Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Ot’^ion Of One Man
____ And He May Be Wrong
A Possible Shift?
Politics is a fluid affair and anyone
who begins to believe he knows what
is going on in this Great American
Game is just beginning to expose his
ignorance because each election is a
new ball game, and a ball game in
which not only the players but some
times the rules are changed.
But this spring there are a few straws
in the political breeze that may indicate
a possible shift. John Glenn in Ohio
and George Wallace in Alabama, to
name a pair of these straws.
Glenn was our first astronaut to circle
Mother Earth, a chore that won him
fame and fortune, but last week he was
beaten by an unknown Ohio millionaire.
Wallace is too well known for furth
er description, but he ran far behind
the man he elected lieutenant govern
or four years ago when Wallace en
gineered’ the election of his wife as
Governor of Alabama.
Wallace may still win in a second
primary . to be held June 2nd, but he
will have, to stoop very low if he does
conquer and even after stooping there
is no assurance that he will win.
The defeat of Glenn may mean the
4>nrt nf celebrity-elections because in the
beginning 98 per cent bf the voters'of
Ohio'knew Glenn and surveys indicated
that just 8 per cent knew his opponent.
'Yet his opponent won because he pro
jected the image of a businessman, with
a depp interest in public\affairs, creden
tials Glenn jnay have also had, but
credentials which were to a large
degree obscured by Glenn’s fame as
an astronaut.
Friends, including this writer, tried
to persuade Wallace that it would be
a, very serious mistake for him to run
against Governor Brewer. Wallace was
told that he had everything to lose
to gain but other equally
js fold Wallace, and he no
ce#dihn*elf, that be need
' ...
ed the-governor’s office as a podium
from which he could exercise national
political influence. Now it is unlikely,
even if Walace wins in the second pri
mary, that he will ever again reach the
national heights he enjoyed in 1968.
So the era of celebrities and segrega
tionist Southerners may have sung their
swan song in this spring’s primaries.
Order Is Necessary
The laws of nature demand order and
man cannot ignore' this simple truth
in his own affairs for very long because
if he does not keep his own house, his
own community and his own nation in
order there will be others available to
do for him what he refuses to do for
himself. ,,
Our nation is at that point in ita
affairs today where eech of us has, In
decide whether we prefer locally made
and locally enforced rules of conduct-or
rules made at a distance and enforced
against our wishes. '
Universities have reached that point
where they have to decide which is
preferable, enforced! rules Of their own
or enforced rules from outside.
Any law — even martial law—ispot
ter than no law: ' ~~ --
And unless we as individuals and as
a nation bring our permissive ignorance
to a spdden halt some kind of central
government will do the job for us.
Call it socialist, or fascist, or plain dic
tatorship. The name will mean very lit
tle as people in Russia and Italy siaA
China and Germany and Spain and Cuba
have recently learned.
As great as America is, it is not
above the simple rules of logic. Politics
as well as phykics abhors a vacuum and
if we confuse permissiveness with kind
ness, freedom with license, civil liber
ty with civil anarchy the rule that ap:
plies to every other country will apply
to us, and far sooner than many people
blasted Heather very nearly w> death
with a charge from a shotgun through
the window of the Reuther home. One
also cannot lose sight of the fact that
one of those who died in the plane with
Reuther was listed as Reuther’s body
guard. ' ■= ' : ; ; •
This, coupled with the jcecent mur
der of the United Mine Workers’ de
feated presidential candidate gpd wife
and daughter, at least serves to remind
that organized labor in America is still
a very bloody business . .. even though
labor unions do include coHege bred
leaders and kingly treasuries, stuffed
with money piucKea tram me pwseis
• of those they purport to represent.
Reutber was an openly admitted so
cialist. He got a major part of his high
er education in Moscow and he worked
during a 'busy and prominent adult
hood to do everything in his power to
shove America over the precipice of
state socialism.
