THE SUMMER
SESSION KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
JUNE 18,1979
Fundamental freedom
Political freedom is a fundamental right of the Constitution of the United States. Americans should not and cannot be denied their right to free expression of ideas, regardless of whether such ideas might be considered incorrect.
True political freedom can only be possible if minority groups have the right to openly disagree with the governing majority. No government, or government institution, has the authority to change this.
However, minority opinions often look insignificant to those with power. Temptations exist to limit the expression of unpopular views. Groups are often termed "radical" and suffer unjust censorship of their ideas. And although such groups are being directly or indirectly manipulated and restricted by the majority, society itself continues being indoctrinated toward popular views.
There are no restraints on the expression of the majority's opinions in America. People from all walks of life are deluged with the ideology of the "status quo."
Newspapers are traditionally guilty of advocating majority opinions at the expense of less popular ideas. Even the Watergate break-in story, which has been called a great example of freedom of the press, was ignored by more than 95 percent of America's newspapers when it first broke in 1971. Newspapers inevitably tend to support the views of those in power.
But the problem with free political expression in America today is not that the majority's opinions are so dominant. Instead, it is the concept that the very same free expression is wrong if attempted by a minority group.
Although certain judgments are unavoidable, the ruling majority is obligated to allow free expression at all times. The strength of our democracy lies on its willingness to allow nonviolent expressions of opinion.
The good of a free society can best be served by allowing even one dissenting voice to be heard in the chorus of popular ideas. That is what makes the Constitution something special.
Ku Klux Klansmen stumble with image
By LEONARD D. GROTTA
By LEONARD D. GROTTA
Editorial Writer
Earlier this month, rob Kuk Xul Klansman staged a march through Decatur, Ala. to assert that white supremacy is still very much alive. Their assertion, however, was greatly undermined by another march on the same street and their number of blacks paraded after the Klan march to protest rape charges against a local black.
The Klan, it appears, is beginning to realize that something is just not working. Five days ago it scheduled a rally in Chicago and coordinated finding men membership in that southern state.
The trouble undoubtedly stems from the fact that the Klan is suffering from an image problem. As any competent public relations firm would surely tell the Klan, its public image is sadly out-of-sync with the times.
DURING THEIR WEEKEND marcy use Klansman wore their traditional white robes—a uniform essentially unchanged during the past 200 years. This being 1979, people hardly ever wear white shirts, let alone white sheets.
Would you want to be seen in public wearing a white sheet? If you are like most people, the last time you wore a white sheet you probably didn't wear it for years old. Certainly this is not the sort of
costume one should wear if he expects to wield any viable political cloak.
The Klan is not the first group to face this problem, however. Only last year, faced with a similar crises and dwindling membership, the Girl Scouts of America came under fire for their design new uniforms for their members.
The opportunity to wear a Bill Blass original, albeit mass produced, apparently holds great allure for the average American ten-year-old female, and the GSA's member rosters and cookie sales are swollen.
IF THE KLAN is to hold out any hope of remaining a viable political and social institution in America during the 1980s, it is, and has been, one of the most widely and dated regalia — the sooner, the better.
In the case of the Klan, it wouldn't even have to go to the expense and trouble of commissioning an exclusive, proprietary design. Practically every department store in the nation is already flooded with a surplus of designer sheets. While the Klan members often prefer the little too flowery and effets for most of the Klan's membership, there are still a wide variety of strong, colorful plairs and other geometric designs from which to choose.
The only way the Klan can hope to assert "white supremacy" in any area other than the color of their uniforms, is by holding them against their linens department of the nearest Macy's.
Minority still rules
To the editor :
In view of the installation of a new government in Rhodesia, President Carter will decide on the 18th whether to lift the military blockade and allow the new government, installed in an attempt to gain U.S. help in delaying the fall of the minority government, will continue the control of the minority but give an appeal to the opposition, writes of the "Smith-Murzowe fraud" that "the defense forces as well as the police are firmly under white control" and the "judiciary is all-white . . . with the prosecution so as to ensure that (it) stay(s) that way."
Aside from the undemocratic implications
of lifting sanctions against Rhodesia, doing so would be unpraticable as well. Carl T. Rowan writes that "Nigria said it would deploy such a move—which could cost the U.S. a million barrels a day of badly needed petroleum."
Rowan asks that Carter not lift sanctions in promotion of the long-term interests of her firm.
Mark Cline
Medicine Lodge junior
KANSAN
THE SUMMER SESSION
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College idealism is fading away
Welcome, children of technology. Enter the warm pool of the University of Kansas and feel its warm waters. Swim through your education and let the gentle currents twist through your mind. And don't make waves or you'll sink like a rock.
Attention! There are certain thoughts you must think. Your values have already been determined. No questions, please. There can be no questions—they might harm the machinery. Reality is your college transcript and nothing else. Well, maybe a high-paying 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. class in our department of television set. And a subscription to Time magazine. And a dog that eats Alpo. Those are the facts.
So what else is new?
COLLEGE IDEALISM is drowning.
Fanciful dreams are being replaced by the lusts of a society gone stale. Students no longer waste their time with thoughts of death and sorrow. The concern these days is fitting in.
So what else is new?
Get an early jump. Hit the water without a ripple. Oil the machine with your sweat. Ignorant and impractical idealism deserves the bottom of the pool. anwav.
We stare wide-eyeed at the problems around us and shrug with despair. Better look out for number one in this world. Nothing can be done to change it.
