The Charlotte News
Tuesday, May 26, 1959
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Geneva that with secret Big Four talks regarding Germany scheduled to start on Friday, following the return of the Big Four foreign ministers from the funeral of John Foster Dulles in Washington, Secretary of State Christian Herter had urged Russia this date to negotiate a Berlin settlement which would unite the divided city under its own constitution pending German unification. Diplomatic informants said that Mr. Herter had spoken at the outset of this date's brief session of the four-power foreign ministers conference in advance of his departure for the funeral. Because Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had already departed for the Washington funeral, Russia had been represented at the session by Valerian Zorin—who would represent Russia at the U.N. during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962. Earlier, Mr. Gromyko and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, who represented the West, had agreed that on Friday when the conference resumed, it would enter private sessions, designed to permit more serious negotiation on Berlin and possibly on a summit conference. Mr. Herter had presented details of the Berlin proposal previously presented to Russia as part of the Western package for German reunification, European security and disarmament, a plan already rejected by Mr. Gromyko. Mr. Herter noted the connection between the Berlin proposal and the package but did not stress it. Western officials had said that they recognized that they might not have to make an interim arrangement for Berlin outside that package. Mr. Herter declared that Soviet action in 1948 in blockading Berlin had broken up four-power control of Berlin and divided the city, violating the wartime and postwar Allied agreements, but had not removed Russia's obligation to work with the U.S., Britain and France in treating Berlin as a united city.
The foreign ministers had suspended their conference on Germany this date and taken off for Washington to pay their respects to Mr. Dulles. The U.S. Air Force Constellation carrying Secretary of State Herter, British Foreign Secretary Lloyd and French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville was due in Washington early the following morning. Mr. Gromyko had already departed by commercial aircraft but would return to Geneva with Mr. Herter and Mr. Lloyd, with M. Couve de Murville set to return alone. West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, 83, was set to fly to Washington for the funeral, a rare gesture of respect for a man of another country who held a lesser office. A great outpouring of words, praise and condolences had come from almost every quarter of the world, even from Moscow. Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan said: "Dulles was a very great statesman. He was very intelligent. He was a strong partisan advocate. We like strong men. We do night like uncertain ones. I am very sorry that he is dead. Not only I, but the whole Soviet government are sorry." It had been the first extended comment by a top Soviet official regarding the Sunday death of Mr. Dulles, who had often been the target of Communist propaganda attacks. Mr. Mikoyan had spoken off-the-cuff at the Argentine Embassy's national day reception. Moscow radio beamed an English broadcast to Southeast Asia, describing the life of Mr. Dulles and adding, "John Foster Dulles was an outstanding government leader of the United States, one of the leaders of American foreign policy."
In Seoul, South Korea, it was reported that Foreign Minister Cho Chung Whan had departed by plane for Washington this date to represent that country at the funeral of Mr. Dulles.
In Berlin, it was reported that the following day was the deadline originally set by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for ending the military occupation of West Berlin, but the Soviet Embassy gave assurances this date that nothing would be done to disturb the city at present, with the chief Soviet spokesman in East Berlin expressing surprise when asked by a reporter if the Communists planned any action on the deadline. He responded: "Premier Khrushchev has said on several occasions that we will not undertake to alter the status of Berlin while negotiations are in progress and there is hope that negotiations can result in a solution." West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt had also predicted that "nothing will happen tomorrow."
