Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Jan. 28, 1965, edition 1 / Page 2
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EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man - And He May Be Wrong Sir Winston Churchill Nothing anyone can say will add now to the stature of Sir Winston Churchill, whose immortality is insured so long as men cherish freedom, courage and in telligence. But we feel the duty to add this tiny footnote to the tremendous volume of words pouring forth now on his death at the age of 90. We feel privileged to have lived in these momentous times on the same shrinking plant with so great a man. To have been in the remotest possible sense a fellow at arms with him in the terrible, and most important of wars. As an enlisted man, far down the ranks from such imperial personages as prime ministers, we felt safer and in better hands with “Winnie” at the helm. He was brilliant, impatient, courage ous, but the most human of the great men up until this date in the short his tory of man’s dominance in this realm. A Timely Suggestion In his talk Friday night to the annual Press Institute Duke University Presi dent Dr. Douglas Knight reminded that the South now has a second chance for greatness if we can heal up the ancient wounds and avoid the terrible mistakes of the past. Dr. Knight, a New Englander, refer red to many facets of this dream, but one most timely was the need now to avoid the industrial blight which has the Great Lakes and industrial east un happy and unhealthy places to live and work in. With an ever-accelerated arrival of heavy industry in the South every com munity — big or little — needs to in sist upon long-range planning that will prevent the pollution of its air, its wat er and its landscape. Fortunate a majority of the major companies who are coming to the South understand this need better than the communities to which they are coming, and largely because they are leaving be hind the kind of environment Dr. Knight warns us about. DuPont did not need a square mile to build its Dacron plant in Lenoir County, but it has beautiful square mile of neat ly clipped fields and handsomely design ed buildings. But there are companies who either cannot or will not appreciate the profit able application of such esthetics, and it is against this kind of “cannot” or “will not” thinking that each communi ty must be on guard. Not the least, but perhaps the most immediate need of any county in North Carolina is a county-wide zoning plan which will protect the things we already have and make better the things that are yet to come . How to Raise Taxes An old master such as President John son obviously needs no tutoring on how to raise taxes. In his budget message this week he does it in the most political fashion — by cutting taxes. The tax cut happens to fall in a very limited field and includes the so-called excise taxes on “luxury items” such as jewelry, furs, cosmetics and luggage. At present this rich man’s tax takes in about $500 million per year. This over-the-counter tax which hit? a small percentage of the national expenditure will be eliminated if LBJ has his way, which all expect But to take up the slack caused by this the President is asking congress to raise taxes on all wage-earners with ex tra payroll deductions that would be gin next year. So what he is doing, to use a fishy simile, is exchanging a big mesh net for a fine mesh net. The old excise net caught the big fish but thd little fish swam on through. Now the president is recommending the use of a net that will catch all the fish. Which is as it should be, because the majority of us fish swallowed his “line,” along with the sinker and the hook. All he is doing now is snatching lightly on the line to “set the hook.” A Political Certainty Political observe™ long ago pointed to thebasic defect in a democracy: That the have-less majority will destroy the systeto once it leans to vote into office the kind 6f people who are willing to take from the have-more to give to the have-less. Once this process grinds into motion the democracy is ended and state social ism takes over. And from the faceless tyranny of this bureaucratic system any basically free and intelligent people will soon revolt. Revolt leads to military dictatorship and finally back again to some kind of representative government — the kind our country is rapidly running from at present. We are told of the democracy of the Greeks, but there slaves were not per mitted to vote, nor women, nor people without property. We know of the “democracy” of the Soviets where everyone is permitted to vote — for a single slate of officers. Lehin called religion the opiate of the people, and there was some crude truth in his hypothesis 50 years ago. Today a more accurate paraphrase would be that “democracy” is the opiate of the people. Millions of people feel better about the explosion of state socialism in our country because they are permited to vote for it, and perhaps more import antly, because they are promised a few crumbs from the state socialist table. The same congressmen who so nob ly stand and fight for Medicare for the “poor old folks” have recently voted themselves a $144.23 per week pay raise and a pension plan that permits them to retire on up to $365.57 per week. The president’s poor widow gets a tiny check of $480.76 per week to keep the wolf away from