Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / May 2, 1968, edition 1 / Page 2
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'Sure makes a solid foundation to work on!* EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man ----And He May Be Wrong Help Wanted The most pressing “Help Wanted ad in American publications today is for people of courage. We need men and women .of courage in public office, who are intelligent as well as courageous to beat back the criminal hordes that have such a major portion of our. nation hovering behind: double-locked' "doors for a large part of their life. We need officials of courage in our colleges and universities to enforce the regulations and common decency in then student bodies, so that a hoodlum min ority cannot disrupt the entire campus. We need voters of courage who will turn their backs on the cheap, political promisers who offer them “freedom and plenty”. We need workers of courage who will stand on their own ability rather than behind the blackmail of union gangster ism. 4 We need preachers of courage who will face the truth and quit leading their congregations down false, dangerous by ways. This nation was built on raw courage by men, women ana cnnaren wno iaceai the unknown wilderness. Today the vast majority of us are unwilling to face the cold facts that stare us directly and closely in the eye. We unwittingly destroy the longstand ing goodwill that exists between the races in our country by permitting paid agents of discord to run riot across the nation. We permit the law-abiding citizen to be abused in his person and in his pro perty by pampering confessed and re peated felons, whose welfare has come to be more important in this generation than the general welfare. When our forefathers wrote of the common welfare, they prescribed a sys tem under which precious protections were erected for the law-abiding and they provided strict penalties for those on the other side of the law. Today w© have strayed from these clear and simple principles and our nation is running from coast to coast this “Help Wanted Ad”. Wanted men and' women or courage to face the terrible problems of our times. About The Election Four years ago in the general election between Dan Moore and Robert Gavin, 1,396,508 votes were cast... 790,343 for enwtarial can non takers on Moore and 606,165 for Gavin. This was an all-time high vote in M rth Carolina About the only thing that is certain about this month’? primary election is that it will break this 1964 voting record. With very strong pressure for increased colored registration, which has gone almost unanimously to the Democratic Party, and with the first Republican Par ty primary within the memory of most Tar Heel voters there has been unpre cedented pressures at the voter regis tration offices. Conservative estimates call for a lib eral vote of 900,000 Democrats mid 700, 000 Republicans in the Saturday voting. Just how this huge ballot pie will be sliced is a matter of high conjecture, and some socalled professional prognosti sere has to be wrong. Which set ,is wrong will not be known until late Saturday night, or possibly early Sunday morn ing, because it’s going to take a long time to count all these votes. One mayassumewitb some confidence that Negro Candidate Reginald Hawldns will get the majority of the estimated 200,000 Negro Democratic votes . . which may very well be enough votes to force a second primary in the 3-way fight for the Democratic nomination. It might, in> fact, be enough votes to put Hawkins himself in that second primary. That leaves about 700,000 Democratic votes to be fought over by Bob Scott and Mel Broughton. The likelihood of either Scott or Broughton getting a majority if Hawkins comes up with anything dose to 200,000 votes is extremely remote. With a Democratic vote approaching 900,000, the job of one candidate snag ging that magic majority of 450,000-plus iseveo mere than the most row optimist Tomorrow The World All across the world, and especially here in the United States the rats are climbing aboard the sinking ships of state, end the captains seem to be the first to deaert; reversing the andent mariner’s principles. At staid Duke University the president of that academic ship permits a handful of boorish pseudoetudsnts to occupy first his office and then his private resi dence. He, poor fellow, 'wound up flat on his back in Duke Hospital, where for tunately men of more courage enforced the rules about visiting and the mob was not permitted to congregate at the sick president’s beside. At Columbia University a tiny per cent of that huge school’s (27,000) stu dents have fiat out'dosed the entire school down; while school officials wring their pink little han^s and wonder what to do. In California, Tokyo, Berlin, Prague, Pekin, Bermuda, Washington, Detroit, Chicago, Farm the mob has been permit ted to run unhampered. Within two blocks of the offices of President John son in the White House police were or dered to stand' by, and did stand by and watch tooting take place. And the president joined in the cow ardly whine: “Life is more precious than property!”, as if there is any possible way to separate the two. The mobster who is permitted to loot a store today will take a life tomorrow if anyone stands in his way. There never has been and never will be any substi tute for discipline in the management of either an individual or a mass of indi viduals, and if we do not maintain the discipline of law and order these mobs that clutter and loot in small patches to day will grow into masses that will en gulf the world tomorrow. Barbarism has to be kept in check or it will destroy the