Opinion
Page 4
University Daily Kansan, December 3, 1962
All sides must be heard
In the last days of the congressional election, a pro-nuclear freeze group ran up against stone walls when it tried to get its television commercial aired.
The group, Citizens for Common Sense in National Defense, formed last July to campaign against the reelection bids of 10 congressmen who, according to the group, opposed a nuclear weapons freeze.
The political action committee prepared a commercial to counter the campaigns of Republican senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico and Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, and seven House members, including House Minority Leader Robert Michel of Illinois.
Philip M. Stern, chairman of the committee, wrote in the Nov. 21 issue of the Washington Post that soon after 10 stations agreed to sell the air time, many pulled out of the deal.
Some reasons the stations offered, he
said, were that the commercial was "too controversial" and that airing it was ". . . not in the best interest of the station."
An executive at one station told the group, "I don't think this is the style that the people of Wyoming like."
Apparently not. Recent news stories from Wyoming indicate that some of the state's leaders are excited that the MX missile might be based there. Such a nuclear buildup is seen as an economic benefit, and not as a threat to the future.
But more credence should be paid to the concerns raised by the pro-freeze movement, not because it has all the answers, but because all sides of the issue must be made available to the people.
To say that the commercial, whatever stand was made, is "too controversial," only stifles debate that cannot be restrained if the issue is to be resolved.
President plies lame ducks in defense, economic debates
By NORMAN SANDLER United Press International
WASHINGTON - President Reagan left town in the midst of the dumke-lack session of Congress he requested, expressing confidence that "there is a desire on everyone's part to get the job done."
In the realities of Washington politics, however, Reagan left town only after setting the stage for several confrontations that could have been resolved by a decision of the current session, into the next Congress.
The president minimized the dangers just 90 minutes before leaving for South America by abandoning a proposal to accelerate the 10 percent increase in energy demand between consecutive congressional leaders reeling.
Last week, Reagan's staff sought to defuse another potential powder kick by announcing that the president had vetoed a proposed tax on the weapons industry. He warned the wrath of Democrats and labor leaders.
But problems remain on the horizon for Reagan in his relations with a holdover Congress that is not expected to finish the work now. But he said the congress that appears less inclined to support him.
Among the items Reagan lumped into a catch-all bag of requests he laid at Congress' doorstep before leaving for five days of talks and meetings, including Latin America was funding for the MX missile.
With the exception of the accelerated tax cut, no subject could be more ripe for controversy. Reagan outlined his $28 billion plan for basing the 10-warhead MX missile — to be the most powerful and most successful of 5武器的 — in a nation proud to address the evening before his recent week-long holiday in California.
It took one day for the proposal to come under
snap attack on Capitol Hill, even with Congress in recess.
The funding request now before Congress would not immediately place the MX in new underground silos in Wyoming, but would keep the program on schedule.
However, Reagan's speech two weeks ago not only refuted a longstanding debate about the MX itself, but kindled a new review of his overall policies and set priorities and his approach to disarmament.
As Congress considers money for the MX, the discussion is likely to bring all these issues together.
Reagan must await the judgment of the new Congress on an economic program shaped by a politicians who had not yet heard the message sent by the voters in the Nov. 2 elections.
Reagan has stood firm in pressing for approval of his defense budget and retention of tax policies that the public has looked on with criticism, which but he insists will work if given time.
The question is: How much longer will Congress wait?
Republican leaders predict that Congress will trim the pace of defense spending proposed by President Obama.
And beyond fiscal policy, it remains to be seen whether Congress has the patience to accept a $5.5 billion program of road and highway repairs — funded by a 5-cent gasoline tax increase — as Reagan's sole response to unemployment, now at a 42-year high.
White House aides hope that the shortness of the lame-duck session will keep controversy to a minimum. What they may not have considered is how the unfinished agenda of the current session might make for rocky relations between Reagan and the 98th Congress.
Norman Sandler is a political commentator for UPL.
Lessons of past lost on Reagan
We all come from the past, and children ought to know what it was that went into their making, to know that life is a braided cord of humanity stretching up from time long gone, and that it cannot be defined by the span of a single journey from diaper to shroud.
— From "Growing Up" by Russell Baker.
— From "Growing Up" by Russell Baker. Probably the most disturbing thing about Ronald Reagan is that he would have a difficult time passing History 101 were he in a college right now, instead of leading the country through one of the worst times since the Depression.
