Erwin Knoll: July 17, 1931-November 2, 1994.

Today, we are in mourning. Yesterday, November 2, 1994, our beloved Editor, Erwin Knoll, died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack. He was sixty-three.

For those of us here at this little magazine, it is a terrible blow. And it is a terrible blow, as well, for the progressive movement in America.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1931, Erwin and his immediate family fled the Nazis and immigrated to the United States when he was a child. Even as a boy, he had an uncanny gift for language, picking up and mastering English in little time at all. He graduated from New York University and then spent a decade toiling in the mainstream media he would later denounce. He worked on the staff of The Washington Post from 1957 to 1963, and covered the White House for the Newhouse National News Service from 1963 to 1968.

Erwin wrote for The Progressive occasionally in the early 1960s. He joined The Progressive formally in 1968 as the magazine's Washington Editor, and moved to Madison in 1973 to become Editor of this magazine he believed in so fervently and worked for so passionately.

No magazine could have had a more able editor. He had a strong vision for the magazine, and for the undiluted, uncompromised politics we would advocate. He would write lucid, cogent editorials staking out progressive positions, no matter how unpopular. And he would swell with pride at particular pieces in every issue that he admired, such as Edward Said's article on Page 18 and Ruth Conniff's interview with Katha Pollitt on Page 34 of this issue.

He had exceptional skill in the behind-the-scenes, day-to-day copy work. Agile of mind, quick of pen, he handled every piece of copy that ran through this office and ended up in these pages. He lavished attention even on the most routine aspects of the magazine, reviewing every manuscript and responding to dozens of letters every week. He edited sections that many other editors would have pawned off. Two particular favorites were our "No Comment" page and the "Letters to the Editor" section.

He took great pleasure in rebutting subscriber complaints about our political views (he cared not at all about losing subscribers over political disagreements; indeed, he took a peculiar delight in it, as he understood that it was the price of independence). He was fastidious to a fault, personally proofreading every page and correcting not just typos but also such picayune details as improper or infelicitous hyphenations. And he was a stickler for the old style, insisting on spelling "per cent" as two words and referring to our region here as the "Middle West," not the "Midwest."

But Erwin's considerable desk skills were not his claim to fame, though we admired them greatly. Rather, it was his political insight and courage, as well as his unique ability to communicate left-wing ideas to the mainstream, that vaulted him and The Progressive to prominence and distinction.

Erwin believed that you either stood for principle or you stood for nothing. His overriding commitments were to free speech and nonviolence, and he would brook no compromise on either. "There is no such thing as a just war - never was, never will be," he said. And he was a pugnacious pacifist. He loved to engage in debate, to grapple with an opponent.

Erwin's commitment to the First Amendment met its greatest challenge in 1979, when The Progressive prepared to publish its famous story, The H-bomb Secret: How We Got It - Why We're Telling It. This story punctured the veil of secrecy behind our nation's nuclear-weapons programs. It was not, as Erwin would take pains to point out, a recipe for how to make an H-bomb. Instead, it was a discussion of the physics behind an H-bomb, one of the most tightly held nuclear secrets of our Government. The story discovered, however, that it wasn't a secret at all. The information on the H-bomb was available in public documents, which Howard Morland, our reporter, was able to piece together. But Erwin, and then- Managing Editor Sam Day, knew that the Government's obsession with nuclear secrecy was just a way to keep the nuclear arms race going. "Secrecy" was a muzzle; it prevented the American people from engaging in a rational debate about the madness of nuclear war. For six months, the Federal Government prevented The Progressive from publishing the story. This was an unprecedented act of prior restraint, which Erwin detested, fought, and ultimately succeeded in overturning. The H-Bomb Secret thus became a landmark case in First Amendment law.

Erwin liked to say the H-bomb case was his proudest achievement. But those of us who've worked here with him in the last fifteen years have other, equally valiant moments that we celebrate.

In May 1984, The Progressive published Behind the Death Squads, an extraordinary piece of investigative reporting by Allan Nairn, which documented the nefarious ties between the U.S. Government and the death squads in El Salvador. Nairn proved that the U.S. Government helped form, finance, and train the forces that were responsible for thousands upon thousands of murders in El Salvador over the last three decades. It was - and is - an astonishing piece of work. And Erwin was instrumental in getting it published. Erwin insisted that Nairn fly from San Salvador to Madison, where we housed him in a hotel for several days until Nairn disgorged the piece. (Erwin was so anxious to shake the story out of Nairn, at the time a painstaking writer, that Erwin said he came close to breaking his vow of nonviolence.)

