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Tuesday, October 31, 1979
University Daily Kansan
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KANSAN comment Peace Talk Plagiarism
The praise that is likely to fall on President Nixon's head if the current hopes for peace are realized is misdirected. I think it should go to Madam Nguyen Thi Bihn who, on July 1, 1971, offered a proposal to end the war which was so similar to the one Henry Kissinger now is offering that we should be accused of plagiarism.
In 1971, Bihn, the chief negotiator for the Viet Cong, presented a proposal which called for a withdrawal of all our troops and military equipment from Vietnam. They promised to make a prisoner exchange in North and South Vietnam beginning on the day that we started to withdraw our troops.
The 1971 proposal included a paragraph which guaranteed that action would be taken to forbid acts of terrorism, revenge or discrimination against persons who had collaborated or promised to dissolve concentration camps and liquidate all forms of constraint and coercion.
The Viet Cong demanded that the United States recognize its responsibility for the damage done to the country and help to restore the country and stabilize the living conditions of the people.
The 1971 proposal also called for the United States to recognize the political sovereignty of South Vietnam. It called for a gradual reunification of South and North Vietnam under the direction of a three-part coalition government. It promised democratic elections, free
from political tricks (unlike those that took place in October of the same year with the United States' approval). It also included passages concerning the relation of North and South Vietnam to other countries while the two were being merged. The political processes of the merger, as well as the withdrawal of troops and release of war prisoners, would be supervised by an international group.
All of those points in the sevenpoint peace plan offered in 1971 now are being offered in the proposal Kissinger recently took to Paris. Admittedly, the Viet Cong proposal had the propaganda style which seems to be so characteristic of their statements, but even that was noted for its unusual mildness when compared with earlier proposals. Surely the offending adjectives could have been discarded and an agreement on the state of Laos and Cambodia, which was not mentioned in the 1971 proposal, could have been reached if the administration had been serious about ending the war in 1971.
The administration waited to get serious about a termination date for the war more than a year later, during the month before the national election. I do not know how many people had other living things between July of 1971 and October of 1972 but, no matter what the number, it was a high price to pay for four more years of Richard M. Nixon.
Mary Ward
Contradicting Life
1 nave a friend named Harry. He was pretty weird in his time. In the lexicon of today's campus poets, Harry was "far out."
He used to hang around Lawrence a lot. Harry considered himself a poet and the University was his home when he wasn't on the road. He was known by many students as the 'tramp poet laureate' of Kansas and of college. He was a poet-in-residence. Harry never could take the classroom for long periods of time, like whole semesters.
His attention span on any one subject lasted as long as something else didn't catch his fancy. Even members of the faculty had a hard time keeping up with him. And although Harry was enrolled at the University a number of times, I doubt that he ever acquired enough credits to be classed as a second semester freshman. He didn't belong to a fraternity either, or a commune.
Harry only did things that appealed to him. If a course proved to be unappealing, he was not above dropping it, sans a signed drop slip, of course, and finding another which did appeal to him. They say classes were only opportunities of which Harry availed himself to explain his own theories on how the world works, as well as what he as Harry wished to interpret him. Harry made quite a nuisance of himself in one Latin class, discussing the merits of the new metrical system in poetry.
Harry was no man to believe in social courtesies. When a prominent local newspaper editor spoke at KU in a lecture series, Harry was the first to rise and criticize the editor's views, as the faculty host sat in shocked silence. All men were equal in Harry's eyes. On one lazy autumn evening he gathered some friends from the front of the Lawrence Journal-World, and then he gave a lecture. A reporter for the paper said that the lecture Harry gave on Shakespeare was one of the finest he'd ever heard.
Harry always was doing strange things. He'd take long walks in the
country, carrying a little food with him in a knapsack. He once rode a cattle ship to Australia, and tramped around the country on foot, simply hitching a ride on a passing freight when he wanted to get somewhere fast. He is known to have made a trip around the world, starting with only a quarter in his backpack, even some in Greenwich Village doing some writing. Harry would be considered a total freak if he still were wandering around this University campus.
But I also think Harry would laugh at some of the things going on today under the guise of "individual freedom" and "do your own thing." He would wonder at my generation's penchant for nihilism, and our sometimes apparent lack of faith. I knew he would laugh at Charles Reich's contention that this is the "now generation," the one that will revolutionize American culture.
Harry would find humorous the contradiction that permits today's young people to cry out for free speech, while yelling down speakers who hold different views than they do. But he also would laugh, I think, at Spiro Agnew and I have a feeling that Harry didn't take to Richard Kendall. He never met George McGovern, but I know he liked Will Rogers. In short, I think Harry would laugh at the whole lot of us for the contradictions we live in the names of peace, democracy and love.
Harry Kemp hasn't been on the KU campus for a long time, although his book still gathers dust on a Watson shelf. But if he were here this fall—Harry died in 1960 at the age of 80—he would have one of his famous lectures on life. He would tell us, I think, that we have become too serious, too narrow and too anxious to speak out. Life is made for the listener and the observer, Harry would say. The KU campus could benefit from another tramp poet like my friend Harry. Harry could benefit from an afraid that Harry Kemp was from another time, another place. He believed in life.