In Little Rock, Ark., it was reported that Governor Orval Faubus had met a major defeat the previous day in the integration feud with the recall of three segregationists from the School Board. He had supported the segregationists in the recall election, which had developed from an uprising of a group of citizens after the firing by the segregationist members of 44 teachers. All three had been defeated, including the Board's president, Ed McKinley, who had been ousted by a vote of 13,347 to 11,855. At the same time, the three moderates, who said that they preferred some integration to not having any of the high schools open, won a vote of confidence by retaining their seats. It would now be up to the Pulaski County Board of Education to fill the three vacancies on the Board. The five members of the County Board of Education, all political unknowns, had kept their own counsel regarding their plans. Governor Faubus had twice gone on television in the closing days before the election to plead for retention of the three segregationists, calling the controversy regarding the firing of the faculty members a smokescreen for integration. He had supported the ouster of the three moderate members, whose supporters had begun the recall movement after the moderates had walked out of a Board meeting on May 5 when the segregationists had begun the teacher purge. Two days later, a group of business and professional men had organized a movement to stop the teacher purge, pledging themselves to recall the three segregationists, after which a counter-group had formed their own organization to retain the three segregationists and oust the moderates. This date, Robert Laster, the Little Rock traffic judge and the worst-beaten of the three segregationists, said: "Well it looks like the people want integrated schools, doesn't it?" The other two segregationists, Mr. McKinley and Ben Rowland, had been silent, as had been the Governor, reported to be at his mansion in Stuttgart, Ark. Mr. Laster had been recalled by a vote of 14,082 to 11,148, and Mr. Rowland, by a vote of 13,691 to 11,528. Everett Tucker, Jr., leader of the moderates, had retained his seat by a vote of 13,323 to 12,094. Ted Lamb had the hardest battle among the moderates, winning retention by a vote of 12,973 to 12,502. The third moderate, Russell Matson, had retained his seat by a vote of 12,963 to 12,326. The six members of the School Board had been elected the previous December after the former members had bought up the contract of the superintendent, Virgil Blosom, and then had quit. From the beginning, the Board had been split in bitter dispute, with the three who attempted the teacher purge having pledged to support Governor Faubus in his fight with the Federal Government regarding integration of Central High School and the other three having been denounced by the Governor as integrationists, though they denied that classification. The Governor closed the four public high schools in the city the previous fall under laws he had sponsored at a special legislative session a few months earlier. The closing had been endorsed by a 3 to 1 vote in a referendum election. The Governor had called out the National Guard in the fall of 1957 to stop nine black students from attending Central, justifying it as a means to prevent violence. But Federal courts had then ordered him to stop interference with integration and the President then moved in Federal troops to enforce the Federal court order during the remainder of the school year in 1957-58.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports that over 200 City and County high school students had signed up for courses which might never be offered in a school which might never exist, hoping to be the first students in the proposed Industrial Education Center, the future of which was shaky at present. The Federal Government stood ready to fund it and the state would allocate $330,000 at its inception. The City School Board had made the Central High School building available as a center. School officials, the Chamber of Commerce, and community and industrial leaders said that it was essential to the development of the area and the students were eager to participate. The hitch was in the County Commission, with it being estimated that it would take $200,000 to begin renovation and remodeling of the school building, which the commissioners had rejected. Dr. E. H. Garinger, City Schools superintendent, was greatly concerned that Charlotte and Mecklenburg were "missing a golden opportunity", that the opportunity to obtain Federal and state funding in setting up a vocational training center was one which the people "ought to grab with enthusiasm." Elsewhere in the state, other communities, such as Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem, had taken advantage of the money and equipment offers. An attempt to straighten out the situation would be made during the current afternoon in a meeting of representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, and the City and County School Boards at the Chamber's office. The vocational center was planned for high school students who would not go to college and for adults in the community who wanted to become skilled workers. The supervisor of the trade and industrial education program for City schools said that the center would not be a "dumping ground" for students. They would have to take a battery of tests, including those to determine their interest, I.Q., mechanical aptitude and manual dexterity. Thus far, the supervisor had visited five of the City and County white schools and he would visit his last one this date to explain the courses and operation of the center. In Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, about half of the high school graduates did not go to college, and the appeal would be to them. Visiting in the different high schools, the supervisor said that he had found students to be very enthusiastic about the program. About 200 students had indicated they would want to be included in the program. With the future of the center uncertain, he said that he had not contacted black high schools yet or started signing up adults. Ten courses were scheduled as part of the high school program, and only one would be specifically for females, but they would be admitted to other courses. Students could elect to take one course which would be taught three hours each day.
