Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1988)
.Editorial— Ghost of JFK lingers; torch has yet to pass Never has a ghost lived as John Fitzgerald Kennedy lives. Never has a death seemed so impossible to so many. The moment of it stands frozen in time for millions. The moment aged the nation, and America has grown worse from the loss of its dreams. JFK stood as a symbol of our grandest myths. He will be remembered that way. We, as people, as a collective nation of diverse histories, see ourselves in time in relation to the moment he left us, and the pain that haunts us, that seared the eyes of our mind, in a way, defines who we have become. We carry the moment with us wherever we go, no mat ter what we might be doing when it comes back to us. We pass along a folklore of stories of the moment he died, of how, at that one moment in time the President moved into our small worlds in a personal way which most of us would never have thought possible. Everyone carries a version of the same story, the story that begins with the perspective of place, with the mun dane, the impossibly small, the impossibly innocent, where we were, whether the sky was cloudy or clear, who was in ' the room with us, what we said, the way we stood, the ! clothes we wore, the insignificant object we held in our hand. Since the moment we heard of the assassination, all we have had of the man is the moment, and we find ourselves there again. The media does not need to remind us. Kennedy’s life, his achievements, his words, his goals, have all disappeared in the cold shadow of the pictures we saw in Life magazine, the memories of the funeral proces sion, the flag draped coffin, the well trained horses, the un ending burning of the torch on his grave, and our long jour ney homeward — of moving away from him, of leaving him for our own lives and bur own private pain. We are not likely to forget; we are not likely to forgive. Much has changed since we lett oui moment in 1965, but as humans, we remain hurt by the lesson, we remain afraid and furious. But we come not to praise Jack Kennedy. We come to bury him. In Kennedy’s time, we as a nation came alive with hope and love and dreams. A new era was born. Perhaps we needed his leadership to carry us through it. In any case, we lost something somewhere, if not with his death, then soon afterwards. We desperately need new leaders to admire, new hopes, new dreams, new aspirations for a new world. We need to direct that compassion, that strength, that anger and hu manity that we find in the infamous moment in our collec tive memory, and move toward a plan that will allow JFK to rest in peace. During the past month, in this the 25th anniversary of his death, the ghost of Kennedy and the traumatic moment of his death has spread wings and has vividly entered our lives once again. The truth behind his death is gone, unlikely to emerge. Let us praise all of our dead leaders, all of our friends, but look forward. We hope we may create a present in which great leaders can live, but also an era in which men with great visions can be elected, whether or not they exhibit Kennedy’s orato ry skills, and whether or not they happen to have the same skin color or same religion into which we were born. We will never again have another JFK, and we may never again have another like him. We may never have dreams again like the dreams we had then. Kennedy spoke of passing the torch to a new generation. But our generation has failed him. We have kept his ghost around because we have found no one to carry the torch. We are sorry, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Maybe you promised us too much. We are sorry for what we have done with the moment you died. Perhaps we have wasted it, after all. ya»**y*r<vtst*v<ce HIGGINS, YOU'LL COVER -The olue north irial YOU'RE YOUNG ENOUGH To BE ALIVE WHEN it's Finally over EDVTOK. Forum Constitutional democracy threatened By Michael Colson How does it happen that to be anti-communist we become undemocratic, as if we have to subvert our society to save it? This is partly the answer: The powers claimed by presi dents in national security have become the controlling wheel _Commentary_ of government, driving every thing else. Secrecy then makes it possible for the president to pose as the sole competent judge of what will best protect our security. Secrecy permits the White House to control what others know, and that's power. How many times have we heard a president say, “If you only knew what I know, you would understand why I’m doing what I’m doing”? But it's a self-defeating situation. Someone said, “Everything se cret degenerates, even the ad ministration of justice.” So in the bunker of the White House, the men who serve the presi dent put loyalty above analysis, and judgment yields to obedi ence. Just salute and follow or ders. It was career military men who managed the Iran-contra debacle under Reagan and North; Poindexter, McFarlane, Secord and Singlaub were all trained to fight wars, not run foreign policy. In war, the aim is absolute and simple: destroy P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, Oregon 97403 The Oregon Daily Emerald is published Monday through Friday except during exam week and vacations by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co., at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices on the third floor of the Erb Memorial Union and is a member of the Associated Press The Emerald is private property. The unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. General Staff Advertising Director Production Manager Advertising Coordinator Classified Sales Assistant to the Publisher Susan Thelen Michele Ross Sandra Daller Colynn McMath Jean Ownbey Editor Managing Editor News Editor Co-Editorial Editor Co-Editorial Editor Sports Editor Photo Editor Entertainment/Features Editor Night Editor Aaron Knox Kelvin Wee Carolyn Lamberson Paula Green Robert St. John Gary Henley James Marks Frank Byers Kelvin Wee Associate Editors Community Betsy Clayton Higher Education/Administration Michael Drummond Politics Don Peters Student Government/Activities Frale de Guzman Accounts Receivable, Circulation, Newsroom.686-5511 Classified Advertising.686-4343 Display Advertising.666-3712 Production, Graphic Services.686-4361 the enemy no matter what. They had little understanding of politics in Iran. Nicaragua, and most importantly, in Wash ington. Our foreign policy has in creasingly become a military policy. Ronald Reagan has dou bled the number of military men on the staff of the National Security Council. What was created in 1947 as a civilian ad visory group to the president has become a command post for covert operations run by the military. Far removed from public view and congressional oversight, they are accountable only to the one man they serve. The framers of the Constitu tion feared a permanent state of war and secrecy (like what the NSC has provided under Rea gan), with the commander-in chief served by an elite corps who put the claims of the sov ereign above the Constitution. The issue here is not whether we should pursue a foreign policy that guards against the Soviet Union or our adversar ies. Obviously, the Soviet Union and the many adversar ies around the globe represent a threat to our interests around the world and to our values. However, the real problem here is the excessive American per ception of that threat, and what it leads us to do, Because in ad dition to distorting our domes tic priorities, to undermining our democratic civil liberties at home, in the end, arguably, it actually does damage our na tional security. George Bush does't seem to realize what Michael Dukakis does about national security. National security for the United States is making the United States a good place to live for all people, where people want to be active, intelligent and in volved citizens. For people at the top of government to say “This world is so complicated and so dangerous, just a few of us need to govern it and hold the secrets in and we will tell you what's good for you," that is moving down the road to dictatorship The Founding Fathers never intended for George Washing ton to be able to go to George 111 and say, "1 don’t like what Congress has done here; give me some money, I’ll hire some mercenaries, and we’ll call it American foreign policy." That would have been treason. There’s a great danger that in this country we would accept automatically things that are said to us in a doctrinaire fash ion. In the case of Contra-gate, it was that we’ve got to be fighting communism, and so that can be the whitewash that Ronald Reagan and George Hush can use to cover up a multitude of sins. I think that's tiie strong evidence that that is what was going on, and we can't be fighting for democracy in Central America and seeing it shredded back here at home. It doesn't have to be. The people who wrote this Consti tution lived in a world more dangerous than ours. They were surrounded by territory controlled by hostile powers, on the edge of a vast wilder ness. Yet they understood that even in perilous times, the strength of self-government was public debate and public consensus. To put aside these basic values out of fear, to imi tate the foe in order to defeat him, is to shred the distinction that makes us different. In the end, not only our val ues but our methods separate us from the enemies of freedom in the world. The decisions we make are inherent in the meth ods that produce them. An open society cannot survive a secret government like the one we have seen under Reagan and Hush. Constitutional de mocracy, you see, is no roman tic notion. It’s our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us. Michael Colson is a political science major and president ol the University Democrats.
