KANSAN Comment
Curing the symptoms?
President Nixon is continuing his fight to reduce crime and civil liberties.
Last Friday the Senate passed one of Nixon's pet anti-crime bills. Washington, D.C., police are now armed with increased authority.
They now have the authority, under certain circumstances, to enter private premises without knocking or giving prior notice.
They now have the authority to employ wiretapping and electronic surveillance.
They now have the authority, when executing a search warrant, to seize property that is not specified in the warrant.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."—Amendment IV of The Constitution of the United States of America.
Yes, crime fighting has come a long way.
Of course, it was obvious that something had to be done. During his campaign, Nixon had promised to reduce crime and restore law and order. But his pledge was not being fulfilled—the Washington, D.C., crime rate for the month of October showed a 35 per cent increase over October of last year.
"Watch what we do instead of what we say."
Attorney General John Mitchell.
Yes, something had to be done. So Nixon went to the Senate for help, and got it. Apparently the Senate is also very much alarmed about the rising crime rate.
But perhaps their fears have obstructed their reasoning. Isn't it possible to combat crime without blasting away at civil liberties?
It might prove more effective and far less expensive to attack the causes of crime, rather than the criminal himself. There are reasons that men commit crimes. Criminals are not born, but Nixon's method of fighting crime seems to suggest that they come from the womb.
For if criminals were born, the only way to stop crime would be to lock them up. But since this is not true, there is an alternative.
Government research could provide valuable information on the causes of crime. Time and money could be channeled into investigations of individual case backgrounds. The war against crime can never be won without the proper weapon.
And the proper weapon is the application of this type of knowledge, not increased police powers.
Switching to these tactics might prove initially expensive, but in the long run it could save money and precious freedoms. —Joe Naas
If Pat can do it...
Arts & Reviews Editor
By MIKE SHEARER
"Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world."—Albert Schweitzer.
Gaining prominence with Andrew Carnegie and sustained throughout the past century by Ayn Randian do-it-yourselfism, the idea that "if I worked my way up from poverty, why can't everyone else?" still lives today.
When Mrs. Richard M. Nixon received the suggestion last week that she should try living on a welfare budget, she responded by telling her story of standing in breadlines and working her way through college. With the utmost respect for her personal encounter with poverty and the knowledge she gained from it, it seems Mrs. Nixon missed the point of the suggestion.
America is no longer standing in breadlines. It is 1969, and America is laying wreathes of luxury about its own neck. We allow ourselves individual luxuries and national luxuries and the fat are getting fatter.
And yet, for millions of Americans modern America is foreign, it is science fiction, it is a lie. And the impoverished of 1969 are worse off than were the impoverished of 1935 because they must starve while the rest of America, including Mrs. Nixon is eating gluttenously.
Personal testimonies of struggles up from poverty are analogous to saying, "Some of my best friends are Jewish." In other words, the time to claim empathy and the time to encourage others to emulate the Andrew Carnegies is past.
The solution to America's poverty problem will not be found at White House luncheons of
well-dressed women under Mrs. Nixon's guidance.
But neither will the solution be found through the meager hunger fight which President Nixon outlined this past week. Nixon's plan (which included a hike in food stamp allotments while poverty crusaders have recommended elimination of food stamps in favor of guaranteed income promises to help feed the poor better, but offers no groundwork for the elimination of poverty. Nixon will ease current starvation, but he will not prevent poverty. And his plan will have no effect at all in the long run.
America's leaders will have to become as dedicated to America's poor as they are to the "silent majority" and to the financial interests of that "silent majority."
And the thinking of such as Mrs. Nixon that poverty today is anything like poverty in the 1930's must be changed, or we will never realize that solutions are needed to a very different type of poverty than that upon which Mrs. Nixon bases her knowledge.
"The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us," Oscar Wilde wrote in "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
America must quickly overcome the idea that what was good enough for the human spirit in the 1930's is good enough today.
America must quickly realize that Horatio Alger is, for all humanitarian purposes, dead.
