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Monday, October 9. 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Law 'n' Order?
The Justice Department in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has asked that "hippies" who live in communes be prevented from receiving federal food stamps. According to the department, Congress never intended to include communes as beneficiaries of the act, but rather had in mind "primarily the needs of poor families, elderly persons and single individuals."
This request is directly contrary to the interests of justice, for it asks that one segment of the public, specifically hippies, be treated differently under the law than any other person. If your apartment is fully aware, there can be justice unless all people stand equal before the law.
But as we all know, the Justice Department is no longer very interested in the prosecution of justice. As a subordinate branch of the Nixon Administration, the Justice Department's main concern is now Law 'n' Order, and this request to the Supreme Court is in perfect harmony with Law 'n' Order.
Unlike justice which attempts to derive its standards from some metaphysical construct of morality and equity, Law 'n' Order depends on the culture for its standards. In the opinion of the dominant culture, the
opinion of Law 'n' Order and the opinion of the Justice Department, such an outlandish appeal to the Supreme Court is fully justified because, in the words of the Justice Department, "many groups of unrelated persons under 60 years of age (bureaucratese for "communes") may, more often than other households, contain individuals (read, "hippies") who abuse the program by remaining voluntarily poor (Law n' Order for "commit the greatest of sins")."
In this instance at least, Law n. 'Order prescribes are clearly nothing more than a weak rationalization for the dominant culture's desire to suppress aberrant cultures such as communes without regard to justice.
Fortunately, the district level courts have not yet been conquered by Law n' Order, for in a District of Columbia Federal court, the ex-convict from the food stamp program was quite properly ruled unconstitutional.
Unfortunately, there is little telling how Nixon's so-called "strict constructionist" Supreme Court will handle the appeal. One has to wonder if perhaps it won't expose its own color for colors by "strictly construing" the Justice Department's version of Congress' unwritten intentions.
—Robert Ward
WASHINGTON—Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. was the model of a moderate, reasonable, judicious legalist during his Senate confirmation hearings last November.
Jack Anderson
Powell's Pro-Business Stance
His views were so militant that it raises a question about his fitness to decide any case involving business interests. He called upon businessmen to mount a high-powered political action campaign and "to penalize politically" the opposition.
Even before his appearance, the FBI report on him was so favorable that Senate Judiciary Chairman James Eastland, D-ACO, who testified, He opened the hearings with the statement:
"Mr. Powell, I have read the FBI files on you; it was a full field investigation. I certainly think going to vote to confirm you.
The FBI, however, had missed—and the senators, therefore, were unaware of a confidential document that Powell dratted two months before his Supreme Court apportionation. It was blueprint for an assault by Big Business on its critics.
The battle should be waged, he urged, in the courts, on the campuses and in the media. He encouraged businessmen to "balance" the "balancing" faculties, to "evaluate" college textbooks and
Agreed Sen. Sam Ervin, D.N.C. "I will afford me pleasure to vote for you. I have no reservations."
to "monitor" TV programs. It was not a campaign, he said, "for the fainthearted."
In an earlier column, we published excerpts from Powell's confidential, 33-page memo, which is now being circulated among top corporate executives by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Here are additional highlights:
Having identified the enemies, Powell appealed: "The time has come—indeed, it is long overdue. Ingenuity and resources are needed to business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it."
He complained that "the enterprise system tolerates, if not participates in, its own destruction." He said American student researchers in the colleges "from which much of the criticism emanates."
"The American economic system is under broad attack," Powell wrote passionately, from the "communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries" as well as from "perfectly reenforced elements of society." He identified three main themes: Ralph Nader as "perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business."
And he added significantly:
"Most of the media, including the national TV systems, are owned and theoretically controlled by companies which depend upon profits and the enterprise system to survive."
E mphasi zing i the "predominant role" of television in "shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people," he boldly advocated:
"This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints—to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission—will promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate."
