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About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 1963)
. PAGK-M HERALD AND NEWS, Klamalh Falli, Oregoo Wednesday, November 6, 1963 WASHINGTON CALLING m m .... dibfujcd (paqsi Facts About The Foe More and more schools and colleges in this country are teaching the study of com munism. The trend is a wise one. We need to know and understand this complex force which bulks so large in the world power struggle. A point already pretty well made is that such teaching should not be in the hands of either amateurs or self-appointed experts on communism of whom there are many. Sidney Hook, a New York University professor who is a genuine expert on this subject, makes another sturdy argument. He says you are not teaching the study of communism when you merely denounce it, speak generally of its evils, indicate that only fools could embrace it. Writing in the New York Times mag azine, Hook asserts that our study will have to be much tougher than that if it is to be of any use to us. It is very comforting, though hardly very enlightening, for us to declare com munism a failure because it cannot solve its agricultural problems, keeps hundreds of millions at depression level, suppresses the liberties of those same peoples. But that is not exactly the entire story. And we need to know the whole of it if we are to gauge and counter the most pow erful adversary of freedom that has ever gained foothold on this earth. Whatever its glaring, awesome failures, communism is in fact the ruling system for well over a billion people in the world. Most may not have consciously chosen it, but that does not alter the fact that they have it. The question for us is: "How did it happen?" This has been not only a bumper year for automobile production, it's been a bumper year for automobile thefts. No less than 249,368 cars worth more than $225 million have been stolen in the first nine months of 1063, reports the National Automobile Theft Bureau. This is a 13 per cent increase over the same pe riod in 1962. The bureau cites two factors contribut The Pot Snobbery is not a very attractive alti tude of mind. But, unhappily, it is not the exclusive possession of any narrow econom ic or social stratum. It turns up every where. The American workingman is often de scribed as the salt of the earth, the living embodiment of the democratic ideal. But some of his fellows can be every whit as snobbish as the most highly placed execu tive traveling in "exclusive" social circles. Some of these workers would never consider for a moment trying to understand the man on the higher economic rung. They have him all figured out, all decked out in clear black and while. Their badge of honor is that they do NOT talk to him any more than necessary. Strangely, this kind of snobbery often saddly distorts religious feelings. Differ ences there will always he, hut they lose their value if not steadily underscored by the Idea of universal brotherhood. Nor is the great racial struggle free of this kind of thing. Negroes want not only belter treatment but also better understanding and good will from the white population. Many of them Rare Art Masterpiece Few of us ever have folding money in our pockets long enough to become very well acquainted with it. And even fewer people have enough familiarity with money to have bred contempt for it. But there's a fellow in Miami, Fla., who has complained to his congressman about the $10 bill. He thinks the obsolete car in the picture on the back gives Amer ica a bad image and certiinly docs not con vey the idea of progress which this nation Is so proud of. Actually, the street scene In front of What is the real history of how commu nism became established in the Soviet Un ion, in China, in satellite eastern Europe, in Cuba? Unless we can grasp the circumstances,, the techniques of politics and subversion which worked in these places, we will really not know how to combat communism here and in other free places. We have also to understand that com munism's failure is not total. By one of the great, wrenching shifts of modern times, the Soviet Union in four decades converted itself from a peasant agricultural land to a mighty industrial country competing for leadership in the space and nuclear fields. We do not help ourselves when we ig nore this. How can you combat an enemy when you do not face up to what he is? We further cannot blink the truth that communism, for all its failures, for all the ideological stresses between Moscow and Pe king, still exerts an enormous appeal for millions of underdeveloped peoples around the globe. Our studies must show us why this is so, how the appeal is made to register, what we can do to combat it by exposing it for the fraud it is. This last, Hook suggests, can be man aged only by attacking communism in its specifics, by revealing its history. Calling it evil has become a boring generality even to many who hate it. Studying communism, then, is a major education enterprise that deserves the best of our scholarship and the fullest participa tion and support of the whole American cit izenryadult and student alike. Locking Is The Key ing to the spread of car thievery popula tion explosions in both( automobiles and teenagers, who take eight out of every 10 cars stolen. Because teen-age theft is usually spur of" the moment, the bureau says auto