Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Aug. 14, 1969, edition 1 / Page 2
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II vA ’When I rang up the total, she just passed out!1 Never r„t„ Thai The" EMMA" °b7W*Z The Grandstand Play Governor Bob Scott has made a typi cally bad mistake with bis grandstand play involving five young colored men convicted a year ago of arson in the attempted burning of a Ku Klux Klan joint in Johnston County. Soott has set all five free after they had served about a y®®* a 12-year prison term Judge Wiliam Bickett had imposed upon them in superior court and after his sentence had ibeen upheld by the North Carolina Supreme Court. Scott’s decision was a mistake on sev eral .points: Primarily it was wrong in that it was a blanket clemency ... ex tended to all five at the same time, al though it is much more than likely that theite were varying degrees of guilt in volved among the five, and despite the fact that it is unlikely almost to the degree of impossibility that each of the five had behaved the same since their imprisonment. Parole and executive clemency should be exercised on an individual basis. And to individuals who have earned the right to 'have their original, legal sen tences shortened. If Scott had studied, or if Scott’s staff had given individual study to these five young men and then had extended mer cy to them individually over even a teas onably brief period the act would not \ be tainted, as it is now, with every element of the grandstand play* Secondly, Scott’s blanket endorse ment of arson is a further blow at the state courts. It is seMota, indeed, that any state court decision is left unfouled by the messy paw of federal judicial - second messing, so when 6' state court decfonn is left untouched by this fed eral paw it is adding further insult to state judicial integrity to have that sel occasion upset by executive log rolling. Finally, arson is one of the most co , wmrffly crimes to the boo* ... and it is a crime for whkh there is very sd dom a couvictiflB. We have no special consideration for Ku Klux K1*0, because p to© fro quently it is a cowartuy orgamzauuu that seeks to work its way behind white sheets and black masks. But society is in most serious peril when arson and' other forms of terror are substituted for law and order. Two wrongs never have, and never will, raafrft one right. If Scott had acted selectively the public and each one of these young defendants would have ac cepted his action as a proper exercise of executive clemency, but his sweeping dap at the courts and his direct slur at the orderly paroles system will only serve to worsen a situation that is al ready too bad. Something Right in 4 Denmark With public education under fire from an assortment of directions and with a greater percentage of Americans than ever before doing some serious think ing on the matter of education the col ossus of America might benefit greatly from analysis of, something right in Denmark. Denmark is a tiny nation of just 16, 619 square miles and) 4,869,000 people at the last official counting, ranking it about the size of North Carolina’s Coast al Slain. ' - Denmark has had free public school ing since 1814 — much longer than the United States', but built into their com pulsory education system is a check valve oil majority pressures that would be a blessing beyond compare if that oppressive American majority would on ly tolerate such a blessing. And that educational blessing is wjiat Ibe Dimes call a ‘Tree School’”, in that it is operated outside the governmental school syston hut with state funds for teachers and bufldteg and- Other gener __m*i • * - *? boards of commissioners even lessjade ful ihan the aforementioned^ mammary glands on' a (he hog. , 1 Examples: Rumblings are coming from tjye bureaucrat belly of Raleigh that Forsythe County commissioners may be illegally acting in refusing to bold, an election to determine if a 88 per cent increase shall be levied in the sales tax its citizens pay. Until recsfatly it bad been generally assumed that among the few basic rights and responsibilities of county commissioners was the levy ing of county taxes. But, apparently not so any (more if the txx, tax, tax 1909 sea sirin of the general assembly was acting either wisely or legally — matter which is still under considerable debate. And while the state’s official concern with Forsythe dereliction is fresh upon us there is still left banging in sonde area of the official limbo that excited concern of Welfare Commissioner Clif ton Craig over the fact that Jones ed official Raleigh, which is accustomed to sneezing on Washington's snuff-tak ing, because these brave Jones County souls have exercise what they had some reason to believe was a small part of their official prerogative to refuting to levy purely county taxes for a welfare program that was bom to Washington. Once upon a legal time it was pre sumed' that if citizens of a given coun ty, or a given state through their elec tive elders decided they wanted no part of a program they could! turn it down, but to this latter day of tjie representative re , public there is a pure purple passion for every mother’s son to be fed same public gruel out of the same public spoon and it is the outer limits of outer dark ness for any official who stumbles upon that ancient presumption which had to do with that cherished, but now perish ing, principle of individual rights — for principalities as well as that lonely unit of the 'body politic, called! you and me. Now it is conformity to the name of the “general welfare” that consumes too much of the thought of these in power. lish standards of education required for national life and the protection of the young, while at the same time provide' for the freedom of parents with special religious, ethnic, economic or pedagogic interests to oversee and direct the ed ucation of their children with minimal interference toy the government.” Mss Fuchs points out further, “De-, spite the hheral financing and govern ment cooperation in the formation of independent schools, they are used by only seven per cent of the children of compulsory school attendance age. The right to educate their children at home, outside the school, is also provided for by Jafw, but few parents use this prerog ative.” She says, “Of the group that does take advantage of right to use Free Schools, the majority dearly repreaento thorn who wish a particular idigtous educa tion for their other than that -■ »' ■ — — »$£§# itM' PARAGRAPHS JACK RIDER j Jift; 4a mr { If is difficult to find a practical* answ er to some profound questions that have the most far-reaching effects on each of us as individuals as well as on the great drama of world history. Such a question is the one resolved last week in con gress by the razor-thin vote of 51-to-49 which gave President'Nixon the green light to deploy what is being called a limited anti-ballistic missile system. I cannot avoid remembering another one-vote margin that kept the draft system going just before Pearl Harbor jmd in that same era another one-vote margin that permitted American mer chant vessels to]>e armed before United States involvement in the Hitler War. Perhaps the only similarity these three great congressional debates has is that each was decided by that slender one vote margin. ' ' But I believe history will view this comparison to have other dose kinship. In each instance the United States was, and is trying to say to those who might have doubts about our courage or our willingness to fight for principles that at least this thin majority of our lead ership feels otherwise.^ Undoubtedly the unpopularity of Am erican involvement in Vietnam made this vote more dose than it might have been in another circumstance, but pol itics do not function in a vacuum. Vot es are taken and decisions are made in the heat of whatever controversy there may be to divide honorable men, and this vote accents how dedicated, intelli gent, patriotic men can completely dif fer on an issue that each, side believes to be vital. If nothing else . this should serve to cause every average citizen — if there is such an animal — to be less dogmatic in our attitudes on matters that most frequently are of mtich less concern than national defense policies. Violence is the order of life — all life, vegetable or animal, and sadly 'enough has not been able to make any practical alterations of this cold: fact of life and death. Of course, it is waste ful to spend billions on defense systems that are never used, but as a wiser person than myself has recently point ed out: “It is only when such weapons are used that ihey represent a failure." And it should he the prayer of all m^n that all items of military destruc tion become obsolete from lack of use rather than from combat experience. JONES COUNTY JOURNAL Jack Run. PubUsktr As one of nearly a total majority who would prefer to see the national wealth spent on more constructive things than guns and bombs I have to keep^ myself reminded that pacifism and disarma ment are noble aspirations but neither is in touch with either the realities of nature itself or whatever refinements man may fancy himself as having made upon 'that plan of nature.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Aug. 14, 1969, edition 1
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