Page 2
Summer Session Kansan
Friday, June 19, 1964
Again It's State Rights
This is the year of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, the year of a third ruling from the Supreme Court regarding apportionment. Wallace in 164 has been a kind of reverse carpetbagger, spreading his gospel in Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland, and coming out of his mission convinced that Americans favor state rights. As for the Supreme Court, it now has told state legislators that they, like Congress, must fairly represent the voters and give up their ancient gerrymandering and disproportionate representation.
So the cry of "state rights" is once again in the air. Again the Supreme Court has trod upon the domain of Wallace & Co. Throughout the long Senate filibuster over the civil rights bill, state rights has been a virtual "Excelsior!" banner, flown by those persons who revere the 10th amendment far more than the first or the fifth.
HOW MUCH DO THE STATE rights boys really care about state rights? Most of us who are concerned with state rights are concerned only when it appears likely that that insidious monster, the federal government, might curb certain practice we have come to regard as "our business." When it comes to being convinced state-righters, however, most of us get disturbed only once in a generation.
The federal government frightens the Senator from Arizona as he views that vast bureaucratic symbol, the Tennessee Valley Authority. But federal aid for Arizona water projects troubles him not at all. Nor are the filibustering southern senators normally disturbed about the federal government intruding itself into such matters as interstate highways, airports, bridges, dams and the like. No one ever talks about state rights at such a time. A threat, however, to curb federal funds for states that oppose sections of the civil rights bill leads our noble solons, as some headline writers term them, to weep and wail and gnash their teeth.
WHY DOES IT SEEM UN-AMERICAN to
some, yet downright logical to others, that one man's vote should be worth as much as another man's? We can expect Arthur Krock and David Lawrence to tell us again how the Supreme Court has chipped away once more at human freedom. More "Impeach Earl Warren" signs will spring up along the highways of Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and California, competing with the Rattlesnake Ranch signs for the mind and sympathies of the tourist. Somebody will propose another constitutional amendment, to guarantee that the erosion of state rights shall stop.
And memory of Calhoun will be called upon, and Thomas Jefferson will be quoted, for Jefferson belongs to the state rights faction even more than to the folks who approve of decisions of the "Warren court." But what should state rights mean today? In the tiny nation of Jefferson and of 1800 weren't the states quite different from the states of today, when jet planes and fast highways have blurred state lines and changed maps?
THERE'S A FICTION in America, one that goes back 150 years and more, that goodness and decency somehow reside only in the states, the small towns, and the rural areas. One would think that this legend, or myth, would have been dissipated, but it persists, despite the books and the studies that have told us there are as many dear hearts and gentle people in the cities as in the villages. Surely the caliber of federal office-holder is as high and as reputable as that of the small town politician—if not higher.
The civil rights bill and the Supreme Court rulings are but logical responses to the behavior of local and state government. If what we call "the federal government" has intruded upon the rights of states, the intrusion has not been out of a wish to interfere in local affairs. The intrusion has come because of the inability, or the unwillingness, of local and state governments to take care of problems that are the concern of the whole people, and not merely of state, county, or city.
Sociology and Religious Authority Disapproves of Intermarriage Trend
By Gay Pauley UPI Women's Editor
NEW YORK — (UPI) A religious leader and sociologist predicts an increase in intermarriage in the United States. But he disapproves of the trend because, as he says, marriage outside of one's religious faith, race or ethnic group, stands less chance of succeeding than others.
"I know" said Dr. Albert I. Gordon, "I shall be charged with bigotry, with prejudice. This is not new. Anyone with a religious interest would be."
Dr. Gordon, who holds a master's degree in sociology and a doctorate in social anthropology, is rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Newton Centre, Mass. He is the author of a new and exhaustive study of college student's attitudes on intermarriage. The book, "Intermarriage- Interfaith, Interracial, Interethnic" (Beacon Press) is a result of his questioning and analyzing the views of 5,407 students surveyed in colleges from Boston to Honolulu.
DR. GORDON SAID, in an interview, that he queried the college group because they represent attitudes of the future—"In 1900, four per cent of the 18 to 21 age group went to college; by 1970, at least 45 per cent will be going."
Forty-four per cent of the respondents were male; 55 per cent were female; one per cent provided no information. Forty-seven per cent were Protestant; 31 per cent Catholic; 12 per cent Jewish; the rest of other or non-religious affiliation.
