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|, in circles, thinking that we’re keeping Christmas.
Page Four
EDITORIAL
Keeping Christmas
In her poem called ‘‘Leisure,”” Grace Noll
Crowell wrote: “I shall attend to my little errands
- of love early this year, so that the brief days before
Christmas may be unhampered and clear...”
~~ As for any errands connected with the
Yuletide, be they errands of love or the routine ones
that go with the season—could anyone start them
early enough to have days ‘‘unhampered and
clear’ just before Christmas?
Anyway, the thought is lovely, and it’s a worthy
goal. We know, as you do, what it’s like to be caught
up in a kind of frenzy known as Christmas
preparations—a pleasant kind of whirlwind we
must say.
But has it any merit?
For years the thought has plagued us: Where
do we miss the way at Christmas?
All of us work with joy and give with love, but
- who gets at the heart of things throughout the
Christmas season?
Always in the background, wistful and haun-
ting, is the question: What important urgency have
we overlooked as we wrapped those shining
packages and set up bright red candles in their
accustomed place?
If hours run out and there’s no time for visits
- with the lonely, then we’ve missed the meaning of
the celebration.
If weariness and rushing result in frayed
nerves, sharp words and lack of patience, then
we’ve been too busy at the wrong things.
If hearts are black with grievances and dulled
with jealous grudging, then we haven’t heard the
angels’ proclamation.
If selfishly we gather ‘round our fireside and
forget to share our bounty, then we don’t believe the
Christmas story. ;
We have a little time left—we who dash around
Spoiled Children
: . With the acceptance of Red China into the
‘United Nations, “a right wing element of US.
\Congressional leaders Have raised their voices in
protest. Led by Sen. James L. Buckley of New York
and ultra-conservative Sen. Peter Dominick of
Colorado, a congressional move has begun to
withhold U. S. funds to the UN because of the ob-
vious glee in the General Assembly the night
Nationalist China was voted out by a majority of
the 131 member nations.
Costs to operate the UN have like everything
else, steadily increased through the years. Unpaid
assessed contributions to the regular UN budget
from all countries, including the U.S., amount to
$164 million. A U.S. Congressional subcommittee
has decided to withhold a $20 million appropriation
for the proposed UN building expansion in New
York, thus adding to the groundswell among UN
delegates for a transfer of Secretariat offices from
New York to Geneva. :
The actions of Senators Buckley and Dominick
would appear to be like the proverbial ballgame
among youngsters where bythe owner of the ball
picks up his possession and goes home because he
doesn’t like the rules.
Secretary General U Thant told the budgetary
committee last Oct. 6 that a UN budget for 1972
would amount to $215 million. The UN, he said, was
“in a state of near and hopeless insolvency.” Its
ability to continue current activities, much less to
undertake new ones, ‘must be seriously
questioned,’ he stated.
Unless enough financial support was for-
thcoming from member countries, he added, he
would have to propose that expenditures be cir-
‘cumscribed by available resources. Such measures
“‘would of necessity be arbitrary in nature and
potentially disruptive of important activities and
services.”
While reform measures are obviously long
overdue in many areas surrounding the UN, the
location of the 131 member states is an obvious
benefit to the U.S. To relocate even part of the big
glass house on the East River because of fiscal
problems would be appalling when considered that
% the entire costs of the UN for all member states is
less than the cost of operating the New York City
fire department for a year.
THE DALLAS POST, NOV. 23, 1971
Insights _
by Bruce Hopkins
These things must be explained to me.
They are totally beyond my comprehension.
Often I am accused of being too sarcastic, too
snide, in my views toward the government of
this country. Often I have been accused of
being unpatriotic. If patriotism means that I
support unquestionably the United States
policies, then I am indeed unpatriotic. I
prefer to believe that patriotism means
support of the ideal upon which the American
system of government is supposed to be built.
It is an ideal that our patriots have somehow
gotten away from. Take for example, the
following events of the past month:
Amchitka. In the interest of national
security, the United States takes it upon itself
to risk serious damage to world environment
by exploding an underground hydrogen bomb
of incredible power. It blows up, gives the
earth a tremendous shaking, and thus is
somehow supposed to make us all feel more
secure. It rather did the opposite to me. The
very idea that this weapon might possible be
used someday above the ground, is absolutely
the most horrifying thought I can come up
with. Common sense, and my own personal
sense of security, tells me - that
building a bonfire in my basement to see if the
house will burn is not a smart idea.
