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Thursday, February 10. 1972
University Daily Kansan
Kansan Photo by DAN LAUING
To an Anxious Friend
In commemoration of William Allen White's Birthday, the Kansan is reprinting his Pulitzer Editor, the editorial, "To an Anxious Friend", which we had printed in the Emporia Gazette July 17, 1922.
You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that you can have no wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people—and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive. That is the history of the race. It is proof of man's kinship with God. You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger. No one questions it in calm days, because it is not needed. And the reverse is true also; only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice.
Peace is good. But if you are interested in peace through force and without free discussion—that is to say, free utterance decently and in order—they interest in justice is slight. And peace without justice is
tyranny, no matter how you may sugar-coat it with expedition. This state today is in more danger from suppression than from violence, because, in the end, suppression leads to violence. Violence, indeed, is the child of suppression. Whoever pleads for justice helps to keep the peace; and whoever tramples on the plea for justice temperately made in the name of peace only outrages peace and kills something fine in the heart of man which God put there when we got our manhood. When that is killed, brute meets brute on each side of the line.
So, dear friend, put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts desire by spoken, by promoted, by letter, or by press. Reason has never failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
Editorial Page Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must provide their name, year in school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
Editorials, columns and letters on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
James J. Kilpatrick
Air Bags: Testing Before Trying
WASHINGTON — Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut sounded off the other day with a call to the state's governors worried about the administration's pending bill for drastic reform of the public welfare program.
"Don't we have an obligation," and the Senator, "before we become billionaires by costing billions of dollars to test this program how we see it how
Several weeks ago a divided House Committee on Government Operations warned against the use of bags in bag requirement. Agreeing that
The question is a little too long, perhaps, to be chiselted in stone in office but it might usefully be worked on fashioned samplers to hang in each Senator's office. Of course he must have accepted the obligation! As Patrick Henry incessantly advised his fellow senators that "the value of a federal system: it encourages small-scale experiments as a safeguard against crime."
Apprehension is growing that precisely such a large-scale blender is in prospect, not only in the car but also in automobile air bags. The Department of Transportation, unwilling to abide by Ribicofis's Rule, still is insisting that the department should automobiles offered for sale in the United States must be equipped with passive-restraint devices meeting certain standards. What this means, is air bags.
the device has "an obvious potential" for saving lives, a committee majority nevertheless dozen thoughtful reservations.
The air bag relies upon electric impact sensors. These sensors can measure the mechanism, which releases gas compressed air, which inflates a large nylon bag, which pops out of the ground. The vehicle thereby imposes a cushion between the passenger and the dashboard. All this happens in 40 seconds.
It sounds like something Rube Goldberg might have invented. To say the least, the system is that stupid. The parts that malfunction. As the committee observed, the sensors and the gas container were not in sync with split-second activation "for a number of years, under varying temperature, atmospheric pressure or other environmental conditions."
The bag cannot be too hard; the
cannot be too soft. The blasting
device must rupture the gas
in the bag, and it should ruptur
the passengers' ear drums.
The triggers must be so
sensitive that they will not fire
in response to the minor bumps of
the bag or of bumper-to-bumper
traffic.
It is further objected that the air bag offers no protection (as seat and lap belts do) against panic stops, severe skids, rollers and sidewishes. There are majorly viewers, whether air bags will protect a passenger who will be to "out of normal seat
position"—a not unlikely prospect—at the moment of impact.
dismisses these objections as unwarranted. The minority is
In fairness, it should be said that a six-member minority of the committee indignantly
Kipatrick has come to the conclusion that the following advice of Senator Abraham Ahram would be crucial in stone the walls of Congress: "Don't we have an obligation, before we embark on a national program costing billions of dollars to report our program out to see how it works."
confident that air bag systems would have an enduring reliability of 99.999 percent, that
problems of bag design have been solved, and finally, that 13,000 lives could be saved each year by adoption of the requirement.
It makes no difference, at the moment, which side is right. The responsible man strongly responsible men strongly on the merits of a compu-
trol system.
Patrick Henry was on the right track nearly 200 years ago, and Abe Ribcock is voicing the same view. He seats both seat belts (this is part of the deal), and to put reliance upon a complex system not yet fully developed conditions is, in a word, driving conditions, is in a word, driving first. First, let us see how it works.
Copyright, 1972, Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
McCloskey wants to be the center of attention. He will run with the pack, but he also wants a pair of gloves as an extra show. As he says, of his war experience, "You lose people when you herd together in combat." He brought smoke bombs back from Korea, to use in special circumstances—his sister-in-law's car as she left on her honeymonkey. Sometimes the pranks misfire—as when he suggests, "Nixon was present with the would like to dwell on, or that should have seized the Pueblo
Truth and Righteousness
Representative "Pete" McClelland father won his baseball letter four for the team ford. McCloskey himself, at Stanford out of family tradition, tried loyally as a backup outfield for the Padres in a terribly slow runner—a fact presumably connected with his stance and lumbering tread.
But if he ran slow, he also ran very low, and those who played high-school football with him learned to keep their eye on him when the ball came into his own as a campus roughneck, especially in the enclosed games of frontroom "knee basketball" played by Phi Beta Kappa at Stanford. He was a mediocre student, but easygoing and gregarious, a practical joker, fond of physical contact. He is now known for being and being into New Frontier swimming pools.
An excellent biography of McCloskey just has been prepared by Lou Cannon (a school teacher) to come up just before the New Hampshire primary election. McCloskey emerges from this treatment as just a big bit of an oddity, and his pranks into useful gestures.
By Sokoloff
"truth in government" is the main concern of our time.
He has claimed he would give up his seat in Congress to oppose the GOP's push for political backers that he remains a candidate in the congressional race. In his own words, he says he would impartially serve up a bit of both, McCloskey repeats this grandiose claim: "I would rather give up my seat in Congress than I would refuse to practice" (of governmental untruth). He doesn't mean it—he is running both for President and Senate. He isn't attention-getter, and he can't resist the loud remark that turns people's heads in his direction. He also has to be tired as they are tiresome after a while.
Garry Wills
Griff and the Unicorn
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff.
back by force. But at least he gets attention. He can also rise to an occasion—as in his war bravery, the California bar exam or well-organized campaign against Shirley Temple Black. He is not a wholly inconsistent, and he is effortlessly summon up useful outrage over others' peechiness, and his impressive collection of political talents—a big kid in some ways the ideal campaign. But there an uglier side to his spontaneity when he is impulsive—quick to take a position, and a stubborn in tension when he has shifted ground. Thus his presidential campaign has hurled and carved from impressivity Nixon to opposing Republicans in embassy in Lao to claim that
Copyright,1972 Universal Press Syndicate
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