2/16 Lieberman signs books in West Hartford and at Uconn

Book review by Phil Marshall, 14 February 2000

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a staunch supporter of the sanctions which starve thousands of Iraqi civilians each month and a vocal advocate of morality will be holding book signing ceremonies this Wednesday, February 16, in Hartford and Storrs. Activists are planning to attend in order to meet the Senator and ask him some pointed questions. Please spread the word.

12 Noon, The Bookworm, 968 Farmington Avenue, West Hartford

3 PM The Dodd Center, UConn Campus, Storrs

The following unauthorized review of the book was sent to me by Phil Marshall of Norwich.

The following is a brief review with some obvious bias of Senator Lieberman's book.

I really expected to have more time to research some facts but I'm short of time and he will be at UConn at the Dodd Center this wednesday at 3:00 PM.

So here it is (I'd welcome any comments or information about his voting or fund raising activities):

Senator Lieberman's book entitled In Praise of Public Life should bear the addendum - : and Private Service.

After an informative review of his political career dating from his first electoral victory for a high school office, which he won by peppering his speech with lines from popular rock and roll songs, and recounting his immigrant family's gratefulness toward their new found homeland, he discusses in a rather shallow manner some of the pressing issues of today. I say shallow because for instance, he explains his support for the death penalty in connection with the rise in crime rates, reporting how many times his own home in new Haven was broken into. He never takes up the greater question of what desperate social conditions drive people to such professions as burglar etc. Nor does he mention the horrific facts that the death row cells of the U.S. are peopled with many, innocent of the crimes that put them there. He evidently supports the bill signed by Clinton to limit appeals for death row inmates (moving toward a sort of legal lynch law). (When we blithely accept the execution of innocent persons we run into the danger of turning execution into ritual sacrifice.) These are the tough aspects of the simplistic solution he supports, best leave them out.

Best leave out also the fact that the bombing of Libya by Ronald Regan was predicated on false assumptions regarding a night club bombing in Berlin in which a U.S. serviceman was killed. He states that he most proudly supported that action, but the consequences of shoot first ask questions later diplomatic policy may well be retaliation against innocent U.S. citizens. We are all in jeopardy abroad for this wild west approach to foreign affairs.

He decries the polarization of the political process by vicious campaign tactics as detrimental to public trust in government but he leaves out the fact that the polarization comes at a time when the two parties have never been more alike in terms of the issues, thus such polarization is merely the manifestation of personally ambitious politicians for whom winning is everything. In his case he admittedly chose to run for the U.S. Senate and then proceeded to learn the issues. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

He anguishes over the corrupting role of money in campaigns but leaves out the fact that he has taken money from one of the worst sources - the Cuban American Foundation - at least $10,000 for his coming senate race. The Cuban American foundation, as recently reported by the Miami Herald is part of the Mas-Canosa gangster element largely responsible for intimidating Cuban Americans from voicing any dissent from the ultra-hard-line anti-Castro position of that Mas-Canosa faction there. Many Miami Cubans who really think that the little boy Elian Gonzales should be returned to his father in Cuba are afraid to voice even this opinion. Although it may seem incredible to most of us that such a condition could obtain right here in the United States of America, it appears there is far more freedom of speech in Cuba today than in Miami itself.

Finally Senator Lieberman leaves out any mention of the most important polarization of our times.

The polarization of wealth in this country now approaches the conditions under the ancien regime in pre-Revolutionary France. Some twenty years ago forty percent of wealth in the United States of America was held by two percent of the population. This seemed hardly democratic to many of us even then. The New York Times recently reported that the score card is now: fifty percent of the wealth has been won by only ONE percent of the population!

Perhaps it's in the Senator's immigrant background, parents—from Central Europe - that we can find the source of his being so comfortable with the powers—that-have in the U.S. and the status quo here. But on our downward slide through the status of being a pre-Revolutionary ancien regime, the next stop will be the even worse pre-Revolutionary Tzarism. Watch out Senator Lieberman, you may end up right back where you started!

Though I don't want to question the sincerity of the Senator's religious convictions, the religious moralizing tone of the book does bear comparison with the tactic of his first high school electoral victory won by peppering his speech with popular song lines. Treating symptoms instead of a systemic approach never will work, I guess you better get religion Senator.

This proud father expresses his love and devotion for his family and children in his election year book, but I would like to ask this loving father, would you be willing to sacrifice every last child of Iraq in order to continue to try to get at Sadam Husein?