John Kilgo of The News indicates that the police captain of traffic in Charlotte had said this date that about 1,500 persons were operating motor vehicles in the county without valid driver's licenses. He said that it meant that about 1,500 persons were driving who had no license or whose license had expired or been revoked. During 1958, City Police had made 590 arrests for improper driver's licenses. A sergeant who was chief records clerk for the County Police said that County and State Police had arrested conservatively about 1,000 people for invalid driver's licenses during 1958. Already during the month, State and County police in Mecklenburg had made arrests of 80 drivers for invalid licenses. City Police were putting roadblocks up in different sections of the city for the express purpose of checking driver's licenses. A sergeant who had set up a checkpoint on Queens Road said that in two hours the previous week, he had stopped 15 drivers who did not have a valid license. Another problem for local police was people who drove in Charlotte with out-of-state licenses. A captain said that some states did not have as rigid an examination as in North Carolina and some people tried to keep on driving with an out-of-state license. The State Highway Patrol was also putting up roadblocks in the county to check licenses.
In Cleveland, a boy of 15 had an
I.Q. in the genius range, 148, and when he undertook to do something,
he poured his soul into it. When he took up piano, he practiced four
hours per day. Then it had been nothing but rockets, which had lasted
until one of his group of young peers had been injured while building
a launcher. Then he and his three companions had planned to organize
a Nazi-like party, and as the boys said in a juvenile court hearing the
previous day, the plan had been to overthrow the U.S. Government. The
court was informed that what they had actually done was to raid the
Bonds for Israel office in downtown Cleveland on April 11, cutting up
an Israeli flag and painting swastikas on the walls. The Rev. Everett
Ostrom, who appeared with the four boys in court, blamed a "special
study class in politics" at a high school on Cleveland's east
side for the extremism. The "fuehrer" of the group was a
straight-A student at that high school with the high I.Q., according
to the minister. He said that the boy had shown no interest in
political ideologies before taking the special course about two years
earlier, and he believed that the course had failed to present
democratic ideology adequately. An assistant principal at the high
school responded that the school's 3,200 pupils all took social or
political study courses and that only the four in court wound up
thinking in terms of Nazism. Three of the youths were 15 and one was
16 and had been investigated after authorities learned that they had
distributed subversive literature at the school. The minister said
that the leader of the group started going to church entirely on his
own about a year earlier and he asked the juvenile court judge to let
him take the boy into his own home for a year, but the judge instead
ordered a psychiatric examination prior to passing sentence. The
judge had ordered the other three to write ten-page compositions on
the best form of government and had also placed them on a curfew each
night at 10:00. Maybe they needed, as in the case in Charlotte explained by Jerry Reece the previous week regarding Missy and the Juvenile Diagnostic Center, a comfort dog
On the editorial page, "June 30 Will Be D-Day for Progress on Two Fronts in Mecklenburg County" indicates that on June 30, the voters would go to the polls to vote for or against a single consolidated school system for the entire metropolitan community, that the choice would be made on the basis of approval or disapproval of a proposed 54-cent maximum supplemental tax, that if it were approved, the two administrative units would be merged and if not, the inequities presently extant would be preserved and a bitter struggle would begin over possession of the perimeter area to be annexed as of the following January 1.
It favors progress through consolidation, and once again presents the argument for it.
"Dulles: Gargantuan Gifts That Failed" indicates that G. K. Chesterton had once told in one of his essays of how, riding across country in a darkened train and certain that he alone was aboard, had made himself comfortable with a long cigar when suddenly a porter appeared and said, "Sir, there's a dead man aboard this train." Mr. Chesterton had then instinctively extinguished his cigar.
It finds that it was that instinctive respect for human beings to be paid to the dead which would cause even the bitterest enemies of John Foster Dulles to put away their enmity and pay their respects to him.