"The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be under constant surveillance, because they merely to so-called educational programs, such as 'Selling of the Pentagon,' but to the daily news analysis' which so often includes most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.
Readers Respond
City Job Market Hostile
Speaking as two of these women, we feel it must be said that they are faced with disan-
seemed uncontrollable." He cau-
doned, however, against President Nixon's method of controlling it.
Powell also contended that American business was threatened by "inequitable taxation" and "an inflation which has
We are women in our twenties, well-educated, and when we first arrived in Lawrence, we looked into the security, intelligence, resourcefulness, independent judgement born of experience could find expression. We found jobs only with extreme difficulty, after a year in one job or two. It is not that we were choosy; we ought jobs where we were in
This was put up to Egypt's tight-lipped Deputy Chief of Police, Ahmed Abdullah Al-Meniyah, the Prime Minister in Cairo, Hanna "made no comments on security," but he "assumed team members would be in civilian clothing," she said.
competition with high school graduates. But after long and fruitless experience, we learned that our qualities were not regarded as desirable In fact, they were so low to the point that and we were told that we were over-qualified and over-educated.
To the Editor:
A problem exists in Lawrence of which only those directly involved are aware. It is pervasive; it is serious; and it is invisible as far as the majority of the city is concerned.
diplomatic mission in Cairo urged Secretary of State Bill Rogers to permit the American marksmans to participate.
After the 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were murdered in Munich, the United States seriously considered withdrawing from an international military shooting meet in Cairo.
first, hiring practices as we have come to understand them in Lawrence must be changed. The employer is faced with a vacancy. The employee has a friend, who may be convenient if not necessarily well-qualified. You can hire one of the people who goes from business to business asking about vacancies walks in on the right day and is hired. In either case, the job is not placed on the open market. We are familiar with the commonplace that you must someone to get a job. In Lawrence you seem to hear of a job opening. Wouldn't it be better for all concerned if a standard policy
pointment, frustration and degradation. For a woman with no contacts in a university town, the pattern of looking for work is set by long experience: one visits the University personnel office; one consults the want ads if the local paper; one takes lessons from local institutions and businesses in one field; one visits the State Employment Service. In Lawrence, the proper channels are dead ends. You find hostility and waitress jobs. You find unconcern and baby-sitting jobs! You find indifference and minimal clinical jobs. You find disinterest and ignoring of the vast talent pool represented by these women. You find interest in typing speed and no more.
The "fundamental premise of this paper," he concluded, was to warn "that business and the law are not the same trouble and the hour is late."
Every year, hundreds of new students arrive in Lawrence to attend graduate school or to take positions as academic postdoctoral or other academic staff. Many of these students are wives, or women whose educational and professional backgrounds and goals do not meet their husbands. They may decide to give up their careers for a few years to put their husbands in a position to put them through graduate school. They have young children or have run out of own education. But whatever the reason, they are not going to school and have assumed that they will find jobs in Lawrence to fill the family income and fill in the time spent spends in academic work.
What can be done? How can these women be evaluated honestly and put to use to help the community?
Despite this lack of Egyptian enthusiasm, the State Department, perhaps mindful that it was a ping-pong match that required a lot of relations, decided to send a military shooting team to Cairo.
"The recent freeze of prices and wages," he wrote, "may well be justified by the current inflationary crisis. But if imposed as the enterprise system will have sustained a near fatal blow."
were established? Take no applications until a position is open. Advertise the position in the paper for a few days. Accept applicants of the desired length of time. Interview qualified applicants and hire the best one. This is certainly fair to all and has the additional advantage of assuring the employer that he has hired the best possible worker.
