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Monday, November 24,1975
University Daily Kansan
COMMENT
Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Spain faces trouble
Francisco Franco, Western Europe's last dictator, died last week after ruling Spain with an iron hand for 36 years.
An immediate reaction to this event by many people was spontaneous cheering. But on reflection, the time for rooting for the fall of Franco is long past.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 that is mostly just a memory today. Not that it wasn't a tragic dress rehearsal for World War II. Democracy, fascism and communism clashed in Spain in those years and 500,000 Spaniards were killed more than 200,000 other Spaniards were executed during and after the war.
Nevertheless, those two and one-half bloody years don't get much attention from people these days. One reason is the passage of time. Another is that Spain is not a country with great liberty even more repression of civil liberties than took place under El Caudillo.
The problem is that Franco didn't adequately provide for an orderly succession after his death. He did reestablish the monarchy, which now, by the end of World War II, was in absence. But King Juan Carlos I might not be able to control the various power-
hungry factions now unleashed after
their master's death.
If the new king loses control of, and balance among, these factions, another civil war might break out in Spain. It wouldn't take much for such an occurrence in an already volatile situation.
Maybe Franco's most dismal legacy to Spain was his singular lack of foresight. Surely he should have known that members of his party, the Falangists, might cause headaches for the new king.
With a growing middle class aching for more freedom posed against the right-wing Falangists and the left-wing Socialists, Spain and its young king face a difficult time. If King Juan Carlos wants to reform his country's political institutions, he will have to do it slowly, because such a move would incur the wrath of many right-wing military officers.
Franco's repressive rule was injurious to Spain, but his failure to prepare Spain for an orderly succession could be just as ruinous. Let's withhold our cheers for Franco's death until the situation in Spain clears. That country could be in for a rough transitional period. Ward Harkavy
Contributing Writer
MR. PRESIDENT, THE GENTLEMEN FROM THE ENERGY COMMISSION ARE HERE NOW!
Cleaver's radical turn ends era
By THERESE MENDENHALL
The black radical hunched over in the back seat of the government car and hid his
head under his arms. Eldridge Cleaver, a symbol of 1960s Negro rugge, was quietly giving himself up to San Diego police after seven years as a fugitive from American law.
Cleaver's return to the United States last week ended seven years of travel and residence in Europe and Africa. The author of "Soul on Ice," former minister of information for the Black Panther party and self-esteled fugitive from courts of California, said he wanted to be home in the United States in time for the Fourth of July, 1976.
CLEAVER LEFT THE United States in 1968, fleeing charges of assault incurred in a shoot-out with police in Oakland, Calif. This fall he dubbed himself "Eldridge de Paris–radical designer" and produced a style in pants that he wore for work, plainly that he couldn't be able to sell the pants on the market
The role of "radical designer" might have been a joke. Or it might have been a diver's suit. California as an armchair philosopher for the left. No matter which it was, it was as clear as Oakland shoot-out as his open arms are from a clenched fist.
Cleaver's point of view has
changed so dramatically that the Black Panther party has disowned him.
"WE DON'T WANT OUR party to be associated with Eldridge Cleaver and we don't want the work of the party to be associated with Eldridge Cleaver," said David DuBois, editor of the party's weekly newspaper.
According to Newsweek reporter Jane Friedman, who interviewed Cleaver this March in Paris, his beard is gone, as is the fierceness of his hazel eyes. His close-cropped hair is full of gray strands and his leather jacket has a ruffled turtleneck and blue pants.
New Cleaver calls the Black Panther party a "closed chapter." He summed up his change in attitude in an interview with Newsweek: "Somehow man is less grand than I would have thought. He's still OK, but he's less grand."
One of Cleaver's beliefs has survived unchanged through his eight years of exile. He still thinks capitalism must be eliminated and replaced with his satisfaction with Marxism has waned. He says the Marxist world view is "static" and no longer relevant to modern political systems.
HIS VIEW ON COMMUNISM as it is practiced today is the
opposite of the view he held before he left the United States. He says the Communist countries must destroy the United States.
Consequently, Cleaver's views on military power have also become conservative. In 1970, he told the New York Times that he believed organizations were the roots of oppression of minorities.