Col. Anthony B. Herbert. Here we have a
fine example of the American system of
justice. Col. Herbert, for those who are not up
on these things, is one of the most decorated
soldiers in this country. He has served his
country in both Korea and Vietnam with
admirable patriotism. His sense of humanity
apparently obligated him to report several
atrocities, to which he was a witness, to some
superior officers. When these officers failed
to act upon his report, he pressed charges
against them. Whether or not he is telling the
truth has not as yet been fully established. In
the meantime, Col. Herbert is being urged,
with little subtlety, to keep his mouth shut,
and is undergoing a good deal of harrassment
by fellow military men. He has been denied
TRB
from Washington
We sat staring moodily at the television
set the other night as Mr. Nixon in the middle
of a statement snapped on that winsome smile
of his and said that he knew Phase II is going
to work because of ‘‘the enormous public
support’ behind it. For Lyndon Johnson such
a questionable utterance would have brought
hoots of disdain but for Mr. Nixon we just let it
‘pass; what's the use. If ever there was a
nation whose mood is cranky, grumpy ‘and
morose this is it, Most of the public; we think;
can’t make head or tail of Phase II; and what
Mr. Nixon interprets as ‘‘enormous support’
is just the universal hope that maybe things
will turn out better this time than they did in
Game Plan I, which he abandoned like a sink-
ing ship last August 15.
Well, the odd thing is, we think they will.
Get better, we mean. We know what an
outrageous statement this is at a time when
being optimistic is as unfashionable as
wearing a mini-skirt at a funeral but there it
is; we ‘just think the economy is going to
improve almost no matter what Mr. Nixon
does.
One reason is that Phase II finally ac-
cepts the fact that economists have been
writing about for 40 years, ever since Berle
and Means invented the phrase ‘ad-
ministered prices.’’. The old theory of Adam
Smith and Alfred Marshall and Keynes and
all the rest was that the law of supply and
demand would ultimately regulate prices and
jobs in the market place. But Gardiner Means
Changes
By Eric Mayer
Thanksgiving . . . November’s cold rains
have drowned the blaze of October. Leaves
lie, like tattered, discarded robes at the
black trunks of their trees. The few zinnias
that held out so long this year, touching the
garden dun with red, have been burned to
dark ash by the first hard frosts. Yesterday
some sparrows splashed in the bird bath but
today the water is frozen. It seems that during
a single rain swept night the lingering Indian
Summer has given way to winter and the
somber landscape silently denies any
memory of warmth or greenery.
Thanksgiving . . . Even before the leaves
come down the colored lights go up, to
compete in vain with the city’s neon glare.
Countless Santas, paunches assisted in
varying degree, take up their grueling
department store vigils. Money can buy
happiness, we are told. And just be thankful
that last year’s seasonal happiness, bought on
the installment plan, has been paid off in time
for this year’s celebration. The abuse of
Christmas is like the weather—everybody
talks about it, but . . .
Thanksgiving An odd holiday,
marking roughly the end of the yearly cycle,
Letters to
To THE POST:
I want you to know that your publication
of the editorial in the Oct. 27 issue of the Post
in support of ‘‘opposition” and the two party
system was appreciated.
The Back Mountain area, as you know, is
adifficult one for a Democratic candidate and
without the encouragement of local news
media, it would be practically impossible to
sustain a campaign.
Although I was unsuccessful, I believe
A Greenstreet News Co. Publication
A Fire in the Basement
Illusions
leave from Fort McPherson on the grounds
that he must complete a project which con-
sists of initialing a letter and carrying the
letter across the hall to his commanding
officer. This letter may arrive sometime
before November 30. On one occasion, he was
subjected to a long period of instruction on
how to salute properly and how to stand at
attention. I tend to assume that one of the
most decorated officers in the country has a
pretty good command of these skills.
The United Nations vs. the United States.
In what was essentially a democratic action,
that dastardly institution, the United Nations,
oppossed the better judgement of the United
States in its decision on Red China. As a
result, Senator Buckley has proposed that this
country withdraw a major part of its financial
support to the United Nations, and thus to the
world peace and understanding. Worse yet
Barry Goldwater has suggested that we force
the United Nations to leave the United States
and set up shop elsewhere. That’s good
democratic thinking: if you don’t get your
own way, pout. I believe that judicial terms
call this action blackmail. This is the
American way?
