OPINION
July 13, 1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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Boog's boycott
The Student Senate Executive Committee passed a resolution last month which forbids the use of Student Senate funds for the purchase of products from companies with subsidiaries in South Africa.
The University Daily KANSAN
Dennis "Boog" Highberger, student body vice president, says that these companies support the low wage system for blacks enforced by the apartheid system. Boog should be commended for his humanitarian concern, but he should have taken a closer look at the effects of an economic boycott on South Africa.
The role of the U.S. corporations in South Africa is a complex one. It is not clear, as the Senate resolution implies, that the presence of these companies supports apartheid. In fact, the evidence indicates that their presence has a positive influence.
Economist Walter Williams observed: "It is South Africa's economic growth that is breaking the back of apartheid. Rapid economic growth makes racial discrimination costly. A growing, robust economy tends to reduce racial hostility and awareness; a declining or stagnating economy does just the opposite. After all, can any sane person argue that American blacks could have just as easily achieved the social, political, and economic gains of the 1960s boom during the bust of the 1930s?"
Of course, economic growth does not affect overnight change; it has an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary effect.
Economic and political isolation, by contrast, has a counter-evolutionary effect. It turns a country inward, and entrenches its social and political institutions. Growth and international trade, on the other hand, have a destabilizing effect on a country's institutional structure.
The external pressure of international protest and outrage, combined with the internal pressures of economic growth, will achieve progress faster than isolating South Africa and waiting for the problem to go away. In light of this observation we find the Senate resolution not only naive, but potentially counterproductive.
A new open door
He finally did it. Walter Mondale put an end to the parade of potential candidates for the No. 2 job in the country.
His choice is "exciting," as he put it. A woman is now only a step away from the second most powerful position in the country.
It represents a ringing success for all women.
It represents a ringing success for an election. It has only been since 1920 that women have had the right to vote. Sixty three years later women not only vote for presidents, but are now viable candidates for the second highest political office in the land.
Historically women have wielded great influence; this year their influence has reached a new peak. It has taken a tangible form in Geraldine Ferraro's candidacy for vice president.
And it is not only a success for women. Minorities will win, and ultimately all men will win, too. The outcome of the 1944 presidential election is uncertain. But what is certain is that Ferraro's candidacy represents the collapse of yet another barrier to what was previously a male domain.
In her acceptance speech she said that "American history is about doors being open."
That is true. But now the doors are opened just a little wider.
A timeless treat
It had its origins in Greek and Roman times. Emperors loved it. Hippocrates warned against it, saying, "but, for all this, people will take warning and most men would rather run the hazard of their lives or health than be deprived of the pleasure . . ."
George Washington ran up a tab of almost $200 during the summer of 1790 for it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said of it, "we dare not trust our wif
for making our house pleasant to our friend so we buy . . ."
Perry Brazelton, a fiery force in the anti-slavery movement and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, made it an American industry in the late 1800s.
In 1921, the Commissioner of Ellis Island decided that all incoming immigrants should sample it as part of their first meal in the United States.
The last two decades have been a Renaissance. People now have more variations of this product than its inventors ever imagined.
In both World Wars, American fighting men valued it almost as highly as freedom itself. During World War II, the Navy even commissioned a ship soley for the purpose of producing it.
This week, President Reagan declared July as the month to honor this product.
July 15, Sunday, is National Ice Cream Day. Treat yourself to a cone.
Patriotism
'It means more because I had lost it'
Up until Viet Nam, America had sailed along as a world leader. Americans had fought to defend the country and free choice all over the world.
People are wondering how it happened, but it happened. American "patriotism" has snuck in the backdoor. And it's about time.
But to many, especially foreigners, the phenomenon is perplexing if not frightening. Even a few Americans aren't too pleased about
In its recent revival, however, patriotism hasn't taken on the same form has it has in the past, that is, its not "blind patriotism."
Though I have always gotten goose bumps during patriotic songs — “America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “My Country Tis of Thee,” and a host of others — I like most Americans, my patriotism over whether my patriotism was justified.
To understand why it disappeared in the first place, you only need to hear two catch words — Viet Nam and Watergate.
Then came Viet Nam. And though America entered the war with noble ideals, as months of fighting turned to years, Americans became disillusioned.
This new patriotism means more to me now that it did previously, and though this new patriotism is visible only in time of crisis, or during national holidays, it has definitely reappeared on the American scene.