—Mark Bedner
Jack Anderson
America's Tragedy-Bureaucracy
WASHINGTON—The story of Mrs. Harry Merica of Naked Creek, Va., is a story of how America's bureaucracy can neglect the people it is supposed to serve.
Mrs. Merica is a spunky, mountain woman in her late 40s. When Hurricane Agnes ripped through Naked Creek last week, the women wounded wooden footbridge that connected Naked Creek to the outside world.
Mrs. Merica was the hardest hit. She was forced to carry her two disabled children on her back every day across a small, makehift bridge which had been hastily constructed upstream. Mrs. Merica's dangerous trek so that her children could catch the school bus on highway 609 across the creek from her home.
Unfortunately, the state didn't fix the original footbridge or begin construction. The state wants a highway bridge. Instead, incredibly, the state took
After two months of this, Virginia officials finally beard about Mrs. Merica's plight.
Both children are handicapped with muscular dystrophy. The Virginia State Nursing Home in Charlottesville, Va., bureaucratic reasoning, concluded that a safe bridge across the creek was essential to the children's welfare and, therefore, the need for a proper home for her children.
the two children away from the despairing Mrs. Merica.
Mrs. Merica's local minister George Shivers is trying to persuade federal authorities to act. he has told Virginia's Department of Transportation Department. But so far no solution is in sight.
Of course, it's up to the government, and M. Merica, to get her in charge for years, we are told, state and local authorities have squabbled about how to get it.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Merica's neighbors continue to shake their heads. Their attitude toward the government was expressed by their loudly accusing; "the government doesn't make the rain. It doesn't
VEREWMENT LOVERAGE.
Despite a federal court ruling that would enable it to be open to the public, Social Security Commissioner Robert Ball has brazenly suppressed information on the quality of nursing homes where many older Americans spend their last years.
make the sun. It doesn't grow my farm. And it doesn't affect me."
It's common knowledge in the health industry that some of these facilities are unsanitary fire traps. This is information, obviously, that the public is entitled to know.
The 4,500 nursing homes that receive Medicare money must pass federal inspection. This usually isn't too difficult; routine inspections of the homes are in "substantial compliance" with federal standards.
The nursing home inspection reports, however, are never released. The taxpayers, who paid for the inspections, can't find out which homes are safe and clean.
For three years, an enterprising investigative reporter.
Mal Schechter, has battled with Social Security to gain access to inspection reports on nursing homes, hospital and clinical lab.
He bumped into a brick wall at Social Security. So Schechter enlisted the help of a Ralph Nader attorney, N伯磊师， and filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act. They argued that protections which protects the privacy of individuals, shouldn't be used to hide nursing home deficiencies. Federal Judge Joseph C. Waddy agreed and ordered the release of 15 reports requested by Schechter. Reporters assumed responsibility for home information. But they didn't reckon with the wily ways of the bureaucrats.
Commissioner Bell has chosen to interpret Judge Waddy's decision as an order to release only the specific reports requested by Schechter. If reporters want to see other inspection records, they too must go to court.
This amazing cover-up policy
has been put in writing. "The Department of Health, Education and Training, responding to future requests for similar documents, will be guided by its present regulations and disclosure," states the directive.
This means that, for the present, the Department of Justice will oppose any further efforts to obtain court orders for the same nurse, nursing home survey reports that already have been prepared."
Footnote: A Social Security spokesman candidly admitted that the agency is treading water to see what happens. They note in a case similar to Schrecher's is pessimistic about northern California and they hope it will be decided in their favor. They also point out that a bill governing access to their records recently passed Congress with the new law however, it remains unclear if future date and wouldn't permit public access to reports of previous inspections.
Copyright, 1972,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Garry Wills
Convention Pretensions
TV viewers in several places are being treated, this long after the conventions, to an album of works by the Democrats and the Republicans in Miami. These are sequences shot, in black and white, by young people operating under the name "Lance a TV television" (i.e., T-V TV).
These long-haired and brautile young technicians used the only advantage they possessed—Leftists and McGoviners trusted them. As a result, they opposed them. California caucus leaders in private meeting Willie Brown is instructing his people on the South Carolina challenge—leftists. Shirley Maclaine interrupts and says she thought "the whole trick" was either to win big or lose big. Brown, who apparently didn't meant to explain that he wanted to win, whips, ran through the mechanics in a perfunctory way, but said it didn't matter to them—they had to vote early, and should look solid behind the strategy to Humphrey's for-
But what Mr. Brown wanted to impress on his cadre was that each of them must make sure the six voters in his charge stayed seated and would vote the way they should (after Brown had passed the word on how they should to these whips).
Good liberal types always have wanted to get people voting "the right way." President Wilson advised that he when decided the "natives" were not voting the way they should. Presidents Johnson and Nixon assure us we are in Vietnamese with a "proper" electoral procedure.
