political system,
where the majority of the people are up in arms. Not arms in that physical sense of the
word, but they are resisting with all the possible means at their disposal the present
system and saying, "We will not rest and we will not be satisfied until we are having a
meaningful share in the whole process of political decision-making in our country."
Twenty-two million people excluded from any possibility of expressing their political
views and making them felt, making them effective where they should be effective;
namely, where the laws are made.
[00:29:23]
The rebellion against that system is also a rebellion against the whole educational system.
And I would like to repeat by saying that I see no possibility of any return to normal
education in the black and the colored and increasingly also in the Indian communities
until the basic grievance of an inferior, discriminatory, unjust educational system is
addressed with all your blacks in separate schools, coloreds in their own schools, Indians
in their schools, whites in their separate schools, and even the whites divided between
your Afrikan-speaking children and the English-speaking children. And therefore, I see
no possibility, except an ongoing resistance and rebellion on the parts of millions of
young blacks who have come to that point where they've said, "Enough is enough. Even
if we have to stand up, to be shot, to be killed, to die, it is better to die for a good cause
than to live with such a bad system."
[00:30:44]
It is also a rebellion against the whole concept of a false authority. And here, I'm
referring especially to the whole legal system, the myriads of racial laws, the security
legislation in our country where increasingly the black and the colored and the Indian
and, thank God, also, a small percentage of the white community is saying that a legal
machinery, the legal machinery of a facade of justice has been built up to uphold a legal
system which is basically unjust, discriminatory and totally unacceptable from the
concept of the rule of law.
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[00:31:36]
And that is why, friends, increasingly every form of respect also for the visible authority
of the law has not only been so eroded and undermined, but has reached such a low point.
The outlook of many of the young blacks that there is a growing total rejection of that
system of upholding the legal position of the police trying to implement laws which the
majority of your black and your colored and your Indian community regard – and
justifiably regard – as unjust, as inhuman, and as oppressive. And when a country reaches
that stage where the respect for law and for the offices of law reach such a position, it is
the beginning of revolution.
[00:32:47]
It is more than that. It is in fact the beginning of a situation where, as it gains momentum
more and more, can only call forth the resistance on the part of an oppressive and an
unjust rule. Therefore, if you wish to ask me what has been the response of the
government to what has been happening in South Africa in the last year, especially in the
last number of months – you've seen this on your news and I don't want to point out any
specific particulars – I could share with you tonight many personal incidents which will
not only shock you, but it will certainly bring home to you the anguish, the suffering and
the pain of thousands of people.
[00:33:46]
The government has responded, on the one hand, with a very hesitant and inadequate
form of reform. The government has announced that it agrees to common citizenship for
the future. It agrees to general franchise. It agrees to the withdrawal of the hated pass
laws. On the other hand, the state president has, in practically the same breath, announced
and said, "Yes, but this does not imply a unitary state with one-man-one-vote." And we
don't have any indication of how long it will take before the pass laws will be withdrawn.
We don't have any indication of what measures will be taken in order to implement these
forms of reform.
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[00:34:33]
But even if they are implemented, the basic point which you have to understand is this:
that PW Botha, can only go as far in these reforms as the white electorate who put him in
power, will allow him to go. And the white electorate, with their self-interests, with the
fear, with the tremendous privilege and power that they've enjoyed in being able to
maintain this system for so many years, do you really believe that the majority of them
would voluntarily relinquish their position of privilege and power?
[00:35:15]
In fact, this is one of the major problems, that the separation which has been created over
so many decades between white and black in the country, not only geographically and
physically, but also mentally and emotionally and psychologically, this separation has
been so successful and so almost complete that in the hearts and minds of the majority of
the white community of South Africa, there has grown this schizophrenic fear of what
may happen when blacks may receive the same rights and privileges as the whites. That's
the major concern of many of the whites. And that is why in a survey which was
undertaken amongst 1000 whites two weeks ago, in which this one question was asked,
"Do you believe that there will be majority rule in South Africa," 66% of those who
replied to that questionnaire said, "Definitely no."
How is it then possible, even if PW Botha wants to bring about fundamental reform, how
is it possible that he will be able to do that if he doesn't have the backing of his own
electorate? It simply cannot happen.
[00:36:38]
At the same time, parallel to these reforms which have been announced, you have had the
implementation of the security laws in those areas which have been declared as
emergency areas to such a degree that police actions of brutality of the police and the
army have reached frightening proportions. You've seen something of this on your
screens; much more than that has taken place and is taking place. And the outcome of
that has been that never in the history of our country have the feelings of the black
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community of anger and bitterness against the state authority as reflected and symbolized
by the presence of police and of the army in the black townships, never has it been so
deep and so strong and so bitter as today.
[00:37:49]
That is why you have the increasing attacks of young blacks on police, security police.
That is why the homes of black councilors who support the government's system have
been set alight and burned. That is why at funerals, when it is discovered that there is a
black informer taking part in the funeral, young blacks get so angry that they throw petrol
over such a person, grab him or her, and set such a person alight. I know, this is terrible! I
know how you and I must feel about that. And that is being used and exploited by the
government and by many others to say, "Do you see that? Do you realize that? That
shows that the blacks are totally incompetent, even to be in freedom and in responsibility
amongst themselves. How then is it possible to entrust the future government of the
country to them?"
[00:38:57]
People who say that, friends, have no understanding of the long, pent–up anger and
bitterness over years in the hearts and minds of the millions of the blacks of the way in
which they've been treated and the hundreds and more who have been in prisons, and the
way they've been treated. And therefore, although I deeply regret it, I can only say that
one has to understand, and one has to say, not first of all to those young people "don't do
it," but you first have to address yourself to the system with its oppression, with its
injustice and say, "Remove this injustice. Remove this oppression. Make the people free
and you won't have this kind of retaliatory action which is taking place."
[00:40:00]
But it's more than that. In addition to that, there has been the total refusal of some of the
basic demands which have been made. Four such demands have been made. First of all,
many of the black leaders have said, "End the state of emergency. Remove the security
forces from the townships. Release all political prisoners. And allow exiles to return.
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Allow a free plebiscite of the people to appoint and to elect their own authentic leaders in
order to sit down and to plan the future of the country." The response on the part of the
government has been a decided, definite, clear "no."
What hope is there, then, of any peaceful solution?
[00:40:57]
In addition to this, the government has, over the past two, three years, especially, engaged
in a deliberate process of destabilizing the surrounding countries. The incursions of the
army into Lesotho, into Botswana, into Mozambique, into Angola, these are known
historical facts that are reported in your press. And this goes on all the time. The
government defends itself by saying, "If we regard any of these surrounding countries or
the incursion of the African National Congress to be a threat to our security and to our
dominant position, we will not hesitate to take action and, if necessary, to retaliate." This
may be, from the political viewpoint of the government, understandable. But it certainly
is not going to help us to a position of reconciliation and solution of our problems. In the
meantime, the militarization of our country goes on without any interruption.
[00:42:05]
And I would not be surprised if the state of emergency does not end, or if eventually, if
the situation becomes to such a point of crisis that the whole country will have to be
declared in a state of emergency, that then inevitably our country will move into some
form of military rule. And if that's the case, we simply have to face a long, ongoing, lowscale form of guerilla warfare, of civil war, of woundings, of clashes, of conflicts, of
killings, and of deaths.
[00:42:47]
I know this may sound very depressing to you. I hope it doesn't sound sensational,
because I don't want to be sensational. I don't want to be melodramatic. I'm too concerned
about the future of the country. I'm too concerned about the concept of justice. I'm too
much concerned about the role which we have to play in order to minimize violence and
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to bring about peace. And I say this not only for the sake of the blacks who are suffering
so deeply; I'm saying this also for the sake of the whites. I'm a white. I'm an Afrikaner. I
don't deny my Afrikanerdom. I understand why my people are doing this. I don't agree
with it; I totally and I utterly disagree. But I thank God that I don't hate them for what
they are doing; I hate the system, yes, I hate the injustice, I hate the oppression, I hate the
racism, because I believe it dehumanizes the oppressor even more than the oppressed.
But having said that, I cannot stand aside and silently view a country being led to a
situation of suicide and revolution.
[00:44:13]
And therefore, with that, I wish to close. The question arises, what can be done in South
Africa? I believe that there is very little hope that the whites will, of their own volition,
change the situation. I believe we have got to face the fact that there will be the ongoing
pressures on the part of the blacks until the situation, both economically and otherwise,
forces the white community eventually to say, "We cannot continue with what we're
doing, what we've done up to now."
[00:44:52]
And in closure, I think it is important to try and answer – I say try and answer – the
question, what is there that you as people of the United States could possibly do? First of
all, I would like to say that I believe that it is absolutely essential that you continue to
pressure also your own government in order to apply more meaningful forms of
disinvestment on our country. And why am I saying this? I'm saying this in the face of
the fact that I know that I could be charged for saying this, but I'm saying this, friends,
because this is one of the last peaceful measures remaining to us in order to avoid a
conflict of violence and bloodshed in our country.
It is only when especially the white community begin to feel in their own pockets what it
means in order to pay that price that they will begin to sit up and to say, "We have to
reconsider what is happening."
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[00:45:52]
I believe it is also important that you as a nation with all the power at your disposal, that
you apply the necessary pressures also on your Swiss and your German bankers to
indicate to them that they can make a meaningful contribution to this struggle for
liberation if they are prepared to cooperate with the American bankers.
[00:46:23]
I believe it's important that you should see and place into its proper perspective the
struggle for justice in South Africa. And I know that our government tries to sell, and
sometimes sells successfully also to the people of the public of the United States this idea
that our government is the strongest anti-communist force on the continent of Africa, and
that it stands for the Christian values and the values of Western Civilization.
[00:46:52]
If any of you or anybody else is impressed by that argument, let me answer you in one
single sentence: That if anybody would like to ask me and say, "What is the strongest
single factor of promoting the sympathy for communism in South Africa?" without
hesitation my reply would be, the policy of apartheid. And as long as that remains, there
is no way to solve the situation by all these false arguments. And to claim that we are a
Christian government and a Christian people, I believe that in no other respect that makes
a mockery of the real understanding of the Christian faith.
I believe it's important that you express increasingly your solidarity with the oppressed
and with those who are the victims of apartheid. I am deeply grateful for many responses
of active support which have come from the United States. I'm thinking of the
demonstrations against the embassy. I'm thinking of many actions which have been
taken. But I believe it's important to continue and to increase that support of your
solidarity.
[00:48:10]
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But above all, I think it is important that you remove from your own society every form
of latent or hidden racism which there still may be. Because as long as the white
community in South Africa can point to the United States or to Britain or to any other
part of the world and say, "You have no right to criticize us. You have no right to become
involved in our struggle with all the forms of racism still evident and prevalent in your
society," it makes it much more difficult for us to answer that.
[00:48:43]
And above all, I believe that the tremendous and wonderful heritage which you have
gained and which you hold dear, your respect for human dignity, for human rights, for the
recognition of a person being a person in his own right, for the concept of human liberty
and freedom, for true democracy, if you regard these values to be the most meaningful
for the maintenance of a free society, please understand and support those in our country
who claim to seek the same for themselves. They are the ones who need your support.
They are the ones who look forward to you through your acts and through everything that
you convey to strengthen them in their struggle until the day when they will be free. That
day will come. I've no doubt whatsoever that that day will come. And when it comes, I
would gladly wish to see that the people of the United States should have been seen by
the struggling masses of South Africa not to have been on the side of the oppressor, but
on the side of those who were oppressed and who struggled to achieve their liberation.
Thank you. [applause]
DONALD TYE: For the benefit of the radio audience, what I'm going to do is to repeat,
as we usually do, the questions that are asked. We'll try to go from one side of the room
to the other. And I'd like to ask you to try to keep your question as a question, as concise
as possible, rather than attempting to make a protracted political statement. And we'll
start from over here, please. Yes, sir?
Q: [off mic]
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DONALD TYE: Reverend Naudé, can you guarantee that the government that takes
over will be a democratic government with the protections of a democratic government?
[00:52:04]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: It depends how this takes place. It depends whether the people of
the country would be given the opportunity to decide and to elect their own future
leaders. I can only state clearly that as far as a body like the UDF is concerned, it has
pledged itself to a democratic and a non-racial future. I can only state that everywhere
where I went, and with all that I and many others have spoken, that there is nothing else
but the deep and urgent longing to set up a fully democratic rule in South Africa. But if
you were to ask me whether I could give that guarantee, certainly not; it is not possible.
But on the basis of all the signs and the pointers and the indications there, I'm convinced
that such a change is taking place and will take place. And when it does come, I believe it
is essential that one gives such a government the full opportunity to prove itself.
DONALD TYE: Do we have a question from this side? Yes, sir?
Q: How many people have been detailed since the state of emergency and under what
conditions are they being held?
DONALD TYE: Since the state of emergency, Reverend, how many people have been
detained and what is the state of those, sir, that are being detailed?
[00:53:32]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: It is difficult to get the full figures because these are not regularly
made known by the police, and it is impossible to ascertain it simply because people just
disappear and you don't know for how long. And eventually some of them turn up, and
some of them flee the country. But it has been ascertained that since September last year,
altogether 15,000 people were detained for shorter or longer periods, and then, again,
many of them released. Seven-hundred-forty people have died. And the number of deaths
continue to take place with every week of the clashes which are taking place.
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[00:54:15]
I only know that at the present moment, the South African Council of Churches, which
provides legal defense for a number of political cases, that we at the present moment are
dealing with about 1500 young people in different parts of the country being charged
either with intimidation, with acts of violence, with arson, or with being in possession of
banned literature and banned publication. And the number of court cases is escalating
every day. I've got to read through the records of every one of those cases before I give
my approval for that money to be paid out for the legal defense. And I can only say that
our staff has found a tremendous escalation. In fact, we've had to increase our staff not
only at the head office, but also in the regional offices, because the number of cases
continue to rise every week.
DONALD TYE: We have a question, yes, sir, in the blue shirt. Would you please stand?
Q: Yes, Reverend Naudé, you expressed pessimism for the possibility for peaceful
change in our country. Are there any circumstances of which you think that armed
struggle is justified? And more specifically, are there any circumstances of which you
would [55:41] of such a struggle?
DONALD TYE: Under what circumstances, sir, is armed resistance justified? And
under what circumstances would you support such resistance?
[00:55:52]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: The South African Council of Churches has up till now declared
itself to be fully in favor of peaceful change and expressed itself very strongly against
violence in any form. In the course of the last number of months, I've pointed out to the
Council that I believe that, although it is understandable that that stand was taken in the
past, that is no longer possible in view of the fact that we have in South Africa moved
into a situation not of violence versus non-violence, but in actual fact of a situation of
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people trying to bring about change by a lesser form of violence over against a great deal
of violence, that of the state and of the laws and of the police and of the army.
The debate is going on within the churches about the justification of the church or of the
Christian community in order to support otherwise the armed struggle of people who are
fighting for liberation. I have been actively engaged in stimulating that debate because I
believe that the churches have got to account themselves for the stand that they have to
take.
[00:57:13]
At this point in time, in view of the fact of this discussion taking place in our country, I
do not feel justified as general secretary to express my personal opinions in this regard
because I believe that is certainly not the right thing for me to do here. All that I'm saying
is I've stated very clearly in South Africa that there is no justification whatsoever for the
church or for anybody to condemn the armed struggle and to condemn the actions on the
part of the young people if the church has not been able to prove that its peaceful forms
of resistance are not more effective and could achieve that purpose.
DONALD TYE: Is there a question from the side? Yes, ma'am? Do you have a
question? Yes, would you stand, please?
Q: To counter the argument, one of the arguments that countered divestment, it's often
said that divestment is a one-shot deal and you'd lose any potential leverage you had. Do
you see any of these transnational corporations who have made huge profits from
apartheid, do you see them as ever having effectively argued for pressures and gotten
some reforms from the government?
[00:58:33]
DONALD TYPE: Regarding divestment, have you seen, sir, any of the trends, the large
corporations that have advocated divestment, seeing any actual progress from the
government?
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[00:58:46]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: I follows the debate and the pressures of the transnational
corporations with great interest and concern. Let me say in all fairness that of all the
overseas companies, the transnational corporations, your American corporations or the
majority of them have, in comparison with the others, certainly been willing to do much
more to bring about certain forms of change and of justice within their economic
structure. But having said that, I believe that these are by far inadequate to meet the real
problem in the country.
[00:59:24]
And I know that the argument of the corporations are that theirs is an economic interest
and that the political aspect of the problem is not something which they should be asked
to deal. In our situation in South Africa, I do not think that that argument is valid any
longer because of the serious nature of the crisis of the injustice which there is. And
therefore, I had hoped that there would be more meaningful measures which have been
taken, and pressures put upon the South African government by your transnational
corporations in conjunction with your South African business in order to do that. And
that can be done; especially now that the economy of the country is in such a very, very
fluid and sensitive state.
[01:00:15]
I sincerely hope that it will be possible. But let me say immediately that as far as the
politically conscious majority of the black opinion in South Africa is concerned, the
feelings are very strong that in view of the senior political crisis in the country and the
longing for liberation, that they would certainly see as the first option divestment where
possible. It is not because they want to harm the country. It is not because they want to
harm the infrastructure. It is not because they do not want to see that blacks have an equal
and full share in the economic advance and development of the country. But it is because
of the fact that they are saying, "We first have to deal with the basic and fundamental
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problem of injustice; namely, the political one. Once we've resolved that, then certainly
we can attend to a meaningful economic growth in the country."
Q: Could you tell us more about what specific things the Council of Churches does in
South Africa? Do you see it as a body that can continue what the Christian Institute tried
to do? And also, do you fear being banned yourself any longer, or does your position in
any sense protect you to be free to speak freely?
DONALD TYE: Would you describe what the Council of Churches does. And do you
see any repercussions from what you're doing now back in South Africa? And how does
your position protect you?
[01:01:47]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: As far as the Council of Churches is concerned, with regard to the–
I'm not referring to the other aspect, but with regard to the struggle for liberation in South
Africa, the Council of Churches has set up in the course of the last number of years a
form of support for the families of political prisoners where every month an amount
ranging between 80 rand and 100 rand a month is paid out to 800 families of political
prisoners. We wish that that amount could be much more, but we are not able to raise
more to give to them because the majority of that money comes from outside of the
country because the white community in South Africa would generally not be willing to
make any contribution.
[01:02:38]
Secondly, we've set up an emergency fund to make provision, first of all, for the cost of
funerals, make provision for a grant to a family where the breadwinner has been shot and
killed, assisting medical aid, provide legal defense, help fathers and mothers where
children are being charged and their cases are being heard and the trials held sometimes
long distances from their homes, to make available transport so that they can be there
where their children appear in court.
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In our emergency fund, we have also made provision for gathering the information on all
forms of torture, of detentions, of the problems which arise for families if children, for
instance, just disappear, to see what we can do to help such families.
[01:03:35]
In addition to that, we have embarked on a program where we're looking at an alternative
form of education for those children who increasingly will not be able or willing to
receive any regular form of black education. We're deeply concerned about the fact that
there may be a generation of students, of three, four years, five years, who for that period,
when other children are normally at school or at university, completing either their school
education or the university training, that they, because of the situation in the country, are
denied that opportunity. And we're desperately trying to see what we can do to set up
such alternative forms of education. We do not know whether the government will allow
it. It may be that the government will deny us that opportunity. But at least we can try.
[01:04:31]
In addition to that, we try to mobilize the feelings and the support of the worldwide
Christian community with the situation in South Africa. We've divided the country in
seven crisis zones. We have appointed four fieldworkers where we receive regular reports
for what is happening in those areas so that we are in a position to judge, hopefully, much
more effectively and correctly what is happening in the country than just to depend upon
news reports which in many respects are unreliable. And this information we try to make
available to all concerned people and groups and organizations who wish to be informed.
END ms113.0036
BEGIN ms113.0037
[00:00:02]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: We are actively cooperating with the Catholic Bishops' Conference,
with bodies like the Black Sash, with the black community in trying to see what we can
do to give them the necessary support. And that is the reason why, as general secretary, I
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have tried to make my contribution in my visit, for instance, to the States, and from here
to Canada.
[00:00:29]
With regard to the question of what this could entail by way of possible actions against
me, I'm aware that the stand of the Council and of myself against divestment, in favor of
civil disobedience, and other opinions which I've expressed could lay me open to a
similar charge as that under which Dr. Allan Boesak is charged, and under the Subversion
of the Internal Security Act and where he has to appear in court on November 6th. As you
may know, Dr. Allan Boesak is the president of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches, and is due to appear in court in Cape Town, or in Malmesbury near Cape
Town, on November 6th. He has been charged on subversion for three counts – one, for
his stand on divestment; secondly, for him supporting the whole call for a consumer
boycott of white businesses; and thirdly, for the support of your school boycott. And if
that could happen to him, it could certainly equally happen to me.
[00:01:31]
So I do not know what the outcome of that may be. But in view of the fact that the
situation is so serious, I feel that that's the least that I can do, to inform concerned people
about what is happening for the sake of minimizing the violence and the bloodshed in the
country and bringing about what I believe to be a more just dispensation. [applause]
DONALD TYE: Yes, ma'am?
[00:02:05]
Q: Two questions. Can you tell us anything about a commission made up of several
American professors and others led by a Professor Peter Broger and its relationship to the
government in South Africa, firstly. And secondly, what do you make of the meeting
between white business leaders and the ANC leaders earlier?
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DONALD TYE: Would you, sir, describe– the first question we'll start with. Would you
describe the commission led by Peter Broger and its relationship to the political issues in
South Africa? And then when that's through, then we'll ask the second question.
[00:02:44]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: I do not have enough information to evaluate or to assess what the
outcome of that could be. If I know more of what exactly is entailed, what is in mind, and
what they hope to achieve, then it is possible to assess it. All that I wish to say with
regard to any such an effort, regardless of whether it comes from the United States or any
other part of the world, I think there are two or three primary conditions which have to be
met before any such a meeting or any such a venture could be seen to be meaningful or
successful.
[00:03:21]
First of all, that if such a group of people coming to south Africa does not put themselves
in touch with the relevant black leadership in the trade unions, in the UDF, in the other
bodies, in the women's organizations, amongst the students and elsewhere, there is no
point in trying to gain their information from the other sources and believe that that is
going to be in any way reliable and meaningful.
[00:03:51]
And secondly, I believe it is of vital importance that, for the information that they wish to
have, that they should certainly not rely themselves purely on the press, purely on your
government sources, or purely on the sources of your white community. And therefore,
we would gladly place ourselves at the disposal of any individual or organization who
would wish to come to the offices of the SACC. Because there we would be able to share
with them in depth with the information of what is happening in the country. And not
only with regard to the facts, but also with regard to putting them in touch with people
themselves who have been the victims, the victims of police brutality, of army brutality,
the victims, for instance, children and mothers. We have 700, 800 children in Soweto
simply being grabbed by the police, thrown in prison for two nights, and then released
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after that. To experience something of that and to understand something of the agony and
the pain and then the anger on the part of the mothers and fathers to say, "What on earth
is happening? Why is this a way in which people are acting against our children?" And
we would gladly wish to do that.
It's only that personal experience where you are faced, where you are confronted with the
agony and the pain and the anger and the feelings of the people, only then that you begin
to realize what in fact apartheid is doing to our whole society.
Q: The second question is, what do you make of the meeting between business leaders
and the ANC earlier this week?
DONALD TYE: What do you make, sir, of the meeting between the ANC and the
business leaders? And would you describe, please, what the ANC is.
[00:05:46]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: The ANC is the banned political organization, African National
Congress, which was banned in 1960. From 1912 to 1960, when in 1912, the African
National Congress was established, it was a perfectly legal organization. It had as its
central goal equal and meaningful political rights which the whites enjoyed. It took a very
strong stand in favor of peaceful change. Its leader Albert Lutuli, before his death, was a
very strong exponent of the whole concept of peaceful change. In every respect, the ANC
advocated fundamental change without violence. For 48 years.
[00:06:34]
During that 48 years, as far as I know, there was not a single church in South Africa
which as a church body ever gave any sign of recognition or of support of this body. And
that is why if people in South Africa, if they wax eloquently about peaceful change, my
first question to them would be, Where were your voices when those who struggled for
peaceful change asked for it in vain?
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The ANC was banned in 1960 and went underground and formed its military arm,
Umkhonto we Sizwe, stating clearly that it was forced to turn to arms because of the
increasing repression on the part of the system. The ANC has been operating outside
South Africa, has grown in strength inside South Africa, especially during the last
number of years. Surveys which have been undertaken have proved that the ANC has the
support of certainly two-thirds of the black community of South Africa in its goals and
aims. Perhaps not necessarily in its methods, but certainly in its goals and aims.
[00:07:59]
The headquarters of the ANC at the present moment are in Lusaka. Recently, a number of
top businessmen decided to send a mission to Lusaka in order to consult with the ANC on
their future vision of South Africa. The fact that your business community – in this case it
was mainly English- and Jewish-speaking businessmen, because the Afrikaans-speaking
community was not willing to accompany them – the fact that they decided to do so, I
think, was an implicit proof that the business community looked at the future of the
country and said to themselves, if they did not say it to others, "We have got to look to
the future of the country. We have got to start negotiating with those who may be in a
position of the ones who are going to decide the political future of the country. And those
ones are certainly no longer in Pretoria; they are elsewhere."
[00:09:10]
The outcome of that was interesting from the viewpoint of the businessmen, in which
they felt a very sympathetic response, although a very clear difference of opinion on a
number of matters. They were impressed by the very, very well-informed way in which
the ANC was informed about the situation in South Africa. They were impressed by the
arguments which were used, by the stand which was taken by the ANC leadership, by the
indications of what the ANC felt was necessary in order to bring about fundamental
change.
I do not know whether there's any other further outcome to that, but I believe that paved
the way for the Progressive Federal Party to go two weeks afterwards also to visit the
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ANC and to see whether it would be possible to come to an understanding of the political
future of the country.
[00:10:06]
Then a number of Afrikan students from Stellenbosch wanted also to go and visit the
ANC. Under the leadership of a white minister of the white Dutch Reformed Church in
Stellenbosch, where upon PW Botha immediately clamped down and removed their
passports and denied them the opportunity to go to Lusaka.
[00:10:28]
I think that was a clear indication of the growing fear on the part of the government; that
the ANC was gaining in such power and popularity that it was time simply to call a halt. I
do not believe that is going to make any substantial difference, because there is no
possibility of the political future of South Africa to be decided without the ANC being
meaningfully included in all the negotiations. It is not possible. And anybody who is
going to try to do that is going to meet with failure after failure.
