189093 260017
Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, January 27, 1981
That's uncredible!
In case you were wondering why the United States has had a credibility problem in recent year, take notice of the debate now going on in Washington to decide whether the country should abide by its part of last week's hostage-freeing agreement.
Some in Congress want to ignore America's promises. Even Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker says 'the wound should heal' for a time before the agreement is implemented, if at all. It's a lot of debate for something former President Carter has already agreed to, and his consent theoretically means that the nation intends to honor its commitment.
In return for the hostages, the United States promised to return $2.8 billion of the Iranian assets that were frozen after the embassy takeover. That represents only part of the $10-12 billion in frozen assets, which is Iran's money in the first place. The agreement, under the circumstances, was fair, although the time it took Iran to consent to it was anything but fair.
Also unfair was the way the hostages were tortured by the Iranian terrorists, but that shouldn't be surprising. Terrorists
rarely follow standard rules of etiquette. Nevertheless, some in Congress think the United States is only obligated to fulfill its promises when it's convenient to do so—and it was convenient to make promises before the hostages were released. Now that they can't be harmed, it's apparently convenient to do otherwise.
That there's even discussion about fulfilling the American half of the agreement says something about how concerned the nation is with its credibility.
America has spent most of the last 20 years eroding its own credibility through conflicting policies, nonexistent policies and broken promises. If the debate over the hostage agreement is indeed serious, that erosion is beginning its third decade.
Credibility cannot be bought. It must be earned. And it takes a lot longer to reestablish one's credibility than it takes to lose it. However, the United States could begin rebuilding its credibility by immediately carrying out its promises to Iran.
After all, the lower America's credibility sinks, the more likely it is that incidents like the hostage crisis will continue. And after 444 days, you'd think the country would have learned something.
Apathy reigns, grades rain but ideals are lost in shuffle
What better place to stage a "Rally Against Reagan" than Lawrence, basked of midwestern liberalism, home of those champions of social change, the college students? (Adapted from the book 'Brimming enthusiasm, motivation, organization, youth.' The possibilities! :
And on Friday, they—the Kansas Anti-Draft Organization, Students Nuclear-Nuclear Alliance, African Students Association, Progressive Iranian Students Organization,
KEVIN MILLS
The day was made to order, unreasonably warm sunshine illuminating the street theatre's stage, a perfect omen for the optimistic demonstrators. A crowd began to assemble at 11 a.m., the appointed hour. Even the public address system worked.
KU Committee on South Africa, and Latin American Solidarity—brought their placards, their speeches, their chants and their hopes to the United Nations attention, the front patio of the Kansas Union.
Minutes into the show, disgruntled audience members signified by their exit that even the best laid plans can go aawry. The speeches and demonstrations ran like clockwork, never a bull in the proceedings. But for a crowd of television's children, spoiled by the histrionary con men like evangelist Jadlock, this new production lacked verve. lackedVerve.
Hecklers tried now and then to create confrontation, but there was none to be had. Borsomed reigned, and in the end only a small group of unarmed men with sunny perches and unmoved by the words.
A dark humor pervaded the affair. Despite the sincerity of the demonstrators and the severity of their message, it was hard to keep a straight face when anti-nuke chants were heard. These protesters pro-ERA chants, and so on. These disparate protesters, bound only by desperate intent, served as a grim reminder that college students, by and large, have become apathetic about matters outside their cozy spheres of influence. Ten years ago, any one interested in interest groups would have attracted more attention and empathy in a similar effort.
The apathetic disposition that typifies today's student is perceived by established institutions as a return to common sense. Time magazine gleefully reported that the loudest noise on campus was the grind for grades. An Ivy League student was quoted as saying: "We are definitely apathetic, but it is a hard truth." We are not alone. We have been through enough for awhile. We need a break. Now we can go forth and party without feeling a sense of remorse."
Beneficial apathy? A nonsensical phrase, at best. There is no solace to be found in ignoring the world's iniquities. By failing to act or even react we are no more than accomplices in the criminal acts perpetrated by others in our society. We protesters like those at the "Rally Against Reagan," we are not only paving our own roads of ignorance but are barring the simplest and most insensible avenue of communication, public intercourse.
