2 University Daily Kansan Monday. April 16, 1962
A New Step
Reapportionment
The question as to how effectively the federal courts would deal with individual state reapportionment moved toward a final answer Saturday.
A three-judge federal court told the Alabama legislature to reapportion before a new legislature is elected in November, or the court would draw up its own reapportionment plan and order it put info effect.
Thus the method by which courts will deal with reapportionment was tentatively established. On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court established the right of a federal court to force a reapportionment. The question then became how much red tape and delay would be involved in a state finally reapportioning. For example, would the court just tell the state to reapportion its voting districts and let it go at that.
NOW THE federal court has shown that it will force reapportionment quickly by setting a deadline after which the court will set up the state's voting districts.
The court's decision and its deadline is of course subject to appeal to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Chances are a good case can be put up against the recent court ruling. The court's establishing a deadline for a state to reapportion
and giving the state the choice of meeting the deadline or accepting the court's plan for reapportionment represents an unprecedented invasion of a traditional political and legislative area by the judiciary.
Kansas is one of the several states that violate this principle of equal representation. For instance, Sedgwick County has one Senator in the State legislature to represent its 343,321 residents. In the Senate district of Jewell and Mitchell Counties, 16,083 residents have one vote. Thus, the vote of a resident of Jewell or Mitchell County is worth about 21 times as much as a resident of Sedgwick County. Other similar inequalities exist.
BUT STRIPPED away from its finery, the counter argument to the court's decision comes down to this—let us play our politics within the state. The argument is hardly valid. Each citizen of a state has a right to equal representation in his state legislature.
The recent court decision setting up a possible court plan of reapportionment for a state has tremendous implications for Kansas and other states. Perhaps this latest decision will start the Kansas legislators moving toward a plan for equitable state reapportionment.
-Karl Koch
The Fateful Issue
The Warfare State
(Editor's note: This is the first in a series of five excerpts from a special edition of The Nation by Fred J. Cook "Juggernaut: The Warfare State.")
On the evening of January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the tradition of George Washington, the predecessor with whom he liked most to be compared, appeared before the television cameras to make his farewell address to the nation. He began with the usual Eisenhower expressions of good will, the usual Eisenhower platitudes.
Then abruptly, in midstream, he struck out on a new and decidedly uncharacteristic course. He picked this final moment of leave-taking with the attention of the country focused upon him, to deliver a grave warning. American democracy, he said in essence, was being threatened by a new and enormous and insidious power—that of "the military-industrial complex," employing millions of men, wielding the power of fantastic billions of dollars, developing an influence that "is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal Government."
IN THE MONTHIS since the former President surprised his listeners by this novel indulgence in apprehension, events have served to invest his final words with the wisdom of accurate prophecy. For hardly had the new Administration of John F. Kennedy come to Washington before it was embroiled, not in just a series of headline foreign crises — Laos, Cuba, Berlin — but in a more secret and perhaps even more determinative battle affecting the future of American democracy. This second conflict on the home front, a form of rear-guard action, was and is being waged to preserve civilian — and democratic — control over the gigantic power nexus of our time, the alliance of a war-minded Military with a war-oriented Big Business.
The issue of civilian versus military and authoritarian control was joined "sub rosa" virtually before the new Administration took office. Kennedy appointed as his Secretary of Defense one of the toughest-minded, toughest-driving American industrialists, Ford executive Robert S. McNamara, and McNamara characteristically and predictably set out to establish his own rule over the Pentagon. Bound up in this personal issue was a national issue of great moment — the traditional American principle of civilian control of the Military.
THE REVOLT of the High Brass, instant and enduring, was both fierce and subtle, employing all the
infighting techniques in which a long-entrenched bureaucracy becomes adept. This internecine strife, for the most part hidden from public view, reached such proportions that, by June, it was being characterized by none other than Senator Stuart Symington (himself one of the nation's foremost advocates of military preparedness) as "a disloyal operation."
To the heat generated by this Pentagon power struggle has been added the explosive quotient of a second and allied cause. The Kennedy Administration's advocacy of mild social reform at home and its shift of emphasis from military to economic aid abroad, has been countered by a nation-wide wave of radical Right propaganda, symbolized by the John Birch Society and supported by a powerful military-business axis that merges liberalism with socialism and socialism with communism in a syllogism that defies sanity and perverts democracy.
EVEN THE gingerly efforts of the Kennedy Administration to curb such excesses and to reassert the traditional American principle that the Military should abstain from political activities precipitated on the floor of the United States Senate a wave of denunciation reminiscent in its fierence of the McCarthy past.