"Mr. Dulles was a marvel of stone and steel. He continued to show it even after he passed from office as he hopelessly but heartily battled cancer, age, and pneumonia in Walter Reed Hospital." But to those seeking his greatest virtues, he would not seem a figure for sentimentality.
It was sad to see his decline surrounded by outpourings of emotionalism from his friends and extravagant claims for his career from political partisans, whom it finds to have been unworthy of Mr. Dulles. "Perhaps the tawdriest insult of all was made in good faith when Mr. Eisenhower awarded him the 'Freedom Medal', thus putting Mr. Dulles in company with such colossi of the Eisenhower administration as Charles E. Wilson and Adm. Strauss. We happen to believe Mr. Dulles served his country with an integrity and a zeal far above what these other relics of the Eisenhower years mustered. He deserved better than to be placed, even tearfully, among them."
It indicates that it had not considered Mr. Dulles to have been an effective Secretary of State and had said so, but admits that the same partisan zeal which made Republican deification of him look unseemly touched equally Democrats, many of whom, finding no other words to express their anti-Dulles feeling, had "hit this ardent liberal (in the classic sense) as being 'too conservative'. Or they claimed he was narrowly partisan and that the failings of his policy might be righted if only he were a Democrat."
It indicates that Mr. Dulles inherited his own excesses of the 1952 campaign, finding himself somewhat encumbered by them, as had many Republicans who had been embittered by being 20 years out of power. "Rolling back the iron curtain," "unleashing Chiang," "liberating the satellites," had all been mottoes of the campaign which had returned to haunt him.
Prior to becoming Secretary, he had served Democrats well and if he had been narrowly partisan, mediocre and without brilliance, his shortcomings would not be worth reflecting on. "But a giant has fallen. The striking tragedy is that gargantuan gifts of intellect, energy, and patriotism failed where lesser gifts might have held the line."
It indicates that Mr. Dulles was perhaps more than anyone else a victim of the nation's sudden emergence to leadership following World War I. He had been in his youth as one of the bright young men of the Versailles Conference, of whose idealism historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had provided a vivid picture in one of his recent books. He had become the heir in international policy of President Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic idol. As such, he had been all of his life a steadfast prophet of the moral fervor, idealism, and absolutism worthy of a Calvin, which Mr. Wilson had left him. "Self-determination, open covenants, independence, democracy—these noble ideals for all states stirred many of the bright young heirs of Versailles; but on no one did its legacy of moral fanaticism rest so heavily or so long as on Mr. Dulles. 'Making the world safe for democracy,' to the last, was Mr. Dulles' dream. For the principle, he deserves to be remembered."
But it suggests that he must have known that long after the death of President Wilson, the appeal of "the American promise" of liberty and democracy had become qualified, that in place of the old European conservatives, to whom Mr. Wilson and his fierce righteousness had ascribed as the precipitant causes of World War I, there were the Communists in the Kremlin. In 40 years, the Communists had become tyrants and authoritarians, but they had taken an impoverished nation and made it a competitor in economic and military power with the West. The force of that example had become a powerful rival with the Wilsonian idealism which had so impressed Mr. Dulles as a young man.
It finds that he had been a complex and subtle man, but for all his undoubted intellect and wisdom, had been too busy to work at the limited warfare which had to be waged on behalf of his ideals of freedom and democracy in the post-World War II era. He had made fervent speeches against the Communist tyranny and the building of military alliances, but his appeals for such limited weapons as foreign aid to compete with the Communists against poverty, overpopulation, and inflamed nationalism among the uncommitted peoples, often seemed dutiful and perfunctory, seeming to think that the sheer force of his moral idealism about human freedom could beat the materialist claims of the Communists and make the world safe for democracy.
"Political failures and successes are never absolute. Mr. Dulles' failure perhaps lay in too much patriotism—in believing too strongly in the power of democracy and liberty to convert the unbeliever. He emphasized it, certainly, at the expense of the less noble warfare being waged nowadays at the level of the human stomach."
