4
Wednesday, April 12, 1972
University Daily Kansan
Garry Wills
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
McGovern Gaining
The results of last weekend's Democratic delegate nominating conventions have turned a few heads outside the state party structure.
Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, swept the three primaries in Douglas County and picked up large numbers of delegates in both Johnson and Sedgewick counties. The strong vote there and in San Antonio not particularly surprising, but McGovern was also able to score delegate victories in Topeka and Salina.
The McGovern people will be going into the District conventions late this month with the largest slate of committed delegates. In fact, most of the other delegates elected were uncommitted, and according to some reports many lean heavily to McGovern.
The party establishment in Kansas was caught with its pants down
They expected neither the number nor the singularity of purpose of McGovern supporters. Party members, though, thought that the McGovern people played the gamma and played it much better than anyone else.
Certainly, the strong showing here will boost McGovern's chances of placing delegates at the Miami convention. But its size renders the institution uniquely insignificant next to New York, California and Illinois.
McGovern's seeming victory in
his game has made me more
spiritual than mathematical.
If his gains in Kansas are a sign of like gains across the nation since the Wisconsin primary—MGoverstate for all the rest to try to catch.
-Thomas E. Slaughter
Whose Era, Jack's or Martin's?
There have been many TV documentaries on the life and death of President John F. Kennedy; but only last week, on the fourth anniversary of his death, did we get a major survey and tribute to Martin Luther King. That emphasis on real reaction measures our comparative estimate of glamor and of substance.
The contrast is a poignant one. I thought of it as I saw again the rough wood mule cart carrying Dr. King's coffin from the little church of his father from the small college he from. No prancing dramatic black horse here.
Both King and Kennedy died young (though King was far younger). Both men made changes in the country (though King's changes were more profound, more beneficent, and more lasting).
It was a shock to see again, on the TV
screen, all those COLORED signs, on
drinking fountains, over rest rooms,
over waiting rooms, over bus sections—
and to see the old women, young
children, and unarmed disdainful meek
people who risked beating and
imprisonment to take those signs down
and keep them down.
They have stayed down. And King, more than any other man, called blacks of all age and status together to accustom this hist. it was a rare historical combination of a magical leadership and courageous followers. Whatever else happens to us in these dreary times, we have witnessed a prodigy of courage over the last two decades, a monster of the greatest achievements of America.
David Halberstam has written of "The Best and the Brightest" as enrolled in the Kennedy administration, and somehow blundering into the worst and the dimmest actions abroad. But the term he uses ironically of the people who flocked to Washington in the early 1960s was those who went South at the same time to Dr. King's elephant call for "white brothers" to vindicate "the sacred heritage of this nation."
It was a patriotic call. In his "I have a dream" speech King stressed that he was just the American dream. He moved the country because he had faith
in it, moved people because he had faith in them.
And through it all we drew on his deep conservative roots as a Christian preacher. Change came to the music of suffering lifted out of pulpit afterulpit: "We will wear you down by our ability to bear whatever you can infiltr on us . . . And in the process we will win you over. I will be the language of the world, so cootypety as a grudge. No other man can convincingly after four little girls were killed in a church, on the text, "Love your enemies."
It was King's gift to transcribe an imposed squaler into the beauty of chosen suffering. That is why the power of his oratory grows, is larger now than ever, while Kennedy's Sorenens-sounds tuned, funer day by day, and fades.
The early Sixties are often referred to as the Kennedy Era. But why should we settle for second best? If we want to be proud of our nation—to boast, not to lie in terms that history will vindicate—in terms that vindicate—majority of what we have witnessed. There is one thing in which we can take an unalienated national pride, one man who is unquestionably among the few great shapers of this country. The most challenging truth is that we have all lived, unworried, through the King Era.
Copyright, 1972. Universal Press Syndicate
Winning Delegates,Wars...
