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Summer Session Konean Tuesday June 20 1961
Two Party System Traditional
The tradition of America's two-party system of electing officials gives the people a free choice between two men and two concepts of government. This has allowed Americans throughout the nation's history to call on reformers when reform is necessary, conservatives when a return to normalcy is needed and liberals when sweeping changes are needed to meet a crisis.
SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE United States Constitution, there always have been two major parties to which a vast majority of the people have pledged allegiance. The Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were the first major parties, with the Anti-Federalists soon changing their name to the National Republicans.
The next period of history in which two parties had sharply contrasting views was the second quarter of the 19th century. This time the question was state's rights. This dispute eventually spread across party lines, but in the main the Democratic Party favored state's rights and the Republicans were for a strong central government.
LATE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY another major difference of opinion between two parties became obvious. The Democrats took the liberal position and the Republicans the conservative on the question: Should democracy mean the lessening of great differences in wealth and social status? The Democrats said yes, the Republicans no. The liberals said that one must always be looking for economic and social opportunities for all. The conservatives countered by saying the answer could be found in the need for individual freedom.
Then in 1929 the stock market crashed. From that time until World War II, a drastic change occurred in the Republican and Democratic parties. The liberal Democrats were spoiled by success and the conservative Republicans were spoiled by compromise. The Democrats were a combination of minority groups—labor, farm, religious groups, etc. and the Republicans represented the major interest group big business. To a great extent this is still true today.
AFTER WORLD WAR II WAS SUCCESSFULLY fought and the horror of nuclear war was impressed upon the nations of the world, and more specifically the United States, Americans divided into two beliefs—the irreconcilables and the reconciliables. The irreconcilables believe that the United States should forcibly put the Soviet Union back in line and that peaceful coexistence is impossible. The reconciliables believe that the problems of the world cannot be solved by war and that the peoples of the world must learn to live with each other.
Principally, the major difference between the two parties today is that the Democrats favor big government and the Republicans favor big business. These are sweeping generalities which can only be upheld by citing certain facts. Big government entails all parts of American life from increased social security to paying 90 per cent of parity to farmers. The Democrats favor big spending and government subsidy to a much greater extent than the Republicans. "Creeping socialism," as the Democratic platform is often called, repulses most conservative Republics, but the new, more liberal Republican Party line led by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller takes a stand more compatible with that of the Democrats.
Many observers of the American political scene feel that the many interest groups and differences of opinion within the parties is the reason for the stability of American politics. Each party has to compromise within itself to partially satisfy its many elements and interest groups.
THIS IS THE PATTERN OF AMERICAN politics—Two major parties which are made up of many minority groups and major interest groups. The differences in the two parties are not overly great and seem to be lessening as time passes. — John Peterson
Daily Crossword Puzzle
ACROSS
1 Slow train.
6 Catch-all.
12 Iroquoian Indians.
14 Operates a plane.
16 Capital of Society Islands.
17 Star of "Pal Joey."
18 Girl's name.
19 Oxeye daisies.
21 Title for a diplomat: Abbr.
22 Gratuities.
24 Mrs. John McCloy.
25 Watch face.
26 Champion golfer.
28 Sea: Fr.
29 English divine and poet.
30 Afflicted.
32 Bags.
32 Reclined.
34 Movie.
35 Actor Power.
38 Stylish coats.
41 Brings up.
42 Fathers.
43 Crisp cookies.
45 Trees.
46 Small coins.
48 Submit for approval (with 'out').
49 Vestment.
50 Gathering peanuts.
52 Be sorry for.
53 Cultivated land.
55 Breathing pores in plants.
57 Contemptuous one.
58 Had a rendezvous.
59 Receives.
60 Anything that facilitates.
**DOWN**
1 Principal.
2 In black and white: 2 words.
3 Letter.
4 Tennis points.
5 Machine.
6 Pattern of parallel lines, in TV.
7 Of the birds.
8 Wins a certain card game.
9 Farmyard sound.
10 Accomplishes.
11 Pertinent.
12 Squabbles.
13 Alaskan fur hunters.
14 Furs.
15 Pung.
16 Ralph Rackstraw and others.
17 Inactive.
18 Former St. Louis baseball stars.
19 Blunts.
20 Compete.
21 Porker.
22 Falangist.
23 Considers.
24 Cheering.
25 Wanderer.
26 Talk wildly.
27 Relate.
28 Whale.
29 Singer Roberta.
34 Place.
36 Sound of the Pacific coast.
37 Between; Fr.
38 Nostril.
39 Spanish painter.
44 Famous general.
45 Library treasures:
Abbr.
(Answer on page 16)
Early Kansans Enjoyed Singing
Sung on a cold winter's night, while a blizzard scoured the prairie, the songs close to the life of Kansas of a century ago reflected the idealistic, romantic spirit of a people who fought the elements daily and found relief from struggle in the sentimental melodies of the time.