These twin developments — the internal power struggle of the Brass against the rule of a civilian Secretary, the passions aroused by the efforts to keep the Military from the most partisan political commitments — limn an over-all issue of great complexity and vital importance. Involved in this muted struggle are the basic elements of democracy—the essential requisites
that civilian control must outweigh the Military, that a civilian population must have the final say on the great issues that lead to peace or war, that these issues must not be decided for them by a military-industrial caste either through dictatorial decree or overwhelming propaganda pressure. At conflict, in essence, are traditional American democratic principles and the kind of Prussianized military-industrial concept that produced Hitler.
IN THIS context, then, hardly any issue of the moment, not even Berlin, is of greater importance than this relatively little-publicized tug-of-war at home, involving as it does the focus of the future. Not at issue here are any questions of our military capacity, of the military efficiency of Army or Navy or Air Force, the command of space, or the wastefulness and duplication of military contracts and military procurements.
All of these are important questions in themselves, but all are subordinate to the great issue—the influence that the military-industrial octopus wields on the affairs of state. Is this influence such that the very democracy we are preparing to go to war—if necessary—to defend is being vitiated in the process? Is this influence such that decisions are virtually predetermined before the issues calling for decision arise? Can we reconcile our need for defense, for multibillion-dollar armaments, with the principles of free discussion and free decision that remain democrys's greatest assets? Or must the word of the military-industrial complex become, on virtually every issue, the word of the nation? These are some of the vital questions that cry aloud for answer.
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912 Telephone Vik 3-2700
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Extension 711, news room
Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Managing Editor
Bill Mullins ... Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache ... Business Manager
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"IF YOU EXPECT TO TEACH FRESHMAN COURSES PROFESSOR NEW!
BLOOD - YOU'LL HAVE TO LEARN TO EXPECT STUPID ANSWERS!"
CRC Castigated
Editor:
For months now I've watched with amused grin the antics of this group of approximately 30 to 50 noise-making moralists (representative of the campus of course) commonly known as the CRC. I laughed as I watched them romp through Lawrence barber shops and boarding houses on their shining white chargers, wielding the sword of this intangible, undefinable—yea, almost holy thing called "civil rights."
But lately the thing has disturbed me more and more because the insane hysteria is spreading. Now we're turning to fraternity and sorority "discriminatory clauses" — something to the effect that they cause mental trauma amongst the minority groups — whatever they are. It's sort of like Robin Hood, I think. Take group A's rights away and give them to group B.
LET'S EXAMINE criteria for just a moment — first that old bugaboo, the minority. Let's say, just for purposes of examination, that I am a Caucasian by race (I am) and a Christian Scientist by religion. I am now a member of a true minority. It may be little recognized, but the white race makes up only 1/7 of the world's population. The majority of the earth are Mongoloid and Negroid. Only about 7% of the population of the United States is of the Christian Science faith.
Then there's equality. That's a good one. Little did old Tom Jefferson realize, when he inserted the word "equality" in the Declaration of Independence to win the French over to our side, that the word would develop into a cow so sacred that Americans fear it today. Acusing a person of anti-equalitarianism is almost as incriminating as accusing him of communism. Jefferson himself remarked several times before his demise that equality among men is impossible, not only because of social and racial differences, but economic,
physical, mental and inherent characteristics as well.
The whole country is caught up in this civil rights insanity, equal to little else in American history. "We're losing face internationally, they scream." Losing face, hell! The only thing that's causing them to lose face is this mass hysteria. With this uncalled for "dogfighting" they are succeeding in only one thing, the undermining of our own country from within. Little do they know it, but this bickering is a thundering blow to the nation's Achille's heel.
Now back to the KU version of the NAACP, the Civil Rights Council (amen). They really resemble one another quite closely, you know—the CRC and the NAACP. I don't know exactly what they're accomplishing, but they sure do seem to be enjoying themselves.
"WE CANNOT limit the rights and privileges of the Great Majority (the shift from minority to majority is quite easy, you see)" our hysterical friends said the other day. They were discussing a poll (representative, mind you) of the campus to determine what they thought of "discriminatory clauses." The word "Great Majority" is lifted directly from George Orwell's "1984." I would imagine that Marx used it quite frequently, too. But maybe they have a point there. Perhaps people outside of every organization should decide what qualifications are necessary for membership in the organization. I'm going to run out and lobby for membership of Japanese war brides to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Then I think I'll organize to abolish any grade requirements necessary for membership in Phi Beta Kappa — all these groups have "discriminatory clauses" and they're nasty — at least they discriminate against me! Not only that, but Phi Beta Kappa is connected with the University and that makes it doubly bad!
Ken Costich
Ken Costich Chicago junior
Worth Repeating
America is by any standard a towering technology and culture, with economic, military, and political power, the only rival powermass being Russia. Wherever you find so much vitality packed tightly in a segment of human society, it is evidence of a striking convergence of history, environment, biological stock, psychological traits, institutional patterns, collective will and drive. When such a combination catches fire in the world's imagination and polarizes the emotional energies of men—whether for love or hate—you have a memorable civilization.—Max Lerner