4
Tuesday, September 28, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
New Red Hunters
Few people noticed but the cry of "Red" was raised again last week. The men who stood stripped to their pink skins were four of the most prominent in the land—Senators Edmund Muskie, George McGovern, Edward Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The super sleuth who discovered this blot on apple pie and motherhood was none other than our nation's vice-president—Spiro Agnew.
Actually the charge was more by implication than by outright accusation. The four had committed the unthinkable crime of advocating cuts in the national defense budget emphasis on social programs.
According to Agnew that sort of talk is "reckless and appalling." "None of them, I am sure," Agnew said. "would draw any comfort from the fact that Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party, U.S.A., agrees fully with their oft-used goal of forcing a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and further reordering the nation's priorities."
It would be nice if the situation were laughable but it is really more cause for crying for Spiro Agnew represents an element in American society that more than any other has caused the slow decay that has become evident in this land with the last few years.
This element has as its middle name "arrogant." It firmly believes that any deed this country has committed or shall commit is right simply because it's American. To tolerate or even listen to disentain is a grave mistake, and it comes endless flow of irrational rhetoric and the cries of "Red."
Out of this arrogant element have come the Dulileses, the Rostows, the Johnsons, the Rusks and, yes, even the Kennedys. These men and their kind simply were unable to believe that what was right for the United States was not necessarily right for the rest of the world. They continually looked backward to what and what could have been. The house they built was made of cards. It got wet. Now it is decaying.
Many of the group look at the so called sexual permissiveness of
youth and lack of discipline and at the increasing use of drugs. Then they look backward—always backward—at what once was the norm of social conduct. Then come the cries, the cries of moral decadence, and the pleas to return to God and the rod or the nation will collapse.
But it is not moral decadence that is causing this nation to decay. That has but little to do with the rotting. Instead it is arrogance that so many have accepted the stature and prestige of what once could have been a great nation.
Now this nation, as arrogant as ever, is trying to imbalance the world to balance its own economy. Perhaps we—you and I—shall profit from such a policy in the short run. But what about the long run? Almost surely, a procession away from the dollar as the reserve currency of the world has begun. The political punch of the United States is shrinking, steadily but surely. Soon also shall its economic punch.
Arrogance never sustained an empire. Rome had years of glory, trying to control the world to the benefit of Rome. So too did Britain and the Ottomans. But they all fell, fell of their own weight. Such shall be the path of the United States as it has been in recent rooted out of office and men who want to "reorder priorities" put in. Men of foresight and responsibility. Men who realize the United States is a nation in the world not the nation.
"Could have been" is a precise term. This nation "could have been," before the national paranosis with "Red," before Uncle Sam donned his policemen's uniform to patrol the world, before the Bay of Pigs, before the Dominican Republic and, of course, before the great misadventure Vietnam. The enemy on our pages, compassing among other items the draft, discrimination against so many parts of our society, hate and mistrust of one's countrymen and intolerance.
—Dick Hay
Will those men and their ideas make us a "second-rate" power as well as so fond of predating? Perhaps. But when we really deserve that much?
What is to be done? "Voices
Simply on its merits; apart from the law, mass busing strikes
distinction seems to him fundamental. He agrees with the Court—the Court of 1834—that a child should be treated when it undertakes to treat children differently because of the color of their skin. He is thus told that a child who turns brown. Now the States are told they must treat children differently because of the color of their skin. This isyes byrds. And many will agree.
The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
WASHINGTON—It has been an exercise in futility, these past 17 years, for a Southern raises to raise requirement having to do with desegregation linked before he starts. It is as if John Roche, of General Motors, were to expound an objective view of Raiph
Byrd is a lawyer. He has steadfastly supported the Supreme Court's landmark decision that Browder could not lawfully be assigned to schools by reason of his race. He continues to defend that proposition. But he looks at the Court's recent line of reasoning, which identifies children by reason of their race, and he sees a perversion of the
the west Virginian as a "senseless" waste of money. He deflores its effect upon the cities: "I'll never hauled willy-nilly away from their homes and neighborhoods, it lessens the chances for improvement of the inner-city that are most in need of improvement."
Fourteenth Amendment: "What a distorted, twisted interpretation of the equal protection clause!"
Senator Robert C. Byrd, though he was born in North Carolina, suffers from no such bolt of atonement that he might Yankee hills of West Virginia. He has devoted his life to public service in non-state bodies, both honoring 85 from the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education which purports to work with such moderates as Mathas of Maryland and Case of New Jersey. He won his post as a Lutheran leader with liberal support.
Byrd's speech of September 3 in Houston, before the national convention of Young Americans for Justice, expressed a veteran lawmaker whose criminal or medical moves were challenged. His devastating attack on what he terms the "madness" of compulsory basing his campaign.
Far from enhancing "quality education," in Byrd's view, busing tends to destroy minority necessarily black children whose needs are paramount. He sees only "increasing mediocrity in race" and "the nonensitious obsession these days with racial quotas." Byrd flatly denies the contention that forced integration will teach all children in harmony together. "Polarization of the races is intensified when neighborhood identities are destroyed."
"No public school student shall, because of his race, creed or color, be assigned to or required to attend," The State Senate Joint Resolution 112. It demands prayful and peaceful spreads beyond the Sanctuary to California to Michigan, to Indiana, perhaps the Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on drastic response to drastic error.