The Transportation Bond Issue.New York
voters were recently subjected to another
experiment in blackmail. In order to receive
a temporary postponement in the increase of
subway fares, New York City voters were
urged to support a bond issue which would
also allow the state to continue building un-
necessary highways that would cut down
trees and destroy some very beautiful natural
land, replacing it with concrete. In a huge
Madison Avenue advertising campaign that
must have cost a small fortune itself, City
voters were deluged with ugly subway
posters, billboards, and t.v. and radio ads
demanding that we vote yes. We voted no,
primarily on the principal of the thing. We
were offered no choice. It was vote yes or
else. We chose or else, and we will suffer the
consequences.
7
PRISON REFORM
All of this brings me to the most hilarious
expression of patriotism of them all: the
Passport Loyalty Oath. This oath taken by
individuals who apply for passports, requires
them to swear allegience to protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States.
Since 1967 this oath has been optional. But
Secretary of State Rogers recently made the
oath mandatory. Anyone who wants a
passport to leave the country, must swear to
support the country. In a very humorous
editorial in the Nov. 7, New York Times,
Russell Baker pointed out that this presents
rather a problem for the proponents of the
“America Love It Or Leave It” philosophy.
How can a person leave the country because
he disagrees with its policies and political
philosophy if in.order to leave he must swear
that he supports the country’s policies and
political philosophy? Mr. Baker entitled his
column: “America Love It or Stay.” Is not
this demand that individuals unquestionably
support our country similar to building a wall
around the country to keep people in?
Americans scoff at another country which
does exactly that. We claim that a calfntry
who forces its citizens to stay there cannot
have much confidence in its government. I
rather wonder if our fearless leaders aren’t
running scared.
Is there anyone who can explain these
inconsistencies to me? Is there anyone who
can justify the absurdities our government
currently busies itself with? There are so
many I haven't even touched upon. The
current fight to have prayers reinstated in
schools. What is religious freedom if you
cannot choose not to have religion? Tell me
what patriotism is. Am I a patriot if I support
government policies when they are so far
away from the ideals upon which t
government is based? We are approaching
the 200th anniversary of a country built upon
the ideals of freedom and equality. What j=, to
be celebrated when we are still so far a#gy
from those ideals?
Taking Stock in America
told Congress again just last year that that
isn’t the way things work anymore; that the
Nixon Game Plan One would collapse in a
year or so. It did.’
It didn’t work because power is now
concentrated so narrowly in big corporations,
and the big unions they deal with, that a
recession doesn’t drive down prices. They are
“administered.” Recently we had the
example of the steel industry, flat on its back *
from high prices and. with foreign steel
flooding the country, and yet it gave a big
wage boost to workers and set new high prices
for its own products.
Nobody has explained this better than the
Hon. John N. Mitchell, Attorney General,
who, in a speech June 6, 1969 said that in 1948
the nation’s 200 largest industrial firms
controlled 48 percent of the manufacturing
assets. “Today,” he added, ‘These firms
control 58 percent while the top 500 firms
control 75 percent of the assets.” All we can
say is that if this sensational information has
now seeped down to Mr. Mitchell it is pretty
widespread and must be accepted. Mr. Nixon
accepts it in his Phase II program which is
largely based on it.
He has set up three tiers of corporations
whose prices the government will monitor,
with the biggest on top—the monsters with
annual sales of $100 million or over.
America’s top 1300 corporations. If you
monitor them you pretty well monitor the
economy on the industrial production side;
they probably account for 90 percent of the
manufacturing assets of the nation. Their
decisions are webbed together by banks. A
staff report to Congress in 1968 found that the
trust departments of the 49 largest com-
mercial banks held $607 billion in assets. But
never mind the figures, the point is that the’
old laissez faire, free enterprise economy of
supply-and-demand that Herbert Hoover used
to. worship now belongs pretty much to
American folklore. It: is naturally left to: a
Republican: President: to quietly accept the
fact and to base his policy upon it. =
Mr. Nixon plays along with business
leaders, and they know and understand him:
just the other day he addressed a series of
$500-a-plate GOP financing campaign dinners
on closed circuit TV and raised $5 million like
shaking dimes out of a piggy bank. It should
give everybody a cozy feeling that the country
is in ‘good hands; power and politics g0
* together. -
Every effort abroad to manage an
economy by an incomes policy (i.e., what Mr.
