A few months before his assassination in Memphis, April 4, 1968, Dr. King spoke to the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting in retreat at Frogmore, South Carolina, He was preparing them for the Poor People's Campaign scheduled for the spring of 1968. This is Dr. King's last thorough evaluation of “the movement” its prospects and problems, in our possession.

While the description of urban violence may seem dated, Dr. King's analysis of the causes and cures of urban injustice remains disturbingly relevant. His understanding of what was happening among youth as well as his understanding of American militarism is, for better or worse, equally pertinent. Especially important, in view of current claims that Dr. King was undergoing a fundamental change of political philosophy toward the end of his life, is his concluding affirmation of non-violence.

One of my more sophisticated friends, a poet and fellow teacher at Dartmouth, is firmly convinced that Americans stopped believing in the doctrine of progress about 1920. “No doubt the majority of the uneducated still believe in it,” he concedes. “I imagine they see a slightly improved version of human existence as being issued by some kind of central committee of scientists every fall, just about the time the new cars come out. But no educated man, except maybe an occasional leftover Victorian, supposes any such thing.”

The focus of the world press upon Salvador Allende has, in 1972, given Chile the center stage occupied by Cuba fourteen years ago. For the first time in history a Marxist candidate who respected the rules of the game was freely elected by a democratic nation. So much is well known. What the “Popular Unity” program is all about and the difficulties encountered in the first year of government are not so well known. Nor, more particularly, have Christian attitudes toward developments in Chile received the attention they deserve. Both in Chile and in other countries many people are disoriented by the outcome of events, finding it difficult to understand how a nation with a Christian and democratic tradition could freely choose the leadership of a declared Marxist.

Uruguay, with a tradition of democratic stability similar to that of Chile and, to a certain extent, Costa Rica, has characteristics which distinguish it within the Latin American continent. Some of these were highlighted during the last few months of 1971 when Uruguay became a center of world attention: The traditional two-party regime was confronted with a conglomeration of political parties of the Left which appeared capable of coming to power through the elections, thus repeating the phenomenon of Chile.

On November 24,1971, the largest political demonstration in the history of Uruguay took place. An enormous crowd, wild with enthusiasm, marched through all parts of Montevideo and gathered in front of the parliament building to express its support for the Frente Amplio (Broad Front).

Since the beginning of the cold war the keystone of American strategic planning has been the principle that the ultimate deterrent to a Russian attack had to be the certainty of American retaliation against Russian cities. The Russians seemingly have adopted the same position vis-à-vis the United States, usually to the point of denying vigorously any possibility of limiting central war to counterforce strikes alone. A typical formulation was expressed by former Defense Secretary McNamara in his 1968 “posture statement” to Congress:

[It is] the clear and present ability to destroy the attacker as a viable 20th Century nation and an unwavering will to use those [Assured Destruction] forces in retaliation to a nuclear attack upon ourselves or our allies that provides the deterrent, and not the ability partially to limit damage to ourselves.

Whenever the word “security” is mentioned, the words of a well-known hymn run through my mind. It is one some of us sing on New Year's Day and on historic occasions. It begins, “O God our help in ages past,” and the second verse runs:

The author of this hymn was Isaac Watts, a divine So prolific in his day that his hymns, especially his Psalm,paraphrases of which this is one, dominated many hynanals of the eighteenth century, both in England and in America.

Ushered in with hosannahs of critical praise (“If you plan to read only one book this year, this is probably the one you should choose”—New York Times), B. F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity has made the bestseller lists for six months. Now that “the growing international storm” (Newsweek) over the book has subsided, a second look is in order. What, precisely, did he say? How persuasive is the behaviorism he trumpets? How does his argument stand up scientifically and philosophically?

Skinner proposes to take us “beyond” freedom and dignity because, in his view, people have no freedom, and human dignity is an illusion. These ideals always were mythic, despite their honored place in the literature of our civilization. The “literature of freedom and dignity,” as Skinner describes it with barely concealed contempt, fosters a wholly false doctrine of the nature of man and nurtures our fear of the developing “science and technology of human behavior” because it reduces our opportunities for self-praise and self-esteem. These opportunities shrink as it becomes increasingly implausible to appeal to mysterious powers of the mind in order to explain heroic, clever or original conduct.