Perhaps the most poignant lesson to be learned at the rally was the plight of the Salvadoreans as revealed by Latin American Solidarity. A revolution is being waged in El Salvador against the ruling military junta. This is nothing new for the Salvadoreans, who for years have strived to gain better conditions for the peasant class which comprises the majority of the population. The sad fact is that many of them only fight the existing junta, but the United States as well. Our government has pumped over $50 million in aid to the existing junta. An estimated 8,000 Salvadoreans were killed in 1980 by U.S.-built weapons.
It is hard to explain our nation's insistence on maintaining a bloodthirsty martial regime, particularly when its victims are seeking the same principle rights as the government. We must insistusciously endorses. The college student's current rationalization is that such foreign dilemmas are beyond our powers of persuasion, and, besides, there are classes to attend. Well, maybe so. But in our headlining rush to gain financial stability, we can't ignore the problems of our time, the continued debasement of the human spirit and human rights.
It's easy to dismiss demonstrators as radicals for the simple reason that they publicly speak their mind. But in doing so, we are dismissing our own potential to rectify, reinforce and refine the new collegiate ideal of learn, learn, learn so we can earn, earn, earn.
Merrily we go to school . . .
Short country club week a bad idea
My education is going down the drain. I blame the Board of Recents.
The Regents decided to shorten the week spent enrolling—country club week—so classes would start on Thursday instead of the following week. We think students need an entire week to enroll.
Well, maybe on paper we don't, but in actual we do. Country club week is a highly efficient tool for preparing students for classes. It makes classes look good.
After five or six parties of drinking weak beer and grain alcohol tinged with Kool-aid while repeating your name, major, hometown and family photos, you are in the middle of uneasy people, winter in Antarctica looks good.
Country club week also has an important recuperative function. If the University of Kansas is not going to adopt computerized preenrolment—and I don't expect it to because the U.S. government least see that we get time to register, as an adviser, enroll and try to recover from the process.
The Regents could spare us a week to drink ourselves into a stupor and forget about the terrible classes we had to take because the ones I studied had been insured. I haven't had my week, and I'm still sullen.
It's not a good idea to start the semester in a sullen mood. Sullenness should hit at midterm, because it rapidly turns to desperation as I attempt to find someone to help me, my notes are illiberable and the test is tomorrow.
Desperation can't start yet. It's too debilitating. But it is starting.
My first hint came when I found myself picking the lint on my carpet again last week.
I had an assignment due the next morning. I
was trying to ignore it. On that same night, I also cleaned all the mirrors in my room, took three cigarette breaks, ate four chocolate chip cookies, danced to punk rock that was slightly quieter than the Niemanberg explosion and then had numerous philosophical discussions with different people.
It's too early in the semester to be procrastinating this much. But because I didn't
JANE NEUFELD
have my country club week. I didn't get bored enough to welcome classes.
Soon, I will be so far behind in all my classes that I will have no alternative but to drain my bank account and go to Guatemala or stay here and warp under the pressure.
I have witnessed and participated in many kinds of such warped behavior. I have stood with 20 other people in the cold night and primarily screamed at the stars.
I have watched people go to a hill and
roll down, unmindful of rocks, squirrels, bruises
and the grass.
I watched a 20-year-old music therapist major who bear the teeth and bear the thumb while it played.
I have watched people blow soap bubbles from their balcony to the general applause of a crowd.
I, myself, when under great stress, will have sundra梦es. While sleeping, I will become
convinced that a huge brown spider is sitting on my pillow.
This prompts me to jump out of bed, turn on the lights and grab something to smash the spider with. When I realize it am dreaming, I turn on the lights and get back into bed without saying anything.
This habit distresses roommates, but I have learned to live with it.
However, this year an sleepy in the top of a bed and on the bottom. I cannot afford too many spider dreams.
Have the Board of Regents no heart? Don't they realize that by depriving us of our country club week they make us start the semester's work. What are we normal? How long do they think we can endures?
Already I sense incipient disaster. Last week, my first bottle of Vivarin bits the dust, along with my hand, from my mouth.
I am suffering from impulses to pluck the leaves off my plants.
It's too damn early in the semester to be hanging little animals on the wall.
Recently, I took a stuffed replica of Kermit the frog, allowed him in a plastic bag and hung him inside.
Letters to the Editor
I want my country club week back next semester. If I don't get it, someone will pay, provided I'm not by then in a nice quiet asylum surrounded by green leaf trees.
