EXTREMISTS VS. BIRCHERS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Your review of The Strange Tactics of Extremism is a clear example of the danger, on the left, of the adoption of McCarthyite tactics by people who should know better. You start out by saying "To the vast majority of Americans, Barry Goldwater's defeat was an unmistakable repudiation of extremism." This suggests that what you mean, by "extremism," is the set of political ideas and policy recommendations supported by Senator Goldwater and by such conservative spokesmen as William Buckley. You later use the term "Radical Right" as though "Radical Rightist" were synonymous with "Extremist."

In itself, there is nothing wrong with this: "Radical Right" is a good description of the views of the so-called conservatives; they are right, and they are certainly radical; that doesn't make them wrong.

But you then go on to talk as if "Radical Right" were also synonymous with "John Birch Society," "Christian Crusade," and so forth. You refer to "the techniques of distortion and innuendo used by the radical right to question the loyalty of many patriotic Americans." I don't see how your approach differs from the distortion practiced by some hypothetical extremist writing that "The American left was united against Senator Goldwater. Prominent left wing groups such as the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party were especially vehement. The ways in which the left is trying to convert America to a Communist state are ..." That hypothetical extremist would have precisely as good, and as bad, a case as you do; after all, the Communist Party, which is on the left, is trying to convert America to a Communist state, just as some "Radical Rightist," and possibly some right wing organizations, are doubtless using "techniques of distortion and innuondo."

I am not and have never been a member of the John Birch Society. I am not and have never been a member of the John Birch Society. No, I'm not trying to be emphatic: just practicing for the next congressional investigation. David Friedman