For many of us, though, Erwin's shining hour began during the Persian Gulf war in January 1991. This was almost a totalitarian moment, when virtually all the main stream media were cheerleading George Bush's war against Saddam Hussein which cost hundreds of thousands of lives It was a lonely time for peace activists There was scarcely an audible voice across the land that opposed this blood - letting except Erwin's. In clear, simple, sensible prose, Erwin took to op-ed page of The New York Times to pen his protest before the shooting started. And once the war began, amid the fluttering of yellow ribbons the "turkey shoot," and the ticker-tape parades, Erwin steadfastly voiced his outrage.

Erwin's stance on the Persian Gulf war brought his first invitation to appear o the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Gruff, disheveled, untelegenic, wearing a trade mark gaudy tie, Erwin nonetheless spoke truth to power, and it was a tremendous relief and inspiration to millions of Americans who opposed the war but were no represented in the public debate.

Subsequently, Erwin was asked to be regular on the MacNeil/Lehrer News-Hour's panel of regional editors. He loved the chance to get his licks in, as he would put it. He didn't play the conventional game of cozying up to the other commentators. Instead, more often than not, he would set or reorient the terms of the debate by injecting a stark, progressive position amid the safe, bland, centrist views at the table. And he had a sense of humor about it. His last appearance was on Friday, October 28, and the topic was an odious book, The Bell Curve. The book's central claim - that the white elite has superior intelligence - was easily disprovable, Erwin said. "All you have to do is watch the politicians on C-SPAN for a day."

In addition to his MacNeil/Lehrer appearances, Erwin spread the progressive word with his two radio programs, Second Opinion and Insight, which reached a combined audience of more than seventy stations in the United States and Canada. Erwin was a radio personality like Studs Terkel, with a voice and a cadence and a style all his own, and his shows were growing steadily in popularity at the time of his death.

There are only a handful of public left-wing intellectuals and journalists in America today. Erwin was one of them, and he took upon himself the task not just to put out The Progressive magazine month after month, which reaches only 32,000 subscribers, but to go well beyond our loyal ranks and to engage millions of fellow citizens in the urgent debates of our day: Will we be a peaceable nation or a warmaking one? Will we preserve free speech or squelch it? Will we have true democracy, or a masked plutocracy?

Erwin Knoll is dead. But the task he set for all of us remains.

As a colleague here at The Progressive, Erwin was unlike his combative, irascible public persona. Instead, he had an avuncular presence, taking a personal interest in our lives, our loved ones, our families, and our professional projects. He was a dear and lovable man. And while he was imposing in public, he had no airs here in the office. He took his turn picking up the mail, taking out the garbage, and answering the phone just like anyone else here. And he did not pretend to be Erwin Knoll, multi-media star; he was just Erwin. Any stranger could walk in off the street and get to see him right away. Any phone-caller would be wired in directly to Erwin's office without being asked for identification. He came to work every day, he did his job, and he expected us to do ours.

Every Fourth of July, Erwin and Doris, his wife of more than fort ears held a celebration at their home, and all staff would be invited, along with our loved ones, and other friends. At this event, Erwin had a characteristic custom: He would nail to a tree a yellowed copy of the Bill of Rights, and then he'd get behind the grill and cook up the hamburgers and bratwurst. We will miss those festive occasions.

Erwin was a devoted family man, and our deepest condolences go out to Doris; to their sons, David and Jonathan; to their daughters-in-law, Glenda and Karen; to Erwin's mother-in-law, Martha; to Erwin's sister, Alice.

Fifty-five years ago, the great poet W.H. Auden wrote about another Viennese Jew who had just died. "Every day they die among us, those who were doing us some good, and knew it was never enough but hoped to improve a little by living." So it was with Erwin. Auden added: "To us he is no more a person now but a Whole climate of opinion under whom we conduct our differing lives." So it will be with Erwin.

WHAT SHALL

I WEAR?

Dr. Elizabeth Karlin, as an abortion doctor, states, "My patients are bruised women who have the worst abusive relationships" ("What Shall I Wear," Journal Entry, October issue). What does she do about the abusive relationships? Is she referring the women to social-service agencies that can help them empower themselves to stop the abuse? Or does she merely give an abortion and send them back? If the latter, she's clearly doing more harm than good for her patients. If the former, then she is unusual among abortion doctors, who most commonly don't think of such details. If a woman becomes unwillingly pregnant because of lack of control over her sex life in an abusive relationship, then the abortion is part of the abuse, not a remedy for it. It helps the abuser get off easy, and makes him more self-righteous about his behavior. The abuse continues. The abuse is encouraged.

Dr. Karlin says outright that most of the women she sees state that they don't want abortions, yet they're getting them anyway. She expresses frustration that more women don't publicly defend their abortions. She is seeing women who are being pressured by a male-dominated society that expects them to alter their bodies to suit men's sexual fantasies. Her job is to help women accommodate to that pressure, even against their own stated objections.

The author replies:

Rachel MacNair is quick to characterize us abortion-providers: I don't consider mental-health care. I am an abuser. My favorite is that I'm tailoring my patients' bodies to suit men's sexual fantasies. Wow! Listening to those who are working to bring back illegal abortion, as is MacNair, is like checking in with the Christian Scientists, who do not believe in medicine, to find out whether your doctor is a good one. My feminist medicine does not include prescriptions for knitting needles, scalding baths, castor oil, and lye douches. MacNair's does. Women don't have abortions to alter their bodies but to alter their lives. My friends who have had abortions, who like me are in their fifties, are now watching their spectacular children graduate from high school and college because they chose the time they were best able to care for a child. Many of my patients choose to come back to my office for their routine health care because it is the first place they have been empowered in a medical situation, treated kindly, involved in decision-making, and left relieved.

MacNair misquotes me as saying most of the women state they don't want abortions. I have never performed an abortion on a woman who said she didn't want one. I have sent such women home, much to their amazement, tears, and dismay. (Frequently, they come back another day.)

Patients have previously said, "I would never have an abortion," or, "I don't believe in abortion." These statements have little to do with abortion. They mean, "I would never allow myself such despair that I would have to have an abortion," or, "I must judge women who have an abortion severely to be okay myself." They not only want an abortion, they would die for one. In terms of our reproductive selves, we have two overwhelming needs of equal validity: One is to have a child, the other is not to. Both need to be respected fully by the medical as well as feminist worlds.

Women don't stand up and say, "I've had an abortion," because they are afraid the punishers will get them. And the master punishers are working hard. In Kalispell, Montana, a really good doctor who not only sends his patients for therapy when they need it but delivers babies, performs abortions, does school physicals, and comforts the dying had his office fire-bombed. It doesn't stop.

The Right

Rides High

Chip Berlet's piece on the resurgent Right ("The Right Rides High," October issue) notes one key aspect of the conservative infrastructure that deserves more scrutiny: its assiduous recruitment of student leaders.

As a high-school and college student, I participated in two leadership organizations - the Hugh O'Brien Youth Foundation and the national leadership honor society Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK) - which unabashedly promoted a conservative, pro-business/military outlook. The Hugh O'Brien organization, founded by the actor, is at least up-front in its aim to educate student leaders about free enterprise. The ODK honor society, by contrast, would rightly be expected to rise above any particular political agenda. Not so.

When I attended the ODK national convention in 1988 (as a delegate and nominee for a national award), the head of the organization was Ronald Roskens, who subsequently embarrassed himself as a Bush appointee in the U.S. Agency for International Development. A real crowd-pleaser was the head of the Strategic Air Command, who gave the most bellicose speech in support of the Cold War I have ever heard. As he ended his diatribe, hundreds of student leaders erupted in a standing ovation.

Before progressives grumble about conservative infiltration of such organizations, a few questions should be asked: Where are the progressive counterparts to the Hugh O'Brien organization, holding seminars nationwide to show today's youth the importance of human rights and the dignity of human labor? Where are those who would educate college students about the radical, risky nature of true leadership? Do they exist? If not, the conservatives win the future by default.

Life Without

Television

Regarding Linda Roca-wich's interview with Michael Jacobson (September issue): Journalists, parents, teachers, the public in general bemoan the television-watching habits of children and wonder how to regulate both the many hours kids sit passively in front of a colored screen and the programming young people view. A solution exists, but no one seems willing to suggest it - no television.

Parents protest, "Oh, my children couldn't live without TV," but are those sons and daughters the ones who pay for electricity, the groceries, the mortgage? Parents don't provide their children with drugs, knowing the ill effects of such on their physical health; are the false realities, the mindlessness, the violence of television any less damaging to their children's mental health? Often it is the parents, I suspect, who can't go without their "soaps" or football games or "sitcoms."

During the twelve years we have not had television, our three teenaged daughters have read hundreds of books, listened to news on NPR, argued about and discussed ideas discovered in magazine articles. Sure, they see TV at their friends' homes; we're not attempting to keep television completely out of their lives. And yes, there are a few good programs on TV that we