DONALD TYE: Sir, over here, on the far right, please.
Q: In September, the US Secretary of State George Shultz justified the administration's
policy of constructive engagement by saying this was necessary to maintain American
influence with white South Africa which held the key to change. Can you comment on
that statement? Can you tell us how the black majority refused constructive engagement?
DONALD TYE: Would you comment on Secretary of State's Shultz's policy of
constructive engagement, please.
BEYERS NAUDÉ: Yes, gladly. It is neither constructive, nor meaningful engagement.
It is destructive from the viewpoint of our struggle for liberation, and it is not going to be
an engagement, but it's certainly going to be a confrontation, which will leave us in a
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situation much more serious and severe than we are at the present moment. And let me
explain why.
[00:12:12]
Because the Reagan administration has time and again stated that what it is trying to do is
in order to assist the white government to bring about meaningful reform. How long has
the policy of constructive engagement been pursued in South Africa? Four years? Five
years? Looking back on that period, what in fact has it produced? From the viewpoint of
the black community, further repression, greater anger, more resistance, less meaningful
involvement with a view to a solution of justice. In fact, it has gone further. It has clearly
strengthened the hands of the government of PW Botha to know that when there is a
crisis and when the crunch comes, they in the last sense can continue to depend on the
support of the Reagan administration.
[00:13:28]
The same argument and the same conviction holds with regard to the British government.
And that is why when reluctantly your President came to at least recognize the need
under pressure for certain limited form of sanctions, the Commonwealth was able to force
Maggie Thatcher at least to accept the same.
[00:13:55]
But I have to say this, friends – and I say this with a deep love for the United States and
for much which I deeply respect in your society, in your life, in your outlook – I think
you should be aware of the fact that the feelings of anger and of bitterness in the hearts of
millions of blacks, not only towards the policy of constructive engagement, but also
towards the Americans as such, in the hearts of millions of blacks, those feelings run very
deep and very strong as negative feelings of the lack of the necessary support.
I know that you may respond by saying, "Yes, but please, they should distinguish
between those of us who disagree." I understand that. But from their viewpoint, most of
what they experience coming from the United States is a clear, visible sign of the support
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of the policy which they feel is a strengthening of PW Botha's position in order to
entrench apartheid further and stronger.
[00:15:21]
And when that is further strengthened by the visit of somebody like Jerry Falwell, who
comes to South Africa, who is given wide publicity, has an audience with a state
president, and who belongs along two journalists who are given the permission to go and
interview Nelson Mandela, which is not given to anybody else, and then comes back with
a report which cannot be identified, and cannot be pursued to be seen to what degree it's
been correct, because these were from notes, and Nelson Mandela is not in a position to
respond to say whether in fact he did say what he said and he did say it in the context in
which it was published in the Washington Times, then you get the anger of the black
community and they say, "If this is what we receive on the part of those who comes in the
name of the government of the United States, we don't want them."
[00:16:16]
Please, friends, for the sake of America's wellbeing and honor and good name, do not
export these convictions and these kind of actions to South Africa. We don't want them
and we don't need them. [applause]
AUDIENCE: Is the Reverend opposed to direct investment in black housing, education
and social services? And also, what advice would he have for a young South African
who's facing military service and is opposed to apartheid?
DONALD TYE: Are you opposed to direct investment in social services, sir? And also,
what comments would you have to a young South African who's facing military service?
[00:17:15]
BEYERS NAUDÉ: I should say that as far as the SACC's concerned, we've made it
very clear that we have never been opposed to any meaningful investment in social
services, in housing, in the promotion of education of your blacks in order to train them
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and equip them for their position of leadership. But the problem was in the past, that is
not what investment was all about. Investment was there in order to gain more profit, and
the profits then to be again taken out of South Africa, or many of them. Whereas, there
was very little of that concern in order to promote that. It was only when the pressures
started being applied that all of a sudden these interests came there to be. But certainly,
we need every form of support with regard to what is meaningful in order to promote the
whole process of liberation.
[00:18:08]
The second question, conscription. During the period of my banning of seven years, I
embarked upon a service of pastoral counseling of many people, one at a time. I could
never see more than one person at a time. And I spent many hours with many young
people – I'm talking about young whites – who were deeply troubled about the whole
situation of conscription and who felt that to them it was a matter of conscience whether
they should proceed. I had to point out to them that basically there were three options:
One was to undertake the military service and face the consequences for themselves,
whether they could do that or not. The second was to refuse to do so and face a six-year
sentence in prison. The third was to leave the country.
[00:19:07]
I never felt that I had the right to say to a young person, "Go to prison." How dare I do
that? I never felt that I had the right to tell somebody, "Leave the country." What I did do
was that I said to them, "If you feel that you can serve and enter and do your national
service with the full consequences of what that entails, calling you up at some stage into a
black township where you may be called upon to shoot a young black, it's up to you to
decide what you have to do."
[00:19:50]
The result is, of the whole situation in South Africa with regard to conscription, that
many young whites have left the country. We don't know how many. And they're
continuing to leave. I don't condemn them, I don't blame them. Because many of them
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have said, "We are not prepared to waste six years of our precious young lives in jail, and
that for nothing." Those who have decided and opted to go to jail, I have said, "I deeply
respect you." Because I do not believe that this is a waste of time. Although I understand
that there will be those who say, "We are not prepared to do that."
[00:20:36]
But it has created a tremendous problem. And that is why there was a new group which
started a year ago of which I am one of the patrons, called the End Conscription
Campaign, a campaign to call upon the government and the authorities to say, "Stop the
whole system of conscription. Allow young people to choose freely. Then to form an
alternative service and not to go into the army." In any case, not as long as apartheid has
to be defended. But it has created a tremendous agony and struggle of conscience in the
minds of many, many young whites in South Africa.
And I'm afraid that that is part of the whole terrible tragedy of our country, where a
situation is being created where thousands of young people are being asked to defend the
indefensible.
DONALD TYE: Yes, sir, in the yellow shirt, right there? Or ma'am, I'm sorry.
AUDIENCE: What role do you see Chief Gatsha Buthelezi and Inkatha playing in your
integration struggle there?
BEYERS NAUDÉ: The question is, what is happening with regard to Chief Gatsha
Buthelezi and Inkatha. Inkatha is the movement, the liberation movement of Chief
Buthelezi. I'll explain.
[00:22:01]
May I explain for those of you who may perhaps not have the necessary information that
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi is the hereditary chief of the Zulu Tribe of South Africa,
which is the largest single black tribe in South Africa, with approximately five-and-a-half
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million Zulu followers? He has established a number of years ago what he termed a
liberation movement called Inkatha in order to build up the sense of cultural pride and
service in the Zulu community.
[00:22:36]
Recently, there have been a number of very painful and deeply regrettable clashes of
followers of Inkatha in Natal between them [OMISSION]
DONALD TYE: –behalf of the Ford Hall Forum, we'd like to thank Reverend Naudé.
[applause]
END OF RECORDING
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�
Dublin Core
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
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Ford Hall Forum
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English
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
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0:59:00
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MS113.0036-0037
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Beyers Naudé's speech at the Ford Hall Forum, "South Africa," Parts 1 and 2 (audio recording and transcript)
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20 October 1985
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Reverend Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner and General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, discusses the future of apartheid in South Africa.
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Ford Hall Forum
Naudé, Beyers
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Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0036-0037
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English
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MP3
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Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Apartheid -- South Africa
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Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
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Copyright Ford Hall Forum. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Black history
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
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82eac4c18051fbb6d78a9464c7081cb5
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New American Gazette: Transcript of Pete Seeger Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: New American Gazette: First Amendment Award Honoring Pete Seeger at Ford Hall
Forum.
Recording Date: May 15, 1988
Speakers: Pete Seeger, Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Item Information: New American Gazette: “First Amendment Award Honoring Pete Seeger,”
at Ford Hall Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, item 0082) Moakley
Archive, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1988 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum event that honored Pete Seeger, a singer-songwriter and
activist, with the Forum’s First Amendment Award. Seeger sang songs while discussing the
Great Peace March and the value of the First Amendment. The forum was recorded and
broadcast on the New American Gazette radio program on January 8, 1989. The program was
introduced by host Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
Transcript Begins
ANNOUCER: From Boston, the Ford Hall Forum presents an archive edition of the New
American Gazette with guest host, Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: When singer, songwriter and activist Pete Seeger first
addressed the Ford Hall Forum the Vietnam War was just emerging as a major issue. Student
demonstrations had only begun. Lyndon Johnson was president. Martin Luther King was at the
center of the Civil Rights Movement and Ronald Reagan was best known as the host of Death
Valley Days. It was 1967. On that occasion Mr. Seeger touched on many issues of the day, the
US War in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and his concern for the environment.
[00:00:54]
When he returned to the Forum last spring to accept the First Amendment Award he was still
fighting many of the same issues, still struggling and still singing, still smiling that enigmatic
grin in the face of adversity. Pete Seeger has always given voice to the causes he believed in,
Civil Rights, labor unions, disarmament, the environment, and an end to apartheid. The Pete
Seeger we know could not exist without the freedoms of the First Amendment.
Speaking today on the value of the First Amendment and leading a spirited forum crowd in a
rousing rendition of “Amazing Grace,” while sharing his visions for the future of humanity is
Pete Seeger.
(applause)
[00:01:54]
PETE SEEGER: I’ll be speaking some prose later on but I thought I’d sing a few little poems
here.
(applause)
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
[00:02:07]
Partly to, I guess, put myself at ease. Some of these songs you know perhaps.
SEEGER: (sings) How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin
When I think of the places my get up has been
Old age is golden, so I've heard said
But sometimes I wonder as I crawl into bed
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup
My eyes on the table until I wake up
As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself
Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?
But though nations are warring and business is vexed
I'll still stick around to see what happens next
How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin
And think of the places my get up has been
When I was young, my slippers were red
I could kick up my heels right over my head
When I was older my slippers were blue
But still I could dance the whole night thru
Now I am older, my slippers are black
I huff to the store and I puff my way back
But never you laugh, I don't mind at all
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
I'd rather be huffing than not puff at all.
ALL: (singing) How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin
And think of the places my get up has been
SEEGER: (sings) I get up each morning and dust off my wits
Open the paper and read the obits
If I'm not there, I know I'm not dead
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed
ALL: (singing) How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin
And think of the places my get up has been
(applause)
[00:05:11]
SEEGER: [reads] Three, four thousand years ago some fellow with a beard and sandals
probably, put this set of lyrics together. All I did was put a tune to it and add one line, one and a
half lines.
SEEGER: (sings) To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
ALL: (singing) There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
SEEGER: (sings) A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
A time to laugh, a time to weep
ALL: (singing) To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
SEEGER: (sings) A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
ALL: (singing)To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
SEEGER: (sings) A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
ALL: (singing)To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
[00:07:35]
SEEGER: Some people are singing very well. But there’s—I can see, even though I’m not good
at seeing that some people are—(laughter)—Preserving their academic objectivity.
(laughter)
SEEGER: (sings) A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of peace, (all singing) I swear it's not too late
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
ALL: (singing) To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
[00:08:31]
SEEGER: Oh, sing it again
ALL: (singing) To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven.
(applause)
[00:09:06]
SEEGER: I count myself one of the luckiest musicians in the world, one of luckiest people in
the world. You’re quite right. I would have been jailed—in jail if it hadn’t been for the First
Amendment. In 1955 I was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee. And I
didn’t cooperate with them. I simply said, “I think these are questions no American should be
forced to answer, especially under threat of reprisal if you give the wrong answer.” And every
time they asked me another question I said, “Same answer.”
So after three-quarters of an hour they said, “We don’t consider this a good answer and you may
be cited for contempt of Congress. And I think I shrugged.
(applause)
[00:09:54]
I—well—I—they said, “Aren’t you courageous?” I was just doing what came naturally, I feel. I
had a good upbringing, some wonderful parents and grandparents. And even when we disagreed
we had a right to argue. Had some good schools and good teachers I went to. So I was very, very
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
lucky. And I had—my own family stuck up for me. And then I had friends who could help pay
for the lawyer. It took about $15,000 dollars. Not to—for the lawyer but so much as all the
printing of the court records and so on, the transcripts and everything. It takes a huge amount of
money. I didn’t know, justice isn’t cheap.
And—but I was acquitted by the appeals court. I was sentence to a jail for a year. Only spent
four hours behind bars while my lawyer was getting bail money. I learned a folk song while I
was there.
[00:10:59]
They gave—handed out a lunch of a baloney sandwich and an apple. And the guy next to me
was opening his sandwich and singing: (sings) “If that judge believes what I say, I’ll be leaving
for home today.” Guy next to him says, “Not if he sees your record you won’t.”
(laughter)
No, I’m very, very lucky. And I made living my whole life, my kids never went hungry. And in
the little town where I live, a conservative little upstate New York community, 13,000 people,
the head of the local hardware store, I was building a house for myself, around that, for my
family, which we lived in, have lived in all these years. And he said, “Well, young feller, I don't
know what your opinion is but it’s America. You got a right to your opinion.” And I know he
voted for Goldwater. But he is what I call an old-fashioned conservative.
[00:12:00]
Yes, all of us are lucky, every single one of us for having—thank Thomas Jefferson and Madison
and the others who insisted on putting that First Amendment in. You know—I guess you know
from the history of the Constitution, that this group of rather extraordinary people, they’re mostly
wealthy men, slave owners from the South and merchants from the North. But some of them
were scholars like Madison and some of them were philosophers like Franklin. And after arguing
bitterly, bitterly, they made compromise after compromise and had checks and balances all
through that.
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
They weren’t able to get a Bill of Rights written into the Constitution. It couldn’t be agreed on.
So Madison and Jefferson and some of the others said, “Well, we’ll see about that. And they
got—when it came to the states it had to be ratified. And state after state said, “We won’t ratify it
unless you promise to put a Bill of Rights on it right away.” So within a year it got the ten
additional amendments.
[00:13:10]
And that first one I guess you could say was the most important one. I guess some judge said, “If
there is any one, fixed star in our firmament it’s that First Amendment.” I just kind of did not say
the soul of the—that extraordinary piece of paper, a very conservative piece of paper in many
ways. It was not a revolutionary document—trying to see if they wouldn’t need to have
revolutions again.
I’ve been to countries where they do have censors and they didn’t have—I sang in Spain once. I
was—I never thought I’d sing in Spain under Francisco Franco but some people said, “It would
encourage us if you’d come over.” So I sang. One censor had to pass every song that I was going
to sing, the complete words of every song. A different censor passed the words, which were
going to printed in the program, although they’re the same songs. Because it was printed the law
said that a different bureau was in charge of anything printed.
[00:14:17]
These two censors didn’t always agree. I could sing something but couldn’t be printed. Or
something could be printed but I couldn’t sing.
(laughter)
And it was a joke, a terrible joke, a 40-year joke until Franco was gone and they abolished those
rules. I went back to Spain a few day—years later and was able to sing any song I wanted to. I’ve
been, I’ve sung in about 35 other countries of the world, never had anything—experience like
that no matter where I went, anybody telling me what to sing. Of course, there’s always
discussion of what to sing but nobody telling me what to sing. And—
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
[00:15:01]
This is really what I’m—thought I’d talk about because let’s not kid ourselves, I don’t think a
single one of us would want to see such freedom of expression that our children or we would
actually be endangered. And it’s real, big, hot arguments now. I’ve censored things. Well, I’ve
been an editor. I don't know really where to draw a line between a censor and an editor. I’ve put
out books of folk songs. And when I came across some of the old folk songs that were very racist
I didn’t put them in, or changed a word here that even—you rarely see, “Oh, Susanna,” put in as
it was originally made, “I’s gwyne to Alabama.” You say, “I’m going to Alabama.”
But the person who really put me onto that was Woodie Guthrie. Woodie had been raised in a
racist atmosphere, a small town in Oklahoma. His father once precip—participated in a lynching.
But Woodie cut loose from his father and went out to California, was singing his Okie songs on a
little radio station. I think he was paid one dollar day, which was pretty good pay in those days.
And he sang an old minstrel show full of that so-called darkie dialect.
[00:16:43]
And he got a letter from a black man the next day who said, “Mr. Guthrie, I believe you mean
well but—or else I wouldn’t bother writing. But I wonder if you realize that that song you sang,”
and he identified it, “is deeply offensive to me and a lot of others like me.” And he went into
detail why. Well, Woodie read the man’s letter on the air after he received it. He said, “Now,
folks,” he says, “I just read you the man’s letter. Now I got in my hand that song I sang to you
the other day. I want you to listen carefully.” (ripping noise)
(laughter)
My guess is we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t in some way use our power to editorialize. If you
had a three-year old girl do you start discussing what rape is with her at that age? No, you wait a
few years. She has to—she must learn sooner or later but you don’t introduce it—I’ve got a
seven-year old grandson who is part African. Am I going to go into detail what a lynching is for
this seven-year old boy?
[00:18:13]
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
And so I say that—I once wrote a letter to the editor of the Progressive magazine and said,
“Don’t you realize all editors are basically censors?” You know what A.J. Liebling said when he
wrote the book about the press. He said, “There’s freedom of the press for the person who owns
it.”
(laughter)
Oh, he didn’t go for that at all. He said, “Look,” he said, “censor is something the government
does. I’m an editor.” He didn’t agree with me. But you know what—you remember Justice
Holmes’ famous line was, “Freedom of speech doesn’t give you a right to shout ‘Fire’ in a
crowded theater.” And this world today is full of ever more crowded theaters. What are we going
to do?
[00:19:08]
I think we want to try not to be hypocritical. Let’s face it. We’ve got some very hard decisions to
make. There are some contradictions we face. We don’t want children to have their lives warped
by the wrong kind of information at the wrong time. On the other hand, I don’t think, frankly, a
censor is the way to handle it. Frank Zappa, a musician out on the West Coast is fervently
fighting hard to see that they don’t label phonograph records with the letter R and PG and all
that. It’s kind of silly anyway.
You see the cartoon, the record store owner has got one section full of the R records and over
here the PG records. Nobody is over there buying them. All the people are at the other end of the
store. He said, “Boy! Sales have never been so good.”
(laughter)
[00:20:17]
We want to see freedom of information. We wouldn’t want to see information on how people
could unlock our cars when we lock them on the street. That’s why I sang, “Turn. Turn. Turn.” I
think what’s true and false is often, depends on when—let me take a minute or two to tell you
about one of the extraordinary achievements of the last few years in America, which I don’t
think was widely enough publicized. It was such an extraordinary achievement that I wish it had
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
been on the—in the headlines every single day, for nine months as this group of 500 or more
people walked from California to Washington. They called themselves the Great Peace March.
In February 1986 a thousand people had been enticed of this thing by some—a lot of Hollywood
hype, too much. And they found—got—walked for a couple weeks. And they are on the desert,
camped out near Barstow, California when the organization that got them all together went
bankrupt. Their support vehicles were taken by the creditors. There they were, camped out in the
desert. Five hundred went home. Said, “We can’t, this is a fiasco. No hope.”
[00:21:43]
The other 500 said, “Somehow we’re going to make it.” And they got on the telephone. Some of
them mortgaged their homes or their cars or something. And two weeks later they started off. It
wasn’t the money that was the horrendous problem. They woke up to the realization they
disagreed more than they could have believed. They had devoutly religious people on this march,
Catholics, Protestants, Jews. They had devoutly anti-religious people. They had people who
called themselves anarchist and people who called themselves Marxists and all sorts of people.
They had gay lib male and gay lib female. And they had families. There was a school for 40 kids
that had—went—followed the whole trip, kindergarten through high school. And the older
people were always saying to the younger people, “Can’t you dress a little more respectably?
We’re trying to prove that peace is not something to be frightened of and we walk in there
looking like a bunch of kooks.”
[00:22:46]
And next day a bunch of men all walked—oh, yes, they said, “Can’t the women wear dresses, for
example.” The next day a bunch of men all walked wearing dresses.
(laughter)
They ended up having to have three chow lines, carnivores, veggies, and macro biotics.
(laughter)
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
The made a number of very important decisions, though. One of them was, they said, “Let’s have
frequent elections.” They voted for their governing body. And every week or two they’d have
another election in case they changed their minds. Even more important they said, “Let’s not use
Robert’s Rules of Order, unless we have to. Let’s try and make decisions by consensus. You
know it’s, Robert’s Rules speed things up but we’ve got a lot of time to talk.” And they did. They
talked and walked and they walked and they talked for nine months.
[00:23:45]
And they didn’t—weren’t able to make all the decision by consensus but most of them. But the
most important decision they made, “Let’s not turn each other off. Let’s agree that we’ll never
stop listening to each other no matter how mad we get at each other.” You know, that one thing
was the most important of all because it was hard to break them up. If they had ever gotten so
mad they would talk to each other, then a provocateur could have easily split them up into two or
more groups. They never would have got to Washington. But they agreed no matter how mad
they got at each other they would always listen.
Curiously enough one of the most effective things was a young German who, about threequarters of the way through the trip walked around with a piece of tape on this mouth. He could
only eat by putting a straw through his mouth. And they’d say, “Heinrich, what’s that for?” He’s
show them a card. I will not take this tape off until I see at least 100 people walking together. We
are too spread out.”
[00:24:45]
He forced the issue to be discussed. Some people liked to get up early. They would walk. Some
people walked later. They were spread out over ten miles along the road. It didn’t look like a
great peace march. Finally, after a month of arguing they came to a compromise. They would
bunch up in the cities but they’d stay spread out in the countryside. And curiously enough when
they came into Washington, even the transvestites start wearing normal clothes.
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
And I think that just as they got to Washington that you and I and our families have got a chance
that this human race will survive and that life on earth will survive if we can work our way out of
some of the contradictions.
[00:25:41]
The biggest contradiction right now is one that I’m really not supposed to be entitled to talk
about. I’m not a scientist. I’ve joked a lot about science. And said a long time ago people had
more time before they inven—had so many labor saving devices.
(laughter)
My father, though, who was an old scholar, the last few years of his life he was almost hipped on
this subject. He said, “I’m concerned with value judgements. How do people make value
judgements? What’s good and what’s bad?” And then he realized, he said, “I realized that most
scientists insist that science is neutral. There is no such thing as good or bad science. Science is
science. It’s the jobs done with science that could be good or bad.”
[00:26:41]
And most scientists say it’s nothing but good to have an ever-increasing store of empirical
knowledge. “Ah,” said my father, “if the world were destroyed by the misuse of that knowledge,
could you then say it was a good thing to have been a scientist?” It throws them for a loop. “You
have no right to ask that question. Ask it of anybody but don’t ask it of me.” He insisted on
asking it. And I think he was right to ask it. To me it seems a logical question.
It’s true. Nothing in this world is good or bad but the thinking makes it so. That’s what Hamlet
said to Horatio and I agree. But we’re thinking people. I think anyone of us has a right to think
that science is bad if it puts us in danger of our lives. Einstein himself is supposed to have said,
“Ach! Mankind is not ready for it.” Does that mean that E = MC2 is bad science? Perhaps. And I
tell you how I work it out. I decide that science out of sequence is, is bad.
[00:27:51]
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
Now normally in any project you want to have a sequence of steps. You get the—you plan what
you want to do. You number the steps you are going to take. You assemble the tools. You
assemble the materials. You do the job. You test that the job is properly done. Now thalidomide
and the Dalkon Shield are two recent examples of science out of sequence. They put some on the
market before sufficient testing.
Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut thinks that there is no hope for us because we have too big brains. I
guess some of you read his book Galapagos. But I think that’s like saying there’s no hope
because we’re—some people are over sexed or there’s no hope because some people are
avaricious and power hungry. He’s saying there’s no hope because people are curious. And I’m
convinced that if this world survives it will be because we face up to this contradiction.
ANNOUNCER: From Boston you have been listening to an archive edition of the New
American Gazette presented by the Ford Hall Forum.
[00:29:17]
SEEGER: There’s hardly a scientist in the world who will go along with this. They say science
is neutral. I sent a copy of this little idea to George Wald, the Nobel Prize winning biologist. And
he sent me a copy of a paper he’d written some years ago. He say, “I used to think I knew the
answer to that question.” And he sent me this paper. He implied that now he’s not sure.
He said, “Is science amoral, the changing ethics of science? I happen to be one of those scientist
who think there is something wrong with napalming peasants. And a few years ago began to
wonder from what base, from what vantage point may a scientist make moral and political
judgements?” And that is what I want to talk about today. In a sense it is my religion, the holy
secular religion of one scientist. Mankind has been engaged throughout history in a ceaseless
struggle to know. Science is a systematic attempt to understand all reality.
[00:30:25]
Reality covers a very wide province, not only such simple things as stones falling and the
structures of atomic nuclei but more complicated things such as poets writing sonnets and people
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
praying. Some of those more complicated things I doubt science will ever understand. I used to
think a few years ago, and this question is more current now—I’d find myself in a room full of
physicists and raise the question, should one do everything one can. That seemed to be a new
question then that very few persons had asked. And as soon as you asked it, it seemed as though
to answer, in most person’s mind was, “Yes, of course. Do everything you can.” But the right
answer clearly is, of course, not.
Among all the things one can do, one needs to make a choice of the things that it is good to do,
those things that satisfy the needs and goals and aspirations of one’s society. Who is to make
those judgments?
[00:31:25]
One of our most serious troubles now is that we’ve grown used to having those judgments made
the wrong way. We’ve grown used to having those judgments made almost entirely by the
producers of the technology, by those who see a way to make a profit from it, achieve increased
power through it, or perhaps increase status through it. One should listen carefully to all such
persons. But it is of the utmost importance that those decisions cease to be made by the
producers and begin to be made by those who will have to live with the products, you and me.
I’d mentioned in my letter to George, “What are you going to do about recombinant DNA?” I
don’t really like what I read of Jeremy Rifken. He seems awful, kind of tunnel vision. And I
suspect all tunnel vision whether in scientists or housewives or musicians. But I think he’s gone
onto to something. What would Hitler do if he knew all about recombinant DNA? Have some
scientists work out a bacteria that would kill every dark-skinned person in the world? I don't
know.
[00:32:41]
George said, “My wife and I fought hard against recombinant DNA as a technology. It could
solve certain important biological problems all of us wanted answered but not in that way, not by
messing up three billion years of evolution. We have three, top operators in this field in our
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15
�MS113.0082 Transcript
department at Harvard, each with his own corporation.” Profit-making corporation, I presume.