Bob Fain, writing in the Lexington (N.C.) Leader, in a piece titled "Just Whittle", indicates that psychiatrists and manufacturers of goofballs would have to live off free government commodities if whittle breaks became as mandatory as the coffee break. A person whittling could not become riled about anything, that even when a whittle made a mislick and denuded his hand or fingers, he would calmly sit and stare at the wounds before deciding whether to make an appointment with the doctor or whether to ignore everything and continue to whittle with his remaining good hand. There were no snap decisions, no ulcers, no pent-up emotions.
It suggests that it ought be a provision of international law that when the world's foreign ministers sat down to confer, each would be equipped with a 25-cent knife and a three-day supply of cedar splinters. If at any time the Communists happened to become unruly, there could be a threat to withhold their supply of whittling sticks, at which point they would become frustrated and whittle on themselves and each other with the knives supplied. "A most pleasing thought."
Drew Pearson indicates that the day before the Senate Commerce Committee had voted on the confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss for Secretary of Commerce, he had made a political payoff to three Senators, John Pastore of Rhode Island, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Norris Cotton of New Hampshire, who together had helped salvage his one-vote majority on the Committee to approve the nomination. The payoff had to do with stricter controls on foreign textiles, especially from Japan. The whole inside story, he finds, illustrated the ruthlessness with which Senate votes were sometimes bartered in a tough confirmation battle and how such a battle could undermine an Administration's foreign policy.
Because U.S. military bases in Japan were so important, the Administration had refused to place mandatory controls on Japanese textiles, instead, Japan having imposed voluntary controls. Such a policy had been urged by the State and Defense Departments to keep Japan as an active free-world ally in the cold war against Communist China. Because the confirmation of Admiral Strauss was personally important to himself and politically important to the President, the White House had agreed to a special agency to investigate textile imports, which anticipated stricter controls on Japanese products later. Former Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, the former Republican candidate for the presidency in 1944 and 1948, had accepted a fee of $100,000 per year to push Japanese textiles in the U.S. Mr. Dewey was primarily responsible for nominating Mr. Eisenhower in 1952 and still had great influence at the White House. He had accepted the fee one day after the White House announced formation of the special agency on textiles. Thus, two prominent Republicans, Mr. Dewey and Admiral Strauss, would be battling on opposite sides of the textile issue.
The backstage buttonholing among textile Senators on behalf of Admiral Strauss had begun sometime earlier, aided by certain large textile firms, notably Burlington Industries of North Carolina. In the middle of the Senate hearings regarding the confirmation, Admiral Strauss had taken a quick trip to Greensboro, N.C., to address a textile meeting where Spencer Love, chairman of Burlington Industries, had called the Senate hearings an unwarranted "political vendetta". Prior to that, Admiral Strauss had dropped in on Senator Thurmond to discuss textiles, explaining how he had begun his business career as a salesman in the Carolinas and how he had used his influence to set mandatory controls on oil imports into the U.S., with the implication that he would do the same for the textile industry. Senator Thurmond complained that the textile recession had hit South Carolina hard, indicating that textile mills constituted 75 percent of South Carolina's industry, that the Defense Department considered textiles second only to steel in terms of being essential to the military.
The Commerce Committee vote on the nomination had been due on May 12, but on May 18, Undersecretary of Commerce Fred Mueller, right-hand man to Admiral Strauss as Acting Secretary, had gone to the White House. The following day, the votes of Senators Pastore and Thurmond were essential, being the difference between total defeat or partial victory. So, Undersecretary Mueller had returned with White House approval for the political payoff.
Joseph Alsop, in Budapest, indicates that Janos Kadar, present leader of Hungarian Communism, had told him that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had said to him, "I certainly won't send you any Russian advisors, because you Hungarians won't give a Russian any credit for your successes, but if you have a failure and there's a Russian advisor handy, you'll all blame Ivan!" Because of the source, he finds the story authentic.
