Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Dec. 29, 1966, edition 1 / Page 2
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Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man —— —s—--! ——— —— —And He May Be Wrong We Are Not Amused There are 435 members of the united States House of Representatives. This number includes some saints and some sinners; some able men and some con genital idiots. But it includes only one Right Reverend Doctor Adam Clayton Powell, and that many is too damned many. Powell poses as a negro because he has what he calls “The World’s Largest Church” in the midst of the nation’s worst negro ghetto. And since he elected to pose as a negro many politicians, fearing the negro-bloc vote in their own districts, are reluctant to tangle with this Harlem pimp. This is the sorriest of all excuses for not throwing him out of congress, be cause his arrogant presence there not only assaults morality but also does dam age to the negro image. This poseur gives the anti-negro ah the ammunition he needs, and then some to point: “Look what a negro does when he’s given a little power and a big job!” Those who shrug and say, “Oh, he’s just a typical ‘nigger’.” ate the people who are really against negroes. The reasons for throwing Powell out of congress are too many and too fla grant to confuse them with “racism”. He has used this crutch to protect himself for much too long. If a majority of his colleagues can not find the courage and the intelligence to throw him out of congress then we’ll have to join the chorus who have long been declaring that congress is the weak est link in our chain of federal govern ment, when its constitutional role should make it the, strongest branch of the federal jgovernment. The power of the purse is absolute and congress alone has this power, and congress alone has the power to rid it self of a member who has flaunted de cency to that point where his presence in congress is a national shame and an international joke. The Answerless Problem inaia is an enigma, une oi tne larg est nations numerically. Potentially one of the richest if its natural resources were intelligently developed. But *a hu man millstone hanging around the neck of the world. China is, of course, another but the current outbursts of xenophobia have sealed China more tightly than when it hid for centuries behind its great wall. So the starvation, disease and ingness to change ancient habits i na are no longer the problem of wide missionary zeal. India remains c for; the world to see and to be cone ut. . ' United States has emptied tfs reiuses to neip himself or when the giver can no longer give? If Indians were to put aside their re ligious scruples about cattle they could immediately come upon a food supply large enough to feed every empty belly in that hungry land. Or if they cannot move from eating one bovine quadraped (sheep) to eating another (cpttle) they could at least shut up the wandering millions of sacred cows who meander about the country side, eating badly needed crops and destroying more. India itself must find the answer to its problems. Washington cannot Lon don did not in more than 200 years in India, although the Indians Were far bet ter off under British rule than under their own t Nam? blatant --congreii-is faced wfti crisis in these two extremes. Whether to win pr quit in Vi Whether to accept or condemt criminality in its membership? And between these truly natiom purely personal extremes congress must meet and defeat, or be defeated by such major issues as inflation, the overall farm^program, federal waste, wa ter and air pollution and theorising rate. Congress has to accept or reject the present executive idiocy which declares that an individual’s spending of a dollar is inflationary, yet the same dollar taken from that individual and spent by the federal government is not inflationary Congress must look carefully at the neatly empty national cupboard; where Once there was sueh an Embarrassing richness and now there is such a danger ous little. Congress must look at the 1966 elec tion returns and decide how much long er the voter will put up with federal ex travagance before turning the money changers out of the temples-of govern ment. Congress must also shift priorities and assign a much higher place to the problems of iur and water pollution. These problems need no lobbyists, since they speak eloquently and urgently for themselves. And finally congress must decide if it is to continue the abdication of its re sponsibility for the growth of crime in our nation. True, the courts are the basic cause of this, but congress is master of the courts if it chooses. Joseph In Egypt Most of us are familiar with the Bibli cal report of Joseph in Egypt. There is an application that this ancient event has today. Time is a relative thing; just as whether Creation took place in seven days or seven stages, the point remains valid, and the seven fat years and the seven lean years of Joseph’s Egypt may be spread, or shrunk in span of time. Certainly our country has been bless ed with many more than seven fat years, agriculturally, and we have spread our plenty abroad among those who have been less lucky. But now our surplus is gone. It is time for a major overhaul national farm policy. Lean years could come to America. Drought, disease or cither natural dis asters could wipe out our entire year’s crop, or the entire livestock industry. We here in Eastern Carolina only have to consider what our position would have been in 1966 if the rainfall of September, October and November had been switched to May, June and July. Instead of a farm income of hundreds of millions of dollars we would have had no income, and worse than the lack of in come would have been the serious blow to the food supply that this would have represented. . The farm surpluses came to be a po litical liability. Shortsighted politicians, purportedly representing the big cities began to use the farm surpluses as a gimmick. Such politicip,’o ognize that these farn far greater masses of the the people on In all but man on du who consult the stars, palmists and tea leaves most of us live in a world of easy unexpecta tions. For me this is better than' living in a world of fatalistic predestination. One Baptist sect insists, “What is to be will be!”, which is a truism, for obvious ly if it “IS TO BE” it can hardly avoid “being”. But the uneasy assumption that every act of nature or of man is fore-ordained is neither sustained by reason nor history. The frightening accidentalness of his tory is one of the more absorbing sides of history. And this is as true of indi viduals as of masses. Once a weird change-of circumstances has been wov en it is easy to chant, “What is to be will be!” But the will and weakness of man have far more to do with the events of his life than any master plan. So let’s peek beneath the curtain just before 1967 begins to strut its “hour” upon the stage of history. In our own country one of the most dan gerous revolutions any nation- has ever experienced will continue, but at a much Slowed pace. I refer to the almost un noticed agricultural revolution that has seen us now approach the day when less than five per cent of the nation is needed to feed the other 95 per cent. Since the beginning of life, and until now mankind and the lower animals have spent the majority, or- all of their time in the relentless search for food. In a majority of the world today this is still true. In Mighty Russia more than half the people are engaged in farming and are still not able to feed the other half well — certainly not so well as our five per cent feed the other 95 per cent. rius agricultural revolution nas ireea millions of minds and hands to do the things that have to be done in a complex industrial society. But at the same time it has cast up on harsh shores many mil lions of people whose heritage is rural. A large per cent of these are colored people, but millions are white. For the past 15 or 20 years misguided do-good ers and selfish politicians have used and abused these displaced persons from American agriculture, rather than try ing to help them with the kind of help they can absorb. There is little chance of making over a generation with a magic wave of the money wand, or even of that “superest” magic wand, the education wand. But this has been the major approach, plus passing of so-called civil rights laws, which declared a man’s right to eat in a cafe but put nothing in his pocket to pay for the meal. If the missionary zeal and money that have- been wasted in the civil rights cause had been invested in projects for the public good that would have given these American displaced persons an honorable job and a steady payroll the problem would be more nearly solv ed and our nation would have been spared the racism it now suffers on both sides of this economic fence. I believe the 90th congress will be convened on a more sober and conserva tive note than its recent predecessors and will finally turn its attention to this long-ignored revolution vthich has given us so much but has also contributed some minor problems of adjustment.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Dec. 29, 1966, edition 1
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