University Daily Kansan, March 27, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daly Kansas, UPSP 605-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lawn, Kan. 6045, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods. Second class postage paid at Lawn. Kan. 6004. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $2 a week in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student addresses must be written on the back cover and not addressed to address changes to the University Daly Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall. Lawn, Kan. 6004
MATT DEGALAN
Editor
DIANE LUBER SUSAN WORTMAN Managing Editor Editorial Editor
ROB KARWATH Campus Editor
LYNNE STARK Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW
General Manager and News Adviser
DUNCAN CALHOUN MARY BERNICA
Retail Sales National Sales
Manager Manager
DAVID NIXON Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Latin leaders
Argentine President Raul Alfonsin was in Washington, D.C., last week, and the message he brought should give the Reagan administration pause.
As other Latin American leaders have stated, Alfonsin warned that the conflict in Central America was due to "authoritarianism, flagrant social injustices and misery."
While refusing to endorse either the Sandinista government's position or the Reagan administration's stance, Alfonsin said that any solution to the conflict must hinge on the principles of respect for territorial integrity and non-intervention.
This position is not new or startling, but it differs fundamentally from the administration's position that the turmillo is due to Soviet and Cuban intervention in the region.
The Reagan administration has heard the same position repeated by the newly elected presidents of Uruguay and Brazil. These men are not radicals. They are trying to work within the framework of democracy.
Their countries have as much if not more at stake in the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Central America than the United States.
The Reagan administration should listen closely when men such as Alfonsin speak.
He represents the new leaders of Latin America, willing to work with the United States, but no longer willing to toe the U.S. line when they think it is wrong.
These leaders understand that the United States can be their greatest ally in building stable democracies and viable economies
But the United States can do this only if it is willing to work with leaders like Alfonsin, and understand what they are saying — not only regarding Central America, but on the problem of foreign debts that are choking the political and economic life of the region.
Ignoring Latin American leaders not only will prolong the conflict in Central America, but also will jeopardize the fragile democracies emerging in the region.
Distilling vote
Year after year, supporters of liquor by the drink have seen their hopes dry up and die in the Kansas Legislature.
By all indications, however, Kansas voters may finally get to decide the issue in the 1986 general election.
The proposed constitutional amendment allows anyone over 21 to purchase a drink in any drinking establishment, slaying the preposterous club system.
Different versions of the amendment were approved in the House and Senate last week. The Legislature must now come to a consensus.
Many lawmakers favor the main thrust of the measure but reject one or more of the countless amendments attached to it like leeches. A conference committee of three senators and three representatives is meeting this week to pick the leeches off.
The committee has tentatively agreed to remove the two most controversial appendages and form them into a companion bill.
The proposed bill limits serving liquor by the drink to restaurants that make at least 30 percent of their weekly profits from food sales. The other half of the bill states that, if and when the amendment is voted on by Kansans, it will be decided individually, county by county, not as a statewide ordinance.
Purging these issues from the amendment was an excellent move.
A clean, clear amendment has the best chance of being approved by the voters.
Creating a separate bill doesn't solve the problem, however. Many legislators say that unless the bill is approved, the amendment will fail again.
The bill is ridiculous.
To deny liquor by the drink in bars, where the majority of liquor is consumed, castrates the original intent of the amendment. The arbitrary 30 percent food sales figure is both meaningless and unenforceable.
The amendment should apply to the entire state, abolishing the present dry-wet checkerboard of counties.
Legislators should consider the amendment and the bill as distinct, unrelated entities.
With any luck, Kansans will have the opportunity in November 1986 to end the state's long, hypocritical tradition of voting dry and drinking wet.
The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stuaffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
GUEST COLUMNS
Reagan avoids truth of contras
One thing has to be said for President Reagan: The man has a certain type of courage.
How else could he stand before the country and Congress and demand a Constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget while amassing the largest deficits in history?
histor-
But even by his own high stand-
ards, Reagan pulled off a stunning coun recently.
cop in front of one of his favorite conservative groups, the president insulted the founding fathers of the United States and received a thundering ovation.
The audience was made up of true red-white-and-blue Americans, firm patriots every one.
How did he do it?
This happened in the same week that three separate human-rights groups issued reports of widespread atrocities by contrast.
Reagan, in his immilable style, decided the "contras" fighting the Nicaraguan government were "the equals of our founding fathers."
Although the reports acknowledge the Sandistas also commit abuses, they have not.
Among the documented atrocities reported by the America's Watch Committee are cases of killing unarmed civilians and soldiers, and of kidnapping women and children and taking them to Honduras.
That is hardly a glowing tribute to the morals of the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and hardly something Jefferson, James Madison and others would have approved of.
Had anyone else defamed Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington and Adams in the same way, should have been run out of town on a rail.
these abuses have tapered off as the contrast' acts have continued unabated.
But Democrats and others have let Reagan define the parameters of debate on Nicaragua and are no longer afraid to take his basic, absurd presuppositions.
The first is the administration's contention that Nicaragua's elections, in which eight opposition parties ran and won nearly 40 percent of the vote, never happened.
An election with opposing candidates is not something that has occurred very recently in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Chile or China, yet the United States does not finance the overthrow of these governments.
The second presupposition is that Nicaragua is a totalitarian. Marxist prison waiting for the light of fire from the United States to shine in.
People who have recently returned from Central America will tell you that the Sandistas still enjoy great freedom, even though the country is at war.
it is more than South Africa, Chile and the Soviet Union allow.