own ers could drastically cut the theft rate by simply removing their ignition keys and locking their cars every time they park. And The Kettle realize that this is a two-way street. But large numbers do not. . While asking much, they too often give little. They want full understanding of their problems, but think seldom of white men's problems. Warped to its worst aspect, this inverse snobbery is expressed in the reckless com ment of an Adam Clayton Powell: "We've got the white man on the run!" What multiracial society can long pros per in which one group has another "on the run" and wants it that way? Obviously, too, there is snobbery among nationality groups. Pride of nation is natural. But those who live on this soil as full-fledged citizens arc Americans not Poles or Italians or Germans. Snobbery is a barricade. We have no business trying to erect such barricades in a society whose hallmark Is its fluidity. Snobbery does not become democratic when practiced by a man with a grievance, real or alleged. It is just as undemocratic when exhibited by a man in overalls, a Ne gro, a Catholic as it is when shown by a corporation president, a white man or a Protestant. the Treasury Building was ridiculously in accurate even when it was engraved in 1929. There are a mere four motor vehicles and 12 pedestrians in sight. Washington hi'sn't been that depopulated since the Brit ish were careless with matches In 1814. However, as one -Treasury spokesman commented, the out-of-date ten-spot is "a symbol of the stability of the American econ omy." On that controversial note, perhaps it is best to close the subject. K If 1 W W K JV WASHINGTON WINDOW Political Platforms Contain Something For Everybody By LYLE C. WILSON United Press International Sen. Barry Goldwater (R Ariz.) should be able lo lick Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller in any showdown debate of their disagreement on what a presi dential platform should contain. Rockefeller wants an item ized platform containing speci fic promises on such major is sues as taxes, foreign aid and civil rights. Goldwater is against that. The senator wants a platform con sisting of a statomont of Repub lican principles without spelling out promises to do this, that and the other thing. Rockefeller has precedent go ing for him. It is customary for the political parties to make specific promises in their pres idential platforms. Some of the Kennedy administration's re cent trouble with the civil rights bill in the House Judiciary Com mittee flowed from Uie ambig uous specifications of civil rights action to which the Dem ocratic Party pledged itself in the 1'JfiO presidential campaign. It has been the custom, how ever, for political parties lo make specific promises. So, Rockefeller defends a well es tablished position in his propos al that the Republicans do like wise next year. Only if the plat form were specific and satis factory, Rocky said, would he support Goldwater if the sena tor were nominated for Presi dent. The weakness of Rockefeller's position and the .strength of Goldwater's opposition is that platform specifics have b cc n carried to Uie point of absurd ity and political dishonesty. Platforms now arc written to include something for everyone vote catchers. The platform writing committee of any na tional convention is a pressure By Speaking of bridge, as 1 was yesterday, reminded me that the most decisive element in any bridge hand is usually the opening lead. .More than half the time, this move determines the success or failure o a con tract. The Spanish have a saying. "The first step is half the d i s tance." whose truth we do not fully appreciate, t have found it to be true even in so subjec tive a process as writing a dai ly column. To write the first sentence is much harder than writing all the rest of it If my "opening lead" is right, then whatever follows is smooth and well-proportioned; hardly a word needs to be changed or a sentence restructured. If t h e opening sentence is poor, it is easier for me to throw it away and start another topic than to proceed from a maladroit lead The importance of getting otf to a good start w ith a child, lor instance, can hardly be ovcrei. timaled. The first year is by tar tlie most important yet many, if not most, people wrongly be lieve that a baby is simply a lump of protoplasm which does not need serious and tactful at tention I beyond changing and feeding) until it can stand up and babble a few words. A wrong start, by its very na ture, keeps getting more and more awry, and each day it becomes increasingly dilficull to correct Uie curve. Once a boy. for example, becomes tagged as a "delinquent." his tendency is to become more so not neces sarily because of his nature, but because his treatment by others sett up a vicious tacit of mis trust and resentment. Only he roic el torts ion both tides) can erase the initial impression his conduct has made. Equally, in our relationship with a new person, if we get off on the wrong foot, things can group lobbyist's paradise. i Suppose the spokesman for the NAACP and other Negro organizations appears before the committee to proclaim ag gressively that there are mil lions of Negro voters in k e y states and that they want U.S. Senate rules changed to pre sent filibusters. Most of the politicians seeking tlie presidential nomination are pretty sure then to endorse the