Lannes J. Kiltpatrick
One takes a long breath. Constitutional amendment is like a lightning bolt; it lightens. Yet amendment may now offer the only effective recourse. Since his speech in Houston, the governor endorsed a resolution sponsored by Brock of Tennessee and eight others. It would write this into the constitution.
THESE LATE GROUNDS offered for Vietnam legalistic approach to the war. I asked Harris, who boasts that he will take any unpopular stand if he thinks it is right, what he would do with his boys bring our boys back from Canada and Sweden." But he makes a distinction between those who would and those who broke the law to oppose
In Byrd's view, "the equal protection clause forbids segregation but it does no command integration." That
must be raised throughout the country which will move this Nation's highest tribunal to the United States to go along with impair public support of the public school system and will continue to produce chaos in the Court. I have acknowledged that the Court has been unanimous in its racial opinions. More protest, however, may accomplish little.
Kilpatrick Finds Champion Anti-Busing Byrd Okay
Fred Harris Foreign Policy
Garry Wills
As a presidential candidate,
Senator Fred Harris seems to have only two weaknesses—domestic policy, and foreign policy. He's "new populism" that tries to make economic sense out of getting tough with the corporations but not with monopoly unions. His foreign policies are "de-tensification" (be put to use).
I asked him how he would densify. "By idealism, by making people proud to be Americans," he said. "We are aimed at reducing tensions in this country. He likes the 'idealism' of Jack Kennedy's Peace Corps and Woodovian pieties about self-determination." We support our support from Saigon now that Thiaw has shown there is no democracy there. And the same goo for places like Mexico.
it, the deserters and resisters. "I look at some of those veterans in John Kerry's organization, who are still here as the parents of men who died, and think these opponents of the government the same as men who deserted."
Garry Wills' nationally renowned author appears on this page from time to time. He is a frequent contributor to national magazines and newspapers.
files is unabated. Again the Senator invokes the honorable soldiers, those who did not shot women and children, those who died without unwarranted killing. He would still "make sense." He would never "make sense" to avoid the fact that all the killing over there was unwarranted.
Must one be wounded, then before he can oppose this war? Senator Harris's answer is trying to harm the soldiers who suffered and died in the war--but that way尼克斯ism. The Harris effort is a smaller-than-mortal mission, kept us in Vietnam year after dreary year, trying to salvage something from all the deaths in Iraq, sending more lives in a vicious circle.
AMNESTY, TO BE adopted at all, must be offered to both sides. Those who were told to kill and those who were not are jailed—both are victims
THE WAR WAS WRONG; even those who took us into it now admire that. Then why punish them? Or, "the ahead of time?" We should have heeded them then, but we didn't. The least we can do is listen. No, you don't. Now I asked the Senator what he thought of the Berrigans'
imprisonment and prosecution.
"I'd like to get into that"—but he said he does not, yet, know enough about all the facts of the case, but not knowing that—that way safety lies, for politicians.
What about amnesty for criminals? Lieutenant Calley, after all, has already been granted a semi-reprieve from prison and is in cities--while the prosecution of men who destroyed some draft
of a war that has too many victims already. Almenga is not a denail ofasmuch, but a refusal to admit the facts has become legally entangled beyond all hope of neatly organized rewards and punishments.
The real way to "de-tensify" the world situation is not by squabbling over the Greek war, but by acknowledging Woodrow Wilson's maxims, but by a thorough national confession and self-forgiveness. Harris seems incapable of taking the plunge into a whole new context of political morality. He is a far more compassionate person than he seems to think. The fact that he has small chance of winning would not matter so much if he had given up honor, because could lose honorably, and teach us something even in defeat. As it is, however, the fact that he has no chance is cause for little regret.
Copyright, 1971, Universal Press Syndicate
The Well Developed Body of Vern Miller
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's rules. Letters should include a school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
An All-American college newspaper
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newroom-UN-4 4-6810
Business Office-UN-4 4-5358
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription costs $6 a semester; 80 a year. Second class students pay $32 a semester. Employment advertised to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin offered to them is necessarily not necessary. Board of Regents
News Adviser ...Del Brinkman
NEWS STAFF
New York Times
Editor
Lance Editors
Campaign Editors
News Editors
News Editors
Editorial Editor
Sports Editors
Feature Editor
Better Reviews Editor
Make up Editors
Side Stories Editor
Photoographers
Greg Sorrisor
David Barrel
Dick Stevens
Kyle Ramer
Joyce Neeman, Barbara Burke
Deanna McKinnon
Neal McKinnon
Mike Madden
Pat Malone
Matt Bager
Malt Harper
Barbara Schmidt
Baja Bancho
Jean Kensham
Greg Sorrisor
Greg Sorrisor, Hank Young, Ed Lahy
Jake Lasker
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Advisor ... Mel Adams
Business Manager
Bachelor's degree in Business Administration or related field
Business Manager
New York, NY
Associate Business Manager
Boston, MA
Banker (NY, NY)
National Advertising Manager
Pittsburgh, PA
National Advertising Manager
Promotion Manager
Las Vegas, NV
Promotion Hedit
Louisville, KY