THANKS, BEVERLY, RJ K., DIANE D. and AARON B. in San Francisco
Julia Child: Aug. 15, 1912 - Aug. 12, 2004
From long before she cooked for PBS ...
Julia Child's letter to "the Committee for Discrimination in Giving"
After graduating from Smith College in 1934, Julia McWilliams (who would later be known as Julia Child) found work with the Office of Strategic Services (which would later become the Central Intelligence Agency). Her first successful recipé was for shark repellent, to prevent underwater explosives meant for Nazi vessels from being jostled and detonated by sharks.
In the OSS, Julia Child wasn't much of a spook by modern standards, but she was promoted to administrative duties, sorting through classified documents. She met Paul Child, a fellow OSS agent who was an erudite culinary expert. Julia took a quick fancy to fine food and wine and Paul, and married him against her father's wishes (her dad was an ardent supporter of Richard Nixon, and Paul Child was a Democrat).
In the 1950s, Julia Child became an early and persistent critic of McCarthyism. When she heard that faculty at her alma mater, Smith College, had been named as suspected communists, she wrote this letter to the "Committee for Discrimination in Giving", and she sent a copy to the college. Considering the climate of the times, this was a remarkably courageous thing to do. And fifty years later, Julia Child's letter (below) still seems vividly apropos. There's also some further information following the letter.
--Helen & Harry Highwater
March 12, 1954
Mrs. Aloise B. Heath, Secretary
Committee for Discrimination in Giving
My dear Mrs. Heath:
Another fellow alumna of Smith College has forwarded to me a copy of an undated form letter containing your printed signature as secretary of a committee whose members are unidentified. This letter names five members of the Smith College faculty as having been or as now being associated with organizations cited as Communist dominated or as Communist fronts, etc.
I have also a memorandum, dated February 26, 1954, signed by the President of Smith College and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Smith College, stating that your committee never presented its letter either to the President or to the Board of Trustees for comment or investigation.
I know you feel you are doing your patriotic duty towards Smith College and towards the United States, or you would not have allowed your name to be used at the end of your committee's letter. But I respectfully suggest that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice.
We, as alumnae, have voted, in the correct parliamentary fashion, for each member of the Board of Trustees to act in our behalf. Our trustees, who are answerable to us, have duly selected President Wright to administer the college. It is an extremely serious matter to accuse by implication five faculty members of being traitors to the United States; and furthermore to accuse the college of knowingly harboring these "traitors". According to proper democratic methods, charges of this grave nature should first be brought to the attention of the President and the Trustees. You have assumed a responsibility for which you were not appointed. It is clear that you do not trust your own elected officers, and that you do not have confidence in democratic procedures.
David Lawrence, the newspaper columnist, has an article in today's Herald Tribune in which he states again a principle he has stated before in regard to fighting Communism:
"The followers of Senator McCarthy believe in fighting fire with fire, and they are not too concerned with the methods, etc."
This is the theory of the "end justifying the means." This is the method of the totalitarian governments. It makes no difference how you do it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, but use any method fair or foul as long as you reach your goal. I am sure Lawrence has not thought through his thesis to this length, but carried to its logical conclusion, it is the nullification of all that the United States stands for.
In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States.
In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and our freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.
Certainly democratic procedures are often slow. But their very slowness gives full opportunity for free debate, free investigation, the right of the accuser to present his case, and the right of the defendant to hear the charges and be faced with the evidence. None of these rights are available in the totalitarian countries; nor have you made them available to the persons you have accused.
One of the purposes of Smith College, and the main reason why its alumnae support it, is that it is a free, democratic institution, privately endowed, and subject to no political pressures from any government or any party. It can operate freely as long as its Trustees and its President have the courage to act as they see fit, with the support of the alumnae. In this very dangerous period of our history where, through fear and confusion, we are assailed continually by conflicting opinions and strong appeals to the emotions, it is imperative that our young people learn to sift truth from half-truth; demagoguery from democracy; totalitarianism in any form, from liberty. The duty of Smith College is, as I see it, to give her daughters the kind of education which will ensure that they will use their minds clearly and wisely, so that they will be able to conduct themselves as courageous and informed citizens of the United States.
