Word: tocsins
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Stanley Hoffmann's remarks about Tocsin, reported in the CRIMSON this morning, probably will not "bring down a storm of wrath" from anyone; but they deserve a couple of comments...
...Whether Tocsin overestimates the danger of war is a matter of personal judgment. Professor Hoffmann seems not to find the danger very great. President Kennedy, in his now-famous speech to the U.N. General Assembly, said that "every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles...
...worse charge, to my mind, is that Tocsin puts "an inordinate stress on survival as a goal of American foreign policy." It is true that our strongest objection to the strategy of nuclear deterrence is our belief that it does not really secure safety from destruction. But this is not our only objection. Most Tocsin members feel that the strategy and structure of the cold war--with its myth of an implacable and apocalyptic total conflict between the Communist system and our own--is contributing to a growing erosion of the civil freedoms and social ideals which in the past...
...course, as Professor Hoffmann should have known, Tocsin's policy of "unilateral initiative" is designed to facilitate, within the limits of military safety, a reduction of tension to a level at which we can again pay some attention to the positive goals of foreign and domestic policy. Christopher Z. Hobson...
Graubard underlined Hoffmann's comments, and remarked that Tocsin reminded him of "an old record." He lamented that peace groups had not framed specific and practicable answers to the radical right...