While Premier Khrushchev did not admit that the dilemma was inescapable, the mere absence of Russian advisors in the ordinary ministries of the Hungarian Government was relatively meaningless, not altering the harsh fact that the Hungarian situation was colonial in nature and that in any colonial situation, the subjected people automatically discounted all of the system's successes and bitterly blamed the colonial power for all failures and disappointments. The evidence that the Hungarian situation was colonial was plain as the 60,000 to 70,000 Soviet troops which garrisoned the country were ruthlessly confined to their barracks and training areas and yet the universal awareness of their half-hidden presence was one of the two main props of the Government's authority.
No effort had been made to hide the omnipresent security police, the grim A.V.O., as everyone still called them. Their vast Interior Ministry was the most conspicuous new building on the Danube waterfront, and in the building, there was no lack of Russians. Russian officers seconded from the M.V.D., held top command positions in the A.V.O. A well-justified fear of the secret police, deeper in Hungary at present than in the Soviet Union, was the other main prop of the Government's authority.
Thus, in Hungary, Premier Khrushchev and Mr. Kadar were presently relying on the same instruments of power which Stalin and Rakosi had relied on, wanting to make the Communist Government of Hungary a stable government by winning the support of the masses. For that purpose, they had adopted the recipe tried by many Western colonial administrators with invariable failure, trying to improve the socioeconomic conditions in Hungary.
Mr. Kadar had told Mr. Alsop, "The first rule of all our planning is that the standard of life in this country must be raised each year." The other point he had emphasized most strongly was the new "realism" of Hungarian Communists, saying, "The mistakes of the past were committed because we Communists did not act on the facts as they were, but on the facts as we wanted them to be." As an illustration, he had cited the suspension of the campaign to collectivize Hungarian agriculture. He said that in December, he had urged the need to make a new start in agriculture because of the economic inefficiency of small-plot peasant farming. But in March, he had taken the lead in calling for a halt to "consolidate because if we had gone further, there might have been a temporary drop in farm output."
Conditions were not merely to be improved in Hungary but the improvements were to be made in a practical non-doctrinaire manner which would cause a minimum of dislocation. After hearing Mr. Kadar describe the heavy state investments which were planned for new agriculture collectives, Mr. Alsop was prepared to believe that the scheme might work and that if so, Hungary would have a gradual but great increase in agricultural productivity. It was also entirely believable that the whole Hungarian Communist program of improvement and advance would work in the end.
Hungary was a potentially rich country, not afflicted with Poland's population problem. Since the heavy handicaps of the Stalin-Rakosi years had now been cast aside, the rulers of Hungary would be astonishingly inefficient if their program were to fail.
He concludes that for all of those reasons, the soft-spoken, pleasant mannered Mr. Kadar was convincing when he insisted that he was "going to make things better in Hungary." But his further claim that "the political problem in Hungary will then be solved" was quite unconvincing. He was too obviously the façade and the A.V.O. were too obviously the reality. Unless the whole body of colonial history was misleading, "just making things better" to win a subjected people's support for a colonial regime was the political equivalent of trying to square a circle.
Doris Fleeson, in Paris, indicates that preliminary inquiries made in the city suggested that Vice-President Nixon might extend his scheduled Moscow trip during the summer to various friendly capitals in Europe. Since he had already visited Britain, he would presumably stick to the Continent. There would be no question of his being welcomed. For he had learned quickly that public opinion circles as well as politicians abroad were quite curious about the coming U.S. presidential election, even though the nominating conventions were still more than a year away. It was realized also, perhaps even more than at home, that not only would the interdependent world soon confront a new President but also a whole new family of American decision-makers in every field, including foreign policy. That realization had no doubt accelerated at the deaths of John Foster Dulles and Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles. But much more than at home and in sharper terms, the press in Britain and France had remarked about the static quality of the Eisenhower Administration in its concluding months.
One influential paper, the London Times, had remarked that it would seem like a long time until it ended. A consciousness of impending change had also been suggested by the new faces on the scene. Another generation was not going to take over at once, but it was on its way.
