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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, March 6, 1963
GOP Critics Too Vague
The idea that it is the duty of the "loyal opposition" to point out the errors of the party in power is a basically sound idea—one that has stood up well under many years of testing in both the United States and Great Britain. But it also is an idea that has been greatly overworked in this country recently.
Cuba and the budget have borne the brunt of most Republican attacks. These two controversial issues illustrate the divergence between issues emphasized in the true spirit of the "loyal opposition" and those overplayed primarily for selfish political reasons.
THE REAL situation in Cuba after the October crisis might have been glossed over by the administration were it not for the efforts of some Republicans. Granted, these politicians probably have gone a bit overboard. But nonetheless the Cuban situation WAS worse than it appeared to most Americans, and the administration was content with their ignorance.
In the Cuban situation the "loyal opposition" even Ev and Charlie—did what it is supposed to do. It informed the voters of a situation the administration would have preferred to keep to itself.
The budget controversy, however, shows what can happen when the "loyal opposition" gets carried away with the sound of its own voice.
Republican Congressmen have claimed that $10 billion to $15 billion could be cut from the President's proposed appropriations for next year. But they conveniently have neglected to mention exactly where and in what amounts in each area the budget should be cut.
BECAUSE OF the non-specific nature of the charge, Democrats cannot defend their administration's proposals by explaining exactly why they think specific cuts should not be made. Evidently this is just what the "loyal opposition" wants.
It would seem that if the cuts really should be made, they would be pointed out specifically so the Democrats could trap themselves in their own explanations. But the Republicans have avoided specifics. They appear to want only to attack—not to inform.
This perversion of the purpose of the "loyal opposition" is unjustifiable.
— Dennis Branstiter
Stalin Was Russian "Prince"
By Jerry Musil
Josef Stalin marched forward with no regard for the means he used to achieve his goals. His methods in both internal and foreign affairs would have left a Machiavellian prince standing in awe.
Human beings were of no consequence to Stalin. He could use them and then discard them usually with a bullet in the head when they had served his purposes.
HE ORDERED thousands of peasants killed when they resisted his agricultural collectivization program. And the purge trials of 1936-37 and 1941-53 are famous or infamous for sheer brutality. He ordered the leader of the NKVD, Lavrenty Beria, to execute Beria's predecessor, N. I. Yezhov, because he "knew too much."
He supposedly arranged for the death of Kirov, secretary of the Leningrad Soviet, in order to start the purge of 1936-37. He also has been accused of arranging the assassination of Trotsky
in Mexico City in 1940. It is even believed that he poisoned his young wife, although the official story says that she was poisoned while tasting "food" for her husband.
Murder was no stranger to Stalin. One critic said that every crime was possible for Stalin, for there was none he had not committed. But this was his means to an end—the permanence of the Soviet Union. He would have destroyed nineteenths of the human race to "make happy" the one-tenth.
STALIN TRUSTED no one and suspected everyone. He saw plots where none existed. He would react violently to any provocation. No one was immune to his wrath.
In great fear of assassination, he never let his guard down. And all his fears were not unfounded. In October, 1927, the Old Guard, which numbered around 6,000 before the revolution, was 80 per cent anti-Stalin. At that time, he said that he would "crush them" — the
only positive statement he ever made concerning his tactics for dealing with his enemies.
Stalin was cold, unsentimental and distrustful. He treated with distrust not only the oppressors, the landlords, the capitalists, the monks and the Tsarist police, but also the oppressed, the workers and peasants whose cause he had embraced.
HE HAD a fierce, burning hatred for the ruling class. The Socialist teachings appealed to him because they gave sanction to his hatred.
Before his death, Stalin was second only to Lenin as far as the hero of the Communist world. He took the theories of Marx and Lenin and, with a needed twist here and an omission there, shaped them for his purposes and Russia's needs.
But shortly after Stalin's death, Khrushchev started his denunciation of Stalin and the "Cult of personality" in his de-Stalinization program, which reached a climax at the 23rd Communist Party Congress.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"SINCE I GRADE MOSTLY ON IMPROVEMENT YOUR STRAIGHT
ARE WORTH A FINAL GRade OF 16" — FOLLOW ME?
