Are yuppie individualism and government-bashing a fading fashion? "Wars are nasty things: They make governments grow," laments Grover Norquist, right-wing anti-tax crusader. Lawmakers ready an airline bailout and subsidies to rebuild New York's financial district.

George Will endorses Robert Kuttner's proposal for massive public investment in a high-speed Northeast rail system. Charles Krauthammer calls for nationalizing airport security. Dire warnings about germ warfare pervade the newscasts, with a standard conclusion: America's public health system must be vastly strengthened if it is to recognize and respond to any such an attack.

President Bush savors that collectivist line from the NATO Charter: "An attack on one is an attack on all." (What next: "From each according to his ability to each according to his need?")

It has always been a maxim of the rosé Left that national security fears serve right-wing interests. But wasn't the public sector in America to a large extent built upon concern about foreign threats: federal aid to education, the national highway system, our ports and waterways...? High tech entrepreneurs boast of their own inventiveness and entrepreneurship, but it was the Department of Defense that laid the foundations for the Internet.

A healthy progressive movement in America can assert leadership in the campaign against terrorism--and use the credibility gained thereby to do things that strengthen the commonwealth. But there are already signs of another anti-American "peace" movement can breed divisions, and old pork barrel programs being dusted off and draped in patriotic bunting. Yes, national security fears often do feed the Right. But it could be because liberals hand them the issues.

The Mobilization for Global Justice, a major sponsor of demonstrations against the World Bank and IMF, called off its action planned for last weekend. Instead, it lent support to a demonstration under the slogan, "War and Racism are Not the Answer." This demonstration was directed against the American government --not those who bomb buildings indiscriminately to kill Americans and Jews.

Respected left-wing journalist David Moberg quotes one organizer for the Mobilization acknowledging that an approach that condones "property destruction or physical clashes with police by a small minority in past protests --'is going to have to be severely moderated in the near future.' "

Such moderation should appeal to working America.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=11989

Paul Berman follows the odyssey of German Foreign Minister and Green Party leader Joschka Fischer in a long essay in The New Republic. The magazine has the notorious photos of Fischer and fellow New Left demonstrators attacking a policeman at a Frankfurt demonstration in 1973. It then explores Fischer's evolution into an effective advocate of NATO military intervention in the Balkans. http://www.tnr.com/082701/berman082701_partone.html

It's interesting history, and a good reminder to all concerned about security issues that post-Cold War politics cuts the opinion spectrum in some very different ways from the way it divided back then. So perhaps one should overlook two problems with Berman's assessment: 1) you might get the idea that Fischer and his circle of repentants deserve the lion's share of credit for getting the West into the Balkans, while they actually played a supporting role; 2) you might get the idea that the transformation of Fischer, Cohn-Bendit, Glucksmann and the like justifies sweeping moral absolution for those the Germans call the "Sixty-eighters." Unhappily, that movement also produced other heirs, a legacy (see above) that is still much with us.

Kelman offers four proposals to lure bright young people back:

1)Let people move in and out of government more easily at all levels, instead of moving up only in the course of a long career.

2) Give workers more latitude to make decisions (and small mistakes) so they aren't stifled by petty rules.

3) Work at recruiting young people--especially for IT jobs. Create a Digital Tech Corps to bring supergeeks in for short stints. Encourage reverse mentoring—in which tech-savvy young people assist senior managers who are duffers.

4) Tune down the government bashing. Congress ought see that at least some civil servants are "honored, not hectored."

In the November 1998 issue of Labor History Anthony Carew lays out an interesting view of the matter, based upon studies of the recently-opened private papers of Jay Lovestone and Irving Brown, top functionaries in the international affairs programs of the AFL and then the AFL-CIO during the Cold War.

Carew argues that, as George Meany always insisted, the AFL-CIO did not take money from the CIA. Instead, Meany and a few of his close associates created an independent group, called the Free Trade Union Committee, which handled the money. That was a little slick, but not in a selfish cause.

Opponents of the AFL-CIO's Cold War foreign policies often contend that Lovestone and Brown were stooges of the CIA, who subordinated labor's interests to those of the "Cold War Establishment." Carew notes that in fact their relationship to the Agency "was not a smooth one, and far from the commonplace caricature of a labor movement in the pocket of the CIA."

He goes on to offer evidence that will amuse anyone who had some acquaintance with these two dedicated but difficult and eccentric characters. Lovestone called his preppie CIA contacts "the Fizz Kids," and refused to follow their directives or even give them details about how government money was used. Lovestone and Brown were constantly attacked by elements within the Agency for their insistence on the political importance of labor to European security, as well as their youthful involvement in the Communist Party.

Genuine scholarship will add more to this story. But it is no mystery how it turns out: the AFL-CIO and the allies Lovestone and Brown developed in the European labor movements gave essential support to Poland's Solidarnosc, despite great ambivalence and even opposition in the U.S. government.

A combination of pressures from Congress and the Reagan Administration finally helped our allies in Central America see that respect for human rights could help in winning the struggle against anti-democratic forces. Will that lesson be remembered? Adrian Karatnycky, President of Freedom House, is helping to pull together a group to see that it is.

Freedom House and a Polish pro-democracy group, the Stefan Batory Foundation are circulating a statement to human rights and democracy leaders world wide. It makes this point: "Governments that operate in the dark, that subject their citizens to repression, and that function outside the scrutiny of independent media and of civil society are unreliable allies and frequently are, themselves, havens for international terrorists and political extremists.

Leiken argues that Mexico is sure to continue to grow in importance for U.S. foreign policy: "the Bush-Fox chemistry transcends personal intimacy and reflects the structural convergence of the two countries." Mexico is, "like Russia...a democracy without the rule of law." But, in Leiken's assessment, Mexico's reformers, U.S. influence, and the growth of democracy generally will continue to push Mexico forward. Although economic difficulties--intensified by the terrorist attacks—could cause Fox difficulties, he has turned Mexico away from its traditional isolation and anti-Americanism in foreign policy. Mexico could be an important partner in helping the U.S. address authoritarian trends on both the Left and Right that are emerging in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Nicaragua.

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