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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Sept. 21, 1964
Hi. Readers
The editorial page of the University Daily Kansan is frequently criticized, seldom praised and little understood by anyone not a member of the UDK staff. Since this is the beginning of a new school year perhaps a brief introduction to this page is in order.
Principally the UDK is the official student publication of the University. However, it also serves as a laboratory paper for students enrolled in the William Allen White School of Journalism. Students majoring in news writing and advertising thus are given an opportunity in a live situation to practice and polish skills learned in the classroom. (Much to the dismay and anguish of faculty members and students who are the occasional victims of the eager, but bungling beginning reporter.)
Similarly the editorial page provides these students with a chance to learn the art of editorial writing. This year the editorial page material will be written and selected by two co-editors—Jim Langford and Rick Mabbott. The burden of writing five editorials a week is ours. In addition we may include material prepared by other students for a class in editorial writing. From time to time, when we run across an article in another publication that strikes us as interesting, informative or expresses our own feelings better than we are able, we may include a reprint of that article. (Reprints most often appear when we editors run
out of fresh ideas or test and term papers fall due.
Generally we will devote most of our attention to topics of campus and local interest. These affect us all more closely and, conceivably, we can know more or can learn more about topics and issues closer to home. However, since fledgling writers feel the need to try their wings, we will plunge oftentimes into a discussion on issues of national and international scope and character. Sometimes objectivity and understanding of these issues suffer from a certain zealousness and lack of information, but we accept, even welcome, constructive criticism and correction of our efforts.
Editorial articles written by members of this staff usually will appear in the upper-left corner of this page. Reprints or work by other writers which reflect our attitude on a subject may occupy the same position. Other opinions and articles will be found in the upper-right corner or the bottom of this page.
This then is the nature of the UDK editorial page. As editors, Jim and I hope during this year to inform you, to make you laugh, to stir you to indignation, but always to make you think. Our efforts are dedicated to the achievement of that goal.
— Rick Mabbutt
Why Johnson Must Be Elected
A healthy, vigorous two-party system is absolutely indispensable to the survival of American democracy. Its proper functioning requires each of the major parties to put forth a man who is unmistakably and unquestionably qualified to be trusted with the incalculably grave and terrible powers of the Presidency.
In the presidential election of 1964, the two-party system has been seriously endangered. One of the great parties, the Democratic, has fulfilled its duty by putting forth a man, Lyndon B. Johnson, who has many flaws and leaves much to be desired, but who is unquestionably as well qualified to be President as any tried and tested leader the Democratic Party now affords.
THE OTHER GREAT PARTY, the Republican, has shirked and betrayed its duty by putting forth a man, Barry Goldwater, who is manifestly unqualified to be President and whose unsuitability for this awesome responsibility becomes clearer with every passing day and with every reckless word he utters.
WE ARE CONFIDENT that Johnson will make a good President because he already is a good President. In the 10 brief months he has held the highest office, he has shown an ability unmatched in this century to bring all the diverse and warring factions of Congress behind the enactment of positive, progressive and needful legislative programs. In his greatest test as Commander-in-Chief the attack on our Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin—he has acted with both the forcefulness and restraint which is required in the man who alone controls the ultimate weapon and bears all the fearful responsibility which that entails.
WE ARE equally confident that Goldwater would not make a good President. He has not even made a good Senator. He has been in the Senate 11 years and not one piece of memorable legislation attaches to his name. He has been in its councils through the most momentous and revolutionary decade in the history of this Republic as we have strained every seam and fabric of our traditional habits and thinking to keep abreast of an age when all the supposed boundaries of man's environment are being broken, gravity defied, space penetrated, the moon reached, the riddle of the human cell being unraveled. Merely to understand, much less to master, this surge and change, heavy with unguessed new treasures of technology to increase man's wealth, has required and will require government entry into areas never before imagined. But Barry Goldwater has managed to live through this whole tremendous
epoch with his face turned squarely to the past, his eyes closed, and his mind preoccupied with one — and only one—idea: somehow to shrink the Government back into the familiar and comfortably small proportions of his Arizona youth. Barry Goldwater has left no mark in the Senate because, as he has truthfully declared, he sought to erase marks rather than to make them: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones. . . ." He is like the Cincinnati kettlemaker who, when first hearing of Kentucky ironmaker William Kelly's use of air to make steel, exclaimed, "I want my iron made in the old way or not at all." His mind is surely not in pace with today's world.
GOLDWATER CHANGES his "convictions" almost as often as his shirt. One day he is for abolishing Social Security, the next day for strengthening it, one day for giving field commanders control over nuclear weapons, the next day for restricting control to the NATO supreme commander. Many of his statements are inherently contradictory nonsense—e.g., to cut all government expenditures, while expanding defense (which already takes more than half of every tax dollar spent)—like advertising a car that is bigger on the inside but smaller on the outside. Some of his statements, if they have any meaning at all, are rather frightening in the subconscious thoughts which seem 'o lie behind them, particularly those concerning his strange love affair with German prowess: "With all due respect to American military leaders, Germany would have won both world wars if she had not been badly led." "I think it was the Germans who originated the modern concept of peace through strenth." This last remark prompted Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, to ask The New York Times to clarify whether it was Hitler's or the Kaiser's "peace through strength" that Goldwater had in mind. However, it is always possible that he really had nothing in mind, as when he told reporters who briefly boarded his cruising Sundance. "I've thought for some time that talks with the Red Chinese might be profitable." He later radioed ashore that what he really meant that the U.S. should be ready to threaten the Chinese, telling them that "if they didn't stop, then you would blow up a bridge or show some other sort of force." He finally cleared everything up by adding, "I'm not really recommending this, but it might not be an impossible idea."
