Onward And Upward And Onward And—
LBJ and his problems with railroads, Congress
By LYLE WILSON United Press International
President Johnson has flunked his responsibility to protect the national interests from irreparable damage such as is threatened by a nationwide railroad strike. In January, 1966, Johnson promised that he would recommend legislation to deal with national emergency strikes.
LBJ's concensus system of politics does not provide for political activity which might prove costly on election day. So Johnson has done nothing.
THE CONGRESS, which doesn't have much political courage either, has full authority to come up with its own proposals. But nothing there. One might think that the Republican congressional leadership would move into this political vacuum. No move!
There impends now a national railroad strike. Such a strike would be irreparably damaging. LBJ waited until the strike bell was tolling to ask Congress for emergency delaying action. There is no strike now only because Congress twice went along with the President in voting to delay a walkout.
This reflects no credit on either the President or Congress, least of all on Johnson. It is quite obvious he has been postponing action to protect the national interest from irreparable damage and that the postponement has been dictated by politics. Nothing much can be said for congressional Democrats and Republicans other than that they made no promises in the first instance. Faint praise. Some one should be
pushing permanent legislation to prevent national emergency.
GOV. NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER and the New Lork legislature did much better than the President and the U.S. Congress. Rockefeller and the legislature cracked down on publicemployee unions which strike as did the New York City transit unions a couple of years ago under the unquenchable irresponsibility of the late Mike Quill.
On the books in New York State for 20 years had been the Condon-Wadlin Law to penalize striking public employees. The individual punishment prescribed was so severe as to be unforceable. New York came up this year with a substitute, levying a fine of $10,000 or one week's dues, whichever is less, for every day a union stays on strike and requiring for a maximum of 18 months the loss of a striking union's dues check-off privileges.
That may not be good law, but it is better than no law at all. Unions do not like it. Their leaders are winding up to oppose legislators who helped enact the legislation.
THAT APPEARS to be what frightens Johnson, that he may lose votes in 1968 if he collaborates in an effort to protect the national interest against irreparable damage. That is not an ideal posture for a President elected to serve all of the people. But the posture is understandable.
The Democratic lefties are bolting LBJ by the thousands. There is a limit beyond which Johnson cannot afford to permit defections to go. This, of course, is a political limit, unrelated to the national interest, irreparable or not.
The people say...
Dear Editor:
Kansas University is a sick school. Its sickness is compounded by the fact that it has the potential for greatness. Why has this happened?
Is it in the nature of great plains farm families to produce children who grow up actively resisting awareness and a sense of responsibility? Probably not. College students everywhere are too easily turned on by inspired teachers with new ideas who are not reluctant to make their ideas public. Rather, the fault lies squarely with an older generation of educators who have somehow relinquished their responsibility to educate.
What a strange feeling at a university of some 13,000 students to attend a well publicized discussion of the U.S. role in Vietnam and find around a hundred students together with two or three members of the faculty!
What about this university's "distinguished" faculty? Next years Senior (!) Class is struggling with the problem of whether to have "We're going places," or "We're on our way" printed on their sweatshirts. Why is such trivia an issue among university students in an unstable world and in a troubled nation? The answer can only be that the faculty has failed to stimulate an awareness in these students of matters of substance. Kansas University has somehow managed to accumulate a doctrinaire, middle-aged, lethargic faculty which seems to view its primary function as the
perpetuation of the status quo. Are these people afraid to question and criticize the system which they represent?
What can be done by those who care? Maybe nothing, but try this: dig up a recent issue of the New York Review of Books with an article by Noam Chomsky entitled "The responsibility of intellectuals." If you like this author's point ask your most enlightened professor to read it and see if you can start a dialogue. If you care about the society which pays for your education, it's your responsibility to see that you are provided with the opportunity to get one.
Wayne Sailor Graduate: Psychology
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To the Editor:
In reference to Mr. Wilson's letter of May 22, 1967, aside from his somewhat erroneous and misleading rendition of the historical situation of Vietnam, and, excluding any comment on his factually questionable and logically weak conclusions, I would like to ask the following questions.
