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Balancing act
EDITORIALS
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Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
___ And He May Be Wrong
The Die Is Cast
The patrons whose children are in
volved and the taxpayers who under
write the costs may as well accept the
fact that the public school die is cast
and there is so little chance of changing
the direction that it is safe to say there
will be no change.
This is a sad day and an unhappy con
clusion because our area has lavished so
much tender loving care, and money, on
its schools that it is calamitous in every
posable way to see well-intendedi people
deliberately going about the job of de
stroying those schools.
If one wishes corroboration of this
extreme view he needs go no further
than Washington, D. C. to see what hap
pens when unreasoning force is used to
cause social change. There they had
instant total racial integration and since
they have had almost total re-segrega
tion. And what is worse; the District
of Columbia school system has fallen
from one of the very finest in the na
tion for both white and colored students
to 'what has to be-one of the very worst.
And while falling from splendor to
squalor the costs of those schools in
the national capital have skyrocketed
to the point now where the per capita
cost per student in the current school
year is over $1500 per year, coshpared
to a cost of much less than $500 per
student in North Carolina schools.
For three times as much money stu
dents are getting far less education.
How much less education cannot be
measured fofr perhaps a generation, but
in WasWngton it is conceded by people
1 of the segrbgatton-integra
that tne national capital
kbawdby
colored as well as white parents is ac
cented by the fact that this year private
school enrollments in the District of Co
lumbia include 9,132 colored students
and just 8,272 white students. So the
picture is clear: That eyery parent who
can, or who cares, is removing his chil
dren from a system that has 'become in
tolerably expensive and intolerably un
productive in the first business of
schools which is teaching.
Poor New York
New York has more than its fair share
of the nation’s population and as might
be expected it also has more than its
fair share of nuts, especially political
nuts.
In December ex-labor-lawyer-supreme
court-justice-UN-ambassador Arthur
Goldberg announced he was completely
retiring from politics. On March 19th he
announced his candidacy for governor.
Tocomplicate the affairs of New York
taxpayers the polls 'are quoted as "say
ing that Goldberg will easily beat In
cumbent Nelson Rockefeller, who spent
an estimated $6 million four years ago
to buy this job for one more ternj.
Whether pollsters are right or wrong
New York loses, and to add insult to
injury the state’s major metropolis has
little Lord Fauntleroy Lindsey as may
or.
But,® state that will elect a man as
one of its two United^States Senators
who does not live in the state is likely to
to have strange political
overlhe^
] Mailer; as
m u “
m
dent himself, are upset because the
twice combined to defeat wnat
feared to be nominees to the su
. _court who would construe the
constitution as it is written and not as
the liberals would prefer if to be writ*
ten.
And why not?
The liberals understand very clearly
that die basic key to their intense fed
eralizations of our government 'has been
in the complete prostration of recent su
preme courts before the 14th Amend
ment, which among other things never
was legally ratified.
But all that any ugly principle, or
lack of principle needs to survive is
lack of resistance by people who know
right from wrong. There is not a fed
eral district judge in the United States
who does not understand the basic ilr
legality of a series of decisions that com
pletely ignores every other phrase in
the total constitution except that partic
ular phrase which fits the purposes of
state socialism.
Equal justice under the law is one
thing but the pattern of the past 16
years under which all law has been bas
ed upon this phrase from the 14th
Amendment: “No state shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States, nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty of
property without due process of law,
nor deny any person within its jurisdic
tion the equal protection of the laws.”
This alone guarantees state socialism
if it is strictly enforced to the exclusion
of all other guarantees of the cbnstitu
tion. If if were enforced strictly in all
things it would immediately be uncon
stitutional to tax one man at a higher
rate on his income than another. If
a 10 per cent tax rate is legal under
this interpretation for one man it has
to be the tax rate for all men. But
these liberal courts have not only ig
nored the total written instrument of
government, but have also elected to
use their most precious phrases at the
leverage points most immediately sup
porting the establishment of state social
ism.
Of course, they are going to fight and
fight like hell to keep a court that will
continue this prostitution of the consti
tution.
problems of the Empire State. As a
candidate for mayor on the nut ticket
last year he proposed! withdrawing New
York City and declaring it the 51st state.
Perhaps the only better suggestion
would be for it to secede from the union
and become a foreign country, since
it has little in common with either the
rest of New York State or the nation.
By becoming a foreign nation it would
be eligible for foreign aid and it could
charge high tariffs for its product»ah<T~
perhaps balance a budget that is even
in worse condition — far worse — than •
the federal budget. V
New Yorkers must long for a La
Guar dia and a Lehman, both of whom
brought good government to the Big
City mid The Empire State. 1*.
JTOWS COUNTY JOURNAL
There are people who romanticize
themselves into believing that there were
“good old days” for which the patina of
time bps covered the harsh realities
and, about which there is far mom
myth than miracle. But time moves on,
and whether the old days were good or
bad them is not much to be gained by
wishing for things that were; either
as they were or as we prefer to remem
ber them.
' The profit is forward. Individuals
and nations cannot profit from the trade
of yesterday except as that bygone era
offers us lessons about what to do or
perhaps more importantly, what not to>
.do. And here again, each generation
prefers to make its own mistakes, even
if they are frequently the same set of
mistakes of yesteryear.
PollocksviUe merchant and insurance
man John Creagh told me a little story
Monday night at .the annual meeting of
the Neuse River Regional Development
Council, of which he is an executive
committee member, and the story has
a perfect pertinence for those who of
ten dull their day, and the company they
are surrounded by with over-romanti
cized memories of the good old days.
Creagh said a teen-ager came into his
store and asked for some ice cream, and
he flinched a little when he was told
the smallest order of ice cream dished
up was ten cents. The teen-ager ex
pressed the view that this was not the
very best policy he’d run into that day
and Creagh said he asked the .boy if
•he were doing any afternoon chores or
summer work and the boy replied that
he had a job cutting grass at the golf
course. Creagh further asked what he
was being paid for his job and was tdld:
$1.25 per hour.
Creagh then used a little quick arith
metic to let this youngster who had
been hit by inflation know that he
could'buy 12% servings of ice cream
for one-hour of work today and yet
when Creagh got his first job back in
the thirties he got 75 cents for working
10 hours a day in a tobacco field, or
7% cents an hour, which was enough
to buy just 1 Vt cones of ice cream at
the prevailing price in those “good old
days.”
This same arithmetic can be applied
to practically anyone today who com
plains about either inflation or too-high
taxation. More people have more money
to buy more tilings in these United
States today than any people ever have
had in the history of the world. Yet a
great many of us spend a-very uncon
structive part of our time bellyaching.
Naturally I include myself in this belly
aching category, but I do hope that a
majority of my complaining is a' trifle
more constructive than the same old
sing-song about the good old days.