her door. What kind of a private fortune would one have to amass to permit his own retirement at such a figure, or to leave his widow so secure? The Arts Council The newly chartered Kinston Arts Council has many things going for it, and not the least is a corps of hard working, hardheaded women whose presence assures its success. Every community needs, and eventu ally will have a rallying point for those who have some talent in any of the very many fields that make up our cul ture. Any effort to permit, and to encour age the greater flowering of these un iversal talents is a giant’s step toward a happier, more beautiful community. This is a step toward a better society that is homegrown, and we hope home nourished; a step that will do more than a thousand government programs to bring about this being called “The Great Society.” ■There is nothing “sissy” about culti vation of the arts, so we urge the men to pitch in and-help the women in this very fine undertaking. There seems to be some slight de gree of shock among our local “liberals” who are just now learning that “token integration” is not enough to keep them, or our area in good standing in “The Great Society.” Many of this breed will have to learn a few new “gliberal phrases”. “Some of my best friends are Negroes”; will no longer suffice. Something a trifle more intimate and broader will have to be found. Is there anyone for tennis? JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER, publisher Published every Thursday by The Lenoir County News Company, Inc., 403 West Vernon Avc., Kinston, N. C., phone JA 3 2373. Entered as Second Class Matter May 8, 1949, AT. THE post Office at Trenton, North Carolina, under the Act of March 3, 1879. By - Mail in First zone-—93.00 Per Vear. Subscription Rates payable in Advance. Second Class Postaoe Paid at Trenton, n. c. PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS »r JACK RIDER I figure I’m such an Old dog there’s not much danger of me learning new tricks, so when I attend press meetings I don’t spend too much time sitting around listening to spme fat publisher tell how he’got rich, or to some skinny professor tell me how to quit splitting infinitives. Last week’s visit to Chapel Hill and Durham fitted this pattern. I spent my time being amazed by the population explosion at Chapel Hill where on and off the campus there is tens of millions of dollars worth of construction going on . . . and a quick look at some of the awesome things already going on in the infant “Research Triangle.” There is less going on in Durham, which is to be expected because no private school — not even fabulously rich Duke, can hope to compete with public schools who have a firm grip on the taxpayer’s dollar. But this seems to fit a pattern too few of us are really willing to admit, even after we have seen it written again and again on the wall. Our civilization, because of automation and new products is rapidly switching from a productive society into a leisure society. Already we know our most basic industry — farming — needs only seven workers to feed another 93. Other industries have not progressed so rapidly as farm ing but the changes are going on, and today we see industry after industry in which half as many people are pro ducing twice as much goods. So we must not resist this trend but learn to live with it and enjoy it. Of first importance is education — not quantity but quality education — that takes this switch into consideration and persuades more people to accept some very hard facts of life. Not the least of these be ing the fact that more and more people are going to have to enter the service fields. Service has come to be an ugly word in the egalitarian patois of our political dreamers who somehow equate service with servility, which any reasonably in telligent person recognizes as not only absurd, but impossibly absurd. But service covers a very wide and utterly important multitude of occupa tions. From the upstairs maid to the manager of the swankiest resort hotel. They all have one common chore: to make pleasant the leisure and some times working hours of other people — many of whom are themselves upstairs maids and hotel managers taking a break in their busy life. More and more people are getting more and more time to spend the ex panding incomes they are getting. Du Pont has recently extended its already liberal personnel plan to provide up to five-week vacation, which can be ac cumulated for even longer sojourns on trips around the world and for more sedentary spells of “rest”. And DuPont Board Chairman Craw ford Greenewalt has recently said some words on the overall subject of educa tion that are peculiarly and particular apt on this subject: "I suppose that at any given time there woutd be a more or less constant percentage of outstand ing able people in our population. If we press too hard for more scientists, it seems to me that there will be either one of two results — scientific quality will suffer, or we'll, rob some other area of its creative people. Creativity simply cannot bo forced. Two men will not have twice as many good ideas as one, and if manpower is multiplied on a giv en problem, one may simply be adding pairs of hands with no increase in crea tive performance."
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Jan. 28, 1965, edition 1
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