Stalin will be cursed and condemned as a sadistic murderer. But history cannot ignore the fact that Stalin was the "builder of Socialism." Lenin might have brought the U.S.S.R. into being, but it was Stalin who made it permanent and moved it from a backward, underdeveloped country to one of the most powerful nations ever to exist.
TODAY STALIN has no place in the Soviet Union. He was removed from his place of honor next to Lenin in the mausoleum on Red Square. His name has been removed from streets and towns. He has been removed from Russian history in the same way he removed Trotsky from accounts of the revolution. Stalin is a forgotten man in his country.
Stalin built a mighty country by exploiting the masses he was to rescue from exploitation. He consolidated a regime just as cruel and oppressive as the one he helped overthrow. Stalin will be remembered for that as well as for building the first really powerful Socialist nation.
Sound & Fury
Fallacies Apparent In Death Penalty
Gentlemen of the Kansas Legislature:
Although I am currently enrolled in the George Washington School of Law, I vote in Pittsburg, Kan., and keep myself informed of the happenings in Kansas.
I do not know if you have formed a position on the proposed bill to abolish capital punishment. If you have not arrived at a conclusive judgment, I wish you would consider the following arguments.
RATHER THAN comment fully on some of the minor arguments for abolishing capital punishment—it (capital punishment) does not deter the acts the legislators hoped it would deter, it is immoral and sadistic, it is the most premeditated of murders, etc. I wish to concentrate my argument on the only "valid" ground for keeping capital punishment. This discussion is that the man who committed the crime must be kept from doing it again. This basis for capital punishment is such a simplification that—stripped of its mask—it is merely another justification for crude revenge. It forgets that:
(1) Capital punishment is an absolute penalty arrived at by trial procedures that are far from either absolute perfection or absolute imperfection.
(2) It is as fallacious to say that man is not a product of his environment as to say that man is a creature solely of his environment. As a consequence, society must share some of the blame for the deed which calls for the death of the actor as a punishment.
(3) ALL THINGS, animate and inanimate, change. To condemn a man to death is to judge not only that he is absolutely evil, but also to prophesy that he will never change.
(4) Many of the acts for which the death penalty is a remedy are committed by a person in a situation that is unlikely to ever occur again.
(5) Life imprisonment will also protect the members of society from such individuals and is not subject to the major pitfall of capital punishment, i.e., the death of one innocent man who cannot be revived creates such a stench in the bowels of justice that the smell will linger as long as men believe life is worth the task of living.
The above statements are brief but I believe that they are sufficient to illuminate the basic fallacies of keeping the status quo.
Charles A. Menghini
1962 KU graduate
Arlington, Va.
BOOK REVIEWS
THE FORSYTE SAGA, by John Galsworthy (Scribner's Modern Standard Authors, $4.50).
This long, leisurely, warm and vivid novel was being read much more a quarter of a century ago than it is today. This is a pity, and modern readers would do well to investigate "The Forsyte Saga," especially through this relatively inexpensive hardback volume.
It is a big book, approaching 1,000 pages, and it really is a saga. Galsworthy first wrote "The Man of Property" early in the century, but the theme stayed with him and years later he wrote "In Chancery" and "To Let." The three books, with linking interludes, now make up "The Forsyte Saga." In later years Galsworthy wrote two additional trilogies which utilized the Forsbytes.
This is a book in the sweeping tradition of a "Vanity Fair," a "Middlemarch," or many of Dickens' novels. Its range is the Victorian era of the 20th century. Its theme, as the first volume suggests, is property, and the wees of those who give property too much stress in their lives.
Namely, in respect to property. Soames Forsyte, the central figure, upper middle-class, stiff, unyielding, ranking his wife Irene with his other possessions. She leaves him, and a second generation becomes involved in the theme.
"The Forsyte Saga" is an old-fashioned novel, especially if we compare it with current literary entries and even with Joyce and Faulkner. Yet it is deep and perceptive at the same time that it gives even the casual reader little trouble.
Daily Transan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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