.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
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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.