Harvard has just patented a mouse. The patent covers that kind of manipulation in all animals.
No doctor can cure a patient unless the patient is willing to admit their sick. The first step in
solving any problem is a admitting there is a problem. And my own little paper said, of course
it’s going to take a lot of time, perhaps hundreds of years, perhaps thousands of years to argue
these questions out properly. But what’s that compared to 16 million years before the next
nemesis planet visits us or five billion years till the sun puts an end to the watery planet. Let’s
argue about it. I believe that only lazy people and bad scientists will shy away from such
arguments.
[00:34:21]
Well, I’ve talked long enough and I thought maybe stopping. How long have I kept on, about 25
minutes? I’m going to sing a couple of songs, different kinds.
I’m going to sing an old hymn. Many of you have heard it before. Maybe you don’t know who—
it was written by a sea captain. Of all things this sea captain was a captain of a slave ship. It was
about 200 years ago. The man had been a rank and file seaman and he rose through the ranks,
become a captain. Now he’s a captain and the owners went into the slave trade. The man’s name
was John Newton. This happened about 100 years ago in the middle of the ocean once he turned
his ship 180 degrees around and took those people back to their homes. He went back to
England, became a preacher. And this is just one of the many hymns he wrote.
[00:35:32]
Arlo Guthrie told me this story. He said, “That man is a friend of mine today. That was a long
time ago but he is a friend of mine because he showed us, we can turn the ship around.”
(applause)
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
Now some people sing this hymn faster than I do. But I do what they call long-meter style, which
is an old-fashioned southern style of singing. No matter how slow we go, don’t stop singing, just
take a new breath and keep on going. No one will know the difference.
[00:36:10]
SEEGER: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
ALL: (singing) Amazing grace.
SEEGER: You’re going too fast.
(laughter)
SEEGER: I’m still on A.
ALL: (singing) Amazing grace,
SEEGER: Where’s the tenors and sopranos?
ALL: (singing) Grace, how sweet—
SEEGER: Where’s the basses? Where the basses and the altos?
ALL: (singing) —the sound
SEEGER: (singing) That saved a wretch like me
ALL: (singing) That saved a wretch—
SEEGER: Where’s the bass part?
ALL: (singing) —Like me.
SEEGER: (singing) I once was lost but now am found
ALL: (singing) I once was lost but now—
SEEGER: Where’s the basses and where’s the altos?
ALL: (singing) I’m found.
SEEGER: (singing) Was blind but now I see.
ALL: (singing) Was blind—
SEEGER: Where’s the bass part?
ALL: (singing) —but now I see.
SEEGER: Shall I be wafted to the sky
ALL: (singing) Shall I be wafted to the sky
SEEGER: On flowery beds of ease
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
ALL: (singing) On flowery beds of ease
SEEGER: While others strive to win the prize
ALL: (singing) While others strive to win the prize
SEEGER: And sail through bloody seas
ALL: (singing) And sail—
SEEGER: Don’t hear those basses.
ALL: (singing) —Through bloody seas.
[00:40:00]
SEEGER: We don’t have quite enough basses. I think it’s because that was in too low a key.
We’re going to raise up a little higher. Let’s try that first verse again. Remember, there’s no such
thing as a wrong note as long as you’re singing.
(applause)
SEEGER: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
ALL: (singing) Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
SEEGER: That saved a wretch like me
ALL: (singing) That saved a wretch like me
SEEGER: I once was lost but now I’m found
ALL: (singing) I once was lost but now I’m found
SEEGER: Was blind but now I see
ALL: (singing) Was blind but now I see.
(applause)
[00:42:27]
SEEGER: Incidentally, I had a whole lot of things I was going to say to you but I didn’t get the
time to say them. I was going to say that, remember Ben Franklin’s great line, “Love your
enemies”. They teach to you your faults.” Remember Rabbi Hillel about 2,000 years ago with
three short lines of wisdom, “If I am not for myself, who will be. If I’m only for myself, what am
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
I? If not now, when?” Remember the English philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. I once saw
him give a lecture when I was at Harvard. He says, “One should try not to speak more clearly
than one thinks.”
(laughter)
This is one I also remember. In 1957 the great Soviet novelist Ilya Ehrenburg was in Buenos
Aires. And a newspaper reporter asked him, “Mr. Ehrenburg, how do you account for the terrible
things that went on under Stalin?” This was only a year after Khrushchev gave his speech about
Stalin. Ehrenburg said, “Well, we found it was easier to get rid of the capitalists than to get rid of
the damn fools.”
(laughter)
[00:44:14]
When you think globally and act locally, sometimes maybe very, very local—E.B. White wrote a
little poem when he had to go away on another trip. And he gave it to his wife.
(sings) The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool defense and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
[00:46:02]
SEEGER: Before I go I’m going to sing the most recent song I’ve been able to put together. The
tune, actually, I’ve had for almost 25 years. I whistle it mostly. About 25 years ago I learned how
to flutter with (whistles). It’s not hard. What you do is pull your tongue back and then you push,
you, well you flatten your tongue so the sides of your tongue touch the sides of your lower teeth
and front of your tongue is the back of your front teeth on the bottom. So, in effect, your tongue
cuts off, all of a sudden, a little bit of air at the bottom. So instead of being this (whistles). You
don’t do like that, because that’s your just brining the middle of your tongue up to the roof of
your mouth.
(laughter)
You keep your tongue far away from the roof of your mouth (whistles). It becomes broad.
[00:46:56]
AUDIENCE: (whistling)
(laughter)
SEEGER: (whistles). Anyway I whistle this tune.
(whistles) I even had an idea for a music video of this.
(laughter)
I sent it, the idea, into Sesame Street but they didn’t reply. I don’t, I don’t know. I called for a
little roly-poly guy who is really a dancer walking down the street whistling this tune maybe
kicking at a garbage can in rhythm as he goes down. And a kid sitting on a stoop sees him and
grins. And the man sticks out his hand and the kid grabs it. And then another kid joins him. By
the time they get to the edge of, end of this one little melody, it only takes 34 seconds I know,
because I timed it, they’ve got three or four kids there.
[00:48:19]
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
All of a sudden they come to one of these little graveyards like you can sometimes see in an old
city like Boston or Philadelphia or New York, in between two brick buildings, there’s a little
graveyard. And the camera zooms in on a grave stone. Maybe says, “Katerina von Trump. Born
18—1790. Died 1795.” The kids look at it and they suddenly grow serious. And the man sings.
(sings) Whistling past a graveyard is not a foolish thing
When all of the world appears to be coming apart at the seam.
And who can tell for sure what’ll be next to go.
Did you ever think that Tricky Dick would leave like he did?
Whistling past a graveyard, I’ll keep on whistling.
And if you want you can whistle along.
For who knows just how many more might like to try the melody
And whistle a similar song.
(whistles)
And whistle a similar song.
[00:49:22]
SEEGER: And now the little guy starts down the street again with the kids. And they’re
whistling this tune. And they turn a corner and suddenly instead of city street there’s the Eiffel
tower there and a bunch of French kids come out to join them. They turn the corner and there’s a
pagoda there and a bunch of Chinese or Japanese kids come out to join them. They turn a corner,
there’s the pyramid of Egypt and some Egyptian kids come out to join them. They turn a corner
and there’ St. Basel’s cathedral, a bunch of Russian kids come out to join them. They turn a
corner there’s a pueblo out in New Mexico. A bunch of Native American kids come out to join
them.
[00:49:57]
All of a sudden there is Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro. And a bunch of black Brazilian
kids come out to join them. Now there’s 50 or 100 kids all gathered around. And now they’re on
the beach. Laurie Wyatt lives over in Northampton helped me write this verse. He did most of it.
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
(sings) Whistling by the seashore upon a windy day.
A look at the breakers trying to drown out my song.
The sea gulls laugh as they glide past
And sand castles all around come tumbling down
Whistling by the seashore, I’ll keep on whistling
And if you want you can whistle along
The ocean may be wide but on the other side
There’s lots of people whistling a similar song.
(whistles)
Oh, you know what? This is what you can do on video. There’s a cutaway to a woman in Japan
in elegant costume playing the Koto (makes sound). And then—
(sings) —whistling a similar song.
There’s a cutaway to a family in Guatemala, all playing one marimba (makes sound).
(sings) Whistling a similar song.
It goes to a European symphony orchestra all in white tie and tails (makes sound)
(sings) Whistling a similar song.
Maybe in India where they have these tuned tea cups (makes sound)
(sings) Whistling a similar song.
[00:51:24]
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
SEEGER: Maybe some steel drums. Lord know what they have. Finally, the last time it’s the
birds in the tree. You can do this if you cut up the tape and scissor it and do tricks with it. And
the birds are all singing (whistles).
(sings) Whistling a similar song.
SEEGER: And the last thing you hear is the ocean wave (makes sound).
Well, if anybody wants to try whistling this tune with me, you’re welcome to try it tonight before
we go home. You’ll find it’s a lot of fun, although people will sometimes look at you and say,
“What you so happy about?” Try it.
(all whistling)
(applause)
MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you. Pete Seeger.
(applause)
[00:53:37]
SEEGER:
(sings) One blue sky above us
One ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more?
SEEGER: And because I love you
ALL: (singing) And because I love you
SEEGER: I’ll give it one more try
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�MS113.0082 Transcript
ALL: (singing) I’ll give it one more try.
SEEGER: To show my rainbow race
ALL: (singing) To show my rainbow race
SEEGER: It's too soon to die.
ALL: (singing) It’s too soon to die.
SEEGER: (sings) Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
Some hope to take the easy way:
Poisons, bombs. They think we need 'em.
Don't you know you can't kill all the unbelievers?
There's no shortcut to freedom.
SEEGER: One blue sky above us
ALL: (singing) One blue sky above us
SEEGER: One ocean lapping all our shore
ALL: (singing) One ocean lapping all our shore
SEEGER: One earth so green and round
ALL: (singing) One earth so green and round
SEEGER: Who could ask for more?
ALL: (singing) Who could ask for more?
SEEGER: And because I love you
ALL: (singing) And because I love you
SEEGER: Give it one more try
ALL: (singing) I’ll give it one more try
SEEGER: Show my rainbow race
ALL: (singing) To show my rainbow race
SEEGER: Too soon to die.
ALL: (singing) It’s too soon to die
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24
�MS113.0082 Transcript
SEEGER: (sings) Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all the mothers and fathers too.
Now's our last chance to learn to share
What's been given to me and you.
ALL: (singing) One blue sky above us
SEEGER: One ocean
ALL: (singing) One ocean lapping all our shores
SEEGER: One earth
ALL: (singing) One earth so green and round
SEEGER: Who could ask
ALL: (singing) Who could ask for more
SEEGER: And because I love you
ALL: (singing) And because I love you
SEEGER: Give it one more try
ALL: (singing) Give it one more try
SEEGER: To show my rainbow race
ALL: (singing) To show my rainbow race
SEEGER: It's too soon to die.
ALL: (singing) It’s too soon to die
[00:56:24]
SEEGER: One blue sky above us
ALL: (singing) One blue sky above us
SEEGER: One ocean
ALL: (singing) One ocean lapping all our shore
SEEGER: One earth
ALL: (singing) One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more
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25
�MS113.0082 Transcript
(applause)
ANNOUCER: You have been listening to an archive edition of the New American Gazette from
Boston’s Ford Hall Forum. The New American Gazette was produced by Deborah Stavro with
post-production engineers Roger Baker, Brian Sabo and Anthony di Bartalo. The New American
Gazette was produced in cooperation with the nation's presidential libraries, the National
Archives and Northeastern University.
To purchase a copy of this program or receive information about the 2006 spring season of the
Forum, please call 617-373-5800 or visit www.fordhallforum.org. Thank you for joining us.
END OF RECORDING
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26
�
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
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Ford Hall Forum
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
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New American Gazette: “First Amendment Award Honoring Pete Seeger,” at Ford Hall Forum [audio recording and transcript]
Date
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15 May 1988
Creator
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Ford Hall Forum
Seeger, Pete
Hunter-Gault, Charlayne
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0082
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English
Type
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MP3
Subject
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Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Folk music
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Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
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Folk singer Pete Seeger receives the Ford Hall Forum’s First Amendment Award. He sang songs while discussing the Great Peace March and the value of the First Amendment. The forum was recorded in 1988 and later broadcast on the New American Gazette radio program on January 8, 1989. The program was introduced by host Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
Ford Hall Forum
Free speech
New American Gazette
-
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Ford Hall Forum
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Description
An account of the resource
The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
Source
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<p>View the <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/cgi/siteview.cgi//researchguides/11">finding aid to the Ford Hall Forum Collection</a> for more information (PDF).</p>
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0:58:40
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<br /><iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/559465293&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe>
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The New American Gazette: Maya Angelou receives the Ford Hall Forum's First Amendment Award [audio recording and transcript]
Date
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16 February 1989
Description
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Charismatic writer, poet and lecturer Maya Angelou addresses the value of the First Amendment with story, song and spirit. The best-selling author of I Know why the Caged Bird Sings reflects on the responsibility to speak for freedom's sake, in this rebroadcast from the Ford Hall Forum archives.
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Ford Hall Forum
Angelou, Maya
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Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0018
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MP3
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Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
United States. -- Constitution. -- 1st Amendment
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Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
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PDF Text
Text
New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: New American Gazette: “An Evening with Robert Frost,” at Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Date: 31 March 1991
Speakers: Marvin Kalb and Robert Frost
Item Information: New American Gazette: “An Evening with Robert Frost,” at Ford Hall
Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, item 0003) Moakley Archive,
Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1991 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum that featured Robert Frost, a Pulitzer Prize winning
American poet. Frost addressed his views of America through readings of his poetry. The forum
was originally recorded in 1961 and rebroadcast as part of the New American Gazette radio
program on March 31, 1991. The radio broadcast is introduced by host Marvin Kalb.
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1
�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Transcript:
ANNOUNCER: From Boston, the Ford Hall Forum presents an archive edition of the New
American Gazette with guest host Marvin Kalb
[00:00:17]
MARVIN KALB: He was the first inaugural poet. Huddled in a large gray overcoat, as John F.
Kennedy was sworn into office, he read an ode to the young leader and to the future of the
country.
New Englanders tried to forget that he was born in San Francisco as they adopted him as one of
their own. Later, a nation would adopt him as the Poet Laureate of America. Robert Frost was
called the Dean of American Poets, a four-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. The language of
his poems speaks volumes. But Frost’s principle legacy was not the tomes of poetry that the
octogenarian left after five decades of writing. It is a particular pride of place, a certain
unconventional wisdom, acute observations of the American landscape and its inhabitants
eloquently expressed in verse and meter.
His appeal was universal. His words spoke to common experiences among us, small movements
observed, deceptively simple things. He was not, however, a simple man. Robert Frost attended
Harvard College and went on to lecture and teach at dozens of institutions of higher learning.
Nor was he the arch conservative his critics claimed. He considered himself more radical in
politics and principles that his detractors, a believer in democratic ideals based on a firm, moral
core.
[00:01:47]
He became an elder statesman traveling to the Soviet Union in 1962 where he exchanged
political views with Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders. Despite his extensive travels
and worldwide adulation, Robert Frost concluded late in his life that the most exciting movement
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in nature is not progress or advancement, but expansion and contraction, the opening and
shutting of the eye, the hand, the heart, the mind.
[00:02:19]
When Robert Frost addressed the Ford Hall Forum in Boston in 1961, he read from his
upcoming book of poems, In the Clearing, which was to be his last. On that day, he shared his
vision of America, and his views on the dawn of a new era. Join us as we remember the poet who
had a lover’s quarrel with the world, Robert Frost.
(applause)
ROBERT FROST: You don’t want to hear me talk politics, but I might say this political thing.
That America is in a strange position in the world now and we're in the position of having to
think a good deal about just where it is and what it is. And I'm going to read you a poem called
“America is Hard to See.” People all trying to see what it is, the world trying to see what it is. I
met an old governor from Lapland, a Finn, not long ago, and he said through a translator,
through an interpreter, he said “In my little country, we have no anxiety because there's no use
having any.” He said, “We understand your anxiety because you're in the responsible position in
the world. Everybody looks in your direction about everything.” Meant Russia. “And if we don’t
know who we are or how important we are, that should tell us that whenever anything—anybody
addresses great things, political things, to anybody in the world, they address it to us.”
[00:04:43]
Maybe the pleasantest way to take it is without thinking too hard, for my part. Another poet I'm
going to name was a lady. Her name was Katharine Lee Bates. And she was a nice poet, and a
fine person, great lady at Wellesley, the great lady of her time at Wellesley. And she had a very
New England story. Her father’s father was a college president and her father was a little
minister down on our Cape. And he died young, and she told me once that she didn't know what
brought her and her sister up, no mother. Kept her mother. She thought the neighbors did it by
leaving things on the porch. It’s what she said after her father died.
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And she wrote that thing called “America the Beautiful” that I hear sung right and left, wherever
I go. And maybe that's a lovely way to take it. It’s a sort of matter of course the way to take it.
You don’t think too politically about it, but it’s just a matter of course. We have acted on the
principle that made us withdraw from the Philippines. You know and I know how long and how
often we've had thoughts of Cuba through the years. It’s a strange interesting history, and how
just we've refrained there.
[00:06:26]
And one of the things that bothers you today is a book such as I handled in somebody else’s
house the other day, it’s called The Shark and the Sardines, I guess, I think it’s sardines for the
rest. All the little nations, it’s by a Guatemalan and somebody that had it in his hands said it’s
subversive. I said, “Let me see it,” but I didn't get a good read of it. But here we're called a shark
to the little sardines of all these other countries when the reproach is as much to them as to us.
Why are they sardines? (laughter and applause)
[00:07:21]
But I accept the reproach to a certain extent. But the thing turns on our investment in those
countries. That's what it turns on. And our investments were wanted. And maybe we invested too
much and too long and too unscrupulously as some, but they were wanted. There was a certain, I
don’t see any good in the world unless I'm helping somebody who’s helping me. That mainly is
my interest. What you might call symbiosis. If I get as much out of it as they get out of it, it’s
better. When I teach or preach or anything else, you know. But there's something else I know
beyond that.
But, it’s great futures ahead of us to come to some relations with the sardines, you know. We
want to get over being shark and we want them to get over being sardines. So isn’t it—and when
you think, you know, when you worry about it all, I said to a Jewish friend of mine that I worried
about little nations, Finland was one of them, and another one was Israel. And he said to me, he’s
a noted explorer, a great friend of mine, he said, “You shouldn’t worry about Israel, you know,
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about our security.” He said, “We never had any except a short time under Solomon.” (laughter)
As for security.
[00:09:09]
And then he said, “And we have no business there anyway. We drove out the Canaanites,” see?
He [inaudible]. A great explorer, he knows all about it. Gets it out of the ground and matches
everything he gets out of the ground with chapter and verse in the Bible. It’s very, very
unassuming.
But this question, see I find too many people being humble about what we are. And if we don’t
know what we are, certainly the Russians do. They look our way about everything. Now, I'll read
this for the fun of it. I had intended sort of to be, you know, just lovely about lovely—a lovely
country, that's what I feel I've been. But I had this come into my head. But now I have with me a
little one that I call “America is Hard to See.” It was in The Atlantic one time under another title.
I keep changing its title. (laughter) It’s about Columbus and it’s a sort of a mystical affair.
Columbus may have worked the wind
A new and better way to Ind
And also proved the world a ball,
But how about the wherewithal?
Not just for scientific news
Had the queen backed him to a cruise.
Remember he had made the test
Finding the east by sailing west.
But had he found it, here he was
Without one trinket from Hormuz
To save the queen from family censure
For her investment in his venture.
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I want you to like my rhymes. (laughter and applause)
There had been something strangely wrong
With every coast he tried along
He could imagine nothing barrener
The trouble was with him, the mariner
He wasn’t off a mere degree
His reckoning was off a sea
And to intensify the drama
Another mariner Da Gama
Came just then sailing into port
From the same general resort,
But with the gold in hand to show for
His claim it was another Ophir.
Had but Columbus known enough
He might have boldly made the bluff
That better than Da Gama’s gold
He had been given to behold
The race’s future trial place,
A fresh start for the human race.
He might have fooled Valladolid.
I once had that, show you how poems get corrected, I once had “He might have fooled them in
Madrid.” And a historian called my attention to the fact they weren't in Madrid that time.
(laughter) So all I had to do was turn it into Valladolid. You see it rhymes the same. That's where
they were.
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[00:13:05]
He might have fooled Valladolid
I was deceived by what he did.
If I had had my chance when young
I should have had Columbus sung
As a god who had given us
A more than Moses’ exodus.
But all he did was spread the room
Of our enacting out the doom
Of being in each other’s way,
And so put off the weary day
When we would have to put our mind
On how to crowd and still be kind.
See, this is what I've been talking about, how to crowd and still be kind.
[00:13:51]
For these none too apparent gains
He got no more than dungeon chains
And such small posthumous renown
(A country named for him, a town,
A holiday) as where he is,
He may not recognize as his.
They say his flagship’s unlaid ghost
Still probes and dents our rocky coast
With animus approaching hate,
And for not turning out a strait
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He has cursed every river mouth
From fifty north to fifty south.
[00:14:33]
Someday our navy I predict
Will take in tow this derelict
And lock him through Culebra Cut,
His eyes as good (or bad) as shut
To all the modern works of man
And all we call American.
America is hard to see.
Less partial witnesses than he
In book on book have testified
They could not see it from outside—
Or inside either for that matter.
We know the literary chatter.
Columbus, as I say, will miss
All he owes to the artifice
Of tractor-plow and motor-drill.
To naught but his own force of will,
Or at most some Andean quake,
Will he ascribe his lucky break—
[00:15:29]
Going through Culebra Cut.
High purpose makes the hero rude
He will not stop for gratitude.
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But let him show his haughty stern
To what was never his concern
Except as it denied him way
To fortune-hunting in Cathay.
[00:15:51]
He’ll be starting pretty late.
He’ll find that Asiatic state
Is about tired of being looted
While having its beliefs disputed.
His can be no such easy raid
As Cortés on the Aztecs made.
Now see, just a minute, because this is sort of political. I'll linger over a line or two of it. You
see, “America is hard to see, less partial witnesses than he.” You see it’s—you understand I
make him the ghost of it all, his vulgar ghost. “America is hard to see, less partial witnesses than
he have, in book on book have testified they could not see it from outside,” or inside either, for
that matter. He’ll miss all of it and go right through Culebra Cut without seeing it. But then,
“He’ll be starting pretty late, that's another important thing in it. He’ll be starting pretty late, he’ll
find that Asiatic state is about tired of being looted while having its beliefs disputed.” I put into
that couplet a lot of myself. “Is about tired of being looted while having its beliefs disputed.”
There's a lot of my politics in that.
[00:17:17]
Then here's a gentler one. These are to be in my new book. I didn't know whether I'd read this
segment, but I’m tempted to read it, too. There's two things talking in it, mist and smoke—
talking. The mist says—this is called, the poem is called, “The Cabin in the Clearing,” “The
Cabin in the Clearing.” The mists says, “I don't believe the sleepers in this house know where
they are.” The smoke says, “They've been here long enough to push the woods back from around
the house and part them in the middle with a path.”
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And the mist says, “And still I doubt if they know where they are. And I begin to fear they never
will. All they maintain the path for is the comfort of visiting with each other equally
bewildered.” Equally bewildered. That's a funny word, bewildered. So people now—the
government’s trying to restore wilderness is all—declaring wilderness is going to—declare
wilderness on my farm. A friend of mine—
“Nearer, nearer in plight than neighbors are than distance.” Then the smoke says, “I am the
guardian wraith of starlit smoke that leans out this and that way from their chimney. I will not
have their happiness despaired of.” And the mist says, “No one, not I, would give them up for
loss merely because they don’t know where they are. I am the damper counterpart of smoke that
gives off from a garden ground at night, but lifts no higher than the garden grows. I cotton to
their landscape, that's who I am. I am no further from their faith than you are,” the smoke—the
mist says to the smoke, see.
[00:19:34]
And the smoke says, “They must by now have learned the native tongue. Why don’t they ask the
red man where they are?” And the mist says, “They often do, and none the wiser for it. So do
they also ask philosophers who come to look in on them from the pulpit. (For they will ask
anyone) They will ask anyone there is to ask in the fond faith accumulated fact will of itself take
fire and light the world up. Learning has been a part of their religion.”
I'm not reading it very well. And then the smoke says, “If the day ever comes when they know
who they are, they may know better where they are. But who they are is too much to believe,
either for them or for the onlooking world. They're too sudden to be credible.” It’s only taken us
200 years, you see. “They are too sudden to be credible.”
[00:20:48]
The mist says, “Listen, they murmur, talking in the dark on what should be their daylong theme
continued. Putting the light out has not put their thoughts out. Let us pretend the dew drops from
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the eaves are you and I eavesdropping on their unrest, a mist and smoke eavesdropping on a haze
and see if we can tell the bass from the soprano.” I guess that was John Adams and Abigail.
(laughter)
And then it says, “Then smoke and mist, who better could appraise the kindred spirit of an inner
haze.” See that, I didn't read that with the force I meant to I was just shy of it a little. (applause)
It was too new and I hadn’t read it, I had never read it before aloud, so I stumbled a little about it.
Now, I'll say something to you. Those are brand new, and then to go back, you know, Judge
Lurie was saying he’d just been reading an old poem of mine, “In the Old Use Companion,” [?]
and the date of it was 1906, he said. Long time ago. And I think I know the poem, but let me get
it here. I have it in front of me, I can say it probably all right.
“Reluctance.”
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended
I have come by the highway home
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lied huddled and still,
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No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel whither;
The heart is still aching to seek
But the feet question, “Whither?”
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
And yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
See, that's one of my very young ones. Then I'm going to read you another very young one about
this question of—
Who has given to me this sweet
And given my brother dust to eat?
And when will his wage come in?
[00:24:03]
The thoughts that William Vaughn Moody had; I never met him, I knew his widow, who thought
of him all the time and thought—and the keeping of his memory in the world, these things fade
so easily, don’t they? But that's a very fine poem, that “Gloucester Moors,” you ought to read it.
Who, sin, get that into your nature. “Who has given to me this sweet, and given my brother dust
to eat? And when will his wage come in?” You know that's where your—
And here is a little something similar that I was writing earlier than that. This would be in the
‘90s, I wrote this. And it’s an odd one, but somebody—I've seen somebody take it entirely
wrong, not very lately.