An Englishman asked not just whether Governor Nelson Rockefeller would decide to stand for the Republican nomination against Mr. Nixon, but he wanted to know what men the eventual nominee might bring to office with him. It was apparent that he believed they might be very different groups and Mr. Nixon's ties with the Republican right-wing were known to that Englishman. No Democratic candidate for the presidency had made any real impression abroad thus far, except for Adlai Stevenson. It was widely assumed that he would be, if not at the head of a Democratic administration, its secretary of state.
The present travels of former New York Governor Averell Harriman showed that there was more than one candidate for the latter job also, as Mr. Harriman, presently in Russia, had asked the State Department for permission to enter Communist China and for that purpose, had entered the widespread amateur competition with the working press. As former Ambassador to Russia and Marshall Plan administrator, Mr. Harriman had credentials which were impressive and he could also document a powerful record of prescience about Russia's postwar course.
It was possible that Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, might also give either Mr. Stevenson or Mr. Harriman a race for secretary of state should the Democrats prevail.
That which remained to be seen about the Nixon travels was whether Secretary of State Christian Herter would be responsive to the Nixon hope of entering the Iron Curtain countries where so many relatives of U.S. voting blocs still lived. Secretary Dulles had previously vetoed that idea of Mr. Nixon firmly and regularly.
A letter writer finds that a recently appearing editorial cartoon, captioned, "We Want To Protect You against the Possibility that Criminals Might Hide Here", had been far from basic Americanism and that because it had been published without editorial comment, the readers had to assume that the newspaper agreed with its message. He indicates that many people wanted to know why the bills to override recent Supreme Court decisions were so wrong and why it was so wrong to protest court decisions which led the country deeper into socialism. He finds it obvious that those bills were wrong only in the eyes of socialists or left-wingers "whose intelligence is so undeveloped that they fail to appreciate the freedom that is America's heritage." He thinks that the recent decision undermining the freedom of the average home from unlawful search was but another step deeper into the socialist "jungle". He indicates that the decision had hidden behind a flimsy rationale that the health of the community had been involved, but finds it a smokescreen for the loss of another freedom. He finds it emblematic of the ways being used to destroy the country from within, via Communists and Socialists. He says that many people had not lost sight of the era in which the Supreme Court had been packed to pave the way for the socialistic burdens under which the country now struggled. He finds the cartoon which he had referenced to imply that efforts to ferret out Communists and to have a Supreme Court dedicated to constitutional decisions were the things destroying individual rights and that the anti-constitutionalists had gained from the publication of the cartoon, that to counteract the "subversive influence", the constitutionalists should have a few cartoons printed by an artist who was a dedicated American. "What is wrong with letting your readers have a few American drawings along with the kind now under discussion?"
Well, he would undoubtedly be pleased with the cartoon which surfaced out of the Jeffrey Epstein estate files last year, signed by one Donald J. Trump. He would undoubtedly deem that "all-American", not commie socialism from those lefties, reducing the caricature of a well-proportioned woman to a cryptic joke, full of recondite meaning tending toward the pubescently tawdry, if not the patently illegal, the latter more likely, given the signature and its location.
The Supreme Court case which he references, Frank v. Maryland, had been earlier the subject of an editorial. As indicated, it would be overturned in 1967 and again in 1978, holding ultimately that entry to private property to investigate or abate an alleged public nuisance is subject to the Fourth Amendment, requiring consent prior to the entry, an inspection warrant, or some legally recognized exigent circumstances, such as a fire or plain view imminent fire hazard.
The writer's apparent disapproval of the Frank decision would appear quite simpatico with the ironic representation of the cartoon in question, implying that the bills to curb the Court, aimed at its integration decisions, not the Frank-type decision, would only allow intensification of the attacks against individual rights, and so we have to assume that the writer simply did not appreciate irony, the trouble with a lot of right-wing nuts, though quite ready to ascribe "just joking" to the most vile of statements by the right when questioned, as so often the case with the utterances of Trumpity Dumpity.
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