proposition and denounce fili busters. They do that to win delegate votes in the convention and Negro votes in the election. They endorse and denounce even if they know they can't make good on their promises. Language satisfactory to NAA OP goes into the platform. That happened at the 1960 Democratic National Conven tion. Such things occur also among the Republicans. And such things are giving plat forms, politicians and political conventions a bad name. The name is for political dishonesty. So long as nominating conven tions write specific political promises into their party plat forms, just so long w ill tins bad name prevail. Moreover, these specific platforms compound political scaluwaggery by induc ing the habit of political dis honesty. Phoney- platforms make con men of politicians. Confronted with campaign promises after on election, they have been known to brush them off as mere campaign oratory. In such an environment there thrive in Washington the little scandals, tlte little messes, the mis-use of official stationery to arm-twist political donations. Why blame Senate Democrat ic Clerk Bobby Baker for ad justing himself to the es tablished political environment? The rotten apple is buried deep in the nominating conven tion barrel. STRICTLY PERSONAL SYDNEY J. HARRIS only go from bad to worse. How often have we found, however, after not seeing sucli a person for a long time and Uien re mcoling. that wo were wrong in our first impressions, and it is possible to be friends. Making an utterly new start is the only way out. We commonly think of t h e "beginning" as just a point in time, from which developments proceed in regular movements; this is a wrong conception. The beginning includes the end. con tains the seed of its own future, and is thus more crucial than any other part of the event. Anvone who remembers, as a BERRY'S WORLD "Wbot Jo YOU think 1 think tbout challenging the Coin A'oirr to m touch foot bill gmt" PIP (Mi By MARQL'IS CHILDS WASHINGTON The strate gy of the Southern segregation ists in their war against the Kennedys and the North is not to be discounted. The goal is to hold change to a bare minimum in the conviction that Northern ers will themselves be alienated by the tactics of Negro leaders who seek by public demon strations to make their case. Thanks to the one-party sys tem prevailing in most of the South and to seniority, their representatives in Congress are strategically placed to delay and obstruct civil rights legis lation. The odds at the moment are probably against passage of a civil rights bill at this ses sion. While Northern bickering and bungling have something to do with it, if this is the out come the Southern bloc can take a big share of the credit. The deepest of the Deep South is Mississippi and there, as this reporter observed re cently, the effort is to keep the struggle on a cold war basis. The visitor is told that every thing is fine. If it weren't for a . few outside agitators there would be no trouble at all. Gov. Ross Barnett says Mis sissippi's industrial develop ment is moving right ahead. If figure? provided by the Depart ment of Commerce in Wash ington show that other Southern states are making faster prog ress, then those figures are wrong and Mississippi's figures are right. Under a system of commu nity bond issues plants are built with public funds, the key handed to an incoming industri alist who pays a form of rent that services Uie bonds and then after a period of years he owns the plant. A right-to-work law incorporated in the state constitution keeps union influ ence down and wages corres pondingly low. Claude Ramsay, state head of the AFL-CIO. calls this a kind of "socialism for the rich." Resisters and nonconformists are squeezed out. At the begin ning of last year 28 younger Methodist ministers signed a statement calling for freedom of tlie pulpit and for public schools to remain open if they were integrated. Only 12 are left in the state and one more, is soon to go. Recently six teams of Metho dist ministers from Illinois were joined by Negroes in Jackson, the capital, and they sought to join in Sunday worship. Three teams were arrested, law en forcement officers entering (he EDSON New Bv PETER EDSON WASHINGTON iNEA) - A new kind of advocate for pas sage of a strong civil rights bill by Congress has appeared on the capital scene. He is Jerome Smith, a 24-year-old Negro from New Orleans, who is field secretary and or ganizer for CORE the Commit tee on Racial Equality and the National Association for Ad vancement of Colored People. He was one of the original freedom riders in tlie South. He has been arrested 12 or 13 child, getting off to a poor start i either inside or outside the classroom) in a new school will vividly recall how difficult it is to establish an equilibrium af ter the first wrong step has been taken. We can recover from late catastrophe more easily than from earlv failure. Mississippi Languishes churches in two instances to carry out tlie arrest, according to the ministers. They were held in jail under S1.000 bond. Fed eral Judge William H. Cox, an appointee of the Kennedy Ad ministration, said: "You came here locking for trouble and you found it." The University of Mississippi at Oxford is now 100 per cent while with the dismissal of Cleve McDowell, a Negro law student, who was found to be carrying a pistol. Up to 20 per cent of the faculty have left since the riots over the admis sion of James Meredith. One of those leaving was the distin guished dean of the law school, Robert J. Farley. The cold war can turn hot. The murder of Medgar Evers in Jackson in June removed an outstanding leader of the Na tional Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People whom many consider irreplace able. No one has been prosecut ed for that murder. The visitor is told of threats and intimidation contributing to fear and suspicion seldom re flected on the deliberately calm outer surface. When Ralph Bunche c a m e to Jackson on United Nations Day. which Gov ernor Barnett has refused to recognize, he spoke at a small Negro institution. Tougaloo Col lege. For whites to attend that meeting in the college hall ap parently took courage. 