If the Board of Regents expects us to again enroll in two days and start classes in the same week, I may not be able to resist taking a jar of hungry brown recuse spiders into the middle of Allen Field House during enrollment and smashing it against the wall.
New morality is really just old hedonism
To the editor:
Just the mention of Jerry Falwell's Moral Major, Inc. tends to make David Henry rather ill, or so he said in his editorial in Jan. 19, 1981 that he was "influenced by America's Christian banding together to impose their Christian morals on him. Implying that morality is not absolute, but relativistic—something that varies with individuals and given contexts—is that the moral code is equally legitimate to anyone else's."
If morality is relativistic, then Henry's moral code is indeed as legitimate as any other. Also legitimate then, would be the horrifying actions taken by communism and Adolf Hitler, who believed that the murder of innocent millions can be justified under certain circumstances.
"It all depends on the attitude at the time. What makes us happy or gives us pleasure, supposedly, is right. If it gives us pain, it's wrong, and we must decide on that basis only. In other words, do whatever we want to do, and call it morality. That's nonsense, of course. The so-called new morality is merely old hedonism with a respectable name.
If, however, one believes that there are absolutes, that some things will always be right and others wrong, then Henry's conclusion, that his argument necessarily as legitimate as any other, is invalid.
In addressing the issue of relativistic morality, or the "new" morality, conservative author and speaker G. Edward Griffen states, "We hear a lot of talk today about the new morality, sometimes called humanism or situation ethics. The concept is that there's no such thing as right and wrong. We have to be right for one may be wrong for another. What's right for today may be wrong tomorrow."
This idea can be taken one set further. Under relativistic morality, no law can be justifiably written in any government. Laws are based on a wrong sense of absolute right and wrong, and if there are not absolutes, there can be no laws. The only other option is anarchy. Thus, social morality is absurd, and Henry's conclusion—that morality is necessarily as legitimate as another's falses.
Henry also implied in his editorial that Christian principles and "traditional American
beliefs and pieties” are disjointed and have nothing in common. However, he forgets that this country and our most basic values and petites are based on Christian morality and on the ultimate authority of God. The very first sentences of the Declaration of Independence refer to God as our creator. Further along, we find the words, “supreme judge of the world,” in the first sentence of the Constitution on the protection of divine providence.” David Henry, the last place you will find support for your new or social morality is in our “traditional American values and pieties.”
Finally, this statement by George Washington points out the validity of Falwell's work: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principlicas."
The University Daily KANSAN
The Moral Majority and groups like them are only trying to put back in place in society those
(USPS 609-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday during June and July except September, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 60045. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $27 a year in county. Subscription fees are $3 a year outside the country. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the student activity fee.
Postmaster: Send changes of address to the University Daily Kansan, Flint Hall, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. 66045.
Editor Business Manager
David Lewis Terrry Fry
supports to which Washington referred—religion and morality. These groups do not deserve our criticism; on the contrary, they deserve our thanks.
Russ Munyan Overland Park sophomore
Comments absurd
To the editor:
I have never met Norman Forer. Knowing his status as an adviser to many Iranian students in past years, there is no doubt that his efforts to mediate the hostage crisis were well-intentioned. However, many of his ridiculous public statements and statements would also like to express my disgust at the Kanass for allowing his absurd comments on the crisis more space in a J. 20 article.
The more idea that U.S. officials used the hostage crisis for their own political advantage, and ended it when it ceased to benefit them, is preposterous. More so than any other issue, the Iranian hostage crisis spelled defeat for Jimmy Carter. And the type of agreement reached last week could not have been reached a year ago. The crisis involved the original demand made by the captors was the return of the shah and his wealth. In the end they settled for simple return of their frozen assets.
There is not enough space to go into a sociological discussion on underdeveloped countries. Suffice it to say that the United States has been an ideal country, but remedy defies medicines in food and human rights around the world. Ronald Reagan takes a realistic view toward similar countries, such as El Salvador. Moderately oppressive governments are better than tyrannical regimes. Greece has been so violent that the shah? But these arguments are on for Oner, and others are tired of hearing about him.
I just hope that if any more similar comments by Forer appear in print, no mention will be made of the fact that he teaches at the University of Kansas.
Alan Jilka Salina freshman