world, and just as surely as any nuclear war that too many leaders spend their energies with, rather than worrying about worse dangers at their very door. About Bigotry Bigotry is defined: Intolerant attach ment to a particular creed,'opinion or practice. In recent years this word has practically been worn out in use with another word: Racial. Although the phrase, as well as the word, Bigotry, have unhappy connota tions in the mind of the average person one might logically wonder if what we need is not more, rather than less bigo try. Can one really be intolerantly attach ed to such creeds as love of family, of country, of religion of basic morality? Of course if such an1 intolerant attach ment causes one to take punitive action against those of another family, or coun try or erred the act is criminal, but so long as this intolerant attachments is passive there seems to be more to sup port it than to damn it. Finally, any realistic appraisal reveals every individual guilty of Some kind of bigotry. Perhaps the most virulent big otry in tiie world today is that directed against White Southerners. There are million* of fairly intelligent people who sincerely believe what they' say about Dixie is really true. Rationalization does not support the worst of these slanders of the White Southerner; that he is a “Nigger Hater1’. For if this bigoted generalization were true all Negroes would have long ago left the South, and sought the comfort of those “Soul White Brothers” to the north, east and west. Nor would it have been possible for the Negroes in the South to have ac cumulated more wealth, more college degrees, more homes, more farms, more bank accounts, motre insurance in force than all of the rest of the Negroes in the world combined. Each of us, if we are at all normal, and of course intelligence does have some at* a church, adeem PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS "V JACK RIDER Having been raised practically from the cradle on politics there is one sinall lesson that it takes a long time to learn, but it is a lesson that is completely necessary if one is to take part in the most popular American game. And that lesson is to not burn every bridge, or sacrifice every alliance because there’ll be another election next year and some of the people who are fighting you this year will be on your side next year.. Nothing could) possibly have proven ■that more than to see Lena Langston and Rachel Davis accepting the co-chairman ship of the women’s folks effort for Bob Scott in Lenoir County. Talk about strange bedfellows. But there are plenty more, in every county, in every race ev ery year. And one of the things that’s tnirinig a little “getting use to” for me is the spirited competition among Republi cans that is now moving into Eastern North Carolina. For all of my lifetime a Republican has very largely been some thing that lived up in the mountains, or kept his name on the local Republican books, hoping for a little patronage whenever fate happened to put a Repub lican in the White House. Growing up with such Republican! im ages around Kinston as Sam Newberry didn’t give one any high-minded notion about the GOP. But now Republicanism is becoming completely respectable in this neck of the woods. And it is an edu cation in itself to see one Republican tearing at another over their respective candidates. In my childhood the Republican Par ty was accurately called the Negro’s par ly, because all early registration of Ne groes had been in the party of Lincoln, who had freed the slaves. But this is no longer the case since about 98 per cent of all Negroes who now register have long since deserted Lincoln, who hasn’t done anything for them lately, and are registering with the Democrats who are promising more these days than the Re publicans did — even under Thad Ste vens, who promised 40 acres and a mule. But the Democrats are now prom ising $3000 pm* year and free rent. One of the great shrines at which all American — or very nearly all worship before is education, and if politics proves nothing else it does prove the need for better education, because no truly liter ate people would ever swallow half the hogwash that is put out by the majority of politicians. First off, anyone who could read and write and count to 20 with his shoes on ought to know very damned well that government cannot possibly give any one anything it has not first taken from someone else. Yet every year, in every election a lot of gullible voters inarch to the polls and vote for that most venal politician who has promised them most. As one result of this government ;. . at every level . . . has grown- to jfoait dangerous point where -now the first group that the politicians begin promis ing are government employees. Every man who runs for governor has to start off with how -big a pay raise he is going to -give public school teachers - and- other state employees. And, these -highly educated teachers in all too many instances march to the polls and vote for that little ole gubernatorial candidate who promises them toe biggest pay raise, little noting that it is the general assem bly which levies the taxes and votes the appropriations over which the North Carolina governor doesn’t even have the power of veto. So this week as old John Q. Taxpayer marches to the polls he ought to keep a few things in his mind, and foremost among these is that the candidate who promises the most may not be the best man insofar as the tax paying public is eaacerned.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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May 2, 1968, edition 1
2
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