First, how does Mr. Wilson (and other profound proponents of the preserve-freedom-crusade in the Far East) explain the preservation and insurance of freedom (he said "if you believe the people's freedom is threatened") in a country which has never experienced any form of freedom socially, economically nor politically (in any authentic, national
sense) in its entire history up to and including the present?
Second, depending upon what Mr. Wilson means by freedom, how can a "free" Vietnam be established when the present head of the military government says that if, in next September's (purportedly free) elections, the man happens to be "a Communist or a neutralist," he (Premier Ky) will use whatever means necessary (i.e. military strength) to prevent this man from assuming the leadership of the government of the free democratic republic of South Vietnam.
Finally, when will Mr. Wilson et al come to realize: 1. To the majority of the Vietnamese people freedom in the traditional Anglo-Saxon sense is a meaningless concept. 2. At this point in history the Vietnamese people are primarily concerned with land and food, not the right to vote nor a "free-market" economy. 3. It is theoretically impossible and pragmatically absurd to attempt to transplant the social, economic and political institutions of a country such as the United States.
The Vietnamese people "see" the world differently than Americans; their experience takes on a different meaning for them than ours does for us; they, in a very real sense, live in a different world than we do. Thus it seems that it would be in the best interests for all concerned if the U.S. ceased playing the role of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence for the world, and concerned itself with problems whose solutions may be more within its grasp, i.e. freedom for all, in the United States.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
Serving KU for 77 of its 101 Years
The Daily Kansan, student newspaper at The University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East St. 50, New York, N.Y., 18022
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graduate student
2
Daily Kansan
Wednesday, May 24, 1967
NEW BOOKS
LET US START HERE: AN INTRODUCTION TO BASIC READING IN LIFE SCIENCES, by Paul Gibbons Roofe (World; 102 pages)—A bibliographical essay and a delightful piece of reading that compares favorably with Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." Now if you know the writer you'll know why this is so, for Paul Gibbons Roofe is professor of anatomy and zoology at KU and one of those warm, considerate people who help to make possible Alfred North Whitehead's description of the meaning of education—a true interchange between teacher and student.
Prof. Roofe is one of those curious folks who love books and somehow can't conceive of anyone not loving books. So he is able to talk about his subject without seeming to suspect that somewhere there is an unscholarly type who can't comprehend why a person would get excited about such things.
You almost gather as you read through this little volume that the life sciences are to be understood by reading in the manner of a universal man. True, there are many titles here that would not ring bells with an unscientific type like the writer of this review, but there are books that even I have read—some, it must be admitted, through the compulsion of being a Western Civ discussion leader. Like, for example, Bacon and Descartes. And Darwin. And Paul de Kruif, whose "Microbe Hunters" I encountered back in the thirties and then had to read again in a college course in bacteriology.
And along the way a discussion of why one should read Lucretius, Seneca, Aristotle, Whitehead, Lawrence Joseph Henderson, Galen, Harvey, Lamarck, Lyell, Pavlov and Harlow Shapley. But also Rabelais, and Balzac, and H. L. Mencken, and Fowler (that's maybe why this book is so well written), and William Graham Sumner. And Pope's essay on man. And Jan Christian Smuts. The list is a fascinating one.
The author has built up an earlier work by Raymond Pearl, called "To Begin With." His categories are fundamentals, living, biology, the nervous system and behavior, man and the universe, mathematics of biology and the strategy of life. There is an appendix; there is an epilogue.
And there is Paul Rooef himself. Listen: "I like to think that those who make science their goal will eventually find that their philosophy, as well as their psychology, will remain dynamic and naturalistic, a philosophy not of Being but of Becoming, not of Life but of Living."—Calder M. Pickett
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THE SCAVENGERS AND CRITICS OF THE WARREN REPORT, by Richard Warren Lewis (Dell, 95 cents)—A refreshing addition to the Kennedy assassination controversy. One, also, that can be expected to anger a good many souls. Mark Lane, Ramparts magazine, D. A. Garrison in New Orleans, Edward Jav Epstein—all the others who have cast sensational doubt on the Warren report and its findings, get their lumps in this book. You'll remember the business about the 14 mysterious deaths, the autopsy, the second (or even third) assassin, the atmosphere in Dallas, the shots from the knoll. All are considered. Lewis' use of the term "scavengers" will tell you what he thinks about the critics.