I may have been mistaken about Mr. Zinn's courage. I am not mistaken about his confusion -- his persistent confusion of a free or democratic society with a good society as he defines a good society. Zinn has not understood my criticism and therefore not replied to it. Perhaps on rereading he will grasp the point.

1. Of course, there is no guarantee that the democratic process will yield a good society regardless of how Zinn or anyone else defines it. Democratic-like majorities, may sometimes be wrong or unwise. But if the decisions are the result of a free and fair discussion and vote, it is still democratic. If those who lose in the electoral process resort to civil disobedience, democratic government ultimately breaks down. Even though the processes of democracy are slow and cumbersome and sometimes result in unwise action, its functioning Bill of Rights makes it possible to set them right. That is why Churchill observed, "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government except all the others that have been tried," including, we should add, anarchism.

Zinn dismisses our democratic processes as "a lifeless set of structures and procedures." But it is these very structures and procedures which have enabled us to transform our society from one in which only white men who had property voted to one in which all white men voted, then all men, then all men and women. It is these structures and procedures which have extended and protected the right to dissent, even for all sorts of foolishness like Zinn's. They currently protect Mr. Zinn in his academic freedom post, in his right to utter any criticism of the democratic system under which he lives -- a right he would never enjoy in any so called socialist society in the world today.

Mr. Zinn gives his case away when he refers to the democratic process, which requires voting in free elections, as a "fetish." A fetish is the object of irrational and superstitious devotion which enlightened persons reject. Like Marx, Zinn rejects "the fetishism of commodities." Is he prepared to reject the democratic process, too, if its results do not jibe with his conception of the good society?

How, one wonders, does Zinn know that his conception is inherently more desirable than that of his fellow citizens? The democrat says: Let us leave this choice to the arbitrament of the democratic process. Zinn has a shorter way. He labels any conception other than his own as undemocratic; and if it prevails, he urges the masses to take to the streets.

2. The space allotted to me does not permit adequate discussion of the international aspects of the struggle for a free society. (I refer readers to my Philosophy and Public Policy and Marxism and Beyond.) Suffice it to say here that sometimes when the feasible alternatives are limited, the wisest choice between evils is the lesser one. This is the same principle, supported by Zinn, that justified military aid to the Soviet Union when Nazi Germany invaded, although Stalin's regime at the time oppressed many more millions than Hitler's. From the standpoint of the free society, Stalin was the lesser evil then. Today Nazism is destroyed and globally expanding communism has taken its place. If, and only if, we are anywhere confronted by a choice of support between an authoritarian regime and a totalitarian one, the first is the lesser evil. This is not only because the second is far more oppressive of human rights (compare Batista to Castro, Thieu to Hanoi, Syngman Rhee to North Korea, Lon Nol to Pol Pot) but because authoritarian regimes sometimes develop peacefully into democracies (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Argentina), whereas no Communist regime allied to the Kremlin so far has. [1988]

3. Within narrowly prescribed limits, a democracy may tolerate civil disobedience of those who on grounds of conscience violate its laws and willingly accept their punishment. (Cf. the chapter in my Revolution, Reform and Social Justice.) But Zinn does not advocate civil disobedience in this sense. He urges what is clearly uncivil disobedience like the riotous actions that proceded the Civil Rights Acts from which the blacks, not white racists, suffered most, and the extensive destruction of property from factory sit-ins. Roy Wilkins, who should know, is my authority for asserting that the Civil Rights Acts were adopted by Congress not because of, but despite, these disorders. The most significant racial progress since 1865 was achieved by Brown v. Topeka Board of Education without "the disorders" Zinn recommends -- a sly term that covers broken heads, loss of property, and sometimes loss of life, which are no part of civil disobedience.

Until now, the most charitable thing one could say of Zinn's position is what Cicero once said of another loose thinker: there is no absurdity to which a person will not resort to defend another absurdity. But when Zinn with calculated ambiguity includes "disorders" in the connotation of civil disobedience, without denouncing violence as no part of it as Gandhi and Martin Luther King did, he is verging on moral irresponsibility.

Law and order are possible without justice; but Mr. Zinn does not seem to understand that justice is impossible without law and order.