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University Daily Kansan Friday, December 1, 1961
The Minutemen
This is the day of the emptyhead. A growing number of Americans, frustrated by the nearly unbearable tension of the Cold War, are beginning to react insanely. The John Birch Society was bad enough, but apparently it was only the beginning.
NOW WE HAVE THE MINUTEMEN, a supposedly nationwide band of guerrillas preparing to resist the Communists when they take over the United States. A group of Minutemen recently held maneuvers in St. Louis. A similar band has formed in San Diego, Calif., although it claims to be nothing more than "a survival, search and research group." Calling themselves the Loyal Order of the Mountain Men, these men carry rifles and ammunition in their cars, as well as survival equipment, food, clothing and bedding.
And as the last straw there comes word of a bunch of Alabama women—telephone operators by day—who are firing cannons from dump trucks and crawling through swampland and weeds, training to resist the imminent takeover.
"IF THE DAY SHOULD EVER COME that foreign invaders swarm ashore along the Gulf Coast," says an account in a magazine distributed by Chevrolet dealers, "they can count on heavy opposition from a group of commando-trained telephone employees — all girls . . . heavily armed..."
This would be hilarious, if it were not such a telling reflection of the sickness and confusion of the times. The Minutemen, like the Birchers, cannot be shrugged off. James Reston, columnist for the New York Times, wrote last week that the Birch Society probably will have a considerable influence when the Republican Party picks its presidential candidate for 1964. And the Minutemen are nothing but Birchers with guns.
THE MAN WHO CLAIMS to be the national leader of the Minutemen is Robert Bolivar De-Pugh of Norborne, Mo. The day after leading a seminar on guerrilla warfare, complete with demonstrations from an arsenal of operative
weapons, DePugh told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that an important objective of the Minute men is "to investigate by our own secret memberships the possible infiltration of Communist sympathizers into American organizations of government, business, labor, religion and education."
Carrying real guns — or hauling cannons around on dump trucks — the Minutemen are hunting down the traitors they are sure are in our midst. And what is Mr. DePugh's loyal band going to do with these "Communist sympathizers" — shoot them?
DEPUGH SPOUTS THE STANDARD LINE of the ultra-idiotic right, sowing distrust and suspicion as he yaks away about "Americanism," "love of country," "Communist-inspired student riots," "internal subversion," "fellow travelers," etc., etc.
Reading his statements makes one queasy. You start feeling uncomfortable — just as when you listen to Barry Goldwater or Francis E. Walter. Suddenly you need sunlight and fresh air.
ITWOULD BE TEMPTING TO DISMISS the Minutemen and the Birchers as nothing but a lunatic fringe. They are that, certainly, but the frightening thing is that now they have the center of the stage.
"We're just loyal American citizens," DePugh says. "We're tired of being pushed around by the Communists and we want to do something to stem the tide of their advance."
IT IS CLEAR THAT NEARLY EVERYONE is becoming preoccupied with "the tide of the Communist advance," although there is a variety of reactions. Some people — the timid ones — burrow into the ground, looking for a place to hide. Other people — the brave ones — drag cannons around, soon to be taking potshots at those damned "fellow travelers."
The sickness is widespread, and the idiots are having their day.
Guest Editorial:
In Defense of Extremists
It's suddenly become so fashionable to berate "extremists" that you might suppose the breed had but lately been born. President Kennedy recently devoted the major part of a speech to the subject and now his unhappiness with them has drawn a sympathetic response from former President Eisenhower.
ALL THIS IS QUITE UNDERSTANDABLE. By their very nature extremists are generally wrong — whether in art, morals or politics — because their anxiety over what is bad in the area of their concern leads them to reject everything, including that which is good. They are thus easily led to a fanaticism for seemingly simple solutions to complex problems.
But there is an equal danger, if we may say so, in being extreme about extremists. The trap is to suppose that extremists are wrong about everything merely because they may be wrong about some things.
YET QUITE OFTEN they have a great deal worthwhile to say. Indeed, they are frequently moved to their excesses precisely because they are willing to look clearly at things from which most of us avert our gazes.
Our whole society, in fact, is the heritage of extremists. Men who said it was not possible to compromise with the shape of statism in the Middle Ages; feudalism must be swept away. Or that distant colonists could not compromise with the remote rule of kings; the yoke must be cut by complete independence. And if democracy has not proved the complete solution to all the problems of society, as its apostles dreamed it was, who would say now that the radicals, the hotheads, the fanatical extremists did not perform a useful service?
AND THE EXTREMISTS serve even when they are dead wrong. Those of a socialist persuasion are wrong in thinking the ills of society are to be cured by going back to an enslaved
society rigidly controlled from the top. Still, they make a free society think about itself, and not all of the changes they have spurred have been ill. A free society is not perfect; it is only the best there is.
So who, now, are the extremists about whom Presidents complain, and what are these ideas that we must banish so absolutely?
Alger Hiss, when he was in the State Department, was a man of good repute; so was Harry White, when he was assistant secretary of the Treasury. Any present soil of suspicion was prepared in the past by the stubborn unwillingness of those in high places to recognize a danger cried by those who were branded as "extremists."
WELL, THE LIST WOULD INCLUDE the "super-patriots," in Mr. Eisenhower's phrase; those who advocate abolishing the income tax and those who make "radical statements" about people of "good repute."
AS FOR "SUPER-PATRIOTISM," for years we have been engulfed in propaganda about how America must submerge itself, surrender its destiny to every fly speck on the map that gains a desk at the United Nations. And at every turn we are preached to about our failings. Is too much pride of country worse than what sometimes seems to be none at all?
The origins of the drive to "stand up to the Communists" at any cost are no less easy to find. Thanks largely to the beguilement that Communists are really nice people, we have seen half of Europe and more than half of Asia swallowed up.
HERE, AS IS SO FREQUENTLY the case, there is in the motley collection of laments andurgings of those who are branded as "extremists" a grain of harsh truth. Perhaps that is why extremists are always so irritating; we can all glimpse the truths buried in their outpourings—but we just don't want to look at them.
(From the Wall Street Journal)
EATON'S FRIDAY CARTOON
"Hysteria, anyone?"
.
the took world
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
DARKNESS AT NOON, by Arthur Koestler. Signet Classics, 50 cents.
We are now seeing what may be the beginning of another purge of deviationists in the Communist world. This happens periodically. New dogmas are enunciated, new shifts are made, and the faithful accept the latest doublethink without a murmur or their names show up in wire dispatches as having died or confessed after a showy party trial.
We have seen similar stories enacted, a memorable one being the British film, "The Prisoner," which resembled the Cardinal Mindszenty episode in Hungary. "Darkness at Noon" is the story of Rubashov, a Communist party official who is put in prison and grilled incessantly for his shifting from the new party line.
"Darkness at Noon," a novel which should be read, along with "1984," by the present college generation, appeared in 1941. Koestler himself had gone through the ordeal of totalitarian grilling, and the Moscow purge trials were not long distant. His novel was both art and history, and 20 years later it is every bit as good as it was in 1941.
He has two inquisitors. The first is from Rubashov's generation, and his own self-doubts prove his undoing. He is replaced, and is executed, and the new inquisitor represents the new breed, the "Neanderthal man," as Rubashov views him. The new man, Gletkin, has none of the essential idealism that some early party leaders had had, and he is able to wring from Rubashov the necessary confession.
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