"Communists aren't plotting just to wipe out the right in America; they're talking about who wants to submit and not cancustate that, I want the U.S. to be vastly improved, not be done in. We have to maintain a vigilance against people who want to destroy the United States."
'TODAY HE SAYS,' "Military people are very patriotic people and that's not a bad trait. I'm turning into a patriot."
The political left, Cleaver says, erred in embracing the opposite of the extreme it detested. "Why should we have allowed Nixon to wrap him up in the American war?" Mr. Hammond away from him. But instead we grab the Viet Cong flag."
Cleaver said the 1970s marked the end of an era that had begun in 1850, the era when Marxism mandated reconstructing capitalistic society to fill the needs of "the people."
"The FINAL SHOCK came the day I saw I Richard Nixon shaking hands with Chairman Nixon and all that he stands for shaking hands with Mao and all that he supposedly stood for—well, it marks a turning point in his personal turning point for me."
Similarly, Cleaver's new patriotism marks the end of a one and one-half decades of political conscience-examining the American past. Eldridge Cleaver and all that he stands for shaking hands with the U.S. military and all that it stands for, you know the curtains of restlessness and idealistic indignation.
IF CLEAVER RETURNS to California and is allowed to live as a normal citizen, he might begin working for his oppressed people within the state of Illinois of illegal activity. he says are through
And so, it appears, are his days of militant rhetoric, the violent writing and protesting which he used in the Cleaver's words burned with rage from injustices American society had inflicted on him. Though his writing was neither artful nor polished, the rage was unleashed and will be remembered as a voice of oppressed people.
Readers Respond / Protesters shouldn't be charged
To the Editor:
In reply to the articles stating that the blacks here on campus were wrong to stop the Shockey club, many aspects, justified in protesting the presence of Shockley on this campus. Some of the things said to the administration, feel, were wanted by them as natural because that could serve as grounds to expel many of the students, which is wanted by many people on this campus and because actions should be overlooked because they were manifestations of anger provoked by Shockley. Therefore, I feel no charges should be brought against any participant in the protest.
In the paper dated Nov. 18, I read that the protesters shouldn't have stopped the lecture because of the right of the blacks to be free from blacks don't believe in what he is saying, why worry about it? I say this is an apathetic view for a black to take—to sit back and let Shockley brainwash whites into thinking they are anti-blacks afterwards, letting him aim at this direct target, blacks.
As for freedom of speech, if this university should have so much freedom, why doesn't the administration pay to bring someone professing superiority to the black we are studying, we some equity in our campus. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?
I think Shockley is a very intellectual man and one of the last members in a dying race of true whites. Shockley, in future years, will become the Great White Hope of his race in his
efforts to try to stop his race from going into oblivion.
Shockley's main purpose is to convince whites that they are superior and sway those few who have the mistaken notion that they are the same as blacks, and therefore process completed, he will insist on blacks and direct all his energy to the chaining of the brain. Law removed the chains from our legs and Shockley is trying to put chains on our brains; that is his main objective. In a sense, warfare is bombarded by blacks with mythical inferiorities, so that we don't find out that we can compete with whites. Shockley knows blacks aren't inferior (a good example of this is right here on the KU campus, where a black student gets the same grade as a white). This is surely not an example of inferiority!
Shockley and his kind are arid blocks are getting hip to hip with the chronic oppression put upon us by white. Shockley's appearances on college campuses he's. He's falling. Leon Brady III
Shockley performs
Kansas City, Kan., freshman
No doubt everyone is as tired of Shockley as I am. Still, there are a few observations worth making.
To the Editor:
Shockley wasn't initially invited to campus under the sponsorship of an academic unit, but by SUA. His services as a "stimulating" speaker were offered by a firm of entrepreneurs, part of the sales force of show bliz. Shockley's
choice of agents must be weighed against his avowed dedication to truth and science. If that leaves one in double trouble, he would be entertained, in entertainment, to Einstein, in scholarship, who would shamelessly beg to be heard by those who contract had been cancelled?
More evidence of the distance between Shockley's avowed purposes and his real purpose may be seen in his recent telegram. Still hat-in-hand, he asks to return to our community because of illness and those who so improperly disrupted his appearance, by attributing their bad behavior to their hypothetically low IQ's. Of such stuff is Shockley's scientific thinking made by his mode of reasoning, we'll have to agree with some of the principles of science on the grounds that professors are absent-minded.