I am sending to Smith College in this same mail, along with a copy of this letter, a check to duplicate my annual contribution to the Alumnae Fund. I am confident that our Trustees and our President know what they are doing. They are only too well aware of the dangers of totalitarianism, as it is always the great institutions of learning that are attacked first in any police state. For the colleges harbor the "dangerous" people, the people who know how to think, whose minds are free.
Very sincerely yours,
Julia McWilliams Child
Comment: Thanks for publishing this important letter -- so awfully apt today.
I seem to recall, from a book about Smith Professor Newton Arvin (persecuted for homosexuality), that the addressee of Ms Child’s letter is/was a sister of William F. Buckley. I may be wrong -- I no longer have the biography -- but the name rings a bell; perhaps you can verify what might be an interesting point.
The answer seems to be yes: According to the History News Network, one Aloise Buckley Heath was William F. Buckley's sister. And it seems unlikely there were multiple Aloise B. Heaths.
So her hatred of communists, her eagerness to smear anyone with that career-ruining insult, was "sibling" to National Review, her brother's widely-read arch-conservative magazine.
Helen & Harry Highwater
Comment: Mrs. Heath (long deceased) was not only the oldest sister of William F. Buckley, Jr., but also wrote about the whole incident many years ago. Her essay, along with others that she had written while raising 10 children, were collected after her death in a volume called, Will Mrs. Majors Go to Hell?
Mrs. Heath ruefully recalled that the overwhelming response she received to her letter was that the recipients poured more money into Smith College's coffers than they ever previously had, mostly, it seems, in response to her letter. ...
Comment: Mrs. Aloise Buckley Heath’s sister Patricia Lee Buckley married L. Brent Bozell, Jr. "A young, energetic red-haired Yalie from Omaha", as he is described in Before the Storm, he co-authored a defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy with brother-in-law William F. Buckley in 1953, before going on to write speeches for McCarthy. He also helped Buckley edit his magazine, National Review. In 1958 he ran for the Maryland House of Delegates and lost.
He took his family to Spain, where he founded the Catholic magazine Triumph. He later worked as a speechwriter Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, for whom he ghost-wrote Conscience of a Conservative.
Their son L. Brent Bozell III is the founder and President of the [arch-rightwing] Media Research Center, the largest media watchdog organization in America. Established in 1987, the MRC has made “media bias” a household term, tracking it and printing the compiled evidence daily. Mr. Bozell is a nationally syndicated writer whose work appears in publications such as Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The L.A. Times and National Review. [Bozell is also founder of the arch-rightwing Parents Television Council and Cybercast News Service, which started as Conservative News Service and has changed only its name. --H&HH]
So when you consider the actions of both Mrs. Heath’s brother-in-law (Brent Bozell) and brother (William F. Buckley, Jr.), concerning Senator McCarthy’s defense for his actions in Congress, you will see that the Buckleys, Bozells and Heaths were just as reckless in their pursuit of communism (if that was ever really the goal) as Senator McCarthy himself.
Additionally, Patricia L. Buckley Bozell created national attention when she
attempted to slap a liberal woman (Ti-Grace Atkinson, former President of
the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women) who was speaking at Catholic University. The slap was a response to
Ms Atkinson referring to the Virgin Mary as being "knocked up," so she
could be used as "a vessel," seemingly implying that the Virgin Mary was no
virgin at all.
Patricia's sister Priscilla Buckley was the managing editor of National Review for 43 years. Their other sister Carol Buckley wrote about her suicide attempts, alcoholism and two failed marriages (how very Catholic) called At the Still Point: A Memoir.
Her nephew Christopher Taylor Buckley was the writer of Thank you for Smoking, now a Hollywood feature film. Another nephew John Buckley is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Communication at Time Warner's AOL division... explaining AOL's very conservative stance and monitoring for the on-line chat rooms.
Finally, brothers William F. Jr., Federal Judge & former US Senator James Lane, and founder
of the Buckley School of Professional Speaking Fergus Reid Buckley, as well as nephew
Christopher Taylor Buckley ... were all members of Skull & Bones at Yale.
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions? We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think. A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
