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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Dec. 12, 1963
Carry Me Back
The newly formed Conservative Party of Kansas has unveiled its platform and, as grandpa used to say, "It takes me back."
The party wants to stop all foreign aid, ratify the Liberty Amendment (calling for abolishing the federal personal income tax, but not the federal corporation tax), "unmuzzle the military to reveal the Communist-Socialist conspiracy," restore the citizen's right to own gold and return to a full gold standard.
IT CALLS THE United Nations a "proven organ on Communist conquest and subversion" and calls for "ending programs of intervention in agriculture."
That's right, let's pull out all the plugs. Let's go back to B.P. (before preventatives).
Let's throw away seat belts and birth control pills and the United Nations.
LET'S STICK our heads in the sand and pretend those millions across the oceans are not there. Let's go back to the days of isolationism. Let's pretend that those millions are not clawing for the food, the freedom, and the materialistic comforts that we've enjoyed since that sacred Constitution was written by men as human as we for times very different from ours.
We wouldn't expect an urban population of 180 million and 50 states spanning a continent to follow religiously a document written to govern
a rural population of four million and 13 states all clustered along the Atlantic seaboard any more than we would expect the University of Kansas Jayhawkers to play football with a 1921 rulebook.
WHEN THE Constitution was drafted it was equipped with an elastic clause which allowed it to expand with the nation. The clause took us to the day of the preventative, and the government took it upon itself to "prevent" war and recession, depression, and inflation.
The government looked back at Coolidge's status quo and laissez faire days which historian Allan Nevins describes as a combination of two policies "freedom of private enterprise from governmental restraint and generous subsidies to private enterprise."
IT REMEMBERED the new era of "a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage" which came crashing down in the Great Depression. Americans looked back and they elected a Franklin D. Roosevelt to put in the plugs and apply the preventatives. And they gave him 100 days to do it.
As Americans, we never hesitate to look back for history is a great teacher. But to go back is another question. We're the generation of the future, not the past.
We're moving ahead, not going back. We hope.
— Rose Ellen Osborne
"Did He Say 'Let Us Continue' Or 'Let Us Work Continuously'?"
Encouragement, Anguish, in Alabama Newspaper
(Editor's Note: The following articles appeared on the same page of the University of Alabama Red and White. Both apparently are regular features by staff writers, but the emphasis, even the general theme, is different. We in the North criticize the South, and I think rightly, for the policies on race approved by the voters, but we should be big enough to try to understand what Southerners feel about our criticism, and what they feel about their South. While the South does err, badly, in its race policies, it is not unreasonable for the South to ask, as does one of the writers, "for a small bit of simple understanding." It might even help us work more effectively toward a solution. B. K.
We're in a crowd. Men and women cramped close together. Shoving, angry shouting at somebody further away, above
heads and past bodies through which we cannot see. Hemmed in. The object of the crowd's anger could be someone picketing for a labor union, for civil rights, for or against peace or Russia. The issue makes little difference. The fact that we are together, cramped and nearly powerless in this crush of angry people is of supreme importance.
SEE THAT MAN over there? Perspiring, his otherwise neat business suit rumpled, his tie pulled loose, he stoops to the ground, picks up a rock, bits of soil still clinging. He draws back his arm—the anger, the hate, the excitement of the crowd is all there and we can feel it all around us. The arm is drawn back for just a moment. In this
moment we can grab that wrist —reach out and stop the hurling stone from ever being airborne; prevent it from ever finding its innocent target—we can, but do we?
All right, we're out and away from the crowd now. Away from the riot, yet it remains frozen in time. That scene of anger will be ours to return to soon. For now it is a lifeless paralyzed moment in time; that arm will remain poised.
There are few things in life about which we have a choice. We had no control over being born into this world. We could have no say in the composition of our initial environment as children. When we are old and the time of death arrives, it will
be another change of environment over which, ultimately, we have no control. There are many things over which we have no control but too often we place disportionate blame on human fallibility when we refuse to act.