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A stranger came to the door at eve
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.
He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.
[00:25:18]
The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With, ‘Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I.’
The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue;
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
‘Stranger, I wish I knew.”
[00:25:45]
Within the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart’s desire.
The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a golden pin.
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The bridegroom—
And this is into these affairs of the world again.
The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
And for the rich a curse;
But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.
[00:26:38]
See, I don’t have to go into that. But I amused myself in one little spot in it that I didn't have too
many rich friends and I was willing to sacrifice them, of course. (laughter and applause) All the
foundations and everything, I didn't have—there were no foundations when I wrote that, I think.
It’s all kind of new, anyway, these foundations. So I said cheerfully there, you know, the
bridegroom thought it little to give, see me chugging them all, a dole, a bread, a purse, a heartfelt
prayer for the poor of God, and for the rich a curse. You see, I was willing to curse all my rich
friends. Didn't have many. It’s all a funny world. Funny world.
[00:27:34]
And the question remains the same. I'm always riding the liberals. I'm a radical myself.
(laughter) And I say all sorts of things about liberals. And that's a typical line, liberal, that very
line is the bridegroom wished he knew. A liberal is one who wished he knew. That's a good
definition of a liberal, wish he knew. And he’s always in that state. And wished he knew.
He’d rather, I've said about him lately, you know, he can't take his own side in a quarrel, that's
one thing. Then he’d rather fuss with a Gordian knot than cut it, and so on. I'm always at it.
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Oh, then I call him, too, if—this is a literary reference—I call him a Dover beachcomber. That's
Matthew Arnold, the great liberal, you know. And when Mr. Stevenson, whom I admire and a
friend of mine, when he was running for president, I threatened to cross his name out and put
Matthew Arnold’s in and vote for Matthew Arnold. (laughter) This is all in—friendship is all.
And I often think that. After I differed with people and all, I'd throw up my hands, say,
friendship is all, friendship is all.
ANNOUNCER: From Boston, you have been listening to the New American Gazette presented
by the Ford Hall Forum.
ROBERT FROST: Now let’s say some more—forget all this. Whose words these are, I don't
think you can make any politics out of this.
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound’s the sweep of
Easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
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But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
[00:30:21]
Oh star—suppose I look up at a star way up there.
Oh star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud.
I was about to say of night, but dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat
Say something! And it says, “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does have something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may take something like a star
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To stay our minds on and be staid.
[00:31:30]
That's to myself more than anybody else, the times I've been too far one way, too far another.
(applause)
Then to change the tune a little, this one I call carefully, I'm very careful about myself in public, I
call this “Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success.” See, so even if it comes out
all right, I shan’t be twitted on it, see?
[00:32:11]
I once had a cow that jumped over the moon,
Not onto the moon but over.
I don’t know what made her so lunar a loon;
All she’d been having was clover.
That was back in the days of my godmother Goose.
But though we are goosier now,
And all tanked up with mineral juice,
We haven’t caught up with my cow.
(applause) You see, I'm all safe, though. If they arrive there tomorrow, I'm all right. You see, I
said “Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success.” I fixed it. (laughter) Science can't
catch me. These fellas.
Then another similar, not as funny as that, but this is one that's called “The Objection to Being
Stepped On.” I'd just been called on to storm the barricade. You know what that means, that
revolutionary thing? Storm the barricade in Berlin. So they used to do that in the streets of Paris
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when I was young. Now you got to do it in Berlin. I don't know whether I'll go or not. It’s a good
way to die, get killed the way. Dreading anything, if you're dreading anything worse, see—
But “The Objection to Being Stepped On.”
At the end of the row
I stepped on the toe
Of an unemployed hoe.
It rose in offense
And struck me a blow
In the seat of my sense.
It wasn’t to blame
But I called it a name.
And I must say it dealt
Me a blow that I felt
Like malice prepense.
You may call me a fool,
But was there a rule
The weapon should be
Turned into a tool?
But what do we see?
The first tool I step on
Turned into a weapon.
(laughter and applause)
[00:34:40]
Then these are new ones. It’s kind of fun. Oh, to go back, though. Ones that I ought to read
because I am misunderstood in it so much. Nearly everybody says to me sooner or later, you
know, it’s something there is that doesn't level all between friends. Well, that's so between
friends, but you do like to waltz between—well, even between friends. Something there is that
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loves a wall, I feel like saying, let’s not argue it, though. See, some there is that doesn't love a
wall and some there is that does love a wall, and I don’t get quoted both ways at once. It’s too far
apart in the poem, I guess. But anyway, you know, those are difficult questions.
[00:35:31]
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen groundswell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have (made not) have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending time, we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we were.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some are so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am Apple orchard.
My Apple trees will never get across
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And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall, I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say, “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
[00:37:43]
See, I play pretty fair in that. I give him the credit for looking at it one way, and I take the credit
the other. And then twice I say something, there is a doesn't love a wall, twice I say—then twice
I say some—good fences make good neighbors. I try and even that up. (applause)
I don't know what you’ve had, but I've had more trouble about boundaries that didn't exist. You
know, lines between one place and another, trespass, encroachment. I didn't make it, the other
fellow made it every time. It's a funny world.
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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Now, I ought to reach—I'm going to say another one to you.
I opened the door so my last look
Should be taken outside a house and book.
Before I gave up seeing and slept,
I said I would see how Sirius kept
His watchdog eye on what remained
To be gone into, if not explained.
[00:39:05]
Always get out to look at the stars, I do.
But scarcely was my door ajar,
When, past the leg I thrust for bar,
Slipped in to be my problem guest,
Not a heavenly dog made manifest,
But an earthly dog of the carriage breed,
Who, having failed of the modern speed,
Now asked asylum, and I was stirred
To be the one so dog-preferred.
He dumped himself like a bag of bones.
He sighed himself a couple of groans,
And head to tail, then firmly curled
Like swearing off on the traffic world.
I set him water. I set him food.
He rolled an eye with gratitude,
Or merely manners, it may have been
But never so much as lifted chin.
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
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His hard tail loudly smacked the floor,
As if beseeching me, “Please, no more;
I can't explain, tonight at least.”
His brow was perceptibly trouble-creased.
So I spoke in tones of adoption, thus:
“Gusty, old boy, Dalmatian Gus,
You're right, there's nothing to discuss.
Don’t try to tell me what's on your mind,
The sorrow of having been left behind
Or the sorrow of having run away.
All that can wait for the light of day.
Meanwhile, feel obligation-free;
Nobody has to confide in me.”
[00:40:31]
Because I'm not a psychiatrist, you see. (laughter) Nobody has to confide in me.
‘Twas too one-sided a dialogue,
And I wasn't sure I was talking Dog.
I gave up baffled, but all the same,
In fancy, I ratified his name;
Gusty, Dalmatian Gus, that is,
And started sharing my life with his,
Sharing his miles of exercise
And finding him in his right supplies.
Next morning the minute I was about,
He was at the door to be let out.
With an air that said, “I've paid my call.
You mustn’t feel hurt if now I'm off
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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For getting back somewhere, or further on.”
I opened the door and he was gone.
[00:41:23]
I was to taste in little the grief
That comes of dogs’ lives being so brief.
Only a fraction of ours, at most,
He might have been the dream of a ghost,
In spite of the way his tail had smacked
My floor so hard and matter-of-fact.
And things have been going so strangely since,
I wouldn’t be too hard to convince,
I might almost claim he was Sirius.
Think of presuming to call him Gus!
The star itself, heaven’s brightest star,
Not a meteorite, but an avatar.
Who had made this overnight descent
To show by deeds he didn't resent
My having depended on him so long,
And yet had done nothing about it in song.
A symbol was all he could hope to convey,
An intimation, a shot of ray,
A meaning I was supposed to seek,
And finding wasn’t supposed to speak.
[00:42:24]
That's a dog one. (applause) Let’s see a minute. I'd like to read you one longer one. Oh, yeah, I'll
tell you one more thing that just—adventures are this way. In Mr. Eisenhower’s house, when the
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
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White House was his, there was a minister named Frederick Fox, and he became a great friend of
mine. And I saw that he, oh you know, that he longed for something beside the White House; not
that he didn't like that well enough. But he longed for something else, get away.
[00:43:18]
And where is he now? I just had a letter from him. He’s away in the middle of Africa and he’s—
he—I've just had a bunch of letters from him. I wonder if he’s here. He hasn't come [inaudible]
but—no, he's in the middle of Africa as far as I know. And the letter from his—about half a
dozen of his Negro pupils that he’s working with. And the most pathetic letters you ever read.
And they're not about food or anything, but wanting to have a country, see. Wanting to have a
country. Every one of them’s about wanting to have a country. A sovereignty, an independence
such as we declared. It’s as if they all knew, to all of my direction, written to me they all are, and
passed along by him. Just thought I'd speak of it now. He was a great friend of mine, but I had
never understood him. The last time I saw him, I had a little party for all his little children, his
little family. Hors d’oeuvres, just hors d’oeuvres. And then he disappeared from me. The
administration changed and I didn’t know where he was going. He didn't want to tell me where
he’s going. That's where he is, gone off with his heart into the middle of Africa.
[00:44:53]
And it’s called—let me see what it’s called there. Tell you about it. It's a curious letter here. It’s
called Africa—Africa Literacy and Writing Center. And it’s in northern Rhodesia, a little place
called K-i-t-w-e, Box so and so. This is his letter to me about them. Very much moved, very
much moved with the simplicity of what he did and not telling anybody, not you know—go off
like that. He and I will want to see more of each other here or hereafter.
Now, I think I'll read “The Death of the Hired Man” to you. (applause) And that has, right in the
middle of it that I never called anybody’s attention before you to come on it, it’s something that I
get quoted as saying a good many times. “Home is the place where when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.” See, I get that quoted. But that's what he says, and the man, husband
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
and wife are talking. And then she adds—that might be the Republican Party speaking, see? That
might be the father, patriotic way of talking. The father is—this might be matriotism. And she
says, “I should have called it home, you know. I should have called it something you somehow
haven’t to deserve.”
[00:46:51]
The husband, the man in the family wants you to deserve what—things and get going, you
know? But it doesn't matter what happens to you, your mother is your mother still. Father doesn't
stand being good for nothing as well as a mother does. And this—that’s the—that’s just the
difference between matriotism and patriotism. (laughter and applause) And you got a long think
coming, same as I have. All this way and that way goes in your life. All is fair game, people, you
know, and well—how you'll treat them, but there's matter with them. That's the same as the first
one—that young one I wrote back there, “Love in a Question.” What will you—what will you
give—will you give up your rich friends, you give up everything, but will you give up bliss?
Will you—will you give up your home and everything? Who will you turn your home inside out
for?
It’s always there. It's all—all right. This is right buried in that where nobody bothered to notice
it. “The Death of the Hired Man.”
Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. ‘Silas is back.’
She pushed Warren with her outward through the door
And shut it after her. ‘Be kind,’ she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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‘When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.
‘I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
If he left then, I said, that ended it.
What good is he? Who else will harbor him
At his age for the little he can do?
What help he is there’s no depending on.
Off he goes always when I need him most.
He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,
Enough at least to buy tobacco with,
So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.
“All right,” I say, “I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.”
“Someone else can.” “Then someone else will have to.”
I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself
If that were what it was. You can be certain,
When he begins like that, there’s someone at him
Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—
In haying time, when any help is scarce.
In winter he comes back to us.
‘Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,’ Mary said.
‘I want him to: he’ll have to soon or later.’
[00:50:09]
‘He’s worn out. He’s asleep beside the stove.
When I came up from Rowe’s I found him here,
Huddled against the barn-door fast asleep,
A miserable sight, and frightening, too—
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
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You needn’t smile—I didn’t recognize him—
I wasn’t looking for him—and he’s changed.
Wait till you see.’
‘Where did you say he’d been?’
‘He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to make him smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing would do: he just kept nodding off.’
‘What did he say? Did he say anything?’
‘But little.’
‘Anything? Mary, confess
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me.’
‘Warren!’
‘But did he? I just want to know.’
[00:50:58]
‘Of course he did. What would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t grudge the poor old man
Some humble way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really care to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture, too.
That sounds like something you have heard before?
Warren, I wish you could have heard the way
He jumbled everything. I stopped to look
Two or three times—he made me feel so queer—
To see if he was talking in his sleep.
He ran on Harold Wilson—you remember—
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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The boy you had in haying four years since.
He’s finished school, and teaching in his college.
Silas declares you’ll have to get him back.
He says they two will make a team for work:
Between them they will lay this farm as smooth!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson a likely lad, though daft
On education—you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to build the load,
Harold along beside to pitch it on.’
[00:52:06]
‘Yes, I took care to keep well out of earshot.’
‘Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn’t think they would. How some things linger!
Harold’s young college boy’s assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold’s associated in his mind with Latin.
[00:52:42]
He asked me what I thought of Harold’s saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it—that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel prong—
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
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He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay—’
‘I know, that’s Silas’ one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself.’
[00:53:31]
‘He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different.’
Part of a moon was falling down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly in her lap. She saw it
And spread her apron to it. She put out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory strings,
Taut with the dew from garden bed to eaves,
As if she played unheard some tenderness
That wrought on him beside her in the night.
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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‘Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’
[00:54:31]
‘Home,’ he mocked gently.
‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
And then she says—
‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’
Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it by.
‘Silas has better claim on us you think
Than on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road winds would bring him to his door.
Silas has walked that far no doubt today.
Why didn’t he go there? His brother’s rich,
A somebody—director in the bank.’
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�New American Gazette: Transcript of the Robert Frost Forum
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‘He never told us that.’
‘We know it though.’
[00:55:37]
‘I think his brother ought to help, of course.
I’ll see to that if there is need. He ought of right
To take him in, and might be willing to—
He may be better than appearances.
But have some pity on Silas. Do you think
If he’d had any pride in claiming kin
Or anything he looked for from his brother,
He’d keep so still about him all this time?’
‘I wonder what’s between them.’
[00:56:09]
‘I can tell you.
Silas is what he is—we wouldn’t mind him—
But just the kind that kinsfolk can’t abide.
He never did a thing so very bad.
He don’t know why he isn’t quite as good
As anybody. Worthless though he is,
He wouldn't be ashamed to please his brother.’
[00:56:27]
‘I can’t think Si ever hurt anyone.’
‘No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged chair-back.
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He wouldn’t let me put him on the lounge.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there tonight.
You’ll be surprised at him—how much he’s broken.
His working days are done; I'm sure of it.’
‘I’d not be in a hurry to say that.’
[Microphone picks up someone else talking]
‘I haven’t been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He’s come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
He may not speak of it, and then he may.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon.’
It hit the moon.
Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.
[00:57:31]
Warren returned—too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, caught up her hand and waited.
‘Warren,’ she questioned.
‘Dead,’ was all he answered.
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(applause)
ANNOUCER: You have been listening to an archive edition of The New American Gazette
from Boston’s Ford Hall Forum. The New American Gazette was produced by Deborah Stavro,
with post-production engineers Roger Baker, Brian Sabo, and Anthony Debartolo. The New
American Gazette was produced in cooperation with the nation’s presidential libraries, the
National Archives, and Northeastern University.
To purchase a copy of this program, or receive information about the 2006 spring season of the
Forum, please call 617-373-5800, or visit www.fordhallforum.org. Thank you for joining us.
END
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�MS113.0XXX Transcript
Transcript Begins
INTRODUCTION: From Old South Meeting House in Boston, the Ford Hall Forum presents
the New American Gazette with guest host William Hahn.
[00:00:26]
WILLIAM HAHN: Few politicians are as controversial and even fewer provoke passions as
deep as Louisiana State Representative David Duke. His name has become so familiar that
United Press International once called him the "best-known state legislator in America."
END OF RECORDING
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�
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
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Ford Hall Forum
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English
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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The New American Gazette: An Evening with Robert Frost at the Ford Hall Forum [transcript]
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31 March 1991
Description
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Robert Frost, a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, addresses his views of America through readings of his poetry. The forum was originally recorded in 1961 and rebroadcast as part of the New American Gazette radio program on March 22, 1990. The radio broadcast is introduced by host Marvin Kalb.
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Ford Hall Forum
Frost, Robert, 1874-1963
Kalb, Marvin L.
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Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
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Poetry--20th century.
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Ford Hall Forum: Transcript of Gloria Steinem Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: Ford Hall Forum: Gloria Steinem speech “Moving Beyond Words,” at Ford Hall Forum,
May 12, 1994.
Recording Date: May 12, 1994
Speakers: Gloria Steinem, Sally Jackson
Item Information: Ford Hall Forum: Gloria Steinem discusses “Moving Beyond Words,” at
Ford Hall Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, item 0173), Moakley
Archive, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1994 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum that featured Gloria Steinem, an American feminist,
journalist and co-founder of Ms. magazine. Steinem reads excerpts from her book Moving
Beyond Words and discusses the state of the women's movement and offers possibilities for the
future, focusing on such issues as economic empowerment, women politicians, and life
affirmations.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
Transcript Begins
SALLY JACKSON: Good evening and welcome to the Ford Hall Forum. I’m Sally Jackson
and I’ll be your moderator for this evening. Introducing Gloria Steinem is a daunting task, what
to leave in, what to leave out. Let me speak directly to the women in this audience under the age
of 30. If you are not at this moment worrying about your typing speed, you have Gloria Steinem
to thank.
(laughter and applause)
[00:00:33]
When you look in the newspaper for a job and there is no section called, “Help Wanted:
Female,” you have Gloria Steinem to thank.
(applause)
If considering law school, medical school or the Supreme Court seem possible, you have Gloria
Steinem to thank.
(applause)
[00:00:54]
She has been instrumental in helping to change not just how we’re treated and thought of and
how we’re paid but how we feel about ourselves. Through her writings, her speaking, her
creating Ms. magazine, and perhaps most of all her example, she has helped make us all who we
are today, more enlightened, confident, liberated, and wiser women and men. Gloria Steinem is
the author of several books including Revolution from Within, a book on self-esteem, and the just
published and available for sale this evening, Moving Beyond Words.
I am truly delighted to present Gloria Steinem.
(applause)
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:01:54]
GLORIA STEINEM: It’s true that I’m of the generation that was supposed to learn how to
type. And I was so worried that I would end up typing that I made it a point not to learn how to
type, which has penalized me ever since. So you see, whether we conform or fight it, the “it” is
still the problem until we humanize or overthrow it. Depending on the state of your patience this
evening you can pick your verb. It’s nice to hear that our presence in the world has been noticed
or makes a difference. But we also know that a movement is only composed of people moving.
And though the absence of any one of us in this room would change the world profoundly, in my
absence the movement would go right on. It is populist. It is about our lives. It is about justice,
the future, looking at the world as if everyone mattered, overthrowing a few little things like
patriarchy, racism, hierarchy, monotheism, a few little things like that.
[00:03:02]
And thanks to your generosity of spirit in taking time out of your busy lives tonight to take a
chance on a stranger. Although I must say I don’t feel like a stranger. I bet a lot of us has been in
the same room before or in the same march or in the same something. How many of us have
been together before?
That’s a kind of perfect proportion, you know. That’s about, I don’t know maybe a fifth. So that
means there are old friends but there are also new friends. So we’re expanding at the same time.
But anyway, thanks to your generosity in spending this time we have something very precious,
which is an hour or so in this room together. So here’s my plan. If everything goes well each of
us, me included, will leave here with one new fact, one new feeling of support, a sense of
community, revolutionary colleagues, subversive organizing idea. And in order to make that
happen we can only do it together.
[00:04:21]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
So I hope that during what is usually called the question and answer period you will feel quite
okay about not just asking questions but also giving us answers, we could all use some, about
making organizing announcements of upcoming trouble-making meetings you think this group
should know about, saying where the bodies are buried locally. If you’d rather not say it in
public, just pass me a note. I’m self-employed. I’ll say anything.
(laughter)
And truly to turn this into an organizing meeting. If we’re here we share values in some way. It’s
a chance for us to not just have a discussion but on the way out look around and see two or three
people you don’t know, introduce yourselves, say what you’re doing, what you care about. You
could leave here with a new job, a new friend, a new love affair. Anything could happen.
[00:05:25]
And selfishly I look forward most of all to that period because it gets—it means that I learn
something. I just came from Washington, which was the first city on my book tour. And I
learned from audiences there everything from the fact that women had put together a softball
team called the Outrageous Acts, average age 44.4 years, and perfectly dignified women came
up and said, “I play second base”, to the fact that there is a 40-day hunger strike in progress to
eliminate—to get the government to eliminate the School of the Americas, which is the place
where, as you probably know, foreign police forces and intelligence forces are trained, often in
torture and in very undemocratic techniques.
And these women are courageously out there in an, to me, unpublicized hunger strike trying to
make sure that our government finally eliminates this school, which is responsible not only for
many of the atrocities in Latin America but also for training the very police force in Haiti that we
are now trying to oust. So think what we could learn from each other.
[00:06:54]
I’m going to—this is supposed to be partly reading and partly lecture. So I’m going to read from
this book at the beginning, at the end—and at the end and speak extemporaneously in between.
The first thing that I’d like to read to you is a little portion if—of, “What If Freud Were Phyllis?”
�MS113.0173 Transcript
which is going to be a challenge to the signers. And then I’d like to talk about the other—some
of the other parts of that essay. Then a few other new ideas, or there’s no new idea on earth but
growing ideas. And then a reading at the end.
(reading from her book Moving Beyond Words)
It’s important to understand that when Phyllis Freud was growing up in Vienna, women were
considered superior because of their ability to give birth. From the family parlor to the great
matriarchal institutions of politics and religion, this was a uniform belief .
Though she was a genius who was to tower above all others in enlightenment she was of course
a product of her time. Women’s superior position in society was so easily mistaken for an
immutable fact of life that males had developed exaggerated versions of such inevitable but now
somewhat diminished conditions as womb envy. Indeed, these beliefs in women’s natural right to
dominate were the very pillars of Western matriarchal civilization, impossible to weaken without
endangering the whole edifice.
[00:08:40]
At the drop of a hat wise women would explain that while men might dabble imitatively in the
arts they could never become truly great painters, sculptors, musicians, poets or anything else
that demanded originality for they lacked a womb, the very source of originality.
(laughter)
I should tell you that everything in here is real. It’s just reversed. There’s not a word here that he
didn’t say and you’ll find the real quotes in the footnotes.
[00:09:09]
Similarly, since men had only odd, castrated breasts, which created no sustenance, they might
become family cooks, provided they followed recipes, of course. But certainly could never
become great chefs, vintners, herbalists, nutritionists, or anything else that required a flare for
food, a knowledge of nutrition or an instinct for gustatory nuance.
And because childbirth caused women to use the medical system more than men did—
�MS113.0173 Transcript
—True, of course. I hope that the Clinton remembers this.
[00:09:41]
Making childbirth its natural focus there was little point in encouraging young men to become
physicians, surgeons, researchers, or anything other than nurses and other, low-paid healthcare
helpers.
Even designing their own clothes could be left to men only at risk of repetitive results. When
allowed to dress themselves they seldom could get beyond an envy of wombs and female genitals,
which restricted them to an endless succession of female sexual symbols. Thus the open buttonto-neck V of men’s jackets was a well-known recapitulation of the V of the female genitalia. The
knot in men’s ties replicated the clitoris while the long ends of the tie were clearly meant to
represent the labia. As for men’s bow ties they were the clitoris erecta in all its glory.
(laughter)
All these were, to use Phyllis Freud’s technical term, representations.
Now just in case you think I made these up I want to read you a Freudian quote. “In her
unconscious envy of the penis many a woman adorns herself with feathers, sequins, furs,
glistening silver and gold ornaments that hang down in what psychoanalysts call representations
of the penis.”
[00:11:01]
And here’s—and here are some things that Freud said were phallic symbols: “sticks, umbrellas,
posts, trees, objects which share with the thing they represent the characteristic of penetrating
into the body and injuring. Thus sharp weapons of every kind, knives, daggers, spears, sabers,
but also firearms, rifles, pistols, revolvers, water taps, watering cans, fountains, pencils, pen
holders, nail files, hammers, the remarkable characteristic of the male organ, which enables it to
rise up in defiance of the laws of gravity”—(laughter)—“leads to its being represented
symbolically by balloons, flying machines,”—(laughter)—“and most recently zeppelin airships.”
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:11:58]
Back to the—back to Phyllis.
Of course one can understand why men would not choose to replicate their own symbols, chicken
necks, bits of rope, dumb bells, cigarillos, spring potatoes, kumquats, belfries and the like. But
instead would choose to admire the glories of cathedrals, stadia, and mammoth caves, the ocean,
the sky and other representations of the womb as well as to replicate the exquisite jewel of the
clitoris in ties that were the only interesting feature of male dress.
Nonetheless, you can also understand why stylish husbands of the well-to do or wife-hunting
young bachelors of the upper classes preferred to be dressed by talented female designers.
Clearly men’s imitativeness did not include modesty however. On the contrary.
As Phyllis Freud was to write decades later in “Masculinity,” her great synthesis of a lifetime of
learning about her male patients, quote, “The effect of womb envy has a share in the physical
vanity of men since they are bound to value their charms more highly as a late compensation for
their original sexual inferiority.” Unquote.
In addition, men’s laugh—lack of firsthand experience with birth and nonbirth—with choosing
between existence and nonexistence, conception and contraception, as women must do so wisely
for all of their fertile years—severely inhibited their potential for developing a sense of justice
and ethics. This tended to disqualify them as philosophers, whose purview was the “to be or not
be” issue, the deepest question of existence versus nonexistence.
Practically speaking, it also lessened men’s ability to make life-and-death judgments, which
explained their absence from decision-making positions in the judiciary, law enforcement, the
military, and other such professions.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
Finally, as Phyllis Freud’s clinical findings showed, males were inclined towards meanness and
backbiting, the inevitable result of having been cut off from the coveted sources of life and
fulfillment to which their mates had such ready access within their own bodies.
[00:14:19]
As she wrote, “The fact that men must be regarded as having little sense of justice is no doubt
related to the predominance of envy in their mental life for the demand for justice is a
modification of envy and lays down the conditions subject to which one can put envy aside.”
After life-giving wombs and sustenance-giving breasts, women’s ability to menstruate was the
most obvious proof of their superiority. Only women could bleed without injury or death; only
they rose from the gore each month like phoenix, only their—
(laughter)
—only their bodies were in tune with the ululations of the universe and the timing of the tides.
Without this innate lunar cycle, how could men have a sense of time, tides, space, seasons,
movement of the universe, or the ability to measure anything at all?
