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Monday, November 13. 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Nixon's Leadership
America in the 1960s, if one accepts the political analysis of Nixon, was lacking quality leadership. Now that it is safe to come out of the protective confines of the White House, Nixon has said that "the enormous movement toward permissiveness which led to the escalation in crime ... came as a result of those of us who have basically a responsibility of leadership not recognizing that above everything else you must not weaken a people's character."
That doesn't wash.
If in the last 20 years there was a single man who inspired Americans with hope and energy, who built this nation's character, it was John Kennedy in the years 1960-1962. It was Kennedy with the Peace Corps and Vista, harnessed the energy of this nation's idealism. It was Kennedy who gave us a sense of purpose in the midst of evergrowing concern for our future. It was Kennedy who gave us courage to move into the future, who gave us vision and hope.
If in the last 20 years, there is one man who has been responsible for weakening the character of the man that man is Richard Milhous Nixon.
And now, Nixon is going to "shuck off" and "trim down" the programs of the Kennedy era because, in Nixon's mind, these programs are the product of poor leadership—that recognition that "above everything else you must not weaken a people's character."
Since the days of Joe McCarthy and anticommunism, Nixon's only ideology has been a Machiavellian appreciation for the power of fear and hate. This nation is just recovering from the fear-mongering
days of Nixon the Commie-killer. We can expect to be convalescent for an ever longer time once Tricky Dick completes four more years of his hippie-hating, welfare-cutting, goo-killing presidency.
Nixon thinks the people will rally around his new leadership, that "the American people will thrive with a new feeling of responsibility, a new feeling of self-discipline, rather than go back to the thoughts of the '60s."
Certainly there will be people who will rally around a president who proclaims that there will be no man and any problems that require a tax increase."
But these people will not be rallying for the sake of America. They will be rallying for the sake of their own self-centered security. They will be rallying around a selfish defense of their own privilege and a studied ignorance of this nation's problems.
Yet these are the people Nixon would have rally around him. These are the people for whom he calculates programs and policies. It matters not to Richard Milhous Nixon that he has alienated the idealistic. It matters not to him that he has further divided and polarized the privileged and the underprivileged. It matters not to him that he has fostered a new cynicism, that he has undermined the people's faith in their government and their hope for a better future. It matters not to Nixon that he has abdicated his responsibility to provide moral leadership for the people. All that matters to Nixon is that some day the history books will record that he won a great landslide victory.
But the histories will also record that expense of a nation's welfare.
Robert Ward
Tripping Out
The ivy at Harvard began to undulate and crawl in the fall of 1960. Sorcery as old as medieval folklore was taken up at a time, giggling down the rabbit hole. Within the next few years, the tentacles of a new drug culture had grown, stretched out and thrashed like the Middle America—its youth.
The Harvard drug scandal began as a program of respectable, if unusual, experimentation by two capable assistants, one assistant professor of clinical psychology and education, and Timothy Leary, a lecturer at Harvard. Each had a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Their study was published in Harvard University's Center for Research in Personality. Together they planned an unusual approach to the study of hallucinogenic drugs that, once acted, acted as a catalyst to the youthful counter-culture of the 60s.
Before February, 1963, when a thallidome disaster forced the federal government to tighten its regulations concerning investigational drugs, nearly anyone could purchase Dyesilic acid in research purposes. Mescaline, Dlyseric acid diethylamide (LSD) and psalocyin were substances that could be found in nature but were more readily available in more reliable quality when synthetically produced. Leary Albert used psalocyin, a Mexican mushroom, in the majority of their research.
LSD had been widely studied in the 1950s, but only in a medical context. Most evidence showed that the drug was not physically toxic, as were heroin and morphine, as were benzodiazepines. American public had heard of long before 1960. The hallucinogens offered a novel danger, the possibility that they could damage cognition or damage could result from taking the drugs. Leary and Alpert departed from the fold of chemical analysis to study the toxic effects of these compounds.
Theirs was an outwardly clinical approach, but few people realized the extent to which Alpert and Leary were convinced that patients experience before they had conducted any extensive research. Even in 1960 the two men advocated unrestricted use of hallucinogenic. Leary's previous personal encounters with the patients convinced him of their "consciousness-broadening" aspects.