Readers Respond
McGovern Win
To the Editor:
On Saturday afternoon at unit conventions across the entire state, Kansans voted the only candidate to be the Democratic Presidential nominee. In this congressional district, about 2 per cent of the people who oppose President Nixon and his administration, it would only opportunity they would have to cast any kind of meaningful vote whatsoever (because of the absence of voters there were some people who actually felt that 2 per cent participation was a great deal better).
My own unit's McGovern, organizer had told me on the phone about twenty-five people. He had not been able to do any successful door to door canvassing, there had been no phone harassment of interstate voters. We had experienced everyone wanted to run for delegate. Nine people ran for delegate committed to running in a race; they delegates were to be elected, thus seriously splitting the McGovern vote. Seven people ran uncommitted, stressing the fact that we should still keep an open mind and remain positive. Their logic said that since we could not possibly know enough about the candidates to make a decision yet, that we should elect someone who would decide for us later.
Yet when the ninety-four ballots were counted all six delegates were ones pledged to McGovern, with the sixth highest number of votes in long-time Democrats were disgruntled. They grubbed about the convention being "stamped." This was not their form of democracy. Then they voted against the efficiency of our organization that could only make an insider laugh. If they had only seen the chaotic state the McGovern had been in just hours earlier.
Then came the sojourn back to headquarters. Phone calls and tally sheets and people cheering at all of the Wyndote and Johnson results were in; all we needed now was 11 of the 21 delegates from Iowa and to have a clean security and to have in Miami for George McGovern.
The news that in Douglas we had swept twenty one of twenty-one was incredible. It was followed immediately by the even higher number, Seedwick County had gone heavily for McGovenn, giving us
a majority in the fourth congressional district as well, and six more votes in Miami. And reports from Shawnee looked hard to believe in Manhattan. Efforts that had started months ago with small goals had increased a few times, led to twelve of Kansas' thirty-five delegates now belonged to Senator McGovern, and the chances looked good for them because they were on two or twenty-five. The rest thought would be uncommitted, and of not any other candidate. Of the almost eight-hundred delegates who attended Conventions, seemingly over 85 per cent were either McGovern or uncommitted, with only a scattered handful of Humphrey, Kennedy and USupon delegate. The National McGovern office called and congratulated us, and asked who would get the other three to believe it when we said "no one."
And then a dozen people who hadn't eaten or slept well in days went out to celebrate a victory that would help them feel of accomplishment was tremendous, and it helped wash away the memory of all those things that we were hopelessly alone. There was a new spirit that night, a new buoyancy. The feeling that maybe we really can do some change if we don't change your environment were not a waste. The feeling that when you buck the system you needn't always feel as if you have everything you want. For this night at least, the cynicism, the pessimism, the apathy of the seventies were forgot. In their place were and dreams that had seemed to die a harsh death years ago.
—Steve Fehr.
Assistant coordinator,
Douglas County McGovern
for President Organization
fighting a moral war because we haven't blown the ever lovin' shift out of them with our atomic arsenal. Ah, yes. I see.
Moral Killing
I was always going to try to avoid going to war because I had always considered killing to be immoral. But now at last Mr. Reeves (Letter to the Editor, Kansan, Apr. 7) has my mind set on that some kinds of killing are indeed moral. How convenient!
That is to say that if one has an effective and, of course, most effective weapon, the most effective one can use, and one blows an enemy's head to pieces then that's immoral. But if one breaks the head of one's enemy to pieces with the butt of the gun, that's moral. How simple it is!
Well now, that makes some sense of our war policy. By considering the militarized weapons with conventional weapons we save our morality. Just think, we could have levelled the whole of it by using them years of feeling ashamed about our war policy in Vietnam, I can imagine how morality, Gee it feels so good!
To the Editor:
Now let me see if we've got this straight. The North Vietnamese must be fighting an immoral war because they can kill us, that is they are killing all the people they are attacking. But we on the other hand, are
Bob Steen. Smith Center senior
Winding War
To the Editor:
to the Editor. The war is still winding down.