(laughter)
How could men mistress the skills of measurement necessary for mathematics, engineering,
architecture, surveying, and so many other professions? In Christian churches, how could males,
lacking monthly evidence of Her death and resurrection, serve the Daughter of the Goddess? In
Judaism, how could they honor the Matriarch without the symbol of Her sacrifice recorded in
the Old Ovariment? Thus—
(laughter)
—thus insensible to the movements of the planets and the turning of the universe, how could men
become astronomers, naturalists, scientists—or much of anything at all?
[00:16:01]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
Of course men are sexually passive just—are passive sexually just as they tend to be
intellectually and ethically. After all, the libido is intrinsically feminine, or, as Phyllis Freud put
it with her genius, “man is possessed of a weaker sexual instinct.”
This also proved—was also proved by man’s mono-orgasmic nature. No serious authority
disputed the fact the females, being multiorgasmic, were better adapted to pleasure and thus
were natural sexual aggressors. In fact, “envelopment,” the legal term for intercourse, was an
expression of this active/passive understanding. It was also acted out in microcosm in the act of
conception itself. Consider these indisputable facts of life: The large ovum expends no energy,
waits for the sperm to seek out its own destruction in typically masculine and masochistic
fashion—(laughter)—and then simply envelops this infinitesimal orgas—organism. As the sperm
disappears into the ovum, it is literally eaten alive—much like the male spider being eaten by his
mate. Even the most quixotic male liberationist will have to agree that biology leaves no room
for doubt about intrinsic female dominance.
[00:17:28]
What intrigued Freud was not these well-known biological facts, however, but their
psychological significance: for instance, the ways in which males were rendered incurably
narcissistic, anxious, and fragile by having their genitals perched so precariously and visibly
exposed on the outside of their bodies.
(laughter)
Though the great Greek philosopher Aristotelia had been cruel to say—(laughter)—that men
were simply mutilated women, men’s womblessness and loss of all but vestigial breasts and odd,
useless nipples were the end of a long evolutionary journey toward the sole functions of sperm
production, sperm carrying, and sperm delivery. Women did all the rest of reproduction. Thus it
was female behavior and psychology that governed gestation and birth. Since time immemorial,
this disproportionate reproductive influence had unbalanced the power of the sexes in favor of
women.
[00:18:33]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
Finally there was the unavoidable psycholog—physiological fact of the penis. Its very existence
confirmed the initial bisexuality of all humans. All life begins as f emale in the womb as
elsewhere—which was the only explanation, of course, for men’s residual nipples—and penile
tissue had its origin in the same genital nub, and thus retained a comparable number of nerve
endings as the clitoris. But somewhere along the evolutionary line, the penis had acquired a
double function: excretion of urine and sperm delivery. Indeed, during the male’s feminine,
masturbatory, clitoral stage of development before young boys had seen female genitals and
realized—
I mean he really said all this stuff. I’m just reversing. Okay.
—And realized that their penises were endangered and grotesque compared to the compact,
well-protected, aesthetically perfect clitoris—it had a third, albeit immature, function of
masturbatory pleasure. All this resulted in an organ suffering from functional overload. The
most—
(laughter)
[00:19:45]
The most obvious, painful, diurnal, nocturnal, indeed even multi-diurnal and multi-nocturnal
result for this residual, clitoral tissue of the penis was clear. Men were forced to urinate through
their clitorises. No doubt this was the evolutionary cause for the grotesque enlargement and
exposure of the penis and for its resulting insensitivity and unfortunate appearance.
(laughter)
Though the nerve endings in the female clitoris remained exquisitely sensitive and close to the
surface, carefully carried as they were in delicate mucous membranes, which were cushioned
and cradled by the labia. The exposed penial versions of the same nerve endings had gradually
become encased in a deadening epidermis, a fact that deprived men of the intense, radiating
whole-body pleasure that only a clitoris could provide. Men’s diminished capacity for orgasm
and lesser sex drive followed as day follows night.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:20:52]
It was almost as if Father Nature himself had paid “less careful attention” to the male. His
unique and most distinctive organ had become confused. Was the penis part of the reproductive
system or the urinary tract? Was it intended for conception or excretion? How could males be
trusted to understand the difference?
(laughter)
As a result of this functional confusion, plus what even the enlightened Phyllis Freud had to
admit were, quote, disgusting, unquote genital results the penis was the constant subject of rude
names and cruel jokes. Even in dignified, professional meetings, when Phyllis Freud reported on
some newly discovered psychological implication of this unfortunate functional overlap, there
was often laughter that would have offended delicate male sensibilities had any males been
present. Inevitably, distinguished women would rise to pay tribute to the clitoris as the only
human organ dedicated solely to sexual pleasure—
True, you know.
—an argument for female superiority that was as old as time.
Nature’s necessity of spacing births was a final dictator of the male role. As Phyllis Freud
reasoned so brilliantly, since insemination and pregnancy could not accompany every orgasm,
experienced by multi-orgasmic females, it must also be the case for males that sexual maturity
could be measured by their ability to reach climax in a non-procreative way.
Female centrality was clear. Thus male adaptability must be equality clear. Male sexuality
became mature only when pleasure was transferred from the penis, which was desensitized and
rendered unpleasant by its dual function any way—to the mature and appropriate areas: the
fingers and the tongue. Immature penile orgasms had to be replaced by mature lingual and
digital ones.
[00:23:01]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
In her ovarian essay, “Masculinity,” Phyllis Freud was clear. In the clitoral phase of boys the
penis is the leading erotogenic zone. But it is not going to remain so. The penis should hand over
its sensitivity and at the same time its importance to the lingual, digital areas.
And I say in a footnote that if you think that I’m being cruel to men I would submit that we have
allowed in this reversal more nerve endings to men than Freud allowed to us by telling us that
orgasms were entirely vaginal where there are almost no nerve endings.
As for birth control itself, Freud opposed it—
Which he did.
After all, if men were mature enough to achieve lingual, digital orgasm, birth control was
unnecessary. If a woman wished to conceive a child, birth control was insurrectionary. With her
characteristic generosity, however, Phyllis Freud held to the belief that some new form of
contraception could be invented that would not produce neurosis.
[00:24:09]
Sigmund Freud did believe that all forms of birth control produced neurosis, not to mention that
masturbation was the source of all addiction and produced neurosis. But cocaine use was just
fine.
(laughter)
It was this willingness to explore, experiment and theorize about experiences so different from
her own and to seek scientific justification for the social order as it does and must exist, that was
to distinguish Phyllis Freud’s work throughout her long and much honored life. Thus we find her
late in her career still pondering with fascination the sexual life of the adult man, which
remained to our intrepid explorer something of a dark continent.
[00:24:58]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
This is all, of course, about empathy. Phyllis Freud was invented in order to speak to the
American Psychiatric Association, as I was invited to do on the subject, as the women
psychoanalysts wanted me to speak, about the sexual abuse of patients by their analysts. And I
was so worried about being stoned to death by the APA that I invented Phyllis Freud as a means
of striving for empathy, to try to ask the audience to understand what it might be like, what it
would feel like if a profession was 90 percent female and patients were 70 percent male. And the
entire profession, as indeed much of the popular culture, was informed by the work of Phyllis
Freud.
But I have noticed as I travel around talking about Phyllis Freud that while people are willing to
laugh at Phyllis, although sometimes they get angry at me for doing this, there is more of a
reluctance to take on what you will find as the story of the footnotes—which became a narrative
in themselves called “The Watergate of the Western World.” Because the basic question is, first
of all, why did Freud become so popular here when he was not popular in Europe in the same
way?
[00:26:41]
And I think the answer for which we all must take responsibility was and is that the religious
support for the caste systems of sex and race and for hierarchy itself was not working any more.
And he came along with this pseudoscientific secular support for the power structure as it exists.
But the second question in addition to our responsibility for this is how did he get to be such a
crazy guy?
Well, I think that the papers recently revealed, only in the past few years, his letters that Jeffrey
Masson printed in the late eighties, which won Jeffrey Masson such hostility from the—much of
the psychoanalytic community. They tell us, and there’s no reason not to believe him, that he
was sexually abused and psychologically abused by his own parents. His father convinced him
that if he touched his penis, if he masturbated, he would be subject to hysteria, neurosis and other
extreme problems.
[00:28:08]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
People tried to excuse this as if that was the belief of the time. Actually, it wasn’t the complete
belief of the time. But Freud used to get up and debate people who said that masturbation was
harmless and the problem was just a bias against it. And also he says such things as,
“Unfortunately, my father was one of those perverts who is responsible for the hysterical
symptoms of my siblings,” and also names a nurse whom he had before the age of three as
someone who abused him.
This—these letters were written in the period of time in which he believed, or almost believed—
was beginning to believe the patients who came to him, men and women, but especially women
who had been abused and sexually abused as infants and little children. He was onto what we are
just now learning. But to admit that, to admit it was real would have caused him to admit what
had happened to him. And after his father’s death he seems to have set about the long process,
which he called his self-analysis, which he said was impossible for anybody else to do, of course,
but he could do a self-analysis—
[00:29:38]
He was the only guy who never had any therapy of any sort—to deny and bury and suppress the
facts of his own childhood.
As I see now the degree to which we are still trying to deny the reality of the extent and depth of
child abuse, including sexual abuse, as I see the same impulse to deny rising up in non-existent
phrases or non-existent syndromes like the false memory syndrome, which actually is just a
name—each case has to be looked at separately but there is no such thing as the false memory
syndrome. I understand again how deep the impulse is to say that this is not true of others. And
therefore I don’t have to believe it about, or remember it about my own past.
People sometimes ask me why I believe the prevalence of child abuse. Well, I think the evidence
is there in the—in a constellation of symptoms that are physical, somatic memories of headaches,
of bulimia, of interrupted sleep patterns of flashbacks to the scene itself, of everything that we
know—but when they ask me this, why I believe the prevalence of child abuse I always say,
because it didn’t happen to me.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:31:32]
And for those of us who either have had the luck of an un-abused childhood or the ability to dig
out those memories and realize how painful they were, how wrong they are and go through the
long process of healing we, I think, have a special responsibility and a special gift to believe the
evidence before us and to try to end this abuse in the next few generations. Sometimes I think
that the only form of arms control is how we raise our children. Because we’ll go on killing each
other with something as long as we raise children with violence and they come to believe that
violence is the way we solve problems.
So I hope that while we’re laughing at this bit of satire, we will also look at its reverberations in
daily life now and consider that, for instance, we know from cases of child abuse that were
documented in hospitals and in reliable ways, extreme child abuse, that now that those same
children have grown into adulthood, 30 percent of them don’t remember it, have buried it. And
though it is still governing their lives it is to frightening to dig out and to look at.
[00:33:30]
It’s a very—it’s controversial now. It’s heated up now. It’s not to say that we believe everything
but that we look at each case individually and we keep open minds and open hearts. You know,
the McMartin case—remember the McMartin case in California? Which was the longest trial in
the history of the nation, seven years, about the use—the sexual abuse of the children in this preschool and their use in pornographic films and so on—that was what the children alleged. As the
prosecution attorney said, the jury found the family, or the accused perpetrators innocent she
thought, because they simply found the reality too hard to believe.
Now the tunnels beneath the preschool, which the children reported as the way they were taken
out of the preschool without knowledge of the neighborhood, have been excavated and verified.
[00:34:39]
I’m not trying to convict people here who have been exonerated by a court. But I do think that
we need to be open and aware of the abuse of children including ourselves and people around us,
�MS113.0173 Transcript
as a root cause of why prostitutes are prostitutes and many men are in prison and others enjoy
close-up torture because they themselves were tortured as children and identify with the
aggressor since it’s too painful to identify with the victim. That to just be open and to look at the
abuse of children as the cause of many of the unexplained ills we see around us. We can read
Alice Miller. We can read Judith Herman. We can read many authors who have great insight and
experience into this.
There’s another essay here in this book of six, long essays, which is sort of more like six short
books or six condensed books. They’re sort of like powdered milk, you know. If you poured
water on anyone of them it would become a book.
[00:36:10]
I didn’t intend for it to become this kind of book which has no genre. I thought it was just going
to be a collection of previously published essay, refrying the beans, as writers say. But as you
can see, Phyllis, which was meant to be this little five-page riff, turned into something quite
different. And the book itself turned into one that is mostly original writing.
But I noticed that the essay about which I am asked the least is one called “Revaluing
Economics.” I hoped that this essay might create contempt for economics and thus increase our
ability to feel unintimidated by it and to understand it and to begin to change it. Because though I
started out in a very, or perhaps because I started out on this journey in a very simple way, which
was that I was trying to explain to reporters in the middle of the Carter administration—
Remember Carter? Anyone?—why it was that the Women’s Commission had been fired by him.
Headed by Bella Abzug and so on.
[00:37:31]
The Women’s Commission had dared to analyze not just expenditures on child care and other
women’s concern but the entire federal budget. And the Carter people got angry and they fired
the Women’s Commission. So we were explaining why it was that this had been done, and I kept
saying to the reporters that the National Budget was the only statement of values this country
�MS113.0173 Transcript
ever makes. And therefore each of us, as citizens, has the right and the duty to look at the values
that that budget represents.
Well, after saying this a few times, I realized that if that was true it was also true that my own
budget was the only statement of values I ever made. And so I took out my checkbook with that
in mind and looked at the checkbook stubs to see what—how they would represent my values if I
were to be hit by a Mack truck tomorrow. And I wasn’t very pleased. I mean I like to think that I
put my money where my beliefs are but I wasn’t happy.
[00:38:41]
And ever since then I’ve been following—they say follow the money, that’s true. But more than
that follow the values. And it ended in this essay, which is challenging the idea that the economy
is an objective report on what is—on supply and demand, and on what is scarce and so on. And
saying, no, it isn’t that at all. It is a bias statement of what is valuable and what is not. The census
decides what is visible. The National System of Accounts [System of National Accounts], which
is an international accounting system, decides what is valuable. And we must challenge both of
those minotaurs at the heart of the economic maze.
Because together they are declaring all—most productive in the work in the world invisible, that
is all the work that’s done in the home, whether by men or by women, but mostly by women has
no economic value whatsoever. In third world countries water that’s carried in jars on women’s
heads from the well has no economic value. But if it comes through pipes it has an economic
value.
[00:40:05]
We know how much it costs to replace a homemaker’s services but her services have no imputed
value in the budget nor do—nor does the work of reproduction and nurturing have any value.
And it doesn’t have to be like this. I mean there are a lot of challenges to this system, especially
in the third world, so called. We can challenge it here where it was invented.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
In addition the environment is not valued. A tree that’s standing out there giving you oxygen has
absolutely not economic value whatsoever. But when it’s cut down it acquires one. We’re never
going to save the environment unless cutting down trees is seen as asset depletion and not just a
source of profit, which is what is—the way it’s seen now.
So I hope that you might look at this—you know, I realize the reason nobody asks me about this
piece is the deadly word “economics.” It sort of makes you—and as an economics-impaired
person—(laughter)—I have tried, I have tried to produce an essay for other economics-impaired
people because it is the heart of the wrong values that we are trying to change. And we have to
have a healthy lack of respect for it if we are to seize control of it and change.
The last essay is called, “Doing Sixty.” It started out as the introduction but it wouldn’t stay that
way. And it’s really an account of one more woman. I’m sure there are many women in the
audience who can also testify to this, of becoming more radical with age. You know people,
reporters and sociologists look at high schools and colleges and young workers. And if they
don’t find the red hot center of feminist activism there, though there are more young,
courageous, activist feminists than there ever were before. But if they don’t find the center there
they think it isn’t there.
[00:42:36]
Well, it’s always been the case that women’s pattern of activism has been the reverse of men’s. I
don’t mean everybody, but just as a general, cultural pattern. Probably all the men in this room
are exceptions to what I am saying. But women tend to be more conservative when we’re young
and grow steadily more radical as we get older. And men tend to be rebellious and active and
radical when they’re young and grown more conservative as they get older.
If young women have a problem it’s only that we think there’s no problem when we’re young.
We haven’t yet experienced the great radicalizing events of a woman’s life, getting into the labor
force, having children, discovering who cares for them and who doesn’t, having two jobs instead
of one and so on. And also young women have more social power as—at eighteen or twenty than
they will when they’re fifty. Whereas men are the other way around.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:43:35]
So I have recognized this pattern intellectually long ago. But I hadn’t realized that I was subject
to it, too. And I’ve only just begun to realize, after fifty, which was—fifty was sort of like
leaving this long, familiar country called the female role. Whether you conforming to it or
fighting it you’re still aware of it. And it last from twelve to fifty more or less or thirteen to fifty.
So when I turned fifty I felt as if I was leaving something. And I responded to this with my
favorite emotion, which was defiance. I’m going to go right on doing everything I did when I
was thirty or forty, so there.
But, in fact, as I realized by the time I was about fifty-five, this is not progress. This is not going
forward. And at sixty I began to feel that I was entering a new country. There are no maps for
this country. We are invisible. Women over sixty-five are the single, poorest demographic group
in the nation.
[00:44:49]
But intrinsically, this stage of life, which exists for all of us, men too, for, in a much greater,
critical mass for the first time. I mean people over—people are living thirty-five years longer in
this nation than they did in nineteen hundred. We’re like a new species. This period, for women
especially, off the patriarchal family map is scary but it is free. It’s sort of like going back—
remember when you were a little girl of eight or nine or ten. And you were this kind of shit-free,
clear-eyed creature and you were climbing trees and you knew what you wanted and what you
thought and everything. And then at about eleven or twelve or thirteen you started to become a
female impersonator and, you know—
(laughter)
And then—well, it’s sort of like going back to the clear-eyed eight or nine or ten year old little
girl. Except now you’re a grown up. You’re independent. You have your own apartment, maybe.
So this is my account of some of the things that I’ve begun to realize. And this will be my last
reading here before—it’s brief—before we start our organizing meeting.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[00:46:07]
(reading an excerpt from her book Moving Beyond Words)
I’m just beginning to realize the upcoming pleasures of being a nothing-to-lose, take-no-shit
older women, of looking at what once seemed outer limits as just road signs. For instance, I used
to take pleasure in going to a feminist Seder every year, subverting that ancient ceremony by
including women in it. In our women’s segata [?] we honored not only Deborah, Ruth and other
heroines of the Bible but also our own fore mothers. “Why have our mothers on this night been
bitter,” we read together, “because they did the preparation but not the ritual. They did the
serving but not the conducting. They read of their fathers but not of their mothers.”
Lately however, I’ve been wondering why start with anything that must be so changed, so fought
against? Why not begin with the occasions of our own lives and create the ceremony we need for
births or marriages, adopting friends as chosen family or setting off on a new adventure.
[00:47:09]
Having learned the pleasures of ritual I’m thinking of founding a service called Ceremonies-ToGo. I used to pass urban slums or rows of poor houses anywhere and compulsively imagine
myself living there. What would it be like? It was a question of such fearsome childhood power
that I only recently realized it had fallen away. It’s simply gone. The deep groove worn by such
imaginings has finally been filled by years of words written and deeds done, crises survived and
friends who became family, work done for others and thus an interdependence. In other words, I
no longer fear ending up where I began.
I used to indulge the mag—in magical thinking when problems seemed insurmountable. Often
this focused on men for they seemed to be the only ones with power to intercede with the gods.
Now it has been so long since I fantasized a magical rescue that I can barely remember the
intensity of the longing. Instead, I feel my own strength, take pleasure in the company of mortals
and no longer believe in gods except those in each one of us.
[00:48:25]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
I used to think that continuing my past sex life was the height or radicalism. After all, women too
old for childbearing were supposed to be too old for sex. And becoming a pioneer dirty old lady,
seemed a worthwhile goal—
(laughter)
—which it was for a while.
But continuing the past, even out of defiance is very different from advancing. Now I think, why
not take advantage of the hormonal changes age provides to clear our minds, sharpen our senses
and free whole areas of our brains. Even as I celebrate past pleasures I wonder, did I sometimes
confuse sex with aerobics?
(laughter)
[00:49:07]
I used to be one of the majority of Americans whose greatest fear was dependency in old age, a
fear the must have roots other than economic. For it is no more prevalent among women or the
racial groups of men most likely to be poor. Then I listened to historian Gerda Lerner question
that fear among a group of middle-aged women. As she pointed out, we don’t fear dependency in
the early years of life. On the contrary we understand that being able to help children find what
they need can be a gift in itself.
Why shouldn’t we feel the same about the other end of life? Why shouldn’t the equally natural
needs of age be an opportunity for others to give? Why indeed? Now I wonder if women’s fear of
dependency doesn’t stem from our being too much depended upon. Perhaps if we equalize the
caretaking and the giving with men and with society this will bring us a new freedom to receive.
I used to think that uprooting negative childhood patterns was an activity reserved for
individuals. Now I wonder if this familiar healing process wouldn’t benefit countries and races,
too.
[00:50:25]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
In the country in which we live there is a glorification of violence and a willful denial of how
much violence hurts. I wonder if we’re collectively doomed to keep repeating these violent
patterns until we admit the hurt that took place in this nation’s childhood, the reality of genocide
that wiped out millions of indigenous peoples and all but destroyed dozens of major cultures.
Plus the still only half-admitted realities of slavery and its legacy within each one of us.
I’m happy about the new Holocaust museum in Washington for I know our government refused
to admit thousands of Jews until it was too late. But we also need to have a Native American
museum which finally admits that the so-called uninhabited Americas were actually home to as
many people as Europe. And a Middle Passage museum to memorialize the beginning of the
massive injustice of slavery that is still playing itself out.
[00:51:28]
We need this remembrance not for guilt or for punishment, which only creates more of the same,
but to root out the patterns of our national childhood.
I used to think that nationalism was the only game in town, the most radical act was to support
poor countries in their rights against rich ones. Now I look at artificial boundaries, lines that
can stop no current of air or polluted river and mourn the violence lavished on defending them.
Long ago, in times suspiciously set aside as pre-history we were mostly nomadic peoples who
claimed nothing but crisscrossing migratory paths. Cultures were the richest where different
peoples and paths were the most intermingled.
We’re still a nomadic species. We move and travel on this earth more than we ever have before.
Yet we insist on the destructive fiction of nationalism, one that becomes even more dangerous
when it joins with religions that try to create nations in the sky.
[00:52:36]
Lest all this seem too impractical, let me add one more contrast between the old and now. I used
to think that I would be rewarded for good behavior. Therefore, if I wasn’t understood I must not
be understandable. If I wasn’t successful I must try harder. If something was wrong it was my
�MS113.0173 Transcript
fault. More and more I see that context is all. When someone judges me, anyone or anything, I
ask compared to what? When I see on television a series about children of divorce for instance, I
find myself asking, what about a series on children of marriage.
When a women fears the punishment that comes from calling herself a feminist I ask, will you be
so unpunished if you don’t? When I fear conflict and condemnations for acting a certain way I
think, what peace or praise will I get if I don’t? I recommend the freedom that comes from
asking, “Compared to what?” Hierarchical systems, all of them prevail by making us feel
inadequate whatever we do so we will internalize the blame. But once we realize that there is no
such thing as adequacy it sets us free to say we might as well be who we really are.
[00:54:02]
I’ve always had two or more tracks running in my head. The pleasurable one was thinking
forward to some future scene, imagining what should be, planning on the edge of fantasy. The
other played underneath with all too-realistic fragments of what I should have done. There it was
in perfect microcosm, the past and the future coming together to squeeze out the present, which
is the only time in which we can be fully alive.
The blessing of what I think of as the last third or more of life, since I plan to reach 100, is that
these past and future tracks have gradually dimmed until they are rarely heard. More and more
there is only the full, glorious, alive-in-the-moment, don’t-give-a-damn-yet-caring-for-everything
sense of the right now.
I was about to end this with, there’s no second like the next one. I can’t wait to see what
happens. And that remains true. But this new state of mind would have none of it. There is no
second like this one.
Thank you.
(applause)
[00:55:54]
�MS113.0173 Transcript
SALLY JACKSON: While people are gaining their courage, let me ask you a question. One of
the chapters in the book talks about when you took advertising away from Ms. magazine. What’s
the situation now? How’s that working?
GLORIA STEINEM: Oh, well, I’m happy to—(coughs)—excuse me I’m still getting over the
flu here—I’m happy to say that probably due to the support of people in this room Ms. magazine
is doing better without advertising than it ever did with advertising.
(applause)
It’s actually, you know, it’s actually making money and was able last year to give some money
back to the movement, which has always been our dream to do.
[00:56:25]
I do think that we need to look at especially women’s—at all of the media—but especially
women’s magazines for the influence of advertising and understand that beauty products won’t
advertise unless they are praised in the pages of women’s magazines, and their little diagrams of
where to put your rouge and so on. And food won’t advertise unless there are recipes and
clothing won’t advertise unless there’s endless praise of fashion. And that’s why women’s
magazines look the way they look.
But we pick them up and I fear that we’re made to be contemptuous of each other because we
think that even though we don’t want all this stuff, somebody wants this stuff. Well, the
somebody are the—is the advertisers. And yes there’s—we must be equally aware of the
influence elsewhere but there’s a difference. If Time or Newsweek attacks an advertiser or a kind
of product they may lose that advertiser for a period of time.
[00:57:23]
In women’s magazines, if you fail to praise it, you don’t get the ads in the first place. And that’s
why they’re such catalogues. Think of what we could do with the thousands of pages if they
were free, if the—if there was a true separation between advertising and editorial.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
SALLY JACKSON: Sir.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wondered if Phyllis Freud isn’t more serious than you even think.
As I understand it anthropologists aren’t sure what the function of males is, at least in the primate
world except to provide diversity. Females—males consume more resources than they produce
in general. But—and a female world would in fact be better off in almost every way than with
males. But males are aggressive. They try for dominance. In other words, there is a—they do
something that is not necessarily useful but, in fact, creates the world that we have. They engage
in war.
[00:58:24]
Do you see any way for the feminist movement to be sustained in the presence of a world of
war?
GLORIA STEINEM: I guess I have a more cheerful view about males than you—
AUDIENCE MEMBER: But wars do occur. And the males cause them.
GLORIA STEINEM: What you say is true. I would only say that it is culturally true not
necessarily biologically unchangeably true.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It happens in the primate world. And the gorillas and the
chimpanzees, they parallel humans.