The human rights situation has improved considerably under the Sandinistas, as has literacy and medical attention. $ ^{14} $
But perhaps the cruelest of Reagan's unfounded presuppositions is that the Sandistas and Nicaraguan people are less than human.
This belief allows the United States to continue to support the slaughter of people, mostly innocent bystanders who want nothing more than to be left alone, in the hopes of stopping social change.
Four U.S. religious workers killed is denounced as immoral, and it is, but killing 5,000 Nicaraguans with our guns, training and support is somehow not evil in Ronald Reagan's world.
Perhaps the president hopes that lies repeated often enough will become truth to the American people.
The sad thing is that most politicians seem already to have swallowed the line.
Ruling on PACs misses real problem
The Supreme Court has given a new meaning to the phrase "money talks." In a 7- ruling last week, it said money spent by non-party public committees was a form of speculation protected by the First Amendment.
The ruling means committees that operate independently of political parties and candidates can spend as much money as they can raise to keep them wherever or whenever they please in presidential campaigns.
At the same time, the court left the official parties, presidential candidates and their supporters subject to limits on spending and contribution.
The decision was no real surprise.
Lower federal courts had ruled the
same way on the issue several times and the Supreme Court gave free
ARNOLD
SAWISLAK
United Press International
speech protection to so-called independent expenditures by individuals nine years ago.
Justice William Rehqunit offered a simple analogy to back the ruling. Telling individuals they may say what they want but limiting how much they can spend to convey their views is a good way to be present in a public hall to express his views while denying him the use of an amplifying system," he said.
Justice Byron White, in a dissenting opinion, dismissed the free speech argument, saying that the Constitution "protects the right to speak, not the right to spend," and that the court's new ruling, taken together with the 1976 decision, has left the federal campaign financing law a nonsensical, loophole-ridden patchwork.
The argument made in favor of limiting expenditures of independent political action committees was the need to guard against corruption of the electoral process. The premise adopted by Congress and approved by the court was that no-limit spending gave the richest party or candidate the chance to buy elections.
In all of this, the court could not, or at least did not, approach the core of the problem that has dogged efforts to limit campaign spending since Watergate days.
Today, ideological organizations — the non-party political action committees involved in the ruling — and other special interests from labor to tax limitation groups are using their influence to become a principal voice in campaigns.
The law still imposes spending limits on identifiable special interest PACs, but the court's ruling has left the ideological organizations with no restrictions. That means independent nonprofits have to anyone else's and makes all the rest of the efforts to control campaign spending that much weaker.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Blacks and Jews
To the editor:
It is unfortunate that most predominantly black organizations on campus have not publicly stated their opinion on the upcoming visit by Louis A. Farrakhan I feel that many people would not be frightened at the event, if they knew how most black students perceive Farrakhan's views.
By examining the statements that Farrakhan has admitted made about Jews and Judaism, it is not unreasonable to refer to him as a racist. I personally find it saddening that a man as intelligent as Farrakhan continues to speak anti-Semitic nonsense. I can honestly say that most blacks do not consider Jews to be their enemies and do not believe the stereotypes that bigoted people have expressed for centuries.
In regard to the Student Senate's allocation of money for Farrakhan's visit, I sympathize with many members of the Jewish community, and understand their feelings of pain and discomfort that accompany witnessing an individual speaking with such prejudiced views.
I would be highly upset if I felt that a percentage of the student activity
fee that I paid through tuition was allotted to bring people to KU people like Richard Butler of the Aryan League and others like him who advocate racism toward black people or other racial and ethnic minorities.
ny being aware that people like Butler and Farrakhan exist, hopefully, we can learn the urgent need to educate others so they will not be susceptible to their emotional and irrational appeals.
But the Black Student Union does not intend to give Farrakhan a forum to promote racist beliefs. The BSU wants to provide an opportunity for all individuals to gain insight into a man who has been exposed to controversy and media to a level of controversy and unparalleled by most black leaders.
Surprisingly, most of Farrakhan's message is positive. He has been a proponent of reinvestment by blacks in the black community, a stronger family structure, better education and a host of other worthy causes. Yet it is regrettable that he has gained his notoriety by the racist statement the media have attributed to him.
"Farrakhan has said many things that are good," says a Muslim fraternity brother. "... but if he
comes to KU to make racist statements against Jewish people, it would be better that he not come at all. There is no need for more racism on this campus." *Mary*.
president, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity
To the editor
Wrong message
Timmons, who was charged with rape, aggravated sodomy and unlawful restraint, and who was convicted of sexual battery, should not be allowed to represent KU students.
As women on this campus, we are very upset by the message the KU Athletic Department is sending out when it continues to allow football player Roderick Timmons to play on team and receive scholarship money.
Receiving a scholarship is a privilege and an honor, and one should not forget this. We're sorry,
there is something very wrong when a person such as Timmons can still receive a scholarship. To us, receiving a scholarship is synonymous with the scholarship exemplary in your field and in your life.
Jeanna Carkoski
Omaha, Neb., freshman
Chris Sowers
Kingman freshman
Kathy Parker
Fayetteville, Ark., freshman
but Roderick Timmons has not lived up to this privilege and is in no way deserving of the honor.
Coach lauds fans
To the editor
I couldn't allow the season to reach a final conclusion without taking this opportunity to acknowledge the very meaningful role our students played this season in the success of the Javhawk basketball team.
The tremendous support you have provided throughout the season has been great and helped inspire us to a perfect 16-0 record at Allen Field
I don't believe there is any school in college basketball that can claim a more dedicated, loyal and vocal group of supporters.
Enjoy your summer and get ready for another great season.
Larry Brown basketball coach
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