We-naturally join 411 others in sym
pathy to his survivors, but we cannot
mourn Reuther’s death insofar as its
larger meaning to our nation. He be
lieved and preached that the workers
should own the industries in which they
worked, but the never made it equally
clear that when and if those industries
did pass frym their legitimate stock
holders that it would not be the work
ers who called the tune in those fac
tories, but it would be highly placed in
dividuals such as himself who would call
. the tune while the worker’s jpaid the
fiddlers. „
It was Reuther and the other dicta
tors of organized labor who very large
ly crucified Clement Haynesworth and
Harold Carswell. . . not because of their
views on race, but because of their
views on labor unions. There is noth
ing in America today any more segre
gationist than the labor movement as
the headlines will testify on nearly any
given day.
But the stake for which Reuther and
his associates were playing was for
total control not only of the workers
they represent, or misrepresent '— de
pending on one’s point of view — but
also an equally tight,control over every
facet of our national life.
For a generation they have held al
most total power over the federal govern
ment. We are sorry Reuther died under
such circumstances but we are not sor
ry that his talents and his plans are tak
, en from the American Scene. But we
need to keep in mind that there are
many more ready to take his place
in the effort to push our country fur
ther down that primrose socialist path.
dare dream at this day and date in our
'history. ">
If people in many of our major cities
today had the choice of martial law
that would protect their lives and prop
-erty ln preference to the existing gov
ernment which has so largely failed in
these first duties of government there is
little doubt how they would vote.
Parents who fail to discipline their
children cannot logically complain when
society is forced to do what they have
failed or refused to do.
Communities, whether academic or
industrial, that refuse to protect their
property, their regulation and their law*
■ abiding citizens win ultimately loose
the authority, as well as the power, to
control any aspect of their function
Authority withers if not used, and
we will have authority; whether we ex-r
erase it locally or whether R is exercised
upon as from afar.
1
To mi it is a source of frightening
and continuing amazement that our
sevefal levels of government are either
so sympathetic to, or frightened by,
the student revolt that they support
this anarchy by inaction. Whatever
the source of this paralysis of leader
ship may be the martyrdom of four
students at Kent State University has
crystallized this confrontation to that
point where now the leadership must
act or be replaced.
When the leadership on the campus
and in the campus town permits repeat
ed acts of violence and damage to life
and property to go unpunished a
vacuum is created that will not go for
very long unfilled. The stakes are
too high and there are far too many
“patriots” available who would like
'nothing better than to step into that
vacuum. Although this is hardly the
era for “Men on Horseback” there are
other modes of transportation available
to carry the dictator from whatever his ,
location and whatever his principles or
lack of principles to the throne room.
And it is so strange that the leader
ship which had the most to lose from
such a shift in the political winds is
the leadership that seems to be most
in league with anarchy. Wherever total
itarianism rears its ugly head the first
and most severely restricted, class is
the intellectual. Yet it is the intellectual
community in our.nation today that
lends the principal support to the crisis
in which we find our nation today.
vy*”
And it is also strange that people
who should be the best informed about
such things are among the worst in
formed. They either do know or do
not care where the financing of their
nihlism is found. They refuse to equate
revolt on the home front with victory
on the international front for the kind
of total thought control so widely and
so well known in that mass of mankind
suffering under any of the several
kinds of socialism; whether the original
Russian variety or the more recent Chi
nese type.
To me it is both irritating andi fright
ening that these people who should
know best and ■ who would lose most
blindly join hands with the very forces
that are directly contradictory to what
they stand for. 1
It forces one to seriously consider the
almost inevitable question: Are they
victims of the conspiracy, or are they
the conspirators themselves? This is
a question that must be gnawing at
the vitals of every board of trustees
of nearly every college and university
in the nation as they contemplate with
understandable terror, the events that
transpire upon the campuses over which
they theoretically have cbnfHSl: Tortu
nately when enough boards of trustees
reach an answer to that question they
still have the power to set their campus
es back on the. proper direction again.
The grinding issue is: Will too many
such boards wait too Jong to do what
is so urgently needed?