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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, February 16, 1981
ON THE WORLD SCENE
A COMMENTARY ON "COMMENTARY" This week I'd just like to draw your
attention to two excellent articles in COMMENTARY magazine, a monthly
journal I always take special note of in my remarks to the ministers
in on the Refreshing Program.
In the January 1981 issue, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, presents an excellent analysis of the reasons why
U.S. interests are plummeting in the Western Hemisphere. Her article
is entitled "U.S. Security and Latin America." Ambassador Kirkpatrick
graphically shows how U.S. policy helped usher in the Marxist Sandanista
regime in Nicaragua, and is leading to instability of governments else
where in the region.
The second article is in the February issue, entitled "Joining the
Jackals: The U.S. at the U.N., 1977-1980," written by former U.N.
Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan. It is a devastating analysis of
recent U.S. failures in the United Nations as a result of trying to
curry the favor of nations who hate America.
rlCCording to Senator Moynihan, there was during the four years of the
Carter administration "a fateful avoidance of reality... a denial that
there is genuine hostility toward the United States in the world.... Those
who now take office must deal with the aftermath of this massive failure
of policy [highlighted by the disastrous U.S. vote against Israel in
the Security Council--later clumsily repudiated--in March 1980]. The
new administration will have to deal also with the whole question of the
Third World. It should be clearer now that hostility toward the West,
toward the United States, is abiding and, it may be burgeoning."
These articles in COMMENTARY are certainly worth reading. Good libraries
should have copies; the February issue should still be on the newstand.
COMMENTARY is perhaps the most influential magazine on current events
today among the powers that be. Earlier articles published in COMMENTARY
by both Mr. Moynihan and Mrs. Kirkpatrick were the springboards to obtain
ing their diplomatic assignments (curiously to the same post) . President
Reagan said that Mrs.Kirkpatrick's December 1979 article, "Dictatorship
and Double Standards," was the best piece he had read on the subject of
U.S. foreign policy.
Excerpts of that article were quoted in the January 1980 PLAIN TRUTH.
Reference to the two current articles probably will be made also.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau