Beyond the Nuclear Freeze

New York: The Seabury Press, 1983. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Trade paperback. Very good. [6], 170, [4] pages. Bibliography. Index. Cover has slight wear and soiling. Robert Frederick Drinan, S.J. (November 15, 1920 - January 28, 2007) was a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, lawyer, human rights activist, and Democratic U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. He was a law professor at Georgetown University. In 1970, Drinan sought a seat in Congress on an anti-Vietnam War platform, narrowly defeating longtime Representative Philip J. Philbin in the Democratic primary. Drinan went on to win election to the House of Representatives, and was re-elected four times, serving until 1981. He was the first of two Roman Catholic priests to serve as a voting member of Congress. Drinan sat on various House committees, and served as the chair of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee. He was also a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Drinan was the first member of Congress, in July 1973, to introduce a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Drinan played an integral role in the Congressional investigation of Nixon administration misdeeds and crimes. His overt support of abortion rights drew significant opposition from Church leaders. In 1980, Pope John Paul II unequivocally demanded that all priests withdraw from electoral politics. Fellow Democrat Father Robert John Cornell, who was seeking a rematch in Wisconsin, and Drinan complied and did not seek reelection. After Watergate, Vietnam, and the economic/cultural malaise of the 1970s, the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency appeared to offer a new beginning for the United States. Reagan promised to unleash U.S. business by reducing taxation and government regulation, while simultaneously calling for major increases in defense spending so that the United States could assume its role as the "arsenal of democracy" against the forces of aggression in the Soviet Union. Pointing to perceived Soviet expansionism in Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Central America, Reagan reinvigorated the cold war. However, the rhetoric and policies of the Reagan administration also reenergized the U.S. peace movement with the call for a freeze on nuclear weapons by both the Soviet Union and the United States. Many conservative supporters of the Reagan administration reacted to the nuclear freeze proposal by labeling the peace movement as a conspiracy supported and financed by the Soviet Union. In a new guise, McCarthyism had reentered U.S. politics. The peace movement of the 1980s had its origins in the protest politics of the 1960s and 1970s, which had opposed deployment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile system and urged ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This coalition of peace groups included the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC), Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (CSNP), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Mobilization for Survival (MfS), and Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC). In 1979, Randall Forsberg of the MfS published Halt the Arms Race, calling for a broad coalition to support a "bilateral freeze on the production, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles" (Meyer, 157). Forsberg's appeal proved promising to many in the peace movement, for it was intelligible to the general public, as well as to arms control experts, and it provided a rallying point for a mass protest movement.