The question mark over the American political system is this: whether those women and men who best understand the crises of the times and the directions that are needed in American and world policy could even remotely hope to be elected President, Congresspersons, mayors, or to any other public office. This question has several layers. First, we have seen that popular elective offices have become so captive to the financial power of great corporations that critical and independent thinkers are almost automatically excluded. We come almost full circle in democracy to preferring those with inherited wealth and leadership tradition as the least corruptible, since at least they and their “interests” coincide. The efforts to create reforms that would publicly finance political campaigns produce such contradictions that we have the spectacle of Eugene McCarthy and James Buckley teaming up against them on the grounds that they would underwrite only the incumbents.

To what degree was the U.S. responsible for the tragic end of Chilean democracy in the September, 1973, coup? Congressional investigations, press leaks, and the publication of the secret Chile files of ITT have continued to provide new evidence for those on all sides of the question. Now, through the investigations of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, we have important new information about U.S. policy toward Chile.

The Committee has released an interim report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, which includes a detailed study of the U.S. relation to the kidnapping-murder of General René Schneider, Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, in October, 1970.

At a White House dinner in his honor last April the President of Zambia tossed traditional protocol to the winds and discomfited his hosts with a toast calling on the United States to cease giving “psychological comfort to the forces of evil.”

Speaking in sorrow rather than anger, Kenneth Kaunda expressed “dismay at the fact that America has not fulfilled our expectations” and cautioned that black freedom fighters and the white minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa are “poised for a dangerous armed conflict.'’ Could America stand and be counted in implementing the Dar-es-Salaam Declaration strategy adopted by the Organization of African Unity? he asked. In that resolution Africa had affirmed its commitment to a peaceful solution.

We live in a curious time. We are agreed that our educational and university system has been increasingly dominated for the past half century by a pseudoscientific philosophy that doubted on principle the validity of moral values. Our constitutional system is implemented through courts managed largely by a legal profession educated in such an amoral environment that any explicit value or religious criterion is practically precluded from being taught as true.

Thousands of predawn arrests of opposition political figures and journalists, the suspension of civil liberties by presidential decree, the imposition of a rigid press censorship—thus in June, 1975, was signaled the end of Indian democracy. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's actions mean that the number of people in the world living under democratic regimes has been more than halved. Perhaps India's masses prefer bread to liberty, but they are likely to have neither. Having obtained absolute power, Mrs. Gandhi and her ruling Indian National Congress seem to have little idea of what it is to be used for.

Apologists for the emergency say it was necessary to ward off a right-wing conspiracy against Mrs. Gandhi because of her efforts at reform. They note that most of those arrested since the emergency began are hoarders of food, manipulators of prices, and holders of money from secret deals.

Americans are committed by Constitutional ideals to political equality. On the other hand, our economic ideals are libertarian and permit inequalities. Court decisions and federal legislation in the 1950's and '60's created a strong commitment to the practical realization of political and social equality. Yet we have come to see in the 1970's that economic inequalities make this achievement very difficult. The pressures for economic equality are relatively recent, because both poor and rich in Amerjca have in the past assumed the plight of the poor can be relieved most quickly through increases in total production rather than through a change in the distribution of what is produced. The prospect of limited economic growth in the future, or even no growth, dramatically shifts the pressures for economic improvement of the poor away from increased production toward greater equality in distribution.

By contrasting alternative moral responses to inequality Joseph P. DeMarco and Samuel A. Richmond have identified a major area of contemporary moral uncertainty. Some readers will object to the fact that their argument is buttressed by reference to a “no growth” future that is said to make obsolete the ethical answers that have satisfied us in the past. And indeed a strong argument can be made that growth will be with us for a long while yet, and this is almost surely the case if growth is seen qualitatively rather than quantitatively. However, their emphasis on this contemporary question should not be allowed to lead us astray, for the dilemmas of inequality are always with us. Most ethical thought has occurred in societies with essentially no growth presuppositions, and whatever doctrines we favor must be able to deal with such conditions. It is on this more fundamental, timeless, level that the argument should move.

Rarely have Israelis felt more frustrated and alone.“ Newspapers are filled with such reports—this one from the New York Times following the U.S.-Israel feud over PLO attendance at the Security Council Middle East “debate” and the lingering bitterness over the “Saunders document.” At this moment Geneva seems distant and the Saunders statement more of a beginning than anyone will admit, even if there might be a respite until after the American election. Following a visit to the U.S., Knesset member Aharon Yariv, formerly the Minister of Information, is back in Israel publicly warning that U.S. support for Israel's political posture is waning and that America is moving toward recognition of the PLO and possible advocacy of a Palestinian state.