'Frankly I'm Pooped . . . Why Don't You Take A Break. . .!' IN WASHINGTON Negro' Is times, he says, imprisoned three months in Mississippi and a month in Louisiana for breach of the peace. Young Smith is appearing in Washington under the sponsor ship of the Leadership Confer ence on Civil Rights. This is a federation of fij church, labor union and Negro organizations which have pooled efforts to lobby tor stronger legislation than the moderate Kennedy bill. Smith's assignment is to call on congressmen to let them see what a young Negro leader looks like, how he talks, what he is thinking. But he says he has been having trouble seeing anyone. Congressmen are so busy. He is a tall, slender, clean-cut young Nosrn. He wears blue denims, a blue cotton shirt open at the collar and tieless to show a clean white cotton un dershirt. "This is the uniform of the cotton fields," he says simply. "I'm part of the cheap labor of tlie South." He has worked on the docks and helped his father, who is an auto body repairman in New Orleans. They have trained him almost too well. His phrases are too S. lib from repetition. His vocabu lary and English are good, but he uses too many bis words. His sincerity and devotion, how ever, come through. It is not pleasant to hear what he has to say. and it may be more shocking to read. But it is worth hearing and reading because it brings you right up against what the Negro mass es in America are being told by their own people in this pe riod of internal strife and con fusion. "I'm appalled by the contro versy over the civil rights bill." he begins. "When government has a conflict within itself, it has forgotten about the country and the people. The Negro win lose faith in his government if thiiogoes on. "It's suicide to think that the The chaplain of Tougaloo is a young white Methodist minister, the Rev. Edw in King. A iMis sissippian soucated in the North, he was assisted to a parish in Vicksburg and then ejected for his racial views. Tougaloo is integrated, with seven white students attending. The Reverend King is run ning as lieutenant governor with tlie NAAOP leader, Aaron Henry, of Clarksdale in a write in campaign to show what the Negro strength would be if Ne groes were allowed to vote. This might be described as an act of ultimate defiance of the white majority. King speaks quietly of the threatening tele phone calls and other acts of intimidation directed against him. The price of conformity can be high. The Illinois Methodists reported they could find no Mis sissippi Methodist willing to go to the jail to administer com munion to the ministers held there. Finally two Catholic priests took the elements of communion to the jail for use by the ministers. Are Northern whites being alienated by Negro tactics. Lt. Gov. Paul Johnson, the tradi tionalist Democrat running for governor, says he has had 65,000 letters from every part of the North sympathizing with the segregationist stand. Time, if one accepts this view, is on the side of the resisters. Impatient President's bill will suffice for the Negro in Alabama, Mis sissippi and Louisiana. What was good yesterday is not good enough for today. All America must go for broke to make sure we gel a broad bill. "I don't believe the President understands the passion of the people in the street. My free dom does not reside in Presi dent Kennedy but ill myself. He's not after what I'm after. My concern is not whether the President gets re-elected. "I put thumbs down on mod eration. I can't think in terms of moderation while police beat us over the head and dogs rip up real flesh. But I'm plain enough to know- that bitterness won't help. I must use my en ergies to bring about creative change. "I am nonviolent. But that doesn't represent the attitude of the masses of people in the country. "Nonviolence is not a con slant thing. This is not consist ent with human nature. They will finally react out of sheer frustration. The mood of the world is bringing about change. "Everv Negro in America is active. This is nothing new. It fuu been going on since the first Negroes came to America in chains." Almanac Bv United Press International Today is Wednesday. Nov. 6, the 310th day of 1963 with 55 to follow. The moon is approaching it last quarter. The evening stars are Jupiter and Saturn. On this day in history: In IMO. Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. In ldfiS, the first formal inter collegiate football game was played between Princeton and Rutgers at New Brunswick, N. J. In 1900. William McKinley wu elected President on the Republican ticket.