To anyone in a normal state of mind, a person under the influence of hallucinogens often
For three years the two researchers continued their excursions into the unknown. At first the project was kept unobtrusive to prevent curious students from becoming intrigued and continued and rumbles from other faculty members grew more menacing, word began to spread among the studentry of Harvard. Subjects in the experiments began to talk about the profound, overwhelming experience of Students began to make private inquiries, and a black market spruced on Harvard Square.
An aura of mysticism drifted in over the two researchers. Leary and Alpert bought a large house in Newton, Mass., and began an institution in multifamilial living" In drug cult began to coagulate.
Then the news broke to the press. The Crinson, Harvard's campus daily, carried a story on mescaline in February, 1962. Boston papers picked up the story, and the university began to study mescaline by the spring of 1983, the only research of Alpert or Leary at Harvard was the growing use of drugs among the students.
Leary and Alpert didn't introduce chemical euphoria to the U.S. but publicity of their work would have made D.D.mescaline and pacleycon to many middle-class Americans who had never heard of them or been a skirmish at Harvard acted as a counterculture of the 60s. Leary's psychedelic cult set into motion a decade of youthful deep split by a generation deeper than any previous abyss.
always rebelled, but, as much as they might have soulded, parents had been able to understand drinking, or smoking tobacco. Parents had been able to engage in activities. Even the compliment of imitation was missing from drug usage. Adults had developed a national syndrome of drug dependence, but there was a need for treatment and habitual use of tranquilizers and the jolt of a tab of acid. Most adults couldn't reconcile the two
Drugs moved from slum to suburb, from college students to their younger siblings. Just as they were involved in their involvement with drugs, they perimentation in alternative lifestyle, a youthful society, mellowed out and urge on by the exhilarating spirit of rebellion, to more elaborate manifestations of "increased awareness."
College students had smoked marijuana before 1982. The beatkins of the East Coast and the hippsters of California had used hallucinogens. But for the majority of young people in America, Leary was the first hint of the coming of a counterculture.
Parents read about LSD and were shocked by the degradation of chemical turn-ons. Their children grasped after the new frontier. Wide acceptance of drug use has prompted the repudiation of adult values so complete that many adults were left bewildered. The young had
Yet the drugs are still here, and are being taken more seriously than ever before. Drugs are no longer the exclusive property of the discontented and disfranchised. The hippies of the last decade have become a more active part of today's society and are increasingly habitats into the mainstream with them. The big high is over, but its hangover seems to be a permanent one.
—Linda Schild
WASHINGTON—The FBI's new boss, Pat Gray, has just discovered what we offered to show him six months ago--that the FBI has been keeping files on congressmen.
Jack Anderson
Gray 'Discovers' FBI Spying
We had reported that the FBI spied not only upon congressmen but upon black leaders, movie stars, football heroes and other white supremacists, we evidence, we quoted excerpts from the secret FBI files.
We immediately offered to tell Gray, since he was new around the FBI, where some of the secret files were stashed. We even printed several of the file numbers to help him locate the hidden dossiers. The entries vary in length, from "Confidential" to "Top Secret" No Foreign Dissemination—No Dissemination Abroad."
To our astonishment, Gray nevertheless insisted to correspondents: "None of you guys are going to believe this... I know't know'cause make you believe that they will not have no dossiers or secret files."
Despite our help, it took Gray six months to discover the congressional files. Not until an audit of the FBI's checking on a Democratic congressional candidate in Ohio did Gray admit that the FBI had been collecting information on the president and candidates since 1950.
Gray said the practice had "just come to my attention" and he ordered it stopped. But he insisted that the FBI program had been limited to gathering "biographical data on major figures in American history Representatives and the Senate from newspapers, magazines, campaign literature and various reference publications."
Once again, we are happy to enlighten Gray about his files. We'll use a special addition to newspaper clippings and campaign literature, also contain eavesdropped information, and gossip from informants.
