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Freedoms and victories
"You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger."—William A. White, July 27, 1922.
A ghost of an era which should have died four decades ago arose last week in Washington.
General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, delivered a speech to Congress in which he claimed that all who protested President Johnson's war were "aiding the enemy."
THE GENERAL'S SPEECH was probably no more than a trial balloon, sent aloft in hopes of "solidifying" American opinion in support of a war that is unpopular, bloody and stupid.
Indeed, General Westmoreland is probably right anti-war sentiments here certainly are not dampening Henoi's spirit. But whether he realized it or not, the General said much more.
After all, whoever "aids the enemy" in this country is a traitor. And federal law requires the rope for those who betray their country.
VERY NEATLY, THE GENERAL and even the President have begun to fence off their opponents behind the damning but complicated label of traitor.
But if this is what one of our foremost military experts and his commander, the President
of the United States, think of all who speak against them, this nation is in trouble.
Dissent, whether the American Legion likes it or not, is the mainstay of democracy. Out of dissent, out of argument, comes reason and her cohort, justice.
ALL TOO OFTEN, this country has been prostituted by those who would stifle dissent and promulgate their bigotry. History shows that the times of peril in America have not come with the fall o f the Maginot Line, but with the mob-beatings of pacifists. Danger existed with the spread of cold-war international communism, but horror ruled when Joe McCarthy slashed down American intellectuals as Commie dupes.
From such a rocky history, we should have learned a lesson. Now, in 1967,we should treasure our dissenters, our citizens who, although they have no power, think they have a better idea, another answer.
But for some obtuse reason—reason that makes the experiences of history more akin to the meanderings of a syphillic wore than a wise counsel—we refuse to look back.
We refuse to believe that force and repression do indeed make the wrecks in this world.
-Dan Austin
"Those Demonstrators Are Getting More Radical All The Time"
THE CHAIRMAN OF UNIV.
FLUND DRIVES
THE FOOTBALL COACH
-FELLOW ALUMNI
OFFICIAL BULLETIN
**Foreign Stud-ents:** Read calendar
in issue of Internal Campus,
n newsletter.
TODAY
Theatre Colloquium, 3:30 p.m. Donatell
Abbey Theatre, 19th Century, 440 Mu.
Shavie Languages Lecture, 4 p.hawk Jackson, Yale. Jay hawk Room, Room
German Movie, 7 p.m.
"Baron
Munchauhaus." Film room, Bailey.
Paglier A, Union Election & Office,
Straightstra Concert, 6 pm.
Union, Theatre.
TOMORROW
Muscle Symposium Forum, 1:30 p.m.
Swarthout Racial Hall.
Seminar, Higher Educ, in Americas,
2 p.m. Forum Room, Union
English Lecture, 4 p.m. Walter Alley
Assessment, Forum Room, Union
Classical 'F'lm, 7 & 9 m.p. "Last
Yay at Macdonald." French Dyche
And
French Club, 4:30 p.m. Panel discussion, Africa and West Indies, by 3 KU: foreign students, Jayhawk Room, Union.
Alpha CbI Sigma (Chem. Frater-
mation) 7 p.m. Cornelwood Room,
Room A
Symposium-KU Chamber Cho'r, 8 p.m. Swartout Reception Hall.
German Movie, 4 p.m. "Baron
Munichhausen," 411 Summerfield.
Lecture, 5; n. h. Hamiltz/Muncl, U.
Virgina, "Visuism Theatre"; Murphy,
U. Virginia
2
Daily Kansan editorial page Tuesday, May 2, 1967
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 50 St., New York, N.Y. 16022. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $9 a year. Published and second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin.
LBJ: the object of derision that passes all understanding
Editor's note: The following is the text of a recent address by Merriman Smith, United Press International White House correspondent, to UPI editors and publishers:
President Johnson these days is the object of some of the worst vilification—even obscenity—that I've seen or heard in more than 25 years on the White House assignment.
When I was in New Orleans not long ago looking into the so-called Kennedy assassination plot, I saw for sale in variety stores metal auto license plates vividly associating the President with barnyard filth.
