The Foothills View
MARCH 4, 1982
The Foothills View is a community newspaper published
each Thursday by the Gardner-Webb College Press, Inc.
AMP PR1V£$ THE LANE..
Member, North Carolina
Press Association, 1982
Dave Robertson,
Managing Editor
Commentary
The editorial page of The Foothills View
The It umble Farmer
One morning in early spring I saw Gramp Wiley
working in his garden. He made neat furrows for
his corn, threw something in them and then
covered each row with dirt.
“It’s too early to plant,” I observed later as he
warmed his fingers over my kitchen stove. “Your
corn will come up, look around, and then not grow
another inch until the ground gets warmer. You
can’t get ahead by planting early.”
“I know it,” said Gramp. “But it’s not too early
to pretend to plant. Look at all them crows out
there pecking and scratching where I was
his name.
“One morning he had hopes of seeing his name
at the top of the court record but his lawyer showed
up late and two speeders and an armed robber got
in ahead of him.”
“One morning he had hopes of seeing his name
at the top of the court record, but his lawyer
showed up late and two speeders and an armed
robber got in ahead of him. ’ ’
“Woodland had a struggle with school,” Gramp
continued. “He even failed at sports. He’d either
It is correct that two estimates of the current
threat posed by the Soviet Union are at war with
each other. They are, however, reconcilable, if
only one would take the trouble. One school says
the Soviet Union’s might is decisive. The other
says the Soviet Union is falling apart.
Years ago James Burnham, the retired
strategist and philosopher, said about the Soviet
Union that we chronologicallyoverestimate its
strength and underestimate its menace. Those
were the days when the Soviet Union was not
strong in international missilery, and now of
course it is. But its weakness as a thermonuclear
superpower in the ’50s are replaced now by a
weakness of a different order.
The Soviet Union is on its knees economically.
And just as in the ’50s, by reason of a failure of
resolution we stood by while the Soviet Union
acquired its massive nuclear artillery, so now we
On The
i i
Controlling a crow’s
mind is a challenge. It’s
harder than controlling
the mind of a man.”
By Robert Skoglund
■
i
“If every Russian were
tomorrow to find himself
free to purchase a bottle of
Pepsi-Gola, the probabili
ty that the Soviet Union
would march to economic
democracy is slight.”
working. It will take them three weeks to figure
out out that I’ve fooled them by planting pebbles.
By the time it’s warm enough to plant corn every
crow around here will be laid up with nervous
prostration.”
“Mind control is a terrible thing. I don’t believe
in it.”
“Last spring two schizoid crows split every stick
in my woodpile. They thought they were wood
peckers looking for bugs.”
“It would be more humane to shoot crows than to
mess up their minds. ’’
“But controlling a crow’s mind is a challenge,”
cried Gramp. “It’s harder than controlling the
mind of a man. Crows are independent and think
for themselves, but anyone can predict a man’s
behavior.
drop the ball or get trampled while he was holding
it. He finally quit school after he learned to write
“He sounds like a loser.”
“The National Environmental Council was
considering Woodland as their one enemy, but a
family in Minnesota beat him out by having
chemicals on their lawn that polluted the town’s
water supply.”
By William F. Buckley
“It’s heartbreaking when you can’t be number
one sometime.”
“Now everyone around here takes a cue from
him a month before planting time.”
“Ask any of your friends why they plant their
gardens so early. Smith will tell you that he
noticed Jones had already planted. Ask Jones and
he’ll say it’s because he saw Fitch planting, and on
it goes. You can count on it.”
“Don’t people get suspicious when Woodland’s
seeds rot in the ground?”
“But someone has to be first,” I protested.
“I made it my business to find out who planted
first last year,” he replied. “Woodland had his
garden in before anyone. Claimed he’d never been
first at anything before he discovered gardening.”
“Oh, he doesn’t really plant,” said Gramp. “He
puts in pebbles to fool his neighbors like I did the
crows this morning. Then he sneaks out at night
and sets out a couple of rows of that plastic spinich
that they make in Hong Kong. ”
“The govenor is still waiting to meet the first
person who has never complained about taxes,” I
volunteered.
“Is it worth the expense of buying plastic leaves
just to be number one ? ’ ’
“His garden doesn’t cost any more than one that
is raised from seeds a month later when planting
time finally arrives. He saves a barrel of money on
bug spray.”
The View invites all townspeople to express their opinions in letters to the editor.
Letters are subject to editing for space, but the author’s thought will not be mis
represented. Preferred length is one page, typewritten, double spaced. Anonymous
and libelous letters will not be printed. Adless all correspondence to Editor, Box
982, Boiling Springs, 28017.
are standing by while it wrestles with its economic
weakness. In the ’50s, Soviet sympathizers in
America dispatched to Russia the secrets
necessary to get on with its nuclear development.
Today, American businessmen and a Republican
administration stand by passively while the Soviet
Union takes such measures as are necessary to
survive its economic ordeal.
We have now the head of the Chamber of
Commerce, no less, taking issue with Mr. Reagan
on the subject of economic sanctions. Mr. Donald
Kendall has for years argued that vigorous trade
with the Soviet Union would benefit the West. This
position has a noble lineage in free-market
analysis. It is assumed that the exchange of goods
has the effect of loosening internal rigidities and
arguing along the benefits of liberalization. This is
true in classical analysis. If a backward economy
desires to trade, it comes soon to discovering the
uses of capital, of division of labor, of organization,
of market testing and all the rest. But in a society
closed like the Soviet Union’s, there are overar
ching methods by which the economy can be kept
closed; and even if every Russian were tomorrow
to find himself free to purchase a bottle of Mr.
Kendall’s Pepsi-Cola, the probability that the
Soviet Union would march to economic democracy
is slight.
It is wise at least once a year to remind oneself of
Trotsky’s response to the inquisitive revolutionary
seminarian who wondered how the little com
munist state would set about to achieve world
socialist. “We run our finger around the perimeter
of the capitalist world,” Trotsky replied, “and
where we feel a weakness, there is our salient.”
Characteristically the West has persistently
refused to apply Trotskv’s doctrine in its own
Ours has been a doctrine of coming up with a
countersalient. The Russians blockade Berlin? We
mount an air operation. They strike in Korea? We
defend Korea. They press in North Vietnam, we
press back in South Vietnam. They now rein
troduce bacterial weapons, we call for rein
troducing them. We appear to be incapable of
acting decisively on distinctive Soviet weaknesses.
These are, of course, economic and spiritual.
The Soviet Union would have a most difficult
time arranging credit sufficient to take care of
indispensable problems at home, let alone the
problem of continuing as a primary military
power. And to whom does the Soviet Union then
turn for credit? The West. The Soviet Union has
yet another bad harvest and needs bread: and to
whom does it turn for bread? To American far
mers. The Soviet Union fears above all things
emergent native disloyalty and insipient
separatism; and the United States discourages the
dissemination of appropriate news and analysis
over our braodcasting facilities.
It is this fear of striking our own salient that
commits us to that perpetual defensiveness under
which a country that has presided over the
cultivation of misery for its own people and for all
other people over whom it exercises dominion,
emerges as the overpowering alternative to
freedom and abundance. That is the problem in the
absence of the discovery of which Mr. Reagan’s
foreign policy will suffer the incoherence of its
antecedents.
behalf. Even through, just because a communist
said it, it is not for that reason contaminated. If a
Soviet doctor were to discover the cure for cancer,
we would not hesitate to adopt it. But we have
refused to run our finger around the perimeter of
the communist world, to strike where we find a
weakness.
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