GOLDWATER IS A grotesque burlesque of the conservative ne pretends to be. He is a wild man, a stray, an unprincipiled and ruthless political juitisu artist like Joe McCarthy, whose last-ditch defender he remained even when three-fourths of the Senate had voted to condemn their Red-hunting colleague. He still defends McCarthy, well knowing that he imputed treason to General Marshall and to President Eisenhower. He will not condemn the John Birch Society, though knowing that its leader, Robert Welch, has called Eisenhower a Communist agent. Yet, in order to get Eisenhower's vacuous blessing, Goldwater was capable of a tongue-in-cheek erasure of his infamous "extremism" slogan, a statement that was not written in haste but with extreme care, and gone over time and again by Goldwater before he uttered it. These words can, and should, forever symbolize the total fraudulence of his claim to be a true conservation: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." That statement deserves to be the "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" of this election, and Barry Goldwater deserves to be defeated for it alone, no matter how much he tries to clown it away. He knew what he meant by it, and so does every John Birch fanatic and Ku Klux vigilante.
FOR THE GOOD OF THE REPUBLICAN Party, which his candidacy disgraces, we hope that Goldwater is crushingly defeated. It was clear, from poll after poll, that the rank and file of Republican voters overwhelmingly preferred other leaders to Goldwater. It was equally clear that the fanatical Goldwater bias of a majority of convention delegates revealed the capture of the Republican Party by a new breed of so-called "leaders" whose selection had been steam-rollered by extremist, well-heeled types. The men who have most deserved to lead the Republican Party, by virtue of their long, distinguished and responsible service in it, and to the country, have been made to feel unwelcome, hissed and hated in it, as they were repudiated by it. A crushing defeat for Goldwater will drive the fanatic saboteurs of the Republican Party back into the woodwork whence they came. It will provide the opportunity for the party's true leaders to build anew from the wreckage that these heedless, reckless, ill-mannered and arrogant men are sure to leave. Then the two-party system can be restored, and the voter will again have a choice, not a calamity.
—Saturday Evening Post
"We'll Just Stuff This In Here And Appoint A Committee To Watch It"
BOOK REVIEWS
ROXANA, THE FORTUNATE MISTRESS, by Daniel Defoe (Dolphin, $1.25).
Despite the glowing praise of the publishers, you can bet that much of the impulse for publication of this book with the juicy title has been the success of the film "Tom Jones" and the book "Fanny Hill." But don't get your hopes up. Like "Moll Flanders," this book is about a lady no better than she has to be, but it's far from being on the salacious side.
Defoe, however, could not write a dull story. Roxana is a courtesan who starts as a respectable wife but finds herself, at 22, the mother of five children and scarcely equipped to face the rough world (and books like this tell us how rough life was 200 or more years ago). So, she gets herself lined up by men of the court and men of business and has a life that gives meaning to the words "fortunate mistress."
This book appeared in 1724, several years after "Robinson Crusoe." Though comparatively little known, it deserves a reading, and it is consistently readable, even though decidedly is lower than, say, "The Carpetbaggers."
* * *
THE NEW GOLDEN BOUGH, by Sir James Frazer, edited by Theodor H. Gaster (Mentor, $1.25).
This new volume includes the Frazer compilations on magic, taboos, sexual practices, superstition and wizardy of man, from savagery to civilization. There are considerable notes by Gaster. The book is highly recommended for students of mythology, literature, history—the works, in fact.
This is a huge and attractive new paperback, a classic in literature as well as in anthropology. Gaster is an Orientalist and folkorist, and he has abridged the 12-volume work of Sir James Frazer. This volume is considerable itself—832 pages.
* * *
THE FROG KING, AND OTHER TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM (Signet Classics, 75 cents).
Fifty stories are in this attractive paperback volume, and it is likely that adults as well as children will derive enjoyment from them. Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, the Bremen Town Musicians, Tom Thumb, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, the Goosegirl, Snow White and Rose Red—all come alive again.
Dailij Hänsan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
**Roy Miller** Managing Editor
Don Black, Leta Cathcart, Bob Jones, Greg Swartz, Assistant Managing Editors: Linda Ellis, Feature-Society Editor; Russ Corbitt, Sports Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jim Langford and Rick Mabbutt ... Co-Editorial Editors
**Bob Phinney** ... Business Manager
**John Pepper**, Advertising Manager; **Dick Flood**, National Advertising Manager; **John Suhler**, Classified Advertising Manager; **Tom Fisher** Promotion Manager; **Nancy Holland**, Circulation Manager; **Gary Grazda** Merchandising Manager.