The FBI chief, if he doubts us, can start with the file on House Speaker Carl Albert. Gray will find therein a report, based upon a conversation picked up by an FBI listening device, about
The file on House Democratic leader Hale Bogg, now missing in Alaska, is loaded with wretched information picked up during the 2016 election of fixer Nathan Volosen and ex-House aide Martin Sweig.
Albert's relationship with lobbvist Fred Black.
Or in the FBI file on House Republican leader Gerald Ford, Gray will find a report on a bugged telephone conversation between AVCO's Earl "Red" Blakphe and the GAPI agent. FBI agents, checking on the monitored conversation, found that Blakphe had enticed an officer of an AVCO defense contract and that Ford occasionally had hitched free rides on AVCO planes.
Rep. Peter Frelinghusen, RN.J., was kept under FBI surveillance, his file will show, because of a blackmail report.
The FBI not only kept a file on Rep. Henry Reuss, D-Wis, but he also kept a 2-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, and his 2-year-old son, Michael.
At "11:10 p.m., Rev. Fauntroy was observed by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation exiting from a car bearing a Fauntroy For Congress deputy, declares a confidential report, which Gray will find in Fauntroy's file.
Or, if Gray really doubts that congressional candidates are sometimes watched by FBI agents, he might read the dossier on Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the nonvoting representative from the District of Columbia. FBI agent Robert Fauntroy met newsmen on January 6, 1971, at the site of the new FBI building.
"Reverend Fauntoy approached the construction site and after greeting newsmen and friends, he insisted statement, the opening paragraph of which inferred that the new building was being constructed as a shrine for Mr. J. Fauntoy, director of the FBL.
There's much more in the secret FBI files which we'll be happy to share with Pat Gray if he has trouble locating them.
Credit President Nixon's silent
During his Moscow meeting with party leader Leonid Brezhnev, the President got an unpublicized promise that Russia would permit Jews emigrate to the United States if not directly to
Israel. Brezhnev kept his word but levied a tax on departing Jews.
The Soviet justification was that the tax would make up for the free education they had received in Soviet schools. The tax varied, therefore, according to the degree of education.
When White House negotiator Henry Kissinger later returned to Moscow, he objected quietly that the tax was contrary to the spirit of his country and understanding. Lately, the Soviets have quietly dropped the tax.
Copyright, 1972,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
"IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT HERE IN AMERICA WHY DON'T YOU 60 BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM?"
Garry Wills
Mgovern's people are desperate for explanations. Even poor Teddy is getting his own farce-disaster of his candidacy.
McGovern 'Too Good'
After the wild flurry of theories on why McGovern would win, we cannot expect much in the way of retrospective canon or judgement of the campaign, Frank Mankiewicz elaborated a thesis of "the Attlee effect" that would put McGovern in office—that is, with peace in the offing, the people would want to forget the past, and yet doing this would be to get rid of the war leaders, just as the
Readers Respond
To the Editor:
There were all kinds of things wrong with that theory. In the first place, McGovern was busy getting off the offing. Also, McGovern never did understand that people did not need to forget the war. They had already forgotten it, under the collaborative and narcotic leadership.
Palistinian Controversy
British did when they turned Winston Churchill out after World War II, and brought in Clement Attlee.
I was pleased to see that the Kansan published Mr. Ulaby's guest editorial a couple of weeks ago. Ever since the Palestinian genocide in Gaza, homeland 24 years ago, the press in the United States has ignored their plight—except, of course, for sensational displays of indignation against Arabs who try to hostages or highjack airplanes.
However, I must take issue with some of the facts claimed by Mr. Unz in his reply to Ulaby's editorial.
1. Speaking of the KU Arab Club's recent "public meeting about Palestine," Mr. Umz says: "They justify, condone, and even attack Palestinians' societies ... by the different Arab terrorist organizations."
2. Mr. Unz claims that the
This is not true. The purpose of the meeting was to inform the KU community about the recent outbreak of a virus in workers from West Germany and the United States. True, a motion to "support the Black September terrorist organization" was offered at the end of the meeting, but it was rejected by Mr. Unz himself, and it was not seconded or discussed.