Shockley courts our consideration as a scholar in his own right. But much of what he learned from the research of Arthur Jensen and others. The whole tribe has been repeatedly refuted, or at least challenged tellingly, in print. A succinct statement of Shockley's views on hypotheses and a bibliography of articles pro and con through
Some of the members of the audience have written to state that they had boned on投保 Shockley's ideas so that they could point against him. I had always thought that scholars read for knowledge, not for ammunition in debates. But, of course, the thing is that nothing begins, be continued to be, and remains a part of show biz.
1971 can be found in the Bulletin of the Linguistic Society of America, No. 53, June 1972, pp. 17-22.
A second conclusion, one the creationists seem unable to understand, is willingness to engage in serious debate that keeps speakers like Shockley off the main campus. It's a reluctance to be bad.
One conclusion to draw from the sory history of this event, and some similar events of the recent past, is that we should buy entertainment from entertainers and select our academic speakers through a network of sometimes happies, the entertainment be shoddy, no one has been permanently hurt.
First, there seems to be a bit of two-facedness in the general attitude towards Shockley's appearance. Many feel charges should be filed against the protesters because they appear to be violent. Are these same people willing to file charges against the SUA and KU-Y for performing the same action?
After the flurry of letters criticizing the Shockley protesters and demanding their suspensions, I feel it is fitting for me to bring up a few points in their defense.
Laws not absolute
To the Editor:
George F. Wege
Associate professor of English
Second, John Mueller (Kansan, Nov. 17) might make a good lawyer, but not a very understanding human being. There is far more involved in the matter than the breaking of
Finally, there has been much superficial talk about freedom and speech. The fact that speech doesn't exist in this country. One isn't allowed to shout "fire" in a crowded street obviously the way it should be.
The statement has been made that all men, regardless of their beliefs, are entitled to the right of freedom of speech. I believe that people who aren't an absolute. It shouldn't be granted in cases where the consequences would produce more bad than good. Shockley is such a case. He doesn't deserve punishment. The number of transistors he may have invented, his theory is nonsense, in a most dangerous way. Promulgation of his theory can do no good, but will in some respects impress the opposition of him and other ministers in this country.
We have all seen the
some code in some book. Laws are to be treated as rules of thumb, not as absolute moral tenets.
dimental effects of racism. If racism is to be wiped out, we may have to suppress the rights of blacks. This is the lesser of two evils.
Another common remark:
"What are they afraid of? If Shockley's theory is incorrect, to demonstrate its fallacy."
Ideally, this may be true. But in the real world it is a rare event. Thousands of Germans fought and killed for Hitler's insane ideas only 30 years ago. Why didn't they see the fallacy in his argument? His blocks against the subject were same environmental influences, it's impossible to disprove Shocklek's theory.
Anyone who wouldn't have shouted Hitler down because he wasn't a genius, would free speech needs to seriously re-evaluate his ethical values.
Ann Pencezek Chicago sophomore
Alan Penczek
Balfour forgotten To the Editor:
The following is written from
letters policy
The Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that letters be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 300 words. All letters are addressed to KU students according to space limitations and the editor's judgment, and must be signed. KU students must provide their name, year in school and homecoming; faculty must provide their name and position; must provide their name and address.
Selfish Cries
a Jewish perspective and is based on historical events. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration of Great Britain opened Palestine to Jews. This action was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922 and by the United States in 1924. Britain couldn't rescind it without U.S. approval. Yet, in 1939 that is exactly what Great Britain did, with a declaration known as the White Paper.
Balfour now is long forgot again.
And cries of justice hailed by choral cheers
Are voiced aloud, proclaimed this freedom year
On spacious skies' muddled shore in vain.
It's barely had enough time to yellow since
White Paper darkens, soon becoming brown.
In thirty-nine its issue did commence
Another chance by haters to devour.
Joined nations as one decree a blasphemy
Of anti-racist liberty they've wrought;
They've built, they've won. They've sold, and not.
A trace of Truth; their cries I can't believe.
If freedom calls for red,for black,for all,
Then who, pray tell, shouts this?
Bob Mendelsohn
Lawrence sophomore
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