[00:58:59]
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, the—you can always tell what somebody thinks by the animals
they choose to study. Do you know what I mean? Lionel Tiger, you know, is not a friend because
he is only studying chimps in captivity where they behave quite different from in the wild. And
somebody who studies elephants who are vegetarian and peaceful and matriarchal and so on, you
know, is a whole different guy, so I—and also, we do have a cerebral cortex. We are the one
�MS113.0173 Transcript
animal that exper—influences our own evolution by changing circumstances, adapting to the
circumstance, changing them again and so on.
There are societies in the world—I mean if, you know, if it were biological there would be no
societies in which this wasn’t true. But there are tribal societies in which there is not war for
territory or institutionalized violence. And the one, shared characteristic of those societies is that
the gender roles are not polarized. Men are not taught that they have to be in control or
aggressive or even violent in order to be men. And women are not taught we have to support
violence, be passive, supportive and so on in order to be women.
[01:00:17]
So I mean Olof Palme, the great prime minister of—late prime minister of Sweden always said
that it was the most important task of every government in the world to humanize and do away
with gender roles because they were the root cause of violence.
(applause)
SALLY JACKSON: Your question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Since you and I are in the same room for the first time this may
sound naïve. When I walked in I was amazed to see so few men here. And I’m wondering if
that’s typical of your presentations and if so, why.
[01:00:58]
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I think maybe there are something like a third of audience is men.
What do you think? Can you tell from—Twenty percent, twenty-five, a fourth to a third—
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ten.
GLORIA STEINEM: Ten.
(laughter)
�MS113.0173 Transcript
[01:01:14]
SALLY JACKSON: And yet they were the first three questions.
GLORIA STEINEM: That’s because the women know the answers.
(laughter and applause)
GLORIA STEINEM: No I realize, you know, what you say is true. Although I have found in
general that there are more men in audiences than there used to be. And—but just as there need
to be men in audiences to hear women just as there need to be white people in audiences to hear
speakers of color. You know, I mean we have to realize that we all have to gain by this. I guess
the ideal audience that I’ve discovered to date is a third men and two-thirds women. Because if
an audience is half and half the women are less likely to actually stand up and say what they are
really thinking. They’re sort of worried about hurting the men’s feelings or how they’re going to
respond or something.
[01:02:17]
But if it’s about a third, then women will still talk and the men get to hear women telling the
truth which is part of the education. So—but it is interesting that it’s always, even if there are a
few men, it’s always men who ask questions first. I think it’s harder for women just to get up and
hear our own voices and, you know, speak out. But next time bring some friends.
(laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I don’t have all the answers. I was wondering if you would
comment on the future of the women’s movement as you see it.
[01:02:55]
GLORIA STEINEM: Oh. That’s like, describe the universe and give two examples. Right,
right? Well, it’s—the future is in our hearts. It depends on what we want it to be. I guess it’s
helpful to look, to take a sort of birds eye view and remember that the first wave in this young
country lasted a hundred and fifty years and gained a legal identity for women of all races as
�MS113.0173 Transcript
human beings. So we shouldn’t be surprised that this wave is going to last a hundred years at
least to get a legal and social equality for women as human beings.
We’re only about twenty-five years into it. Those twenty-five years have built a majority support
for all the basic issues. Consciousness has really changed. And we’ve begun to change the
structures, but just begun. And we have a backlash because we’ve changed the majority
consciousness. So I think where we are is fighting the backlash, which is inevitable, and having
the courage to look forward, you know, to envision, because otherwise we can’t create what we
can’t envision, new structures. New structures. I mean, you know, if—it’s terribly important that
men raise children as much as women do.
[01:04:23]
The country now understands that women can do what men can do. But we haven’t yet
demonstrated the men can do what women can do. So women have two jobs. And kids grow up
not knowing that men can be loving and nurturing just like women can and then they divide
themselves up. Yet we don’t have changed work patterns for the parents of little children. Both
men and women. I mean that’s just one of, you know, there are hundreds of examples of the
ways in which the structure hasn’t yet changed to make our dreams real possibilities for most
people. So structural change I think is the order of the day.
SALLY JACKSON: Yes?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. My question is, how did you overcome the inertia initially of
needing to be pleasant in a society and what keeps you going?
(laughter)
[01:05:21]
GLORIA STEINEM: I don’t think I’ve overcome it, actually. I mean I would come back to the
magazine—the Ms. Magazine office having done some television thing and the young interns
who had this much better shit detector than me would say, “Why do you smile all the time? What
you’re saying is serious. You don’t have to”—I would say, “You’re right. But what can I tell
�MS113.0173 Transcript
you. I was a fifties person, of Doris Day, you know. So, you know, you just—you struggle with
it, actually. You struggle with it. And it changes in increments.
And it changes from having support. Maybe that’s the most important thing, not to try to do it by
yourself. But to have a group of women or—and/or supportive men who you meet with once a
week so you can find out you’re not crazy, the system is crazy. That makes the difference.
SALLY JACKSON: This just handed me. Only two more questions and yours is next.
[01:06:18]
GLORIA STEINEM: I’ll answer shorter. I promise. Maybe we could do everybody standing
up. Could we do everybody standing up?
SALLY JACKSON: Sure.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: To be on the reverse end of it, I don’t want to strive to be unpleasant
but what I’m finding as a younger member of the audience in my own life is there is what you
talk about a lot, this notion that if I say, “I’m a feminist,” people think I’m man hating. People
think I’m all sorts of terrible things. So I’m striving right now to know what your answer is to the
question, what can I do to make feminism more palatable to my peers.
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I think the first thing, I’m not trying to tell you what to do because
only you know. But the first thing may be to say, “I’m a feminist.” Because then people who
love you will begin to think differently about feminism.
[01:07:06]
It’s not—the thing is that it’s so unusual to be pro-woman and it’s so unusual to be pro-black or
pro, you know whatever the racial group that it’s perceived as being anti-male. Because the
maleness is supposed to have this kind of support. And whiteness is supposed to have this kind
of support. But it isn’t. We’re talking about fifty-fifty. So just remember that the problem is in
the ear of the hearer not yours. And ask yourself the question, compared to what. You know,
�MS113.0173 Transcript
what is life going to be like if you don’t say you’re a feminist. You’re more likely to acquire
support if—and people who are—who share values if you do say so. And you’ll change it. You’ll
change minds all around you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
SALLY JACKSON: Quickly,
[01:07:59]
AMY RICHARDS:
I have an organizing announcement, which is to introduce or re-introduce
to some people the Third Wave. And I think it’s very appropriate for this audience, which seems
to be filled with young women. And maybe answers that question, which you just asked, which
is one of the problems is that women, a lot of young women feel alone. And the answer is to
come together. And one great way to come together is through the Third Wave, which is a
membership organization for young women, a national organization devoted to activism.
GLORIA STEINEM: The next meeting is?
AMY RICHARDS: Well, the next meeting—you can see me afterwards and I’ll give you more
details. Or I’ll put these next to where Gloria will be signing books. Thank you.
[01:08:33]
GLORIA STEINEM: And this is Amy Richards who is the parent of this book, almost as much
as me. I mean she’s been working with me and living through this book. And the Third Wave is
the organization that lasts a summer, a summer before last ran a voter registration. They in the
spirit of Freedom Summer 1964, they did another Freedom Summer and young men and women
feminists piled into buses and crisscrossed the country registering voters in poor neighborhoods.
I mean, you know, so they do great work.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: In this recent program where young girls are being taken to work by
their mothers, and being someone who used to hate feminism and only very recently realizing
�MS113.0173 Transcript
that I was very unliberated—I also saw with these children that what they were gaining, One of
the girls said that she could now learn how to carve her own future. That this was something that
was a piece that was missing from me in whole life.
Now I’m grown and I don’t have someone to take me to work and I’m looking for remedial—a
remedial program.
(laughter)
[01:09:49]
GLORIA STEINEM: That’s great. That’s great. Well, you know, pick out the area you’re
interested in and just say to somebody you know or can find, you know, “I’m looking for a
remedial program. How about taking an older daughter to work or a sister. Take a sister to work.
The Take-A-Daughter-To-Work Program has been great. The Ms. Foundation for Women
started this last year and it just—
(applause)
—it just caught on. It just is amazing. And it’s all in other countries now. And I do want to
assure you because the one question we always get is, “What about sons?” Though I still think
that if it were a program for African-Americans nobody would rise up and say, “What about
white people?”
[01:10:35]
But we have always created curriculums on the work of caring, for instance, for—in the last two
years for boys. And six million classrooms had these curriculums. I mean we are also thinking
about the boys. Maybe we should have a Take-Our-Sons-Home-Day.
(laughter and applause)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, many people are amazed by your youthful appearance and
wondering how you keep it up. And what I’m wondering is how you feel about cosmetic surgery
and estrogen treatment and how you feel men relate to this.
�MS113.0173 Transcript
GLORIA STEINEM: To cosmetic surgery?
[01:11:15]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Right.
GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah. Well, speaking for myself I couldn’t bring myself, I don’t think,
to have cosmetic surgery and I’m not having estrogen treatment because I had breast cancer and
you’re not supposed to have—I had a very minor, so far, experience with breast cancer. But
you’re not supposed to have estrogen treatment. By saying those two things I’m not trying to say,
I’m not trying to pass judgement at all on women who choose to do this. We all have many
different forces in our lives.
As for men, men are now a third of all cosmetic surgery patients, though I think that that also
counts hair transplants.
(laughter)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)—Influence on trying to deter age. That’s what I meant,
more the men’s influence on the women.
[01:12:05]
GLORIA STEINEM: Oh, well, men’s influence on women in trying to conceal age. It’s both
individual, real male pressure and imagined social expectations. Sometimes I think women might
be surprised if they just said their age and looked at their—as their real selves and discovered
that men love them as they are. Sometimes it really is, seems, feels necessary to keep a job, to
keep a marriage, to keep a social standing.
But I do think that if we were, if all of us who are lying about our ages were to tell our ages, our
idea of what fifty or sixty or seventy looks like would change overnight. I mean I have met
women who are successfully lying their ages, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. Twenty years.
There was a—there’s a case I report in the book about a woman in—who went to Israel for a—
�MS113.0173 Transcript
what’s it called, when you implant a fetus in a woman’s body and she gives birth even though
she is beyond child bearing age. She lied and said she was in her forties and she was really in her
sixties, and she gave birth.
[01:13:24]
You know, if we were to tell our real ages even doctors would be shocked. So I hope that we
might consider the great gift that the gay movement has given us in this phrase, coming out. It’s
such a wonderful paradigm of honesty and risk and truth. And just consider as much as we can
telling the truth, about—whether it’s about our ages, how we really feel, what we fear, what we
hope, whatever it is. Take the risk. Nobody will ever know if we don’t tell them. They can’t read
our minds.
SALLY JACKSON: And the last question or comment.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, I was wondering about what you mentioned about early
childhood education. I agree that it’s a very important time to influence. But I was wondering,
how do you—what is your philosophy about how to dialogue between the genders without the
males feeling threatened and what is your answer to Robert Bly?
[01:14:36]
GLORIA STEINEM: Well, to start with Robert Bly first, because that’s easier than child
rearing. He does, Robert Bly does talk, does allow men to talk about how much they missed
having loving and nurturing fathers. And that’s very valuable I think. However, it seems to me
retrograde to encourage men to talk about warrior status and so on. And also, when you see a
group of men together and they’re all white and heterosexual, you sort of know that something is
not so great. As you know when you see a group of women together and they’re all white or
heterosexual it’s not so great.
There are parts of the men’s movement that are I think much more substantive by far than Robert
Bly, who captured the media attention. But there are groups like the Oakland Men’s Project,
which has been together for 17 years I think, very diverse group of men, racially gay and straight
�MS113.0173 Transcript
men. And they came together to try to help boys in the Oakland area have an image of
masculinity that wasn’t violent.
[01:15:50]
In the process they made a community of their own. You know, they’re some of the few men I
know who talk to each other the way women talk to each other. And they’ve been greatly helped
by this. And their belief is that men’s work is ending male violence against women but also
against other men. And helping each other understand that this masculine box, you know, may
be—that you’re seeing in the man next to you—may be a prison for him, too.
It’s a wonderful group and they’re—I believe their doing programs in the Boston area. If you—I
was about to offer you, say, write me and I’ll write you back their address, which will drive Amy
crazy if I—but it’s listed, anyway, in Oakland, the Oakland Men’s Project.
[01:16:40]
About child rearing I think there are two paradigms out there that are both wrong, that are both
destructive. One is the right wing paradigm that says that children are little animals who need to
be tamed. And this, which is often religious as well, justifies, it justifies physical, corporal
punishment, psychological punishment. It can be very cruel. Then the more liberal paradigm is
that children are blank slates on which you can write anything. And that’s not true either. There
is a person already in that baby. The question is how to help that person become who they
already are. It’s like a seed in a flower.
So if we take the cues from the child, you know, try to help the child become who they can be,
instead of owning, possessing, controlling. That’s the key to it. Because that makes you—the
child know that she or he is lovable and good as they uniquely are. And they won’t feel like they
have to conceal some part of themselves in order to be loved. That’s the key to it, I think.
Children are fragile but children are incredibly durable, too.
And Alice Miller always says that if we—if a child has just one person in their life who loves
them as they really are, a teacher, a cousin, a parent, somebody, that they have a chance. And we
�MS113.0173 Transcript
can be that person because children belong to all of us. They don’t have to be our biological
children, right?
[01:18:20]
We can reach out to people we know who have children and who might, who could use a little
extended family. The—there’s the great African proverb, you know, that it takes a whole village
to raise a child. We can be part of that village.
SALLY JACKSON: I hope you will join me in thanking Gloria Steinem for a wonderful
evening.
(applause)
END OF RECORDING
�
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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MS113.0173
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Gloria Steinem's speech “Moving Beyond Words,” at Ford Hall Forum [transcript]
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12 May 1994
Description
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Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum that featured Gloria Steinem, an American feminist, journalist, and co-founder of Ms. magazine. Steinem read excerpts from her book Moving Beyond Words and discussed child abuse as wells as economics.
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Steinem, Gloria
Jackson, Sally
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Ford Hall Forum Collection,1908-2013 (MS113)
MS113.3.1/0173
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Ford Hall Forum
Feminism -- United States
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Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
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New American Gazette: Transcript of Kissinger and Ford Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: New American Gazette: “Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford,” at Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Date: January 30, 1990
Speakers: Marvin Kalb, President Gerald Ford, and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Item Information: New American Gazette: “Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford,” at Ford Hall
Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, item 0131) Moakley Archive,
Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1990 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum featuring Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, a former diplomat and
U.S. secretary of state under Richard Nixon and former President Gerald Ford. They discuss U.S.
foreign policy, issues facing the Soviet Union, and the situation of reform in China. He answered
questions about U.S. armed forces and Soviet Union trading systems. The forum was recorded at
the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids, Michigan and broadcast on the New American
Gazette radio. The program was introduced by host Marvin Kalb.
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Transcript Begins
ANNOUCER: From the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Ford Hall
Forum presents the New American Gazette with special guest host Marvin Kalb.
[00:00:28]
MARVIN KALB: As Assistant for National Security Affairs under Pres. Richard Nixon, Henry
Kissinger was often called the second most influential man in government. In 1973 he was
appointed Secretary of State. The author of arms control agreements and the policy of détente,
Kissinger achieved a level of power and influence unusual even in Washington. As the
Watergate crisis distracted the President, Kissinger became the chief architect of US foreign
policy.
In late December 1973, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin made a special visit to then Vice
President Gerald Ford. In that meeting he sought assurances that Kissinger would remain
Secretary of State should Ford succeed Nixon.
[00:01:19]
At a turbulent time in American history, with a president in trouble and the nation locked into
Vietnam, Kissinger vaulted to the pinnacle of power, prestige, and controversy by virtue of his
intellect, his grasp of foreign policy, his endless delight in manipulating people and events, his
secretive style of negotiation. He demanded and received recognition and respect. Enhancing this
public image of power was Kissinger’s preference for private diplomacy and diplomatic
breakthroughs.
His tireless globetrotting to meet with foreign dignitaries, especially in the Middle East, inspired
the term shuttle diplomacy. Kissinger’s efforts helped to bring about normalized relations with
China, a painful end to the conflict in Vietnam, and the SALT I and anti-ballistic treaties with the
Soviet Union. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with North
Vietnam’s negotiator Le Duc Tho.
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[00:02:23]
This recognition followed three years of secret meetings, which brought about a cease fire in
Vietnam. The award produced much criticism as Vietnam continued to see fighting despite the
agreement. Controversy came again in 1983, ten years later, when, as head of the bipartisan
presidential commission on Central America, Kissinger advocated continuing aid to the
Nicaraguan Contras in order to maintain pressure on the Sandinista government.
Upon leaving office in 1977, the former Harvard Professor of Government established the
international consulting firm of Kissinger Associates. Today Kissinger reflects on the recent
changes in Eastern Europe, on Gorbachev’s prospects for success, and on the possibility of
political reform in China. Sharing reminiscences and an insider’s view of global politics is Henry
Kissinger. He is introduced by former President Ford.
(applause)
[00:03:33]
GERALD FORD: Thank you. Won’t you all sit down please? Thank you very, very much.
Thank you. Thank you. It’s a very high honor and a very great privilege for me to have the
opportunity of welcoming Dr. Kissinger as the William Simon Lecturer this evening. I’ve been
very fortunate. I can say without any hesitation or qualification I feel very lucky that I’ve known
Henry Kissinger for about 30 years. I first met him, when Henry, in the late fifties or early
sixties, was a professor at Harvard University, teaching military policy, foreign policy.
At that time I was a member of the House of Representatives and was the senior Republican on
the Defense Appropriations Committee. It was a small group that had total and exclusive
jurisdiction over all the expenditures for the military. Henry kindly invited me to come to
Cambridge where I spent a couple of hours with him and his seminar. Of course, when Henry
became head of the NSC and Secretary of State in 1969 through 1970—August of ’74 when I
became president, he was head of NSC and Secretary of State under President Nixon, I was the
Republican leader and I met frequently, was briefed regularly by Dr. Kissinger and our
friendship grew stronger and broader and even better.
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[00:05:36]
And then, of course, on August 9, 1974, when I took the oath of office, the first member of the
Cabinet that I asked to stay on and work with me was Dr. Kissinger. I happen to believe very
strongly that Henry Kissinger is one of the finest, if not the finest, Secretary of State this
country’s had in the last hundred years or more.
I was extremely lucky that our views, his and mine, on major foreign policy issues were
identical. Our personalities meshed despite obviously far different backgrounds. So I am pleased
and honored to say to all you ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Henry A. Kissinger. Henry.
(applause)
[00:07:02]
HENRY KISSINGER: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, President de Gaulle of France
towards the end of his term in office said on one occasion, “We go through life looking for
hidden treasures. And then we find that there are no hidden treasures. And that the most
important thing left to us is friendship.” I say this because I have had the great privilege of
working under President Ford. I was Secretary of State during the period just preceding his
coming into office. And when he said, “Our long, national nightmare is over,” there is no one for
whom he spoke more deeply than for me.
To conduct foreign policy when the Executive authority of the United States is disintegrated, it’s
a really nightmarish prospect. Then President Ford came into office and with calm dignity
assumed his responsibilities.
[00:08:51]
Right now we are talking about—I mean we are all thrilled by the changes that are going on in
the world. But it is not often enough recognized that most of them had their origins in the Ford
administration. The structure of arms control negotiations was established by President Ford at
Vladivostok. And all agreements that have come afterwards have substantially followed what
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was outlined there. Everybody now talks about the changes in Eastern Europe. But what laid the
basis for the changes in Eastern Europe were the Helsinki agreements, for which at the time
President Ford and his associates were vilified.
People didn’t recognize that these agreements laid the basis on which one could appeal on the
subject of human rights in Eastern Europe. It made human rights an international and not a
domestic issue. And it gave all the fighters for democracy behind the Iron Curtain a forum and a
rallying ground. And it think it may have been most significant agreement that was signed in the
last 30 years.
[00:10:32]
It was signed against violent opposite by people who are now embracing it. And are—there is no
longer any dispute about the fact that this was decisive. But the calm dignity with which our
affairs were being conducted at that time will earn the thanks of our nation so long as American
history is being written.
I reciprocate strongly the warm feelings that President Ford expressed about our relationship.
One serves in government under great pressure. There is always more to do than you can
possibly accomplish. It is rare that the relationships in government survive the period afterwards.
I’m proud to say that Nancy and my friendship is very— President Ford has grown in the
interval since we worked together. And so it is, of course, a great honor to be here.
If you think back to the Cabinet that President Ford had assembled you will see that he did not
feel threatened by not exactly shrinking egos.
(laughter)
[00:12:17]
Of course Bill Simon, who endowed this series, is a close friend of both of ours. I’ve almost
forgiven him for having said once that my knowledge of economics was one of the best
arguments against universal suffrage—(laughter)—he had ever seen. Because he proved his
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knowledge of politics shortly afterwards—(laughter)—at the height of the oil crisis by calling the
Shah of Iran a nut.
(laughter)
[00:13:00]
So I called him up and expressed my uneasiness at this manner of expressing himself. And he
said, “Oh, you political scientists. You get too excited. I’ll have it solved by the end of the day.”
(laughter)
At the end of the day he put out a statement that he had been quoted out of context.
(laughter)
The Shah of Iran went to his grave trying to figure out in which context he could be called a
nut—(laughter)—that was not offensive. But it was—it was a really interesting Cabinet in a very
important time. Now of course, there is one thing that the President didn’t mention in listing my
various positions. He didn’t list the fact that for three years I was simultaneously Secretary of
State and National Security Advisory. The reason I mention that is for students of public
administration that may be here. Because never before and never since have relations between
the White House and the State Department been as harmonious—(laughter)—as they were in
that period.
[00:14:36]
Now I will talk to you for a bit about the current situation in East-West relations. And after I
finish I remarks I’ll take a few questions before I dash off to the airport. You can ask about any
subject that interests you. Of course I’ll answer on any subject that interests me—(laughter)—to
see whether we can mesh the two. I started out with a quotation from President De Gaulle. And
there was one characteristic of his for which I had always particular admiration. When he had a
press conference he did not believe that he should let the French version of Sam Donaldson tell
him what he should talk about. He arrived with five prepared answers. And whatever the
question was—(laughter)—he would give—he would work through his five answers, which led a
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French newspaper to publish a cartoon of De Gaulle opening a press conference by saying,
“Would somebody like to ask a question to my answers?”
(laughter)
And that’s really true. That is how the De Gaulle press conferences were conducted. They were a
way for him to deliver five, brief speeches. Well, we’ll see what happens in our question period.
[00:16:22]
Let me talk about the current situation in East–West relations. I’d like to make two propositions.
One, on many levels this is one of the most exciting periods through which anyone can live. It’s
the culmination of what Americans have wanted in the whole, post-war period. On the other
hand it confronts the United States with a type of foreign policy we have never had to conduct in
our entire history. It’s the end of our—of what we dreamed about because it does mark the
philosophical collapse of communism as an ideology. And also the disintegration of the Soviet
Empire in Eastern Europe.
It marks a new period for American foreign policy because since the early period of our country,
at least since the War of 1812 the United States has not had to conduct foreign policy like other
nations. First, we were protected by two great oceans. Then we had an atomic monopoly. Then
we had a huge, economic superiority. And then we were in an ideological struggle with a hostile
philosophy. All of this meshed with the American notion of what the world shou—well should
be like. Americans have never known hostile neighbors in terms of countries. America has been
able to concentrate on its domestic affairs. When we were challenged overseas we could
intervene, solve the problem and return to the United States.
[00:19:12]
And when that ended more or less after World War II. We still confronted a hostile philosophy.
So that the idea developed that if that philosophy ever changed we could return to our original
vocation of concentrating on our own affairs. Because of the factors that I described, Americans
have had a tendency to think—to be split into two groups. One group tended to think of foreign
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policy as a subdivision of psychiatry. And another group thought of foreign policy as a
subdivision of theology.
The psychiatric group took the view that relations among nations were like relations among
people and that you proceed with good will. Making concessions to establish good will. If you
look at the American wars in the post-World War II period, it was an article of faith in almost all
of our media, that by bringing pressure you weakened your prospects of negotiation. In the
Korean War we stopped military operations as soon as negotiations started. In the Vietnam War
there was enormous pressure to stop military operations, at any rate bombing, in order to
encourage negotiations. The fact is, in both those case we removed the incentive to negotiate by
those—by those actions.
[00:21:19]
The theological group tended to think that if you simply asserted your ideology strongly enough
a day would come when the walls of Jericho would crumble. The other side would see the light
and we would live with a consciousness of harmony. And all of this is reinforced by the fact that
when one is in an area like this, in the middle of the country, one really isn’t very conscious of
foreigners. One isn’t really aware of dangers. And there’s a great temptation to believe that all
foreigners are like Americans or maybe misunderstood Americans.
I have a friend who thinks there’s no such thing as an English accent, who think the English put
this on to intimidate Americans.
(laughter)
[00:22:03]
And if you can only catch an Englishman unaware, like waking him up at four in the morning,
he’ll talk like a normal human being.
(laughter)
That’s often our attitude towards—towards foreign leaders. We’ve been waiting for some
Russian to come along who’d be like a Midwestern American. And we think once that happens
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all our problems have disappeared. And so Gorbachev to the American mind, or to many in
America, comes as an answer to all of our problems. But I think we have two problems in the
Soviet Union. One is communist ideology. The other is Russian history. If a nation has followed
a certain pattern for 400 years, you can’t say they’ll never change but you can say they have a
certain propensity in certain directions.
[00:23:23]
Now Russia has been expanding for 400 years. They started out in the area around Moscow and
pushed east and west to the center of Europe and to the shores of the Pacific, incorporating more
and more nationalities. The special trait of the Russian empire has been that when European
states won a war they annexed the province. When the Russian state won a war they annexed the
country. And that’s why they have so many nationalities. Barely 50 percent of the population of
the Soviet Union is Russian. Less than—barely 50 percent speak Russian.
So you have many nationalities, many religions all living together. And I mean various religions
live in discreet units. And that is one of the big problems they have today. I mention all of this
because even though I think communism is in trouble, the United States will have to deal with
Russia as a major factor in international relations. I think we have to be careful to be so obsessed
with one personality in the Soviet Union.
[00:25:10]
I give Gorbachev great credit for having recognized the weaknesses of his system. I give him
great credit for attempting to reform it. And probably he’s doing it with more flair and verve than
any other Russian leader. But he did not have a sudden flash of inspiration on the road to
Damascus. He faced real necessities. And any other Soviet leader would face the same
necessities. They might do it a little less well. But this idea that if Gorbachev went that we would
face a totally new challenge is, in my view, wrong. I hope it’s wrong, not because I want him to
leave. I would just as soon have him stay.