Driving down the Southeastern coast last winter, I saw for sale in roadside stands ellegedly clever but actually quite dirty sayings about the President, his wife and their two daughters. These were lapel buttons.
At the so-called peace demonstration in New York's Central Park the other day, there were grown men carrying signs which openly and plainly challenged the President's normalcy — mentally and sexually.
THIS IS NOT enlightened social change, or legitimate dissent or revolution. It is anarchy, born of a highly permissive atmosphere in this country; a strangely paradoxical, pejorative atmosphere in which freedom, at times, seems to be working against the very things for which freedom supposedly stands.
One of these facts is that President Johnson, Secretary Rusk and Secretary McNamara cannot throw up their hands in dismay and say to Doctor King and Spock, "here, take over, you run things for a while." Neither can General Westmoreland hand over his command to Dick Gregory or Richard Goowin.
We live with certain verities which a million kookie men with bananas around their necks cannot change - Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael cannot change—which Doctor Spock can't do very much about.
LIKE IT OR NOT, Johnson,
Rusk, McNamara and company
are piloting an enormous ship with a human cargo of nearly two hundred million Americans, to say nothing of many millions in other lands depending on us for guidance, protection and a certain amount of assistance.
It is open to legitimate public debate whether these leaders are embarked on a wrong course, but under our system they cannot be dumped overboard and furthermore, they're running things, at least until January, 1969.
THUS IT WOULD seem only natural to ask what these rather open merchants of filth and utterly unfounded innuendo hope to accomplish. Run Johnson out of office? Not a chance. Are they starting a political teardown aimed at 1983? This is most unlikely. We're not talking here about the political opposition of Republican versus Democrat. This is something different, slimy and at times, irrational.
So, it would seem that vicious personal attacks on government leaders could have only one motivation that would make any sense at all—and that is to tear down public confidence in the establishment—and by establishment, I mean authority on almost any level.
IF SUCCESSFUL, this could lead us to a sort of rudderless society of irresponsibility to the group, amorality for the further erosion of the family unit and finally the confusion of anarchy.
The fact that Johnson's image—his standing with a great many of his fellow countrymen—is in poor shape is, I think, moot. He is trying to do something about it by being a little less large and overpowering.
But there are certain things he cannot lock. One of these is Texas. Because of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, the wild shooting spree of that crazy man on the University of Texas, the fact that the Chicago killer of those eight nurses came from Texas—these things have created in the minds of many Americans an ugly, violent image of Texas and everything having to do with the state.
THIS ATTITUDE, of course, ignores the fact that violence takes place every hour in every state of the country; that millions of us stay up late every night watching murder shows on TV.
Because Texas has been connected with the biggest crime of this century; because the killing of Kennedy was attributed to an atmosphere of political hatred in the state and because the state, after all, is Southern, then Johnson must be hung.
HATE AND VILIFICATION warp judgment just as heat buckles steel beams of you tear down confidence in established authority, then those in public office blame a lot of this on the newspaper for reporting it.
Believe me, this is the time for the American public to take some responsibility for its own image and stop blaming everything on either Lyndon Johnson or Drew Pearson.
Mr. Johnson—in fact, no president—deserves the indignities being heaped upon him these days in the name of peace or civil rights. Criticism and challenge have their rightful place in our political system, but not the scrawls from rest room walls.
THERE ARE THOSE in our trade who wonder at times whether the President, along the middle of next year, will decide that he's taken about all the slings and arrows he cares to endure and decide to step out.
But unless his standing in the polls drops to a minus position, unless his health starts to crack and there's no current indication of that, my munch today is that in 1968, if Lyndon Baines Johnson can walk, he'll run.
All of us should be able to see the situation with more clarity when we meet again next year. Eut meantime, LBJ is on for much more punishment at the hands of the name-callers unless the squares who raise kids, mow their lawns and pay their taxes decide to involve themselves by getting off their patios and telling the dirty-mouths to shut the hell up.