WE DON'T NEED to go over the event of a few weeks back. People die and so do presidents. However, during that weekend this country saw, for the first time in many years, something called "individual leadership." If someone laughed they might have been surprised when they discovered themselves in a new kind of minority. Some people who wanted to continue to spume hate just like always, found themselves without an audience, or at best a hostile one.
It Hurts To Hear Home Criticized
Ninety eight years ago the Confederate States of America lost their war for independence, and by virtue of that loss, have been made to suffer ever since. For ever since then the southern states have been set aside to assume responsibility for most of the Nation's domestic shortcomings. Nobody wants to forget . . . and they won't let us forget . . . that the South is generally a sort of sectioned-off Hell on Earth.
Regardless of where you go, you will have two strikes against you because you are from the South. This is true in New York, just as it is in Paris and the District of Columbia. Because ever since 1865, the South has been dragged like a rag doll through the press all over the world; and especially in the northern United States. From this has come some of the most rotten journalism in all history, and it has caused untold thousands of people to suffer, and wonder why so much hatred is turned upon them; why they are made to read and hear about themselves and their communities, and suffer ridicule, humiliation,
and indignation.
And we hear it every day; every time we turn around; everywhere we go . . . over and over. It never stops. The image of the southern people never fades in the eyes of a world eager for scapegoats.
For you see, we are only half-human down here. We are all a bunch of mindless oafs and nigger-hating red-necks who go out and get drunk and kill just for the pure Hell of it. We're ALL like that and we are proud of it . . . except for a very few who write books and things, and they are neurotics, or queers, or alcoholics. That's the image.
silent again. So we'll probably remain that way, but before we return to the crowd scene there's a bit of a question: With all the over-simplifications, inuendoes, hateful jibes and platitudes tolerated by ourselves and by our public officials and private leaders, can we still marvel that some men take loose words seriously and then dismiss these men merely as "Demented"?
So then, after a hundred years of image building the President of the United States is assassinated and people all over start saying "it's the South's fault." We are told that we must share the blame for the man's death. We are guilty, they say. Not only do many of us have to suffer the loss of our President, but also the accusation that we never respected him, and that we are largely responsible for killing him.
It hurts. It hurts to grow up in a country and learn to love it and see your father or brother or friend die to protect it, and then hear somebody say that you hate it, and that you should take the blame for assassinating its President. It hurts to be shunned all over the world, and to have to right scorn and hate from people who call you "Rebel."
It is a low, dirty blow. It is cowardly. The South is full of nuts, just like the North, West, East; just like anywhere, for that matter. But the South has an image, from which the press can make money by exploiting, and by keeping alive the forces of misunderstanding and sectionalism . . . and this happens every day when truth is blown out of proportion and smeared across front pages and magazine covers.
NO, IT'S A BIG, wide, complex world. Cause and effect are not easily determined. But, we're back in that crowd now, and before chanting the old ritual, "Next time it'll be different," let's pause. Enough of the simple idealisms about "a better tomorrow." The stark fact is that today is yesterday's tomorrow and it's little better for our having been around yesterday.
But it hurts most of all to see your country tear its own guts out in a wild spree of reasonless panic and passion, which even a small bit of simple understanding could erase.
This was something bigger than a region or an issue. To some it struck home, others didn't feel a thing. The impressive thing was that to those of us who felt a deep and spontaneous reaction it was something important enough to call forth a new kind of courage, a kind of "caring."
IT WAS A KIND of courage which helped some to see that their own contribution to the hate and misery of this world while not as prominent as some is in principle as lamentable. It was the kind of courage that gave some the strength to stand up as individuals and say to another, "I'm not going to stand for your stupidity in this hour." So here we are today.
University of Alabama Red and White
So, here we are today, mostly
And, here we are, pressed back in that crowd, faced with that choice. We don't have to put it off. We needn't lament tomorrow. We can take the risk today, walk forward and grab the arm of that flushed and angry man.
But will we? Will we take that risk and make at least an individual attempt to restrain the brick throwers of the world? If we do not, whether they be hurling bombs, stones or unrelenting hate, if we make no effort we will have no right to one day regret that we have become their target.
— University of Alabama Red and White
Dailij Hänsan
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Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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