Page 2
University Daily Kansan Thursday, Sept. 26, 1963
The American Way
The Johnny Birchers went to the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson this summer to plug a product they called Americanism.
Birch faithful set up a booth in the grandstand, from which they passed out mounds of printed matter ("literature" would be a doubtful word).
One college student received a card bearing a picture of Old Glory and the inscription, "I am a card-carrying American," a pamphlet, a pocket-book advocating a foreign aid cut, and a citizenship questionnaire.
The questions read like a high school American government test. "What is our national motto? Name the senators from your state. When was the Constitution adopted? What is the Bill of Rights?"
MOST OF THE QUESTIONS were stock, but the Birchers sneaked in a few loaded ones.
For example, "Under the Constitution, it is illegal to be a member of the Communist party. True or false?" False, of course. It is legal to hold any belief you want, but the Birchers like to play on the fear of Communism.
"Our American President has the power to make treaties with foreign powers without consulting Congress. True or false?" True, although the Senate must ratify the treaty before it becomes law, but Birchers don't like anyone but
them having that power.
For those who had resisted the temptation to peek at the answers, there was a self-rating scale to plot what grade of American you were.
THOSE WHO SCORE 20-24 are ranked as super patriots. "Congratulations! Your education and patriotism are showing."
Those with 17-19 scores are not what Presidents are made of, but "good solid citizens." A 13-16 score is passed over as "today's typical American. Try reading more news and less comics."
An 8-12 scorer is regarded as dangerously deficient: "underaverage. You may lose some priceless freedoms." Those scoring below 8 are asked; "Have you thought of moving to Siberia."
The Birchers have set themselves up as arbiters of Americanism, the Only True Judges of what is good for this country and what is bad, and obviously anything which they oppose is Bad and Evil, a Threat to The American Way.
The Birchers are using tactics which smell of the worst kind of bad politics. They spout the glories of patriotism and then try to undermine the ideal of personal liberty by imposing their own brand of Americanism on others.
And I'll bet they won't give me a card so I can prove I am an American, either.
— Rose Ellen Osborne
©2013 HERBLOCK
THE WASHINGTON POST
Dropout
Dixiecrat Dream: Fixing the Score in '64
Ed Planer
A number of Southern politicians have been dreaming the same dream recently: It is December, 1964, and the Electoral College is preparing to cast its votes for President of the United States. Neither the Democratic nominee nor the Republican has enough votes to reach the required number of 268. The balance of votes is held by several Southern states whose electors are not pledged to the candidates of either party.
At this point, two endings have been suggested, both happy ones as far as Southern dreamers are concerned. In one version, the candidates or their spokesmen make all sorts of concessions to the Southern electors in order to gain their votes. No more Negroes will be admitted to the Universities of Mississippi or Alabama. Louisiana will be granted all its claims to the oil-rich tidelands. A Court of the Union composed of state supreme court justices will be established to supersede the U.S. Supreme Court. The list is endless. In another version, the unpledged electors decide to throw the election into the House of Representatives, where in January, 1965, with each
state casting one vote, a majority of states choose Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia or Governor George Wallace of Alabama as the next President of the United States.
ALTHOUGH THE dream sounds fantastic, a determined band of states' righters and segregationists are working hard to make it come true. Chief among them are Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi and Leander Perez, boss of the Louisiana bayous and one of the founders of the Dixiecrat party in 1948. Earlier this year, Barnett got a special session of the Mississippi legislature to pass a law practically guaranteeing that Mississippi's seven electoral votes will be unpledged. Under the new law, Mississippi voters will go to the polls in September, 1964, to determine which slate of electors they wish to appear under the Democratic emblem in the November general election. One slate would be pledged to the party nominee, presumably John F. Kennedy. Anti-Kennedy slates could be pledged to Barnett, Senator Eastland, Governor Wallace, or simply listed as unpledged. "If we conservatives
The People Say...
Well, a new football season is right around the corner and the stadium is expanded to 44.900 seats. Many of these 44.900 seats are "reserved" seats. I have placed that word reserved in quotes because I have often asked myself, "reserved where, how, and for whom"? It has been my unfortunate experience in the past to arrive at home games exactly at kick-off time with my wife and two "reserved" seat tickets. We miss the first ten or 15 minutes of the game trying to persuade a gaggle of excited, cheering, but otherwise comfortably seated, usurping spectators out of our "reserved" seats.
Reserved Seats?