Stephen Foster was a great favorite. Grouped around the glowing hearth, a Kansas family would join in singing "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair," "Willie, We Have Missed You," or "Hard Times Come Again No More."
They turned to other songs, too, most of them unashamedly sentimental, dealing with the virtues of the home, the joys of family life. They delighted in others which they sang for the sheer beauty of the melody, for in these times group singing was one of the major diversions in a raw new country where there were no movie houses, dancehalls, opera houses or other places of entertainment. Often families lived miles apart, separated by the windswept prairie.
So they sang. They sang "What is a Home Without a Mother," by Alice Hawthorne; "There's Music in the Air," by Francis Jane Crosby, and "Poet and Peasant Overture," by Franz Von Suppe. They sang away the desolation of the prairie, the cold of winter, the heartbreak inflicted by wind and weather. They sang the songs of Kansas.
Short Ones
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. George Bernard Shaw
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Morelock and
Ron Gallagher Co-Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Chuck Martinache Business Mgr.
By Frances Grinstead Associate Professor of Journalism
A THICKET OF SKY. By Edsel Ford. Homestead House, Ft.
Smith, Ark. Cloth. $2.75; paper. $1.50.
The Arkansas versemaker who to knowledgeable poets looks like the Robert Frost of the future shows pronounced growth in this volume.
Acknowledgments to the magazines, newspapers and literary journals which first published the poetry show a great range; all of them are esteemed by writers of verse. The variety and excellence inside the book are guarantees of this promise.
Among dozens of quotable lines and stanzas, a poem which reflects the farming and versemaking combination of this author's life is:
Rounding a Poem
Before these phrases have a chance to harden
Into lined print and feel the rain of ink.
I will have peas to gather from the garden;
I will have lettuce laving in the sink.
Before I can think up a civil title
To top this verse, or mail it, I will have
A first-spring colt near broken to the bridle
And two black heifers coming time to calve.
After each line that I put down, I listen:
Things always happen here, whether or not
I write about them. Yellow ducklings glisten
From their late hatching; bees come tumbling out
From hives and go far places. Nothing waits.
Rounding a poem closes no pasture gates.
As Ford turns the sonnet form to the uses of his material, so he employs avant garde as well as traditional patterns to suit his own need.
"Verse is communication," he believes, as truly as the forms of prose. Ford, unlike some modern poets, does not believe this communication should be limited to a blessed inner circle in-the-know.
"The Song in the Threat of the Lark" is not only about love but about living in the dedicated use of words. It goes:
The street was ours, but in the park Where day was being nudged by dark. The yellow fluting of a lark
Broke over us like rain. You said,
"I must be getting home." Instead,
You lingered, and the sun fell red
While each of us in his own mind Composed, revised, and underlined The poems that he could not find
To speak. Our love was always thus:
The best of it remains in us . . .
But what comes out is marvelous.
SEIZE THE DAY, by Saul Bellow. Popular Library, 35 cents.
This volume consists of several short stories, a one-act play, and the perceptive but frustrating novellete "Seize the Day." Saul Bellow is a chronicler of the American scene who understands the success theme and the forces that push men toward success—or failure. His hero is a failure who knows he is a failure but doesn't know why. He blames society, and he blames his heritage.
TOMMY WILHELM IS AN OVERGROWN CHILD IN HIS forties, relying on a charlatan as a financial adviser, using his retired father as a backstop, blaming his wife for the failure of his marriage, wondering why in the thirties he was unable to become a success in motion pictures. The climax of the story finds this juvenile hero caught up in a funeral of a person he doesn't know, sobbing his heart out over the tragedy of his own life.
WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN?, by Budd Schulberg. Bantam Classics, 50 cents.
I used to feel sorry for Al Mannheim, but he seems somewhat of a jerk today. Anybody who continues to be used the way Al Mannheim is used by Sammy Gliek hardly deserves sympathy. Sammy may be an Ivory-pure monster, but Al is a sap.
These comments do not detract from "What Makes Sammy Run?" When this novel appeared in the early 1940s it impressed me as much as anything I had read; I even fancied myself as an Al Mannheim martyr, ill-used by at least one friend of college days. It seems certain that the Mannheim-Glick vendetta became part of the American literary tradition, and it also is certain that Budd Schulberg never again equaled this brutal and brittle story.
Besides being an excellent depiction of character, "What Makes Sammy Run?" gives us a valid picture of the forgotten thirties—forgetten, that is, in the interest accorded both the twenties and forties. The novel also sketches the world of newspapers and movies, and even though others may conclude with me that Al Mannheim is a gutless wonder, they also may agree with me that here is a novel of increasing interest and value.