America must quickly begin to understand that Schweitzer's suggestion that those of us who are spared pain have a duty to those who suffer is a reality, both idealistically and practically.
Readers' write
To the editor:
In the Dec. 4 Kansan the lead editorial asks the question "Why are we there?" in reference to Vietnam. I'd like to answer that question.
We are in Vietnam because we learned during World War II that to appease an aggressor merely whets his appetite. We learned that to surrender a small nation to an aggressive force may prevent a small war, but it will start the wheels turning towards a much larger and more devastating war.
Let us look at the events that led up to World War II. Nazi Germany's first aggressive action was to remilitarize the Rhineland, France, which was then stronger than Germany, did nothing. It should be noted that when the Allies occupied Germany in 1945 they found that the German troops who entered the Rhineland had orders to withdraw if challenged by the French.
The next step was Austria. Again the Allies did nothing.
After Austria came Czechoslovakia. Here the Nazi jugernaut met opposition. The Czechs, who had defense pacts with both France and the USSR refused to surrender. As a result of this crisis the Munich conference was called. Neither Czechoslovakia nor the USSR was permitted to attend. Britain and France gave the Germans everything they wanted. Neville Chamberlain, so similar to both Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, returned to England with a worthless piece of paper signed by Hitler and declared that he had acquired "Peace in our times."
The currents in European international relations had now changed. No longer did the Allied armies hold a superior hand over the Germans. Soon after the Germans entered Czechoslovakia they attacked Poland and World War II began. And more than 40 million people died in World War II. (It should be noted that the USSR had no border with Czechoslovakia, and was not nearly as strong as Nazi Germany was, and was therefore unable to help Czechoslovakia.)
The problem in Vietnam in 1965 was that we had reached our "Munich." Communists were not only active in Vitnam, but they were also active in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Philippines and Indonesia. Indeed, only two months after the US actively engaged in combat in Vietnam a bloody Communist coup came within an eyelash of success in Indonesia. And who can deny that had Viet Cong troops entered Saigon in 1965 instead of American troops the anti-Communist leaders of Indonesia might have been too demoralized to resist the CPI (Communist Party Indonesia) coup? And who can deny that the entry of Vietnam and possibly Indonesia and other Asian countries into the Communist block would be a grievous blow to world peace? I cannot, and neither can every American President from Harry Truman onward, including John F. Kennedy who declared: "Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia." Jonathan Jordan
Washington, D.C., sophomore
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To the editor:
I was interested to note the high praise given to President Nixon in Friday's editorial in the UDK, in part for renouncing the use of biological and chemical warfare agents. Perhaps Miss Diebolt never got past the headlines before writing her editorial, otherwise she may not have been so quick to praise. Once one looks deeper, past the admirable sounding press releases which give the impression we have abandoned chemical and biological warfare, it becomes obvious President Nixon is far less humanitarian than he would have us think.
True, he has taken a step in the right direction, by scrapping biological weapons, but President Nixon has sanctioned the continued stockpiling of chemical weapons, every bit as frightening as anthrax and typhus weapons. All of the nerve gases are exempted from the ban, including VX, of which only one can kill a man in 30 seconds. New improved mustard gases, far more effective than their WWI predecessors are still in the army's arsenal. Tear gas and defoliants are similarly to be kept.
Most tragically, napalm does not figure into President Nixon's "renunciation of biological and chemical warfare agents." Evidently, death by napalm bombs, nerve gas or mustard gas is not officially as inhumane as death by the pneumonic plague.
While Nixon made one very small step in the right direction, his original announcement would lead one to believe he had taken a giant leap. I would definitely hesitate to praise such an obvious attempt to mislead the world into thinking he was oriented by humanitarian interests. Rene Rondeau
Agawam, Mass., senior
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except for a special period in June and July. Received by the University a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 660444. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without further notice. Acceptance is made necessaryly those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
GRIFF AND THE UNICORN
by DAVE SOKOLOFF
Griff & the Unicorn, Copyright, 1969,
University Daily Kansan.