Word: communisms
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DEMOCRATIZATION: this has been the justification for Republican foreign policy initiatives in the Third World. It is loosely based upon the Monroe Doctrine and its alleged goal is to keep Communism out of the Western hemisphere. In reality, this is the rationale used by Republican administrations to support right-wing dictatorships in developing nations. This often means--as in the case of Nicaragua--trying to overthrow a democratically-elected government and replacing it with a band of right-wing mercenaries. This is the strategy for increasing AMERICAN CORPORATE INVESTMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD...
...around the world, arming a movement here, putting pressure on a dictatorship there, as J.F.K. put it, "to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Without an Evil Empire to contend with, the job becomes easier -- there is less need to support dictators in the name of anti- Communism -- but harder to justify. Why make the effort? Seventy years ago, Americans were not wildly enthusiastic about Woodrow Wilson's crusade for democracy. Whether a post-Soviet America will want to embrace Wilsonian idealism any more than did a pre-Soviet America is an open question...
...spoke of the imperative to fight Communism, in praise of President Reagan and of the right to freedom of speech...
Newspapers around the world dissected the event for weeks afterward. The left attacked her as a pawn of the right and the right as a latecomer to anti- Communism. Sontag was stunned by the response, especially the assumption that her rejection of Communism was a recent development or that it signaled a sharp move rightward on her part. As early as 1971, she points out, she was protesting Cuba's imprisonment of writers like the poet Heberto Padilla, now a friend living in the U.S. She also insists that her views are not the result of the close friendships...
...time to fiction -- and failing. "Essay writing is part of an addiction that I'm trying to kick. My last essay is like my last cigarette." She quit smoking two years ago, but there's still one more essay she plans to turn out, this one about intellectuals and Communism, taking as its point of departure the disillusioning trip that the writer Andre Gide made to the Soviet Union in 1936. And then there's a short book on Japan. And then . . . Well, at least the tube won't be distracting her. The houseguest has departed, and the men have...