It it means more to me because I had lost it, and have only recently rediscovered it. So any or all these forms of patriotism are OK with me. I'm just glad it's back, finally America is letting itself "feel"
At home, our families were falling apart as children questioned their parents and their government. Families watched their sons and brothers being killed and mamed as they ate their dinner.
I also watched my family fall apart, and it was over silly things, such as whether my oldest brother should be allowed to let his hair touch the back of his neck, or whether another brother should be allowed to smoke.
America was fighting an enemy it couldn't see; worse yet, it was fighting for a cause that became less noble as it became less clear.
They are silly in retrospect, but were hardly funny at the time.
I remember watching the draft "lottery" on television hoping that my brother's number would be high enough that he wouldn't have to go fight a war I didn't understand.
MARY
SEXTON
Asst. Campus Edito
Then despite his high number, I watched as he went to join the army anyway, and was relieved when he changed his mind.
Then, without time to recover,
America was plunged into another crisis from which it would take years to recover. Watergate
I watched as no hero's welcome awaited those lucky enough to survive the war.
Watergate, combined with Viet Nam, brought shame on America. And for the first time in anyone's memory, Americans could not, in
good faith. trust their government
For years, America limped on. We endured the oil crisis, Nixon, and more recently, Lebanon, Grenada and El Salvador.
We've watched as the deeper wounds, those inflicted in our homes, have slowly healed. Families have started being families
America is starting to recover, and the result is the healing of a gaping wound in the heart of America.
For those confused over the recent surge of patriotism, they shouldn't be. It can be understood by looking at the way we've treated our past enemies.
Americans don't hold grudges. We are inclined to forgive our enemies and have even gone so far as to help them rebuild their war-torn economies. Some of our best allies have at one time or another been our worst enemies.
And during the Viet Nam and Watergate eras, America was its greatest strength.
The resurgence of patriotism is a sign that America has finally started forgiving itself.
America is a little older and wiser this time around, and this new patriotism will be tempered with skepticism.
To those on the outside of the United States, it may look like we have swallowed the hook of "patriotism" and are in danger of being carried away with it, but they needn't fear — we haven't. Viet Nam and Watergate are still too vivid in the American memory.
America still has a responsibility to the rest of the world to be united and strong. And to do that we must have that key, cementing element - Patriotism.
'Maybe I have a different definition'
It happened at the first football game I saw in America. I was still impressed by those cheerleaders, when suddenly everybody got up and began to sing the national anthem.
Now I knew. I was in the United States
It's not that in Germany we don't sing the national anthem. We do. Or, let's be honest, they do, the big bands and choruses that have been paid to do so.
wen, the national soccer players are supposed to sing. You should see them when they pose somewhat embarrassed in the middle of the field, eleven men, the heroes of the entire country.
One man — it's probably his first game for the national team — moves his lips and somehow produces something that might be called a melody. After the first few sentences he realizes he's the only one "singing." The others are occupied mistreatting their chewing gum, tying their shoes, picking their noses, or whatever.
We Germans, especially the younger ones, don't tremble any more when we hear the word fatherland. More than half of the 16-29 year olds in Germany think that the word fatherland no longer suits our time. Almost half of them say they don't like to see the black-red-gold federal flag. Still, a large majority considers itself proud to be German.
Maybe they agree with Gustav Heinemann, a former President of West Germany, who, when asked whether he loved his country, said, "I don't love my country, I love my wife."
I just couldn't figure it out, so I consulted a dictionary.
Patriotism must mean something else to them.
Was he patriotic because he sent the marines to invade this island? Was it because America, once again, was "standing tall"?
"A patriot is a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country," it said.
Sound strange? Certainly it does if you agree with President Reagan's idea about patriotism. After the American invasion of Grenada when he welcomed those medical students he said, "What you saw ten days ago was called patriotism."
I admit I did not really understand. What did the man mean?
WOLFGANG DOBLER
Staff Columnist
German dictionaries say essentially the same as their American counterparts with one exception. They normally include a paragraph that points to the negative side, to the excesses of patriotism.
I love, support, and defend my country, so I am patriotic. But I'm not sure if in Ronald Reagan's eyes I would qualify. Maybe I have a different definition of patriotism.
I'm well aware that there is some reason for it. After all, German patriotism found not too long ago its expression in racism, and ultimately led to Auschwitz and Dachau.
American patriotism, on the other hand, helped to liberate Europe, and to defeat Nazi Germany. In the United States it has never been abused as racism.
Ronald Reagan did not praise civil liberties and other values that the U.S. is admired for in the rest of the world. He was referring to the actions of soldiers who invaded a far-off East Caribbean island with just twice the population of Lawrence, Kansas
Patriotism, reduced to strength and power, degenerates to mere jingoism.