But because if it were true that he alone is responsible for this policy then we are building on
very uncertain foundations because Soviet domestic politics are violent and Gorbachev is mortal.
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[00:26:37]
But I’d like to discuss a few of the factors that will drive any Soviet leader in the same direction.
The first is the colossal mess in the Soviet economy. A modern economy cannot be run by
central planning. In the Soviet economy every article in commerce moves by allocation. The
managers make an arrangement with the planning agency and with the ministry that buys their
product to establish quotas. There is no market. There is no credit system. There is no objective
basis on which anybody can judge why anything is being produced and for whom.
There’s no way of determining costs because all prices are fixed. And there are huge subsidies.
Electricity is free. Health service is dirt cheap. And some people may think all off of this is
terrific except that somebody pays for it. And it isn’t—there are no free lunches. The result is
that the whole infrastructure has run down. I talked to a leading Soviet individual a few weeks
ago. We were talking about a possible food shortage in the Soviet Union this winter. And I said I
thought that there was no question that the American people would support relief supplies going
into the Soviet Union if that happened.
[00:28:36]
He said that doesn’t help our problem very much because our distribution system has broken
down. For example, we are missing 20,000 railway cars, which we can’t find.
(laughter)
Now can you imagine a super power that has lost 20,000 railway cars and can’t find them? So
that is the extent of the crisis. And, in fact, every economic reform that Gorbachev has
undertaken has made matters worse. He tried to cut down the consumption of alcohol in order to
increase productivity, which in itself is a laudable objective. But the result of this was that the
alcohol tax, which was one of the largest sources of revenue in the Soviet Union was no longer
being collected. They have no other easy sources of taxation. So they had to print money and
inflation got very bad.
[00:29:53]
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They started ordering, which you may have read in the newspapers, that every enterprise had to
sell a certain percentage of its production on the market. But there is no market. So a kind of
criminal Mafia took over the distribution. In other words, until they establish markets and credits
and some cost accounting they cannot know what they are doing. And yet, in order to do that,
they will have to go through a period of rising prices, closing inefficient businesses,
unemployment. And that they have been afraid to do.
ANNOUCER: You’re listening to Henry Kissinger on the Ford Hall Forum’s New American
Gazette.
In a democracy, faced with such a crisis, if it’s a healthy democracy, you produce a Lincoln or a
Roosevelt or a Churchill or a De Gaulle who incarnates the values of the society and tells the
people what sacrifices they must bring. But in a communist system, the Soviet Union, the leaders
have been in power now—the system has been in power for 70 years. The first generation could
still say that they won a revolution and so they must have had some public support.
[00:31:32]
But after that every succeeding leader has emerged from a contest, which nobody knew was
going on, which was fought by criteria, which nobody can describe, and which was settled by
calling the loser a criminal or a fool. And that’s been going on for 70 years. No Soviet leader has
ever retired with honor. In fact, no Soviet leader has ever retired.
(laughter)
They have all died in office except one, who made the mistake of going on holiday without his
colleagues.
(laughter)
He was purged. Every Soviet leader has become a non-person as soon as he left office. When
President Ford and I met with Brezhnev there was a degree of obsequiousness on the Soviet staff
side that you’d never see in an America entourage. Today, everybody is dumping on Brezhnev.
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[00:32:58]
His family has been kicked out of their house. His son-in-law has been put into prison. And it’s a
cruel fate to lose power in the Soviet Union. So, they do not have anybody that can embody the
values of the society because nobody knows what they are. Gorbachev is a great hero in many
foreign countries but not in the Soviet Union. And, in fact—so this is one problem.
The second problem they have is, you cannot be a true Communist and a true Democrat. Those
two concepts are incompatible. If you’re a true Democrat you believe that the conflict of ideas
generates an approximation of the truth. If you’re a communist believer you know the truth. And
that it is your duty to instill it, impose it on your environment. That was the quarrel between the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks to begin with. So in every communist state a small group of
people imposes its will on the population. They are unthinkable without a secret police.
[00:34:26]
Now to the extent that the terror ends, the Communist Parties crumbles because they have no
mechanism of contesting for the beliefs of people. They’ve never had to do it. It is after all
amazing that these parties that have been in power in Eastern Europe for 40 years with a
monopoly of education, patronage, police, propaganda, that they can be swept away in a week or
two.
And Gorbachev faces the problem inside the Soviet Union, that on the one hand he preaches
glasnost. But on the other hand the end of glasnost has to be the destruction of the Communist
Party. There’s no other outcome for it. He put his own man in as party chief of Azerbaijan. But
in order to govern that man has to reflect what the people there want.
[00:35:40]
But what the people there want doesn’t happen to be what the Communists want. So he’s caught
either with losing all support at the local level or becoming a spokesman for the various—for the
Azerbaijan nationalists. The same happened in the Baltics. The local communist ruler in
Lithuania has decided that if he sticks with Moscow he’ll get three percent of the vote. And he’s
got an election coming up. And the fact that Gorbachev doesn’t fully understand his problem is
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shown by his visit to Lithuania when he said, “In order to get a divorce, both parties have to
agree.”
But the Lithuanians—it may not even be true but the—the Lithuanians say, “But we are not
married. “
(laughter)
[00:36:47]
The premise is wrong. And every leading Russian that I talk to tells me about the great economic
advantages that these nationalities get from Russia. I always tell them—being a great diplomat I
always say, “That’s what every imperialist nation always says. That’s what the Europeans said in
their colonies that they’d be better off with help from Europe. It never works, because these
people want to have their own national identity.”
So those are the problems that the Soviet Union has. And in a way they’re insoluble in the
present framework. And this is why you read all these stories about the precariousness of
Gorbachev’s position. I don't know how precarious his position is. On the face of it I would not
be surprised if he faced the usual dilemma of reformist. That he’s going too fast for some people
and to slow for other people. And also, that in trying to fix the problems of the day, he doesn’t
necessarily create a pattern for the future.
[00:38:23]
Is he a great statesman? Or is he the best runner on a log that we’ve seen? We don’t know yet.
Eastern—take Eastern Europe. Was he trying to achieve what has happened or was he trying to
get friendly communist governments into power? And as soon as he started the process it ran
away from him. But whatever he tried to do one fact is certain now, the Communist Parties in
Eastern Europe have all disintegrated.
The funny thing is, the only slight hope they have is that if the election—that since they have
killed all the democratic parties, it may not be possible to organize the democratic parties fast
enough for the elections that are scheduled for the next few months. So that the first election
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results may prove misleading. But take Poland—about which we owe it to President Ford to
point out, he happened to be right, in the 1976 (laughter and applause)
[00:39:51]
Take Poland. The Solidarity leaders did not want to come into power at this time because they
know the economic mess is so great that they did not want to assume responsibility for cleaning
it up. They wanted the Communists to try to begin the process of the economic changes. And
they agreed to an electoral system that in any normal situation the Communists could not have
lost. They gave half the seats to the Communists provided the Communists got 50 percent of the
votes of those voting in an unopposed election. And that should be easy to do since who would
vote when there’s no opposition.
And then they contested the other half of the seats and the expectation was that the Communists
would get all of the unopposed seats and the—would get a few of the opposed seats and thereby
have a majority. In fact, the Communists could not get half the votes in an unopposed election.
They got only 15 percent of the votes where they had no opposition. And among the 150
candidates where they had opposition, they won one, who ran under a different label.
(laughter)
[00:41:37]
So that shows something about public opinion in Eastern Europe. Now what you have—if one
wanted to be sophisticated one would go country by country because there are obviously
differences in Romania and Bulgaria where it looks to me as if the Communists probably will
hold power, but not by election but by rigging the system. The Soviets cannot go back into
Eastern Europe, into dominating Eastern Europe without fighting. And we have seen in
Azerbaijan that they cannot call reservists and they cannot fight both in their own country,
holding it together and abroad. But they still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Eastern
Europe.
And one of the challenges for American foreign policy is, to get those troops out of Eastern
Europe. Because once there are democratic governments in those countries, nobody wants these
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troops there. And, in fact, we have to be careful in our arms control negotiations that we don’t
establish ceilings, which permit the Soviets to keep more troops there under agreement than they
could keep on their own.
[00:43:04]
Because they’ve already been asked to leave Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And I think
they will sooner or later be asked to leave Eastern Germany. So we have a very tricky problem in
the next few years. Now, there are a lot of people who say if they withdraw their troops from
Eastern Europe, we ought to get out of Western Europe and dismantle NATO. I think that’s a
very dangerous course. They withdraw only about 800 miles. If we go back to this side of the
Atlantic the balance of power in Europe would be totally destroyed.
[00:44:02]
So we have to negotiate a system, which can be done, in which certain areas of Europe become
like Austria, neutral zones between the Soviet Union and Germany. And I think Germany will
obviously be unified if only because with the frontiers between the two countries now being
open, if they don’t equalize economic conditions very rapidly the population of East Germany
will emigrate to West Germany. As it, four percent of the population is leaving now, 2,000
people a day are moving from East Germany to West Germany. That cannot go on indefinitely.
So those are some of the challenges to our foreign policy. But the most important one is this. In
our recent history we have been involved in foreign policy, either when there was some
immediate danger or when there was a philosophical challenge. But the area—era into which we
are moving now, it’s different. There’s not necessarily a philosophical challenge. There’s not
necessarily an immediate danger. And yet, we have to remain involved in the world. Why?
Because for 400 years Britain realized that it had to keep the continent of Europe from being
unified under a hostile power because otherwise it would be too weak to resist.
[00:45:59]
We have to prevent all the resources of Eurasia from being organized by a hostile power.
Winston Churchill in the 1930s wrote an article about British foreign policy in which he said that
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it was the policy of Britain to oppose whichever country seemed to be the dominating tyrant on
the continent. He listed all the various rulers that had existed and he said, “It did not matter to us
whether it was Napoleon or Hitler or Philip II of Spain. We were not pursuing a policy of
sentiment. We were pursuing a settled, national policy.”
“And it was in this manner,” he said, “that we preserved the liberties of Europe.” And that is the
challenge for the United States today. We don’t want anything from the Soviet Union. The
Soviet Union stays within its natural—national boundaries. We have no quarrel with it. And it
has 11 time zones in its national boundaries. Vladivostok, where the President and I were, is
closer to Seattle than it is to Leningrad. And Leningrad is closer to New York than it is to
Vladivostok. So they need not suffer claustrophobia—(laughter)—if they stay at home.
On the other hand for 400 years they have been threatening and attempting to disintegrate every
pow—every power center within reach, sometime withdrawing when they had domestic chaos,
which happened periodically. But always coming back. So, of course we want them to be
peaceful. And of course we should encourage it. But we also have to keep in mind that states
have permanent interests. That do not change with personality. And there may be other factors
emerging. I have been opposing sanctions against China because I think we need China as a
potential counterweight to the Soviet Union and as a balancer vis-à-vis Japan. It’s in our own
national interest. I don’t like what went on there but we’re not doing them a favor by having
normal relations. We’re doing ourselves a favor.
[00:49:17]
And one could review the international situation on this basis. That’s not easy for Americans.
That’s the great educational task that’s before us. But I want to stress one, key factor. All the
problems I’ve described are really exciting problems to have. The whole international
environment is changing. It’s changing in the direction of our values. It is reducing the dangers
against us. We’re in a position to work on building a structure of peace in the world. That while
it will require constant vigilance, will be a lot less tense than what we’ve known for a generation.
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�MS113.0131 Transcript
I have a Chinese acquaintance who claims that there exists the following Chinese proverb. I say
claims because I don’t believe there are as many Chinese proverbs as they lay upon us. But he
claims that it goes like this, “When there is turmoil under the heavens little problems are dealt
with as if they were big and big problems are not dealt with at all. When there is order under the
heavens, big problems are reduced to little problems and little problems should not obsess us.”
[00:50:56]
The great opportunity of our period is that we can, in our life time, reduce big problems to littler
problems and thereby contribute to what my Chinese acquaintance calls order under the heavens.
And now I’ll take a few questions. Thank you very much.
(applause)
What do I foresee happening in China? I think in fairness one has to recognize that the Chinese
upheaval last year was caused, in the main, by a successful reform policy, by the most successful
reform policy that’s been carried out in any communist country. China had the fastest growth
rate of any country in the world for a ten-year period. They had moved from becoming an
agricultural importing country to becoming an exporting country.
[00:52:04]
Then when they moved the economic reform to the cities, they ran into the problem that I’ve
already mentioned, namely that they—they had to move to price reform. Price reform must
produce inflation and unemployment. And while the students started the upheaval the shock
troops of the upheaval were not students but workers. And I think the vast majority of the
casualties were workers, not students. And the workers were protesting against what was almost
inevitable in the economic reform.
Now I think that if the Chin—if—that the Chinese are trying to go back to economic reform.
They are not—they are not great believers in political change. But the present leadership is quite
old. If they go back to economic reform that means they will have special economic zones. It
means they’ll have to decentralize decision making. And I would think that over a period of time
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�MS113.0131 Transcript
there’s a good prospect that the exactions of government will be reduced. And, in fact, I believe
the sanctions tend to punish the reformers and help the hardliners who want to isolate China.
[00:53:31]
But I think the prospects of reform in China are, in my view, better than in the Soviet Union even
though Gorbachev is an extremely attractive leader.
[Question not audible]
Will somebody call my wife and tell her I’m coming tomorrow morning.
(laughter)
I’ll—I’ll tell you. I—that’s not an easy question, that’s—in fact, it’s an impossible question to
answer briefly. What worries me is, I think we made a mistake in the beginning of the Reagan
period to increase our armed forces indiscriminately. I was in favor of the buildup. But I think
we should have insisted on developing a strategic doctrine first.
[00:54:31]
I’m afraid that now the reductions will go in the same way. And I would—I talked to President
Ford about it. And I feel a lot happier if some bipartisan commission were created like the Social
Security commission that would develop an answer to your question. Not necessarily force
levels—that’s a job for the Secretary of Defense—but a strategic doctrine. What is the danger
against which we are trying to protect? What kind of forces do we need? Where should these
forces be stationed in a general way?
Then, first of all, this would put—give everybody, Congress and the President, the better part of
this year to address the issue. And they can still make cuts of—you know—of cutting out waste
and clear duplication. Then the next budget could reflect a strategic doctrine that would answer
your question.
I see Marty permits me to answer one more question.
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�MS113.0131 Transcript
(laughter)
MARVIN KALB: I want to get you home tonight.
HENRY KISSINGER: (inaudible) One more question. Yes, sir.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: There is a lot of speculation about the Soviets creating a gold bond,
creating a hard trading currency. What do you think will happen with the development of that?
HENRY KISSINGER: Well, remember what Simon—what Simon said. You know, there’s a
lot of talk about the Soviet Union getting a convertible currency. And, you know, until they do it
they can’t really enter the international trading system. I don’t quite see how they can do it in the
present, economic chaos inside the Soviet Union. But they have had the advice that they should
go to the gold standard in some fashion because that’s the only way they can get credibility for
their currency.
[00:56:28]
But at this moment it would require for Gorbachev to be willing to assert more authority on
domestic matters because that certainly would lead to an inflationary situation for a while in the
Soviet Union. But there’s no way around it. They may come to it but not before their leadership
struggle is straightened out.
(applause)
ANNOUCER: You’ve been listening to the New American Gazette with this week’s guest
Henry Kissinger. This program was recorded at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids,
Michigan on January 31, 1990 by WGBU FM in Grand Rapids. The moderator was President
Gerald Ford. The New American Gazette is produced for the Ford Hall Forum and directed by
Deborah Stavrow. Post-production engineer is Brian Sabo. This program is produced in
cooperation with the nation's presidential libraries, the National Archives and Northeastern
University.
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�MS113.0131 Transcript
Funding for the New American Gazette is provided by Houghton Chemical Corporation of
Boston, for over 60 years a major marketer of organic chemicals and automotive antifreeze
products. Additional funding is provided by Metropolitan Life Foundation, helping to create an
informed citizenry through public affairs programming.
If you'd like a cassette of this program, send a check for $12 to the Ford Hall Forum, 271
Huntington Avenue, Suite 240, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115. That's the Ford Hall Forum, 271
Huntington Avenue, Suite 240, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115.
Join us again for the New American Gazette.
END OF RECORDING
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20
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Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reviews domestic affairs and world events with former President Gerald Ford. They discuss U.S. foreign policy, issues facing the Soviet Union, and the situation of reform in China. The forum was recorded at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids, Michigan and broadcast on the New American Gazette radio. The program was introduced by host Marvin Kalb.
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New American Gazette: Transcript of Ayn Rand Forum
Moakley Archive and Institute
www.suffolk.edu/moakley
Title: New American Gazette: “Apollo (11) and Dionysus (at Woodstock),” at Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Date: 1 March 1990
Speakers: Ayn Rand, Marvin Kalb
Item Information: New American Gazette: “Apollo (11) and Dionysus (at Woodstock),” at
Ford Hall Forum. Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1908-2013 (MS113.3.1, item 0013) Moakley
Archive, Suffolk University, Boston, MA.
Digital Versions: audio recording and transcript available at http://moakleyarchive.omeka.net
Copyright Information: Copyright © 1991 Ford Hall Forum.
Recording Summary:
Transcription of a Ford Hall Forum that featured Ayn Rand, a prominent Russian-American
objectionist philosopher and novelist. Ayn Rand provides a detailed analysis of two major event
of the sixties -- the Woodstock music festival and the Apollo 11 spaceflight in a forum entitled,
“Apollo (11) and Dionysus (at Woodstock).” The forum was originally recorded on November 9,
1969 and rebroadcast as part of the New American Gazette radio program on March 1 1990. The
radio broadcast is introduced by host Marvin Kalb.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Transcript Begins
ANNOUNCER: From Boston, the Ford Hall Forum presents the New American Gazette with
special guest host Marvin Kalb
[00:00:29]
MARVIN KALB: The year was 1969. On July sixteenth, nearly one million observers traveled
to Cape Kennedy to witness the launching of Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon. A
month later, on August fifteenth, 400,000 young people gathered in a cow pasture near
Woodstock, Vermont [sic], for a three-day music festival.
Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand long argued that human reason and intellect command our
moral code and lift us to the stars. Emotions and physical senses root us to the earth. The two
sides, she believed, reason versus emotion, represented the fundamental conflict of our age.
Now, the sixties had provided her with two stunning examples.
[00:01:18]
The best-selling author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged offered a fresh, startling, and
controversial opinion on the significance of Woodstock. In August 1969, Time magazine
reported that "Woodstock may well rank as one of the significant political and sociological
events of the age"; adding that Woodstock was "the stuff of which legends are made." Miss Rand
heartily disagreed.
Twenty years later opinions had shifted. Woodstock is now remembered as a great social
experiment, primeval and futuristic, and a brief demonstration of unity and cooperation. Miss
Rand died in 1982. Had Miss Rand lived until Woodstock's twentieth anniversary, it is doubtful
that she would have reformed her caustic view of the Age of Aquarius. Perhaps she would have
been comforted by the ensuing decade of greed and the emergence of yuppies from the former
love children of the sixties. Yet, that was her prediction of more than twenty years ago when she
concluded that these rebellious hippies were in fact no less traditional in their attitudes or beliefs
than their middle class parents.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[00:02:40]
In this program, she reveals her piercing wit, intellectual vigor and shrewd observations of an
American society that both attracted and repelled her, that delighted and infuriated her, that
expressed the highest goals of reason and the dark, wild chaos of the irrational emotions. On this
occasion, Miss Rand used her reason and wit to reassure her admirers and vanquish her foes
while demonstrating the philosophical principles of objectivism.
Stay with us for a special look back at two of the most significant events of the sixties as seen
through the eyes of Ayn Rand—Apollo 11 and Dionysus at Woodstock.
[00:03:37]
AYN RAND: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on July 16, 1969, one million
people, from all over the country, converged on Cape Kennedy, Florida, to witness the launching
of Apollo 11 that carried astronauts to the moon.
On August fifteenth, 300,000 people, from all over the country, converged on Bethel, New York,
near the town of Woodstock, to witness a rock music festival.
[00:04:12]
These two events were news, not philosophical theory. These were facts of our actual existence,
the kinds of facts—according to both modern philosophers and practical businessmen—that
philosophy has nothing to do with. But if one cares to understand the meaning of these two
events, to grasp their roots and their consequences, one will understand the power of philosophy
and learn to recognize the specific forms in which philosophical abstractions appear in our actual
existence.
[00:04:50]
The issue in this case is the alleged dichotomy of reason versus emotion. This dichotomy has
been presented in many variants in the history of philosophy, but its most colorfully eloquent
statement was given by Friedrich Nietzsche. In The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music,
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Nietzsche claims that he observed two opposite elements in Greek tragedies, which he saw as
metaphysical principles inherent in the nature of reality. He named them after two Greek gods:
Apollo, the god of light, and Dionysus, the god of wine.
[00:05:36]
Apollo, in Nietzsche's metaphysics, is the symbol of beauty, order, wisdom, efficacy—though
Nietzsche equivocates about this last—that is, the symbol of reason. Dionysus is the symbol of
drunkenness or, rather, Nietzsche cites drunkenness as his identification of what Dionysus stands
for: wild, primeval feelings, orgiastic joy, the dark, the savage, the unintelligible element in man;
that is, the symbol of emotion.
[00:06:11]
Apollo, according to Nietzsche, is a necessary element, but an unreliable and thus inferior guide
to existence that gives man a superficial view of reality: the illusion of an orderly universe.
Dionysus is the free, unfettered spirit that offers man—by means of a mysterious intuition
induced by wine and drugs—a more profound vision of a different kind of reality, and is thus the
superior. And, indicating that Nietzsche knew clearly what he was talking about, even though he
chose to express it in a safely, drunkenly Dionysian manner, Apollo represents the principle of
individuality, while Dionysus leads man, quote, "into complete self-forgetfulness," unquote, and
into merging with the "oneness” of nature. Those who, at a superficial reading, take Nietzsche to
be an advocate of individualism, please note.
This much is true: reason is the faculty of an individual, to be exercised individually; and it is
only dark, irrational emotions, obliterating his mind, that can enable a man to melt, merge and
dissolve into a mob or a tribe. We may accept Nietzsche's symbols, but not his estimate of their
respective values, nor the metaphysical necessity of a reason/emotion dichotomy.
[00:07:55]
It is not true that reason and emotion are irreconcilable antagonists or that emotions are a wild,
unknowable, ineffable element in men. But this is what emotions become for those who do not
care to know what they feel, and who attempt to subordinate reason to their emotions. For every
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
variant of such attempts—as well as for their consequences—the image of Dionysus is an
appropriate symbol.
[00:08:26]
Symbolic figures are a valuable adjunct to philosophy. They help men to integrate and bear in
mind the essential meaning of complex issues. Apollo and Dionysus represent the fundamental
conflict of our age. And for those who may regard them as floating abstractions, reality has
offered two perfect, fiction-like dramatizations of these abstract symbols—at Cape Kennedy and
at Woodstock.
[00:09:02]
They were perfect in every respect demanded of serious fiction—they concretized the essentials
of the two principles, in action, in a pure, extreme, isolated form. The fact that the spacecraft was
called Apollo is merely a coincidence, but a helpful coincidence.
(laughter)
If you want to know fully what the conflict of reason versus irrational emotion means—in fact,
in reality, on earth—keep these two events in mind. It means Apollo 11 versus the Woodstock
festival. Remember also that you are asked to make a choice between these two, and that the
whole weight of today's culture is being used to push you to the side of and into the mud of
Woodstock.
In my article "Apollo 11," in The Objectivist, September 1969, I discussed the meaning and the
greatness of the moon landing. And parenthetically, for those interested in the subject, I would
very much recommend that you do read that article because in today's lecture I will not have the
time to discuss in detail both events. And therefore, if you want my discussion and my analysis
of Apollo 11, please read it in the September issue of my magazine The Objectivist. I shall
merely quote the essential point of that article. Quote, "No one could doubt that we had seen an
achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being, an achievement of reason, of logic, of
mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality. The most confirmed evader in the
worldwide audience could not escape the fact that no feelings, wishes, urges, instincts or lucky
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
conditioning could have achieved this incomparable feat—that we were watching the embodied
concretization of a single faculty of man: his rationality," closed quote.
[00:11:20]
This was the meaning and motive of the overwhelming worldwide response to Apollo 11,
whether the cheering crowds knew it consciously or not—and most of them did not. It was the
response of people starved for the sight of an achievement, for a vision of man the hero. This was
the motive that drew one million people to Cape Kennedy for the launching. Those people were
not a stampeding herd nor a manipulated mob; they did not wreck the Florida communities, they
did not devastate the countryside, they did not throw themselves, like whining thugs, at the
mercy of their victims; they did not create any victims.
[00:12:04]
They came as responsible individuals able to project the reality of two or three days ahead and to
provide for their own needs.
(laughter)
There were people of every age, creed, color, educational level and economic status. They lived
and slept in tents or in their cars, some of them for several days, in great discomfort and
unbearable heat. They did it gamely, cheerfully, gaily. They projected a general feeling of
confident goodwill, the bond of a common enthusiasm. They created a public spectable—
spectacle of responsible privacy. And they departed as they had come, without benefit of press
agents.
(laughter)
[00:13:04]
The best account of the nature of the general feeling was given to me by an intelligent young
woman of my acquaintance. She went to see the parade of the astronauts when they came to New
York. For a few brief moments, she stood on a street corner and waved to them as they went by.
Quote, "It was so wonderful," she told me, "People didn't want to leave after the parade had
passed. They just stood there, talking about it, talking to strangers, smiling. It was so wonderful
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
to feel, for once, that people aren't vicious, that one doesn't have to suspect them, that we have
something good in common," unquote.
This is the essence of a genuine feeling of human brotherhood – the brotherhood of values. This
is the only authentic form of unity among men, and only values can achieve it.
[00:14:05]
There was virtually no comment in the press on the meaning of the popular response to Apollo
11. The comments, for the most part, were superficial, perfunctory, mainly statistical. There was
a brief flurry of nonsense about unity, as if it were some mysteriously causeless emotional
primary, with suggestions about directing that—this unity to such inspiring goals as the crusades
against poverty, air pollution, wilderness desecration, even urban transportation. Then the subject
was dropped, and the Apollo 11 story was dropped as of no further significance.
