Loyalties
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. First Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. xi, [1], 96, [2] pages. DJ has some wear and soiling, with large tears and chips. These essays by the former Ambassador to India and present New York Senator address three issues: international peace, international racism and international law. The essay on international peace focuses on the history and meaning of the arms race. The essay on international racism examines the Communist theory of racism, in particular the Soviet use of the term "Zionism" as a synonym for racism, that is applied to those who oppose Soviet totalitarianism. The third essay explores the idea of law in the conduct of nations. From the New York Times Review by Richard Bernstein: The mind of Daniel Patrick Moynihan has ranged so nimbly over so many subjects that the senior Senator of New York may well be the foremost scholar-politician of the land. This slender volume, appearing midway through his second senatorial term, continues Mr. Moynihan’s tradition of elegant and original thinking on the big questions of the day. The Senator puts three subjects under scrutiny, all of them having to do with America’s role in the world and all of them related to the concept of loyalty – to nation, to good sense, to immutable principle – that the Senator sees his fellow citizens and politicians abandoning at our great peril. From Wikipedia: "Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 March 26, 2003) was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times (in 1982, 1988, and 1994). He declined to run for re-election in 2000. Prior to his years in the Senate, Moynihan was the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations and to India, and was a member of four successive presidential administrations, beginning with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and continuing through that of Gerald Ford....In 1976, Moynihan was elected to the U.S. Senate from the State of New York, defeating U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, Ramsey Clark, Paul O'Dwyer and Abraham Hirschfeld in the Democratic primary, and Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley in the general election. Shortly after election, Moynihan analyzed the State of New York's budget to determine whether it was paying out more in federal taxes than it received in spending. Finding that it was, he produced a yearly report known as the Fisc (from the French). Moynihan's strong support for Israel while UN Ambassador may have increased support for him among the state's Jewish population. Moynihan's strong advocacy for New York's interests in the Senate, buttressed by the Fisc reports and recalling his strong advocacy for US positions in the UN, did at least on one occasion allow his advocacy to escalate into a physical attack. Senator Kit Bond, nearing retirement in 2010, recalled with some embarrassment in a conversation on civility in political discourse that Moynihan had once "slugged [Bond] on the Senate floor after Bond denounced an earmark Moynihan had slipped into a highway appropriations bill. Some months later Moynihan apologized, and the two occasionally would relax in Moynihan s office after a long day to discuss their shared interest in urban renewal over a glass of port." Moynihan continued to be interested in foreign policy as a Senator, sitting on the Select Committee on Intelligence. His strongly anti-Soviet views became far more moderate, as he emerged as a critic of the Ronald Reagan Administration's hawkish Cold War policies, such as support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Moynihan argued there was no active Soviet-backed conspiracy in Latin America, or anywhere. He suggested the U.S.S.R. was suffering from massive internal problems, such as rising ethnic nationalism and a collapsing economy. In a December 21, 1986, editorial in the New York Times, Moynihan predicted the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. He blasted the Reagan Administration's "consuming obsession with the expansion of Communism which is not in fact going on." In a September 8, 1990, letter to Erwin Griswold, Moynihan wrote: "I have one purpose left in life; or at least in the Senate. It is to try to sort out what would be involved in reconstituting the American government in the aftermath of the cold war. Huge changes took place, some of which we hardly notice. Moynihan introduced Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which cost certain professionals (like computer programmers, engineers, draftspersons, and designers) who depended on intermediary agencies (consulting firms) a self-employed tax status option, but other professionals (like accountants and lawyers) continued to enjoy Section 530 exemptions from payroll taxes. This change in the tax code was expected to offset the tax revenue losses of other legislation that Moynihan proposed to change the law of foreign taxes of Americans working abroad. Joseph Stack, who flew his airplane into a building housing IRS offices on February 18, 2010, posted a suicide note that, among many factors, mentioned the Section 1706 change to the Internal Revenue Code. In the mid-1990s, Moynihan was one of the Democrats to support the ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. Condition: Very good / Fair.
Keywords: International Peace, Racism, Arms Control, Nuclear Weapons, Ballistic Missiles, Launch on Warning, Zionism, Anti-Semitism
ISBN: 9780151547487
[Book #68384]
Price: $35.00