Arabs left Palestine because their leaders "ordered their people to leave."
On the contrary, it was massacres like Deir Yassin, Jamissin, and Nassrreldn that caused the panic exodus. Menachim Begin, leader of the revolution, asked for the "Supreme Victory" at Deir Yassin and now an Israel cabinet minister, writes in his book The Revolt: "Deir Yassin helped us in particular. . . All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Hafa like a giant." He then began fleeing in panic, shouting "Deir Yassin."
3. "Now, those Arabs who stayed in Israel enjoy full rights as Israeli citizens." Unfortunately, Arabs in Israel must apply for permits to travel from the town to another, and have baggage carried without trial for indefinite periods.
I offer these corrections in full accord with Arnold Toynbee's comment on the 1947 conquest: "The most tragic thing in human life is when people who have been given birth to you turn" (A Study of History, VIII, 280). But for Toynbee, as for the KU community, there should be a
further sense of tragedy in the fact that the historic suffering in the oil-rich Middle East is being increasingly aggravated by the Western nations, and especially by the United States, which consumes 34 per cent of the world's annual oil production.
In Venezuela, where the average life expectancy is 49 years, about two thirds of the oil is exploited by two U.S. companies. In Indonesia, following the slaughter of over half a million citizens by the Suharto government, oil was sold to $160 million in 1971. Oil was discovered in Angola in the Siketies, and now Portugal, with U.S. support through NATO, is at war with the Angolans. And following the discovery of offshore oil in Southeast Asia, Nixon announced his Vietnamization plan, which included (using U.S. armaments). And now Semitic peoples are fighting Semitic peoples.
J. K. Houck Assistant Professor of English
Mr. Unz proposes "the resettlement of the Arab refugees with U.S. and International help." Any more U.S. "help" in resettling the international civilization of turning the cradle of civilization into its grave.
But "the Attie effect" was no more mistaken than other theories offered, all along, to show why McGovern had to win. The people were dissatisfied, populist, anti-politics, getting their way and getting guess, bulded down to that last point—the people were too good for Richard Nixon, as any fool could plainly see.
But 'only' the fools around McGovern, it turns out, could see this 'plain fact'. McGovern was, in fact, too good for the people, and irritating ways of suggesting this superiority to them.
I bring up the false predictions to stress that we should not be taken in by exculpatory false analyses after the event. There will be plenty of Attle-effect effects before they forget Forget them. He lost because he had to; deserved to; never had a chance not to.
I suppose Eagleton will be the explanation most strenuously offered, because it suggests one accident made the difference, not any structural fault in the campaign.
But single-episode explanations are dangerous—e.g., that Nixon's bad showing in the first debate made him lose in 1960, or that Romney's "brainwash" comment, Muskie's crying in Manchester, ended their primary hopes.
Neither the press nor the public give that much trust to a single incident if it is felt to be out of character or truly accidental. It is important growing feeling about the candidate, it has its effect—not so
much as a cause of disaffection, but as a symptom of it.
Romney was a clown, and said even more damage things—e.g., while trying to use kid-kid on campuses. The realization of these mistakes in connection with the brainwashing remark. Muskie conveyed a sense of disproportion and bad judgment, of intensity misplaced, of sudden outburst after long hesitation. That impression, given the Manchester event, was given at symbolization there.
in the same way, McGovenn tried to be a politician above politics, to be considered Nixon's moral superior yet not to be judged with moral rigor. This was true in his dealings with Daley and Johnson and Louse Day Hicks, not only with Senator Eagleton if the Eagleton affair buturt, not because of a pattern, not because it went against it—not because it was atypical or accidental. Eagleton did not defeat McGovenn. McGovenn defeated McGovenn.
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
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I'M THE LEGENDARY PHOENIX, THE MYTHICAL BIRD THAT HAS TO SET FIRE TO ITSELF SO A NEW PHOENIX CAN RISE FROM THE ASHES...
I'D RATHER BE ANYTHING THAN A PHOENIX...
I WONDER IF I COULD PASS MYSELF OFF AS A ROOSTER OR SOMETHING...
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