—Tom McClenaghan, Lawrence sophomore
Concert
Chalk up another mark for the well researched articles that appear in our UDK's.
Monday's UKED stated, in the caption under the Brewer and the Killarney, that Friday night was their first KU concert appearance. We can recall singing and hearing them in Vanilla Fudge, with Vanilla Fudge, also in Hoch.
To the Editor:
Tom McClenaghan, Lawrence sophomore
Carl Davaz, Lawrence freshman
James J. Kilpatrick
Giddy Swings on the High Court
WASHINGTON-What in the world has happened to Stewart and White? The two swinging courts could have Court seem to have swung awry this term. They are taking our ball first. We never land of the Warren years.
Potter Stewart has served on the Court since 1858, Byron R. White since 1962. Over most of his career he worked as middlemen between the shifting conservative and liberal blocs. In the field of criminal law, they generally have demonstrated sound common sense.
But the Court has delivered
itself this term of four turkels, all of them hatched by 5-2 votes. In each of the cases, Stewart and William librals—William O. Douglas, Brennan, and Thurgood Marshman; each case, was to benefit an obviously guilty defendant; and to make the burden on law enforcement greater.
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and not should exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must have a minimum of 24 hours of professional faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
The most recent of these judicial miscarriages came on March 28, when the Court voided a statute that allowed the statute as unconstitutional on its face. The ruling, to borrow Chief Justice Warren Burger's burger," in the "bizarre" "bizarce." Justice Harry Blackmun, who also dislented, took a long breath and summed up the facts and the holding this way.
Letters Policy
"It seems strange indeed that in this day a man may say to a police officer, who is attempting to build a building, "White son of a bitch," I kill you 'and' 'You son of a bitch,' I shoote you to die and say to you, "You son of a bitch," son of a bitch, if you ever put your hands on me again, I cut you all corn constitutionally cannot be prosecuted and convicted under a state statute which makes it a crime to another, and in his presence.
opprobious words or abusive language, a language to cause trouble in the peace. Thus, however, is precisely what the Court pronounces as the law
The majority's objection to the Georgia law was that the statute
failed to define the offense precisely. That was the same objection raised by the same five justices to a portion of the decision back in December. In a dazzling exhibition of pedanty at its worst, the majority went searching for ambiguity until it found an answer. The weaken, if not to destroy, a statute prohibiting the possession
or transportation of a firearm by a convicted felon.
On January 11, in U.S. v. Pucker, and on March 22 in Manning, the two judges joined the soft-hearted three in decisions that made a travesty of justice. The two cases deal with the 1963 trial of Court's 1983 opinion in the landmark Gideon case, but Pucker has absolute right to counsel.
This is what happened. Tucker was convicted in 1935 of armed assault under cross-examination, acknowledged three prior accusations, and received evidence against him and was overwhelmed. A jury found him guilty and the judge gave him 25 years. But it now appears that the police represented by counsel in the 1938 and 1948 trials, those convictions ruling out of 1838, could not even be mentioned at Tucker's trial in 1933. Nineteen years after he must go back, the case must go back.
the same flimsy clay. Loper was convicted in Texas in 1947 of the statuteury rape of his 8-year-old steadepather. In an effort to prevent the prosecution questioned the defendant on his prior criminal record. Loper freely admitted four prior felony convictions, and was found guilty and sentenced to 50 years in prison. But because it is not clear today whether he had counsel when he was tried for burglary 41 years ago, the conviction of 1947 must now be set aside.
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff.
Griff and the Unicorn
Chief Justice Burger, acidily disentering, said the majority's decision in the Looper case "does not change what we course it does. It does violence to the whole cause of justice, and it leaves the high court looking silly. This we expect of Douglas." He also said that they are so bubbleheaded that they cannot find substance in it. But it is a keen disappointment to that we are getting nothing better toward and White.
The Looper case was cut from
Copyright. 1972
The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
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