Nixon is trying now) has failed so far as we
know; what makes us think this one will
succeed? Largely because we think the
recession hit bottom last year sometime and
is gradually getting better anyway, though
you may not have noticed it. The funny thing
is that several of the top men administering
the new Nixon program think so too—George
Shultz, head of Budget and Management, and
Herbert Stein, member of the Council of
Economic Advisers who is a spokesman for
the program. They are allied to the new
monetarist school of Professor Milton
Friedman, which believes that the amount of
credit available from the Fed turns on
prosperity or shuts it off, like water from a
faucet. It’s all pretty recondite, but the im-
portant thing is that they prayerfully believe
that the economy is getting better, slowly,
and will’ continue to do so; if Arthur Bins,
Héad: of ‘the Fed, will just keep the credit
faucet on. Their slogan is ‘In Arthur We
Trust.” Phase II is just a kind of icing on the
cake. ~
In April, 1970, Mr. Nixon told a press
conference, “Frankly, if I had any money I'd
be buying stocks right now.” The Dow Jones
Industrial Average stood at 735 and promptly
dropped 10 points. By May, 1970, it was down
to 631. Taking the formula 735-100, a Mutual
Fund that invested $10,000 on Mr. Nixon’s
advice would have declined to $8,700. But then
stocks rallied. They shot up to 950 after he
froze wages and prices, or an increase of
around 30 percent. The “Nixon Fund’ was
worth $13,300. Stocks have fallen since then
but last week the Fund still showed a com-
fortable $11,200 or so. As Democrats ruefull
remark, it all goes to prove that Mr. Nixe )
was wise to adopt a policy they urged. Indeed,
he abandoned his aversion to Peking, Moscow
and a managed economy all at about the
same time. é
Thoughts on Thanksgiving |
celebrating symbolically and a bit too late the
harvest, but serving simultaneously as a kind
of gigantic kick off dinner for Madison
Avenue’s annual $mas campaign. Recol-
lection of the Pilgrims’ grim existence,
during an age when full November larders
were indeed something to be thankful for, is
mingled with the expectant dread of
December’s plastic festivity.
I sometimes wonder about the way
Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, about the
kinds of things they seem to be thankful for.
What spiritual significance can we find in the
* huge turkeys and heaps of cranberry sauce
that weigh so heavily on our tables? Is it an
act of reverence for us to gorge ourselves at
the holiday feast when half the world is
starving? Is this bounty so many of us share
as Americans actually a “blessing” to be
thankful for and if we are thus ‘‘blessed” in
our material abundance, does it follow that
the poorer countries like India and Pakistan,
are cursed with its lack? Surely this uneven
distribution ‘of riches is purely accidental,
hardly an act of divinity, hardly a matter for
thanksgiving in a spiritual sense. There are
more universal blessings for us to ponder.
the Editor
that the effort was worthwhile because at
least a few more people are beginning to
realize the importance of a two party system
in encouragement of better government at all
levels.
Think you for your help and for a fair
presentation of all candidates’ views through
both the primary and general elections.
. Sincerely,
PAUL LAUER
Shavertown
At this moment, 30 million miles from the
green hills of earth a mariner spacecraft
peers down into the yellow dust of the planet
men have named Mars, after the god of war.
But the horror of human war has never
touched that alien world, human blood has
never stained its rusty deserts, human suf-
ferring has never cried out in its tenuous
atmosphere. Mariner is perhaps a crass
example of that same American technology
that ‘cans our cranberries; a technology
powerful enough to violate even the cosmic
quarantine of the void. But Mariner, in its
search for ‘alien life, suggests something
more important, something to be thankful for.
The infinite possibilities of an infinite
universe.
For isn’t it possible, even probable, that
somewhere amid the countless stars of our
galaxy or amid the countless galaxies that
spill forever into the dark abyss of space,
there exists other life? Life that may suceed,
may flourish in peace and wisdom even if the
human race destroys itself in endless war?
We don’t have to look to the stars to find
infinite possibilities. Our own minds harbor
innumerable worlds, many of them far
superior to 20th century civilization. Maybe
we should be less thankful for the material
“Blessings” we have won, and more thankful
for the non material visions of our
Michelangelos, Beethovens and Shakes-
peares. Such men draw back the veil of the
present and give us a brief flimpse into a
possible future. Such man debunk those lesser
minds who are forever whining about prac-
ticalities and impossibilities. i
)
The philosopher and mathematician !
Descartes once argued: that the existence of
God was proved simply by. the fact that he,
with his seemingly finite mind, was able to
form the idea of an infinite being. Might we
say that our minds, bound physically to this
universe, are incapable of conceiving an idea
that is not possible within the universe?
We might be thankful for the fact that
whatever we imagine, be it peace or brother-
hood or an end to starvation, no matter how
improbable it seems, is possible. And these
things, and all the other blessings we can
think of, will remain possible as long as we
can imagine them. This world is a lot bigger
than some of its inhabitants would have us
believe.
Te ALLASCPOST |
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