[00:14:50]
One of the paradoxes of our age is the fact that the intellectuals, the politicians and all the sundry
voices that choke, like asthma, the throat of our communications media have never gasped and
stuttered so loudly about their devotion to the public good and about the people's will as the
supreme criterion of value. And never have they been so grossly indifferent to the people. The
reason, obviously, is that collectivist slogans serve as a rationalization for those who intend, not
to follow the people, but to rule it. There is, however, a deeper reason. The most profound breach
in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the people and the intellectuals.
In their view of life, the American people are predominantly Apollonian; the mainstream
intellectuals are Dionysian.
[00:15:52]
This means that people are reality-oriented, commonsense-oriented, and technology-oriented.
The intellectual calls this materialistic and middle-class.
(laughter)
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
The intellectuals are emotion-oriented and seek, in panic, to—an escape from a reality they are
unable to deal with, and from a technological civilization that ignores their feelings.
The flight of Apollo 11 brought this out into the open. With rare exceptions, the intellectuals
resented its triumph. A two-page survey of their reactions, published by the New York Times on
July twenty-first, was an almost unanimous spread of denigrations and denunciations—see my
article "Apollo 11." What they denounced was technology what they resented was achievement
and its source, reason.
[00:17:00]
The same attitude, with rare exceptions, was displayed by the popular commentators, who are
not the makers, but the products and the weather vanes of the prevailing intellectual trends.
Walter Cronkite of CBS was a notable exception. But Eric Sevareid of CBS was typical of the
trend. On July fifteenth, the eve of the launching, he broadcast from Cape Kennedy a
commentary that was reprinted in Variety, July twenty-third, quote: "In Washington and
elsewhere, the doubts concern future flights, their number, their cost and their benefits, as if the
success of Apollo 11 were already assured. We are a people who hate failure. It's un-American.
It is a fair guess that failure of Apollo 11 would not curtail future space programs but re-energize
them," unquote.
Please consider these two sentences: "We are a people who hate failure. It's un-American." In the
context of the rest, this was not intended as a compliment, though it should have been; it was
intended as sarcasm. But, who doesn't hate failure? Should one love it? Is there a nation on earth
that doesn't hate it? Surely, one would have to say that failure is un-British or un-French or unChinese.
(laughter)
I can think of only one nation to whom this would not apply—failure is not un-Russian. It—
(laughter and applause)
I mean this in a sense which is deeper than politics, philosophically.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[00:19:06]
But what Mr. Sevareid had in mind was not failure. It was the American dedication to success
that he was deriding. It is true that no other nation as a whole is as successful as America, which
is America's greatest virtue. But success is never automatically immediate. Passive resignation is
not a typical American trait; Americans seldom give up. It is this precondition of success, the
"try, try again" precept, that Mr. Sevareid was undercutting.
[00:19:44]
He went on to say that if Apollo 11 succeeded, quote, "the pressure to divert these great sums of
money to inner space, terra firma and inner man will steadily grow," unquote. He went on to
discuss the views of men who believe, quote, "that this adventure, however majestic its drama, is
only one more act of escape, that it is man once again running away from himself and his real
needs, that we are approaching the bright side of the moon with the dark side of ourselves."
(applause)
Do you agree with that? I don't. Continuing the quote, "We know that the human brain will soon
know more about the composition of the moon than it knows about the human brain, and why
human beings do what they do," unquote.
This last sentence is true, and one would think that the inescapable conclusion is that man should
use his brain to study human nature by the same rational methods he has used so successfully to
study inanimate matter. But not according to Mr. Sevareid; he reaches a different conclusion,
quote, "It is possible that the divine spark in man will consume him in flames that the big brain
will prove our ultimate flaw, like the dinosaur's big body, that the metal plaque Armstrong and
Aldrin expect to place on the moon will become man's epitaph," unquote. This means that the
solution is for man to give up his big brain.
[00:21:40]
On July twentieth, while Apollo 11 was approaching the moon, and the world was waiting
breathlessly, Mr. Sevareid found it appropriate to broadcast the following remark: "No matter
how great this event," he said, "nothing much has changed,” quote, “Man still puts his pants on,
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
one leg at a time, he still argues with his wife," unquote, et cetera. Well, each to his own
hierarchy of values and of importance.
(laughter and applause)
On the same day, David Brinkley of NBC observed that since men can now see and hear
everything directly on television, by sensory-perceptual means, as he stressed, commentators are
no longer needed at all. This implies that perceived events will somehow provide men
automatically with the appropriate conceptual conclusions. The truth is that the more men
perceive, the more they need the help of commentators, but of commentators who are able to
provide a conceptual analysis.
[00:23:08]
According to a fan letter I received from Canada, the United States TV commentaries during
Apollo 11's flight were mild compared to those on Canadian television. Quote, "We listened to
an appalling panel of experts disparage the project as a mere technological cleverness by a
stupid, pretentious speck of dust in the cosmos. They were also very concerned about the inflated
American ego if the voyage succeeded. One almost got the impression that they would be greatly
relieved if the mission failed," unquote. Such are today's intellectuals. Or the majority of them.
What is the actual motive behind this attitude, the unadmitted, subconscious motive? An
intelligent American newsman, Harry Reasoner of CBS, named it inadvertently. I had the
impression that he did not realize the importance of his own statement. Many voices, at the time,
were declaring that the success of Apollo 11 would destroy the poetic-romantic glamour of the
moon, its fascinating mystery, its appeal to lovers and to human imagination. Harry Reasoner
summed it up by saying simply, quietly, a little sadly, that if the moon is found to be made of
green cheese, it will be a blow to science. But if it isn't, it will be a blow to, quote, "those of us
whose life is not so well organized," unquote.
(laughter)
[00:25:01]
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And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a
reminder that their own lives are irrational and that there is no loophole, no escape from reason
and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth.
[00:25:24]
What Harry Reasoner's statement implied was the fact that only the vanguard of the Dionysian
cohorts is made up of wild, rampaging irrationalists, openly proclaiming their hatred of reason,
dripping wine and blood. The bulk of Dionysus's strength, his grassroots following, consists of
sedate little souls who never commit any major crime against reason, who merely indulge their
petty irrational whims once in a while, covertly, and, overtly, seek a balance of power, a
compromise between whims and reality. But reason is an absolute. In order to betray it, one does
not have to dance naked in the streets with wine leaves in one's hair; one betrays it merely by
sneaking down the back stairs. Then, some day, one finds oneself unable to grasp why one feels
no joy at the scientific discoveries that prolong human life or why the naked dancers are prancing
all over one's own body.
Such are the Dionysian followers.
[00:26:44]
For a reunion with wildness, for intergalactic travel. The goal, the ideal, the salvation and the
ecstasy have been achieved by 300,000 people wallowing in the mud on an excrement-strewn
hillside near Woodstock.
(applause)
Their name for the experience of travel unaccompanied by life, to peripheries untouched by time
and space, is LSD trips.
[00:27:31]
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair did not take place in Woodstock. Like everything else about
that event, its title was a phony—(laughter)—an attempt to cash in on the artistic reputation of
the Woodstock community. The fair took place on an empty thousand-acre pasture leased by the
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
promoters from a local farmer. In response to $200,000 worth of publicity and advertising,
300,000 hippies showed up for the occasion. These figures are from the New York Times; some
sources place the attendance estimate higher.
According to Newsweek, the three-day Woodstock fair was different from the usual pop festival
from the outset. Quote, “It was not just a concert but a tribal gathering, expressing all the ideas of
the new generation—communal living away from the cities, getting high, digging arts, clothes
and craft exhibits, and listening to the songs of revolution," unquote. The article quotes one of
the promoters as declaring, quote, "People will all be doing—going into their own thing. This is
not just music, but a conglomeration of everything involved in the new culture," unquote.
[00:28:56]
So it was. No living, eating or sanitary facilities were provided. The promoters claimed that they
had not expected so large a crowd. Newsweek describes the conditions as follows: "Festival food
supplies were almost immediately exhausted and water coming from wells dug into the area
stopped flowing or came up impure. A heavy rain Friday night turned the amphitheater into a
quagmire and the concession area into a mud-hole. Throngs of wet, sick and wounded hippies
trekked to impromptu hospital tents suffering from colds, sore throats, broken bones, barbedwire cuts and nail-puncture wounds. Festival doctors called it a health emergency, and fifty
additional doctors were flown in from New York City to meet the crisis," unquote.
[00:29:49]
According to the New York Times, August eighteenth, when the rainstorm came, quote, "at least
80,000 young people sat or stood in front of the stage and shouted obscenities at the darkened
skies—(laughter and applause)—as trash rolled down the muddy hillside with the runoff of the
rain. Others took shelter in dripping tents, lean-tos, cars and trucks. Many boys and girls
wandered through the storm nude, red mud clinging to their bodies," unquote. Drugs were used,
sold, shared or given away during the entire festival. Eyewitnesses claim that ninety-nine percent
of the crowd smoked marijuana, but heroin, hashish, LSD and other stronger drugs were peddled
openly. The nightmare convulsions of so-called “bad trips” were a common occurrence. One
young man died, apparently from an overdose of heroin.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[00:30:54]
The Newsweek report concludes with, quote: "The promoters had hired members of the Hog
Farm, a New Mexico hippie commune, to peacefully police the fair. At week's end near the Hog
Farm campsite, a hard core of crazies barked like dogs and freaked out in a bizarre circle dance
lit by flashing strobe lights. The songs seemed to sum up what the young Agrarians believed,
despite all misadventures, the festival was all about—'Now, now, now is all there is. Love is all
there is. Love is. Love,'" unquote.
(applause)
Who paid for this love feast? Apparently, the unloved ones—(laughter and applause)—those
who know that there is more than the now for a human being, and that without it, even the now is
not possible. The citizens of Bethel, the nearest community, were the victims, abandoned by their
law-enforcing agencies. These victims were neither bums nor millionaires; they were farmers
and small businessmen, who worked hard to earn their living. Their stories, reported in the New
York Times, August twentieth, sound like those of the survivors of a foreign invasion.
(laughter)
[00:32:35]
Richard C. Joyner, who operate—the operator of the local post office and general store on Route
17B, quote, "said that the youngsters at the festival had virtually taken over his property,
camping on his lawn, making fires on his patio and using the backyard as a latrine. Clarence W.
Townsend, who runs a 150-acre dairy farm was shaken by the ordeal. 'We had thousands of cars
all over our fields,' he said. 'There were kids all over the place. They made a human cesspool of
our property and drove through the cornfields. There's not a fence left on the place. They just
tore them up and used them for firewood.' 'My pond is a swamp,' said Royden Gabriele, another
farmer. 'I've got no fences and they used my field as a latrine. They picked corn and camped all
over the place. They just landed wherever they could. We pulled 30 of them out of the hay mow
smoking pot. If they come back next year I don't know what I'll do. If I can't sell, I'll just burn the
place down,'" unquote.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
No love or thought was given to these victims by the unsanitary apostles of love. And some day
the world will discover that without thought there can be no love. Furthermore—
(applause)
ANNOUNCER: You're listening to Ayn Rand on a special edition of the Ford Hall Forum's
New American Gazette
[00:34:27]
AYN RAND: Furthermore, the universal loving was not extended by the promoters of the
festival even to one another. Quote, "In the aftermath of Woodstock," writes the New York
Times, September ninth, "as the euphoria of the three days of peace and music dies out, the tales
of the problems, the bickering, the power struggles and the diverse philosophies of the four
young businessmen are coming out," unquote. The promoters were four young men, all of them
in their twenties. One of them, the heir to a drugstore products fortune, pledged his fortune to
cover the festival's losses. Inasmuch as the Woodstock hordes broke down the ticket-selling
procedure, and half the people got in without paying the seven dollar admission, the fair was a
financial disaster, according to the young heir who said, in an earlier story, that his debts might
reach two million dollars.
[00:35:23]
Now the four promoters are splitting up and fighting over control of the Woodstock Ventures
Corporation. One of them was described as, quote, "a hippie who keeps one foot in the financial
world at all times and as a boy who eschews shoes, shirts and barbers, but who likes chauffeured
Cadillacs and overseas jet travel and plunges in the stock market," unquote. All of them,
apparently, have connections with several large establishment-oriented corporations and Wall
Street investment firms who are interested in cashing in on the youth market. One of these four
stated openly, quote: "Maybe the best way to define the Underground Industrial Complex is
materialistic people of the underground trying to make money off of a generation of underground
kids who feel they aren't materialistic," unquote.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[00:36:24]
The problems that plagued these promoters, quote, "before, during and after the festival reflect
the difficulties in merging the ideas of making money off the kids and trying to let the kids
believe that a rock festival, for example, is, as one of them likes to put it, 'a groovy meeting of
the tribes, a part of the revolution,"' unquote.
If this is disgusting, there is something more disgusting still—the psychology of those hundreds
of thousands of underground kids, who, in justice, deserve no better.
(applause)
Under the title "Woodstock: Like It Was," the New York Times, August twenty-fifth, published a
lengthy interview with six young people who had attended the festival. The interview gives only
their first name—first names. Five boys: Steve, Lindsey, Bill, Jimmy and Dan, and one girl,
Judy. Most of them were college students; the youngest one was "a sixteen-year-old junior at one
of the city's better private schools. All were from comfortable middle-class backgrounds. I shall
quote some of this interview. It is a remarkable psychological document.
Quote:
[Rand reads a passage from the New York Times interview.]
Question: Why did you want to go to the festival?
Lindsey: It was the music. I wanted to go because of the music. That was the only
reason.
Judy: They had the most fantastic line-up of stars that I've ever heard about,
more than any place I've ever heard of, better than Newport.
Question: Did you have any idea where you'd sleep or what there would be to
eat?
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Judy: Well, we drove down in a caravan of two cars. There were four girls and
two guys. But we were supposed to meet 20 or 30 other people who were driving
down from New Hampshire and they were supposed to bring a tent, but we never
met each other. We just scattered.
Question: What about food?
Judy: We brought a bag of carrots. And some soda.
(laughter)
Question: Did you expect to be able to buy more there?
Judy: We never really thought about it.
Unquote.
[00:38:59]
RAND: When they were asked what they felt at the scene, Judy answered, quote, "I just had a
feeling that, wow, there are so many of us, we really have power. I'd always felt like such a
minority. But I thought, wow, we're a majority; it felt like that. I felt, here's the answer to anyone
who calls us deviates."
(laughter)
[00:39:26]
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Question: Was that before you heard any music?
Judy: I never made it to the concert. I never heard any music at all.
(laughter)
Question: The whole weekend?
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Judy: Yeah. The whole weekend.
(laughter)
Unquote.
RAND: Further, all the participants stressed a sense of what they called community.
[00:39:53]
Quote:
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Steve: Everyone came there to be together. Not that everyone would cease to be
an individual, but everyone came there to be able to express their life style.
Question: Was there a lot of sharing?
A voice: Everything was shared.
Bill: I was sitting in a group of people and it was hot and the sun was beating
down. All of a sudden you'd have a box of Cocoa Puffs hit you in the side. They'd
say, 'Take a handful and pass it on.' And like Saturday afternoon we were sitting
there and this watermelon came by—
(laughter)
RAND: You haven't heard anything yet.
(laughter)
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
—and this watermelon came by with three mouthfuls taken out of it.
(laughter)
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
You were supposed to take a bite and pass it on—
(laughter)
—because some guy three rows over said, 'Give those people some watermelon.’
Unquote.
[00:41:15]
RAND: Further, all the panel participants carried some kind of drug to the festival—mostly
marijuana. Quote, "Not infrequently drugs were given away by young people eager to share.
What couldn't be had free could be bought from dealers roaming freely through the crowd. Most
of the participants regarded the drugs as an essential part of the scene."
[00:41:36]
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Question: How much of the time were you people up there stoned; that is, deeply
drugged?
Lindsey: About 102%.
(laughter)
Question: Could you have had the festival without the drugs?
Steve: I'm sure there were people there you would have had trouble with if there
had not been drugs there.
RAND: One of the boys remarked that some of the older ones were using cocaine.
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Question: The older ones? How old?
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Judy: About twenty-four or twenty-six.
Unquote.
[00:42:17]
RAND: When they were asked what they wanted to be in the future, they answered as follows:
Quote:
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Jimmy: All my life I've had just about everything I want. And I have to have
whatever I want for the rest of my life, except from now on I have to begin to think
of how to provide it for myself. And I don't want to work because I can't have
everything and do everything I want if I have to stay in the same place from nine
to five.
(laughter)
Judy: I'm going to try everything at least once. I lived on a communal farm for a
month on the Cape. And, well, I liked it and I really enjoyed staying there and I've
always wanted to go back and try this thing again, grow tomatoes and things.
(laughter)
Question: Do you want a family?
Judy: One child. Just, you know, to procreate. But I don't want a family because I
don't want to get into that much responsibility. I want to be able to move. I want
to be able to leave at any time. I don't want that much restriction.
Unquote.
RAND: Further in the interview, quote:
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[Continues reading from the New York Times interview.]
Question: Was sex an important part of the scene at Woodstock?
Dan: It was just a part. I don't know if it was an important part or not.
Steve: In any society of 500,000 people over the course of three days you're
going to have sex, let's face it.
Jimmy: They were no more free or less free in Woodstock than they are any other
place.
Dan: There was some society to what people did. I mean, they waited until night.
(laughter)
Question: You mean there were certain standards of decorum?
Dan: I think there were, yes.
(laughter)
People still have some reservations. Some. Not as many.
Close quote.
RAND: Had enough?
(laughter)
[00:44:21]
Has it ever occurred to you that it is not an accident, but the psychological mechanism of
projection that has made people of this kind choose to call their opponents pigs?
(applause)
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
These are the young people whom the press is hailing as a new culture and as a movement of
great moral significance—the same press and the same intellectuals who dismissed or denounced
Apollo 11 as mere technology.
Of the publications I have read, Newsweek was the most fastidious in regard to Woodstock: it
offered no praise. The New York Times started by denouncing the festival in an editorial entitled
"Nightmare in the Catskills," August eighteenth, but reversed itself the next day and published an
editorial with a softened tone.
[00:45:30]
Time magazine went whole hog.
(laughter)
It published an essay under the title "The Message of History's Biggest Happening," August
twenty-ninth. This included such statements as, quote: "As the moment when the special culture
of US youth of the sixties openly displayed its strength, appeal and power, it may well rank as
one of the significant political and sociological events of the age," unquote. And, quote: "The
spontaneous community of youth that was created at Bethel was the stuff of which legends are
made," unquote.
Life magazine published a special edition devoted to the Woodstock festival. The best skills that
technology has created in the field of color photography was used to fill that issue with beautiful
pictures of scummy young savages.
(laughter and applause)
[00:46:41]
The hippies are right in one respect: the culture of today's establishment is done for, it is rotted
through and through, and rebelling against it is like rebelling against a dead horse.
The hippies are wrong, however, when they fancy themselves to be rebels. They are the distilled
essence of the establishment's culture, they are the embodiment of its soul. They are the
personified ideal of generations of crypto-Dionysians now leaping into the open.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Among the various types of today's younger generation, the hippies are the most docile
conformists. Unable to generate a thought of their own, they have accepted the philosophical
beliefs of their elders as unchallengeable dogma, just as, in earlier generations, the weakest
among the young conformed to the fundamentalist view of the Bible.
[00:47:48]
The hippies were taught by their parents, their neighbors, their tabloids and their college
professors that faith, instinct and emotion are superior to reason. And they obeyed. They were
taught that material concerns are evil, that the State or the Lord will provide, that the lilies of the
field do not toil. And they obeyed. They were taught that love, indiscriminate love, for one's
fellow man is the highest virtue. And they obeyed. They were taught that the merging of one's
self with a herd, a tribe or a community is the noblest way for man to live. And they obeyed.
There isn't a philosophical idea of today's establishment which they have not accepted and which
they do not share.
[00:48:43]
When they discovered that this philosophy did not work—because, in fact, it cannot work—the
hippies had neither the wit nor the courage to challenge it. They found, instead, an outlet for their
impotent frustration by accusing their elders of hypocrisy, as if hypocrisy were the only obstacle
to the realization of their ideals. And, left blindly, helplessly lobotomized in the face of an
inexplicable reality that is not amenable to their feelings, they have no recourse but to the
shouting of obscenities at anything that frustrates their whims, at men or at a rainy sky,
indiscriminately, with no concept of the difference. It is typical of today's culture that these
exponents of seething, raging hostility are taken as advocates of love.
[00:49:43]
Avowed anti-materialists whose only manifestation of rebellion and of individualism takes the
material form of the clothes they choose to wear, are a pretty ridiculous spectacle. Of any type of
nonconformity, this is the easiest to practice, and the safest. But even in this issue, there is a
special psychological component. Observe the hippies' choice of clothing. It is not intended to
make them look attractive, but to make them look grotesque. It is not intended to evoke
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
admiration, but to evoke mockery and pity. One does not make oneself look like a caricature
unless one intends one's appearance to plead, Please don't take me seriously.
And there is a kind of malicious wink, a contemptuous sneer in the public voices acclaiming the
hippies as heroes. The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by
anyone; anyone who would tell them how to live, without demanding the effort of thinking.
Theirs is the mentality ready for a Fuhrer.
(applause)
[00:51:16]
The hippies are the living demonstration of what it means to give up reason and to rely on one's
primeval instincts, urges, intuitions, and whims. With such tools, they are unable to grasp even
what is needed to satisfy their wishes; for example, the wish to have a festival. Where would
they be without the charity of the local squares who fed them? Where would they be without the
50 doctors, rushed from New York to save their lives, without the automobiles that brought them
to the festival, without the soda pop and beer they substituted for water, without the helicopter
that brought the entertainers, without all the achievements of the technological civilizations they
denounce? Left to their own devices, they literally didn't know enough to come in out of the rain.
(laughter and applause)
[00:52:24]
Their hysterical incantations of worship of the now were sincere. The immediate moment is all
that exists for the perceptual-level, concrete-bound, animal-like mentality because to grasp
tomorrow is an enormous abstraction, an intellectual feat open only to the conceptual—that is,
the rational—level of consciousness. Hence, their state of stagnant, resigned passivity. If no one
comes to help them, they will sit in the mud. If a box of Cocoa Puffs hits them in the side, they'll
eat it. If a communally chewed watermelon comes by, they'll chew it.
(laughter)
If a marijuana cigarette is stuck into their mouth, they'll smoke it. If not, not. How can one act,
when the next day or hour is an impenetrable black hole in one's mind?
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
[00:53:20]
And how can one desire or feel? The obvious truth is that these Dionysian desire-worshipers do
not really desire anything. All of them are seeking desperately for somebody who will provide
them with something they will be able to enjoy or to desire. Desires, too, are a product of the
conceptual faculty.
But there is one emotion which is not, and which the hippies do experience intensely—chronic
fear. If you have seen any of them on television, you have seen it leaping at you from the screen.
Fear is their brand, their hallmark. Fear is the special vibration by which they claim to recognize
one another.
(applause)
[00:54:15]
I have mentioned the nature of the bond uniting the admirers of Apollo 11, the brotherhood of
values. The hippies, too, have a brotherhood, but of a different kind; it is the brotherhood of fear.
It is fear that drives them to seek the warmth, the protection, the safety of a herd. When they
speak of merging their selves into a greater whole, it is their fears that they hope to drown in the
undemanding waves of unfastidious human bodies. And what they hope to fish out of that pool is
the momentary illusion of an unearned personal significance.
[00:54:57]
But all discussions or arguments about the hippies are almost superfluous in the face of one
overwhelming fact—most of the hippies are drug addicts. Is that—
(applause)
I will assume that your blame is directed at the hippies because this is a fact. I didn't create it. I
object to it, also.
(inaudible)
(applause)
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state, from a reality
that one cannot deal with, from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian
reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian intuition brought him closer to nature and truth, the
apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek
to get stoned.
(applause)
Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately
induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene an evil that any doubt about the moral character of its
practitioners is itself an obscenity.
(applause)
Such is the nature of the conflict of Apollo versus Dionysus.
[00:57:01]
You have all heard the old bromide to the effect that man has his eyes on the stars and his feet in
the mud. It is usually taken to mean that man's reason and his physical senses are the element
pulling him down to the mud, while his mystical, supra-rational emotions are the element that
lifts him to the stars.
[00:57:27]
This is the grimmest inversion of many in the course of mankind's history. But, last summer,
reality offered you a literal dramatization of the truth. It is man's irrational emotions that bring
him down to the mud; it is man's reason that lifts him to the stars.
Thank you.
(applause)
ANNOUNCER: You've been listening to a special edition of the New American Gazette. Ayn
Rand was recorded at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston on November 9, 1969, by WGBH FM in
Boston.
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�MS113.0013 Transcript
The New American Gazette is produced for the Ford Hall Forum by Deborah Stavro. Postproduction engineer is Brian Sabo. Major funding for the New American Gazette is provided by
Digital Equipment Corporation.
The programs are produced in cooperation with the nation's eight presidential libraries, the
National Archives and Northeastern University. If you'd like a cassette of this program, send a
check for $12 to the Ford Hall Forum, 271 Huntington Avenue, Suite 240, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02115.
That’s the Ford Hall Forum, 271 Huntington Avenue, suite 240, Boston Massachusetts, 02115.
Join us again for the New American Gazette.
END OF RECORDING
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26
�
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Ford Hall Forum Collection, 1910-2013 (MS113)
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The Ford Hall Forum Collection documents the history of the nation’s longest running free public lecture series. The Forum has hosted some the most notable figures in the arts, science, politics, and the humanities since its founding in 1908. The collection, which spans from 1908 to 2013, includes of 85 boxes of materials related to the Forum's administration, lectures, fund raising, partnerships, and its radio program, the New American Gazette.<br /><br />The digital files are being moved to: <a href="https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall">https://dc.suffolk.edu/fordhall</a>
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The New American Gazette: Ayn Rand “Apollo (11) and Dionysus (at Woodstock)," at the Ford Hall Forum [transcript]
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1 March 1990
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Rand, Ayn
Kalb, Marvin L.
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MS113.3.1/0013
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Documents
PDF
Subject
The topic of the resource
Forums (Discussion and debate)
Ford Hall Forum
Project Apollo (U.S.)
Music festivals
Relation
A related resource
Find out more about our collections on <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/moakley-archive-and-institute/collections">our website</a>.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright is retained by the creators of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law. This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the Moakley Archive & Institute. Prior permission is required for any commercial use.
Ford Hall Forum
New American Gazette
Women's History