Reagan has difficulty comprehending that events don't just happen; they flow from the past and are shaped by the past. When Ronald Reagan proclaims that the Vietnam War was a noble undertaking, or believes in staying the course the way Herbert Hoover did in the early 1930s, he is dangerously ignoring history to the detriment of the country.
Part of it stems from the American love of anti-intellectualism. The American goal of more material goods and a higher status in society rarely allows for much rational thinking. The can-do society is too busy to stop and think about what it is doing.
Unfortunately, Reagan isn't alone. Most Americans, I'm afraid, don't care about their own past or their country's past.
In American society the rush to make good doesn't allow one to read and ponder where one has come from and where the country has come from. It is accepted that the country does nothing but good, and that there should be no reflection or questioning of the past.
today. Witness a ravaged economy, an economy overheated by the war to the point where it had to break — and break it did over the heads of millions of unemployed Americans. Witness Agent Orange and Vietnam veterans relapsing into combat in their hometowns years after their service. Witness the cynicism American people gained about their government following the war.
Now we have Ronald Reagan who has promised to return America to the state that he thinks it once was.
Even our entertainment, television being the best example, either ignores history or makes docu-dramas out of it that usually bear little resemblance to the actual event.
Ignorance of history is no problem should one aspire to a job as a meat-cutter in a packing plant, but when it extends to the country's leaders it is a grave problem.
Reagan's memories of America don't exactly correlate with the history books. He remembers things such as the Depression and wars as times when America was one big happy family, and did nothing but good. He doesn't remember an America with any problems.
They ignored the French experience in Vietnam. They failed to try to understand the Vietnamese people, their culture and their history. They failed to look at their own country, both in its state at the time of the war, and its past.
The classic example is the Vietnam War. Not only did America's leaders, from Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to Dean Rusk and
Reagan wants to return us to a time, in his mind at least, when everyday life was like one of his old movies. Nice memories perhaps, but lousy history.
McGeorge Bundy in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, forget their history, they mangle what they could remember to fit their own assumptions, goals and strategic demands.
For example, Reagan would have us return to a time when business was king, when business could do no wrong. Yet his policies don't seem to improve the economy any and he forgets that business is often concerned with making money more than with making a better nation.
What they got for their ignorance was a quagmire from which the country could not easily extricate itself. The leaders' ignorance of the past in dealing with Vietnam is still with us.
As we have seen with Vietnam, forgetting history means leaving problems for the next generation. By setting policy on terms of what is right and wrong, we can help Ronald Reagan could leave us with no future.
TOM GRESS
Letters to the Editor
AD selection points to athletic priorities
To the Editor:
Well, now we know for sure what we have long suspected. Athletics at KU is big business — we've just hired an MBA to run things in Allen Field House.
Never mind that the new athletic director has had no experience on the educational side of athletic programs (other universities have hired Ph.D.s in health, physical education and recreation) or even in the coaching of intercollegiate athletics. Monte Johnson is a banker and, according to the press releases, into money in a big way.
Where has the concept of the STUDENT-athlete gone in all the bally-hoo?
Football is the key, says Johnson; build football, said (former athletic director Bob) Marcum, and all things will be given unto you. Just where did that philosophy take us? Elizabeth C. Banks
Associate professor of classics
Campus personnel include men and women of many categories. A listing would break them
Starlight strolls risky
1) Race (Oriental, Latin, Jewish, Iranian, white, black, British, etc.).
To the Editor:
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edid or reject letters.
2) Religious persuasion (Catholic, Quaker,
abst, Hindu, Baptist, Moslem, charismatic,
scientific).
3) Political affiliation (Republican, Democrat,
Communist, Libertarian, etc.).
4) Sexual practice (celibates, homosexuals,
heterosexuals, lesbians, etc.).
5) Social standards (thieves, burglaries, tax-payers, tax dodgers, drafters,产批)
6) Human rights
Unfortunately, one class of people here at KU is in particular danger of vicious attacks by a warped minority. A number of you already have been injured.
And what is this classification? Women and girl. Most of us really care about you. When you
6) And, of course, combinations of the above.
Please don't carelessly insist on your democratic privilege to walk alone at night.
Electrician, Facilities Operations
KANSAN
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