Why should the student, or anyone for that matter, be allowed to purchase reserved seat tickets if the University is not going to insure his use of said seats without his having to physically remove others before being able to sit?
win." Barnett has said—and he would seem to have reason for optimism—"Kennedy just won't be on the ballot in Mississippi."
In the first place, the obtaining of these tickets is no mean task in itself considering the lines one must stand in and the exact procedures which must be followed and deadlines met. In the second place, the student has no choice as to where he can sit, so the University must take the responsibility of seeing to it that he is able to sit where he is assigned. And in the third and final place, reserved season tickets represent a financial expenditure large enough to warrant some consideration on the part of the seller for the customer.
In order to get a slate of loyal Democratic electors on the general-election ballot, one thousand qualified voters would have to sign a petition for each of the seven electors. Even then, these electors would appear on the ballot without party designation. The electors appearing under the Democratic emblem would, of course, actually be opposed to the Democratic nominee.
SO FAR, BARNETT and his co-workers feel sure of Mississippi's seven electoral votes and ten from Alabama, where electors can also be unpledged. In 1960, six of Alabama's electors voted for Byrd, five for Kennedy. In 1964, with one less vote in the Electoral College but at least two Negroes in the University of Alabama, all ten of Alabama's electors may very well be anti-Kennedy. With a foundation of seventeen electoral votes. Barnett, Perez, and others, including George Shannon, the outspokenly segregationist editor of the Shreveport Journal, are trying to whip up support throughout the South for the unplied-electors plan.
Hal Yoker Kansas City graduate student
Under present Louisiana law, electors are designated by the parties' state central committees. In 1960, the Perez faction came within two votes of getting unpledged electors placed under the Democratic emblem. During the last session of the Louisiana legislature, it got a bill introduced to set up a presidential electors' primary in July, 1964, at the same time as the state's Congressional primaries. Under this arrangement, voters might well find themselves choosing presidential electors before either party held its national convention. If the unpledged electors won in the Democratic primary, their names would appear under the party emblem in the general
election. For a slate of Kennedy electors to get on the November ballot, one thousand independent voters would have to sign a petition requesting it. Independent voters were defined as persons not affiliated with any political party. That may seem reasonable enough, but according to the latest statistics, less than four thousand persons would qualify as independents in the whole state. And for good measure, the bill specified that the names of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates would not appear on the ballot in November.
THE MEASURE passed the lower house 57-44. As the bill headed for the state senate, where the vote was expected to be extremely close, the Kennedy administration decided it was time to bring the dreamers back to reality. Senator Russell Long flew down from Washington to make his views known in Baton Rouge. The former mayor of New Orleans, DeLesseps Morrison, ambassador to the Organization of American States, arrived on the scene. Five members of the Louisiana Congressional delegation, headed by the Majority Whip, Hale Boggs, issued a statement in which they condemned the bill.
Supporters of the measure argued that it would place Louisiana in a powerful bargaining position. "You pass this bill and the presidential plane will be flying down here tomorrow to talk about tidelands," Senator Wendell Harris of Baton Rouge argued. Senator E. W. Gravovlet, who represents the Perez districts in the state senate, declared. "We've been kicked around too long by the bloc-vote-dominated national party. Let's pass this bill and join with other Southern states and support somebody who won't use the South as a whipping boy."
The measure was defeated by the narrowest of margins, 20-18, but sponsors have already announced that they plan to make
the issue a major one in the state's gubernatorial race later this year and the Congressional races next year. According to George Shannon of the Shreveport Journal, who serves on a citizens' group called the Committee for Free Electors for Louisiana, "We are going to work for the election of a governor who not only will support free electors himself but who will campaign for candidates for other public offices who believe in free electors."
THE EFFORT to export the idea to other Southern states is also continuing. Barnett and Perez claim that they will be able to count on a minimum of forty-seven unpledged electoral votes: seventeen from Alabama and Mississippi, ten from Louisiana, eight from South Carolina, where an unpledged-electors bill will be voted on in next year's legislature, and twelve from Virginia. Florida is listed as doubtful, and Georgia is now listed as "renegade." Subtracting forty-seven from the total of 535 votes in the next Electoral College, the backers of the plan calculate that neither President Kennedy nor the Republican nominee will be able to secure the needed 268.
And so the dream continues:
It is December, 1964, and the Electoral College is preparing to cast its votes for President of the United States . .
Reprinted from The Reporter, Sept 12,
1963.
Dailij Finnsnan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded, became bieween 1904,
founded by Charles F. Owen.
UUNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
UUNiversity 4-3198, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas