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Article

The Nuclear Freeze: The freeze—deep or shallow?

JAN 01, 1983
The freeze proposals are misdirected and will not help do what needs to be done to prevent nuclear war
Harold W. Lewis

The trouble with trite and banal sayings is that they are sometimes painfully to the point. In the case of the freeze, the observation that comes to mind is that to every complex problem there exists a solution that is simple, appealing, and wrong. Wrong may be too strong a term for the freeze proposal—it is wrong only in the sense that it is wrong to give laetrile to a cancer patient. In both cases there is little intrinsic harm done, unless the patient really believes the treatment will contribute to the cure of his disease, and thereby substitutes wishful thinking for therapy.

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Harold W. Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara.

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