Only when I watched that TV sequence did I realize, after all these months, what was so objectionable in McGovern's convention. It was all run on the domestic equivalent of those liberal do-good intentions that took us into Vietnam!
McGovern never has understood this. He thinks we went over to Vietnam out of some inexplicable taste for propping up corrupt dictators. Quite the opposite. We went to get rid of corrupt dictators, something we natively accomplished in the case of a former prime minister that we got stuck with Thieu, not so much propping him up as using him to prop up our own bedraggled effort.
since self-determination is so patiently good, the self that emerges from this process also must be good. If that turns out not to be the case, you might be bennitely picky for Dale's side, then it is because they don't see their true interests; they vote under a misconception and the system must be 'adjusted' to get the 'right' result. Whence the problem? The name of "representation" by McGovern's packed slates.
MgoVeniers should not be surprised at this. They began by outsting Daley, and now not only rely on him, but also hope to ride on Edward Hammarson's coattails. The next week would be angels end up devils.
McGovern, if they only come to know him. If they don't know him, it is because they have been cheated out of that knowledge by evil forces. And any means now are allowable to overcome this disadvantage. (Maybe Daley can steal enough votes for "us," i.e., the Democratic party, association, McGovern, to overcome the down-state vote). So quick do high pretensions sink to mean practices.
This is the old story of our liberal crudities. Academic dogooders think they know how the peasants ought to vote. Indeed,
The voters must choose
is the story of Vietnam. Arriving to replace old manipulations, we soon were forced to adopt them—anything to save the crucade, or even to save it. The crucade was first aimed against! Bright liberal do-goods do the strangest kinds of bad (dumb) things. Forced to crawl in order to win, they do not even win. But those who did so somehow else's fault. The fault of those so evil as to resist the dogoer's manifest goodness.
A familiar story? Of course. It
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
James J. Kilpatrick
McGovern Faces Apocalypse
One of the most revealing interviews of this campaign appeared on Oct. 20 in the Washington Post in the septembrer that scripted George McGovern and reporter William Greider. When the postmortems begin on Nov. 8, and our political pathologists begin to explain McGovern's loss, they find a good starting point here.
It is the absolute self-righteousness of the man; and this is one characteristic. I venture to suggest, however, that a sincere will not buy when they choose a political leader. Our voters have stomachs of stainless steel. They will tolerate the hypocrite, the second-rate, the second-rater, but in the presence of moral rectitude, the
typical voter comes down with the heebie-jebies. He starts glancing around for the nearest exit.
"You know," McGovens said to Greider, "all of my life I've grown up in a religious climate and that's why I struggle between good and evil, that that's what it's all about. For every individual and every nation, it's a struggle between the impulses of evil and the impulses of goodness and, historically, sometimes the good impulses win over the bad ones who knows what's going to happen? But I just feel very strongly that this election is different than any one in my lifetime in terms of the stakes." Greider jabbed at "aback" "Well," he said, "the
Greider plainly was taken aback. "Well," he said, "the good-and-the-evil — Washington
would say certainly, wow, that's an arrogant black-and-white description of the choice."
"That's the way I feel," McGovern said.
It was a moment of uncomfortable truth, for this is indeed the way McGovern feels. He views this campaign as a kind of protest against the legions of darkness, on the other angles of light. He is convinced that Nixon's impulses are the impulses of evil. He himself has said of another four years of Nixon." But he cannot perceive how any decent person could look with terror on the thought of four years of McGovern, for example, Sin. What reasonable man, having been offered a chance at salvation, would opt for perdition
By Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
The trouble with this approach is that it wipes out a middle ground, and it sets in motion some uneasy apprehensions. If this election is a struggle between the Impulses of Evil and the Impulses of Goodness, how would a President Goodness deal with the White House? Helfire and damnation? Outer darkness? No wonder Bill Greider said, "Wow."
instead?
This Olympic attitude cropped up earlier in the campaign, in McGovenn's crack about the working man. Any man who works with his hands, and has a great sense of humor in his head examined." Such a man, in this view, is not merely misdoubted, he is nuts.
juices of goodness, there the poison of evil. We do not think, most of us, in mutilent terms. It is much easier to get out of bed in the morning.
Moral rectitude ought to be an admirable quality in a man. As an audible witness it is absurd but a Man who identifies himself with the impulses of goodness ought to have the grace to keep that high opinion to believe.
$ \textcircled{2} $ Universal Press Syndicate 1972
The Senator is fond of quoting from Holy Scripture. One of these days, when the campaign is over, he might want to return to that scripture in later Lake 18 of the Pharisee and the Publican. The story was aimed at those who "trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised other," so if the Senate had thought, though it may have slipped the Senator's mind, is that "everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted; the sinless sinner sims, but it seems to be lost on the Democratic nominee.
The voters, if I am not mistaken, are not so willing to march to Armaggeddon on a road that would be observed tells them so—the political art seldom is crafted in stark black and white. They understand the necessity of opinion cannot be bottled, labeled, here are the
(C) The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
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