It is not merely the Lawrence businesses and merchants who must rethink their hiring policies. The University Personnel Office is of almost no use in helping women find jobs. It is exclusively concerned with Civil Service organizations. Kansas is like the mill of God, which grinds slow but exceeding fine. It is possible to place an application in February and have no significant action taken on it until September. Moreover, why is the Personnel Office extensively concerned with Civil Service organizations? Women who come as strangers to Lawrence from other academic communities are going to look to the Personnel Office for help. The office should become of real
"On balance," said the September 12 cable, "UISINT (the U.S. mission) favors participation U.S. military team . . . proactively." Egypt makes proper security and logistical arrangements."
service by becoming an employment clearhouse, these wellqualified applicants jobs in the greater community.
Finally, there must be some recourse for women who have employment problems. Lawrence is a lonely place when one is unemployed, and contact with her may be in the same boat can be heartbreaking p.m. Wednesday in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union, the Commission on the Status of Women is sponsoring a program on Affirmative Action programs. We meet as a group after dinner to work with who we are and what we can do to help each other. Bring a resume; we'll discuss legal recourse from discrimination and exchange information about jobs and places to start looking. Perhaps if make ourselves heard, we will learn that there is work for all of us.
To some, it seemed grotesque for an American shooting team to fire its guns in a country which has encouraged terrorists.
But a classified cable from our
Patty Westmont 926 Tennessee Street, 1
Terry Neilsen-Steinhardt 926 Tennessee Street.4
Copyright, 1972,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Garry Wills
Ecclesiastical Shysterism Undermines
Recently I argued that Pope Paul undermined his own moral authority by freezing the Catholic Church in an all-male scheme of ministry. Some have taken offense at my anti-papalism. Yet it is the decline in the Pope's spiritual authority that I revert.
We have few enough moral leaders—King and Gandhi and Hammarskjoe are dead; and they had to forge their leadership over them. We have a sway reaching beyond their immediate followers by the force of moral office—the Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, or the head of the World Council of Churches, which has been one of these moral leaders. But the voice he has raised in favor of humanity and peace has been trivialized, I am aware. He has increasingly indesferable things
commission, dismissal of that commission's findings—the Cardinal assures me I have missed "the basic thrust" of my work, and the recent document condemning contraception (and one I never
The Archbishop of Baltimore, Lawrence Cardinal Shehan, has answered me in a public letter printed in several places. I am not surprised he defends the Pope's rebuke to women. Just this year, Cardinal Shehan rarely dismissed a liturgical singing teacher as an invited to help celebrate Mass he retreat—he dismissed them because the group contained woman singers.
The Cardinal takes issue with me on three points. The first is contraception. Brushing aside aside the indemnation of contraception—indemnation of all, the subject of vast study, argument, appointment of a
On the third point, I had said the Pope's recent mote proprio on ministry 'changed the old cursus honorum of priestly appointments, going from minor orders to major'. He eliminated the requirement for this scheme of things (i.e. priestly appointments); but he also took the occasion to emphasize that women may not
Besides, the preservation of the distinction between permanent office and occasional performance is a legalism. When one takes the context of the motu proprio into account. The liturgical offices are here being modernized and dignified for the purposes of worship from the very arrangement of the celebration the Church clearly
The Cardinal says I am "the victim of misinformation" because, "The intent of the proviso, obvious from the context and in the form of ordination to these ministries, not performance of them, was reserved to men." In other words, a woman cannot be held accountable by a reader, but can at times be "authorized" to perform some of
displaces the question, assuring me the Pope was acting "within his prerogatives" by maintaining this discipline—as if I had gone. I said to her, I just said he was acting foolishly within his prerogatives.
perform even the lowest of these liturgical functions.” I underline what should be clear—that I am talking of these liturgical functions in the priestly-order “scheme of things.”
appears structured in different orders and ministries." The new ministries are distinguished (as "installation" from full priestly care) by the proper sphere—but only the male laity!" "The Church" is articulated into male priesthood and male ministers, as if women are not being ordained to the church at all. That is the "new" structure commended to us, and it encourages the mentality of church leaders who lack the ability to accept a song to the Lord when it comes from female lips.
the functions reserved in an official way to men.
But I was always talking about "These liturgical functions (i.e., those of the ministers within the cursus)."
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
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