So true and yet so unfair. College is the last opportunity students have to think before being completely swallowed by society. It is a time for dreams and demands for change. Hopeless causes should be taken up. Serious philosophical
discussions made. Religion scrutinized.
Authority challenged.
H IAPPENS once and a while. Last gasps of air, no. Nakes at Wolf Creek. No nukes. It even happens at the University. So we thinkers who still challenge-Protest
Some even dare question the University
code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and
administration.
Ronald Kuby seems to be a sinking college idealist. He actually thought he might get away with displaying a political banner at KU's commencement exercises May 21. Sure it was out of the way and not in the program of proud smiles and handshakes.
But that is not the point. The banner said "KU Out of South Africa" and that is a nono. Kuby challenged an established value when he dared to question the institution's investments in South Africa. And in front of teachers filled with parents and alumni
ALTHOUGH KUBY and his banner didn't remain at commencement too long, he still had to keep himself as an idealist. What did he hope to accomplish? Doesn't matter. Few would have cared if he had been there for hours. Didn't he go on to spend several days. Upsets the timing of the machine.
But at least he was there. A ripple was made. Students smiled, alumni frowned.
And here we are. Look hard for the edge of the pool and concentrate College years at the end.
Life, language becoming blurred
MIDDLETOWN, Conn.—Doughty boys in 1918 had a much higher opinion of their officers than did GIs a quarter of a century later.
The officers had not changed. For instance, Douglas MacArthur, a general in both world wars, was just as arrogant, just as brilliant on V-J Day, as is brilliant on V-J Day on Armistice Day.
It was America that had changed. A tightly disciplined society had become passionately egalitarian; two bloody conflicts and a great Depression had discredited authority. Public men won against us, distilling that they were very common men.
THE POPULAR general was Eisenhower, with his infectious grin, his diminutive, and his little stationing attendant's tunic. Ke asked to be liked, and he was. MacArthur in his braided cap demanded that he be revered, and he wasn't.
One sees it in the cult of informality- in the aggressive use of niches, for example, of the word "were".
Now, after the Vietnam War and Watergate, leveling has become a secular religion, a faith as powerful and intolerant as Puritanism in 17th century New England
On every side there is a blurring of the distinctions between the classes, the generations, and the sexes, sacrificed to the totem of absolute equality.
denim overalls, once the uniform of workmen, have been adopted by the children of the affluent, whose fathers, meantime, are shedding any garment that falls out of their clothing, instead "lunge suits" that are virtually identical to their wives" "pants suits."
MUCH OF THIS unisexism is attributed to the women's movement. I don't buy that. The original chauvinist, Nicholas Chauvin, French soldier who was hoped by Napoleon.
His name has become an epithet because men are in flight from all the stigmata of manliness. And the revolt against masculine dominance predates the present struggle for the equal rights amendment by several decades anhow.
As far back as the 1930s, Clarence Day's father, who ruled his household like a caliph, had become obsolescent. By the 1960s he had been replaced on television by a man of manhood whose certain blunders were highly corrected by their amused families.
NOW CHILDREN may actually sue their parents for incompetence. The next step is lawsuits against teachers, who have only themselves to blame. There is something wrong with the system of member telling freshmen, "We shall learn from each other," and explaining that at the
end of the course they will be asked to grade his performance.
Professors rarely wear their Phi Beta Kappa keys any more, or athletes the letter sweaters, or Legionnaires of Honor who wear one the bjoux of eminence are vanishing.
In their place is a strange, false humility, which Dixon Wecter wryly called "the social consequence of democracy". Democracy, let it be written, is a form of government that is adaptable because the alternatives are it. It should be confined to the poll.
CLEARLY SOMETHING is wrong when a suburban mother defends her adolescent daughter's determination to have a baby by saying "We believe in democracy at home—in kids making their own decisions," or when grammar school pupils are asked, "How many think Lincoln was well-adjusted? Hands. please."
Since World War II an entire generation of American writers has provided us with a tumult literature of egalitarian: "From here to here" has been the source of in inverse proportion to his military rank; "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," the villain, a workaholic, alienates the reader's affections by expecting similar dedication to other literary works. Loman, Holden Caulfield, and Alexander
Portny, losers whose very defeats endear them to audiences distrustful of victors.
It is impossible to see where all this will lead, and the signposts along the way are ominous. The present tenant of the White House got their by running against the office he hoped to occupy, and to which he has since added so little luster.
Now that the pelative "elitist" is used to denounce advocates of excellence, excellence, inevitable become scarcer. Invitations for defiance are less common; the usage,"use", under which grammar is determined by a kind of continuing voice vote; if sufficient people say, "I feel badly," or "It feels bad," we don't agree.
THE GREATER A character's defiance of traditional values, the more sympathetic he is to his own. He also true. Erich Segal's harmless valiantity to matrimony aroused wrath wholly disproportionate to the offense. Had he been insincere, I think, he would have been spared.
GIFTED CHILDREN are ineligible for special attention, though retarded children aren't; being below the general level, they must be brought up to it.
In short, we are expected to look down on those above us, and up to those beneath us. Since superiority is itself suspect, everyone tries to like, talk like, and be like everyone else — thus all the attentive and separated people from one another are discounted.
Doubless this comforts those in whose breasts lurk the gnawing and usually justified hunch that they really are inferior. It puts extraordinary souls at a disadvantage, however, and it is, they not the dross of society, who deter the rothe who resist it be high or low, and whether the journey will even be completed.
William Manchester, writer-in-residence at Wesleyan University, is author of "American Caesar," a biography of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
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