‘Joan Kroc Should Stay in the Kitchen’

When Caspar Weinberger talks about “the moral case for defending Western democracies, which has to be made if citizens are going to support such defense” (quoted by columnist Cal Thomas), he is not talking straight. We don’t need a moral case to support defense. Defense is inherently moral. We only need a moral case to support attack; this has always been so, and this is what Weinberger is really driving at.

He never lets up preparing this historic case for attack--asserting our moral superiority, reassuring us that attack, whenever we launch it, will be a moral necessity. And it follows that he must constantly, in moral terms, batter down all proposals for mutual freeze and negotiated disarmament. He must insist that no agreement, no treaty, only the threat of attack, or attack itself, can protect us from moral inferiors.

Pro-attack publicists like Cal Thomas help Weinberger depreciate and discredit women like Helen Caldicott and Joan Kroc by branding them insidious and naive. Thomas, who is himself naive (and boring) in relying still on a shabby old sexist argument, tells “naive” Mrs. Kroc (being a widow with millions, she simply has to be naive) to go back to making the McDonald hamburger, to leave nuclear policy to the Pentagon.

Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if what I’ve heard is true--that the men in that building are as worried about our nuclear policy, and Weinberger’s attack obsession, as the thoughtful, fascinating Mrs. Kroc and Dr. Caldicott.

CARROLL O’CONNOR

Malibu