It is a selective patriotism,
however, to which those people
subscribe to, those who say you
should support a war your country
is fighting, even if you personally
consider it wrong.
Patriotism can mean singing the national anthem or reading the Constitution and feeling your spine tingling.
Therefore, those in Germany who tell us that "we" lost World War I because the "home front" did not support the morale of the soldiers are wrong. They are as wrong as those in the United States who tell you now that the Vietnam War was lost because the American people back home did not provide enough support.
I think patriotism becomes something to be admired only when feeling proud is balanced by being responsible. Being responsible means to me, apart from loving my country, criticizing it when I think it is wrong.
What in 1968 was a patriotic protest against the war in Vietnam might today well be the protest against the mining of harbors in Nicaragua.
Current theory of capitalism suffers flaws
The prevailing theory of capitalism suffers from one central and disabling flaw: a profound distrust and incomprehension of capitalists.
With its circular flows of purchasing power, its invisible-handed markets, its intricate interplays of goods and moneys, modern economics resembles a vast mathematical drama, on an elaborate stage of theory, without a protagonist to animate the play.
The acknowledged role of the capitalist or entrepreneur is to mediate marginally among all the limiting conditions. Even his leading academic advocates see him as a mere "scout of opportunities," a puppet of price signals, a servant of sovereign consumers. In this view, the entrepreneur is a dependent variable, who rapidly vanishes into the shadows of such imperious factors of production as land, labor and capital
The Marxists, surprisingly, have provided a grandeer and in some ways more accurate view Karl Marx himself acknowledged the supreme productive genius of the bourgeoisie and assigned to the capitalist phase a central, if transitory, role in economic progress. But the left fantasizes a tiny elite of tycoons rather than an immense class of aspiring businessmen — perhaps 30 million in the United States alone — who comprise a near majority of working citizens.
GEORGE GILDER Author
Even on the right, the entrepreneur is of low moral statue — a plodding pursuer of his own self-interest. Adam Smith sometimes avers that self-love leads to social good, that greed brings prosperity. Nonetheless his theory of the invisible hand leaves the entrepreneur as a blind tool of appetite, who looks beyond himself only to scour the scene for signals of the appetites of others.
Observing the world, one can see scarce factual foundation for the prevailing view of entrepreneurial activity. The capitalist is not merely a dependent of capital, labor and land: He defines and creates capital, lends value to land and offers his own labor while giving effect to the otherwise amorphous labor of others. He is not chiefly a tool of markets but a maker of markets; not a scout of opportunities but a developer of opportunity; not chiefly a user of technology but a producer of it.
He does not operate within a limited sphere of market imbalances, marginal options and incremental advances. He seeks monopoly: the unique product, the startling new fashion, the marketing breakthrough, the novel design. These ventures disrupt existing equilibria rather than restore a natural balance that outside forces have thrown awry.
Because they can change the technical frontiers and reshape public desires, entrepreneurs may be even less limited by tastes and technologies than artists and writers; who are widely seen as supremely free. And because entrepreneurs must necessarily work and share credit with others, they tend to be less selfish than other creative people, who often exalt happiness and self-expression as their highest goals.
There is nothing abstract or predictable about them or what they do. Some are scientists, some are artists, some are craftsmen. Most are in business. They are not always kind or temperate, rarely elegant or tall, only occasionally glib or manly festy leaders of men. As immigrant grants, many deliberately seek an orphan's fate, and tola to launch a dynasty. Mostly outcasts, exiles mother's boys, rejects, warriors they learn early the lesson of life, the knowledge of pain, the cestasy of struggle.
In their own afflicted lives, they discover the hard predicament of all human life. From their knowledge of failure, they forge success. In accepting risk, they achieve security for all.
While the entitled children speak of an absence of worthwhile work, the entrepreneurs hold three jobs at one time. While the entitled children ache at the burden of laboring 9 to 5, the entrepreneurs rise before dawn and work happily from 5 to 9. While the entitled children see failure as catastrophe — a reason to resign — the entrepreneur takes it in stride as a spur to new struggle.
It is the entrepreneurs who chiefly create the wealth over which the politicians posture and struggle. When the capitalists are thwarted or dispossessed, the generals and politicians are always amazed at how quickly the great physical means and resources of production dissolve into so much scrap, ruined concrete, snarled wire and wilderness.
(George Gilder's most recent book is the forthcoming "Spirit of Enterprise," from which this article is adapted.)
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