THE GORDON book is full of tabulated breakdowns of young people's attitudes on various aspects of marriage. But the author summarizes them this way—91 per cent of the students in the all-school sample do not favor marriage to a person of another color; 50 per cent do not favor marriage to a person of another religion; 31 per cent do not favor marriage to a
person of another educational group; 16 per cent do not favor marriage with a person of another ancestry; and 13 per cent do not favor marriage to a person of a different economic level.
Dr. Gordon gives his findings in the bulk of the book, then concludes with "a personal view." He expanded on the latter during a visit to New York.
MARRIAGE OUT of one's faith is almost three times less likely to succeed than ordinary marriages, said Gordon. The chances for the interracial marriage are "according to my research, even less than that of an interfaith marriage.
"Interethnic has a better chance than the others."
The improvement of job and educational levels for all; the natural outgrowth of young people from assorted walks of life, assorted races and cultures, meeting on today's campuses; the great number of social barriers which keep tumbling down; and the "honest desire for one world."
But Gordon said that "we may expect that intermarriages will continue to increase in our society."
"IM AS INTERESTED in one world as everyone else," said Dr. Gordon, "but one world is less likely, less probable without religion.
"I feel that American values in religion need to be perpetuated.
He listed several reasons:
"Human brotherhood cannot be assured by intermarriage.
To Dr. Gordon, children of intermarriage often are the ones who suffer most. "Children don't know what they are, where they belong," he said. "Everyone wants a sense of identification."
"To create one world, shall we overthrow families?"
BUT THE RABBI, father of two grown children, opposes parental
stonewalls against an intermarriage.
His advice to troubled parents: "Talk things out thoroughly with the children. State your case as strongly as you can. But if they are in love, very fine young people, then I suggest in matter of religious difference a conversion of one to the other's faith so there will be a united family, so they can be at home in church."
"Parents who threaten their children, or who insist that they will disinherit them, or refuse to acknowledge them as their children, are guilty of the greatest of crimes," he said.
OF INTERACIAL marriages, Dr. Gordon said, civil rights legislation enacted or not, "Americans are just not ready for them."
He quoted a Negro leader in the civil rights movement—"I want you to be my brother, not my brother-in-law,"
Summer Session Kansan 111-112 Flint Hall University of Kansas Student Newspaper
Telephone UN-3198, business office
UN-3646, newsroom
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
BOOK REVIEWS
Member of Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50th 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. Published Tuesdays and Fridays during Summer Session. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
All it takes these days is the name Hitchcock. What the master has here is stories you may have read; surely everyone has read "The Lady or the Tiger?" There is quiet suspense like that and there is real horror. Here's what you'll find in this little book:
14 SUSPENSE STORIES TO PLAY RUSSIAN ROULETTE BY, edited by Alfred Hitchcock (Dell, 50 cents).
Hitchcock writing on the quality of suspense; C. B. Gilford's "Never Kill for Love," Phyllis Bottome's "The Liquor Glass," A. D. Divine's "Flood on the Goodwins," Hanson Baldwin's "R. M. S. Titanic," Wilbur Daniel Steele's "Blue Murder," Ralph Farley's "The House of Ecstasy," William Outerson's "Fire in the Galley Stove," Stockton's old standard about the lady and the tiger, Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Margery Sharp's "The Second Step," Albert Payson Terhune's "The Blue Paper," James M. Cain's "The Baby in the Icebox," Ralph Straus" The Room on the Fourth Floor," and Stephen Vincent Benet's "Elementals."
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ARCHIBALD MacLEISH (Sentry,
$2.45).
Here is a splendid paperback, one bringing us many of the writings of one of the great poets of the 20th century. It is a sturdy, well-bound volume, printed on good paper, and it suggests the possibility that many such paperbacks of poetry may become available to the reader, for this is a field not yet tapped to any great extent by the publishers.
It is a volume of more than 400 pages. Included are poetry from "Tower of Ivory," "The Happy Marriage," "Streets in the Moon," "New Found Land," "Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City," "Poems, 1924-1933" "Public Speech," "Active and Other Poems," "Later Poems."
Part Two consists of works in their entinety—"The Pot of Earth." "The Hamlet of A. MaeLeish." "Einstein," "Conquistador," "1933," "America Was Promises," "Colloquy for the States," "Actfive" and "Songs for Eve."
TAKEN AT THE FLOOD. by John Gunther (Popular, 50 cents).
In this biography John Gunther gets inside a man instead of inside a country. The man is Albert Lasker, an almost legendary name in American advertising. He was a fabulous figure who played a leading role in shaping the tastes of the American people.
Lasker was the president of the Lord & Thomas Advertising Agency. Gunther tells how he became a multimillionaire by 35, how he gave us that great institution, the soap opera, how he taught women to smoke and most of us to drink orange juice.
ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO,
his, Rachel. Field. (Dell. 75 cents).
rachel Field (Dell, 75 cents). In the late thirties, when blockbuster historical novels were appearing and taking the place of the entertainments many still could not afford, this novel was one of the leaders. It's now in paperback for the first time, and it will set many readers weeping once again (it's revelatory, of course, that Bette Davis and Charles Boyer costarred in the movie version of 1940).
"All This, and Heaven Too" is about a governess, Henriette Desportes and her eventually gruesome experience taking care of the children of the Duke de Praslin, with whom she falls in love and in whose house she sees murder take place. It was a celebrated and true murder case of the 19th century.
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES,
by Thomas Hardy (Signet Classies,
50 cents).
In realistic fiction of the late 19th century Hardy has no equals in English. This handsome paperback gives us one of the best of Hardy's novels, a tale that reveals the desperate condition in which many have had to live.
Tess is a lovely girl, but she is doomed to misery and tragic death. Like many in her England, Tess was victimized by poverty and Victorian hypocrisy. In telling her story, Hardy gives the reader a combination of realism, perhaps even of naturalism, and beauty,
for the setting is the English countryside, one of the key episodes occurring in the mystifying region of the Stonehenge.
JENNIE GERHARDT, by Theodore
Dreiser (Laurel, 75 cents).
Latest of the vigorous protest novels of Theodore Dreiser to emerge in the Laurel line, with an introduction by Alfred Kazin, is "Jennie Gerhardt." The book appeared in 1911, and though it is not known to as many readers as "Sister Carrie" or "An American Tragedy" it still is an important book in American naturalism.
Once again Theodore Dreiser depicts a woman beaten down by society in the age of vigorous development in this country. Jennie Gerhardt, like Sister Carrie, could have been a sister of Dreiser, and her story is grim and tragic.
Also, like Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt is a woman cast out by society for her "sins" and because of her low station in life.
THREE WHO MADE A REVOLUTION, by Bertram D. Wolfe (Delta, $2.95).
The book is essentially the biography of the key participants in the Russian Revolution—Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, as well as their associates and foes. More than that it is an important history of the revolution and the forces which led to it.
Standing alongside "To the Finland Station," if not ahead of it, in depictions of the background of world communism is this monumental history, first published in 1948. Edmund Wilson, who wrote "To the Finland Station," regards it as "the best book in its field in any language."
"Three Who Made a Revolution" is a virtual modern classic. This edition is a revision of the work, and Wolfe offers a new introduction which gives insight into historical writing.
MUSSOLINI AND ITALIAN FASCISM, by S. William Halperin (Anvil. 8145).
The excellent Anvil series of primary documents with scholarly interpretation now presents a volume about II Duce, familiar figure of a generation ago who now is merely a historical name to university students. S. William Halperin herein reviews the emergence of Mussolini into prominence as boss of Italian Fascism.
He describes the revolution, the establishment of the dictatorship, and its rule up to the day Mussolini and his mistress were murdered and strung up by their heels in a square in Milan.
Much of the book consists of documents—from a 1912 speech on Italian parliamentarism to the resolution submitted by Dino Grandi to the Fascist Grand Council in July 1943.
SOVIET RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM, by Victor S. Mamatey (Anvil, $1.45).
One of the dogmas of modern communism is that imperialism is the ultimate of capitalism, and that communism will save the world from this evil, as personified in Yankeeism. But Victor S. Mamatey, in text and relevant primary documents, submits in this paperback original that Russian communism itself is imperialistic.
Few will quibble with this idea, but here is the proof. Mamatey shows Russian imperialism in its earlier period and then develops the idea of imperialism in communism since 1917.
Students of modern world history should find this book of special help.
EUGENIE GRANDET, by Honoré de Balzac (Signet Classics, 60 cents).
Here is one of the two best-known works by Balzac, the other being "Pere Goriot." Many readers accord "Eugenie Grandet" an honored position in Balzac's mighty "Human Comedy." It is a short novel and a moving one.
in contrast to "Pere Goriot," this story has a provincial setting, dealing with a quiet country girl, hungering for live and love, and her grasping, avaricious father, one of the most hateful characters in fiction.
Balzac demonstrates how greed can react on all peoples. This is a powerful and absorbing tale.