Capitol Ideas / The Ad Hoc Hike

...A few days ago, for example, the Washington Post ran a story ("March On Washington Called Communist Front") about a rally led by Rev...

...Not plot...

...If implemented, defense spending would be greatly reduced...

...And why the participation of other Communist-front groups such as the National Lawyers' Guild and the U.S...

...waving familiarly to strangers, so diverse yet so reliably like-minded...

...Stone's Weekly...

...Notice the word "coalition...

...Carl Mclntyre, who "told 300 flag-waving, hymn-singing followers at the Washington Monument yesterday that next Saturday's march on Washington is a front for international communism...

...CAPITOL IDEAS THE AD HOC HIKE by Tom Bethell Tomorrow I'll be attending that well-advertised grievance jamboree, the "New Coalition of Conscience" on the Mall, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's much publicized dream...

...possible, the Daily World has been even more enthusiastic about the upcoming march than the Washington Post...

...They actually play up the fact that the Right sees them as "communistic," so that they can "disavow" the very different (and false) claim that they are Communist controlled...

...Many of them had Panasonic radios glued to their ears, enjoying the peculiar thrill of hearing about the event they We were so far from the platform that only the occasional word or phrase came wafting our way on the hot afternoon: "hunger in America . . . injustice . . . racism . . . regressive Reagan regime . . . committed to the elimination of Reaganism from the face of the earth . . . fiscal austerity . . . struggle . . . vision . . . aspirations . . . Hitler...

...intervention" in Central America...

...Can you imagine what the liberals would say if there were an anti-Communist rally in Washington, with U.S...

...Here a cap doffed to Concerned Catholics, there a hearty greeting to Quakers for Gay Civil Rights...

...Onward they struggle toward the New Dawn, undaunted by old setbacks: the Gulag, the Castro Catastrophe, Mao's murdered millions...

...It does people the gravest harm to tell them that the state will take care of them, and that they need not work, because they are "deprived"-the victims of society...

...The old idea of civil rights was that of a uniformly applied limitation of government power...

...On one or two banners I noticed the words "ad hoc," a phrase which misleadingly emphasizes the accidental nature of such alliances...

...This leadership, unfortunately, is now completely under the thumb of the white liberal establishment and media-who decide which blacks are "recognized" as leaders, and which are ignored...

...The Guardian, an "independent radical newsweekly," had a twenty-page supplement on march themes...

...At Constitution Avenue, I watched the Broad Coalition come rolling by- liberals, progressives', socialists, Trots, and Communists: the Hive on parade...

...Communist Party newspaper, the Daily World, given the march so much pre-event publicity, even telling readers "how to mobilize...

...Twenty years ago, state power was being wrongfully used to prevent blacks from registering to vote...

...If it were Tom Bethell is The American Spectator 's Washington correspondent...

...Out came the turkey sandwiches, the fried chicken wrapped in tinfoil, the potato salad, the coleslaw, sodas, and brownies...

...On Saturday on a talk show program, the columnist Jack Germond said he didn't buy the idea that the march was a "commie plot...

...The liberals, of course, need the black voting bloc in the same way that Lenin needed "the proletariat...

...No fewer than 21 Washington Post reporters contributed to this coverage, but the only word in the paper about Communist participation was a quotation from Harry Belafonte repudiating the idea that the march was "the result of some massive Communist conspiracy...

...Media coverage to date has downplayed the reality of Communist support by playing up the false charge of Communist control...

...Hence their participation in the march...

...I gather he will be on a parade tomorrow...

...They are perhaps the leading cause of unemployment in America...

...Forcibly debarring people from working at the market wage is called the "right to strike," and so it is protected against antitrust prosecution...

...At the same time we can be sure that the press will behave decorously, with due regard to all the unwritten rules of coverage and discretion...

...Why has the U.S...

...The Communists can reasonably be regarded as authoritative in such judgments...

...From across the nation," the Washington Post said of the march the next day, "a diverse coalition of 250,000 Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial including 700 groups with a wide range of political and social agendas...

...This is a direct result of submitting to the very welfare programs that their corrupt leadership now seeks to expand still further...

...It is sgnificant that both Communists and anti-Communists agree as to the "communistic" character of contemporary liberalism...

...Diversity coalescing, barriers crumbling, equality just over the horizon . . . Ahead lay the Lincoln Memorial, and a familiar array of speakers who just happened to have been assembled for the occasion: Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Harry Belafonte, Cora Weiss, Dick Gregory, Jesse Jackson, Benjamin Hooks, William Wimpisinger...

...The liberals themselves "reject labels" and put on airs as autonomous beings-free spirits...

...had three articles on the day's events...

...El Salvador Alert had two articles, and from this paper I learned that another coalition will be getting together on November 12, this one protesting "U.S...

...Liberals conveniently pretend that Communism is an all or nothing affair...

...Clearly, what the liberals have in mind is not that association is innocent, but that Communism is...

...social spending and income transfer programs would be greatly increased...

...both weighed down with rucksacks stuffed no doubt with natural herbs and old copies of I.F...

...that the adjective "communistic," although used by Karl Marx, imputes "guilt by association," and that is "Mc-Carthyism...

...relishing once again the outing, the communistic camaraderie, the ad hoc hike...

...But in November, no doubt, Coretta Scott King will be a peripheral member of the team rather than central figurehead...

...Most of the marchers were blacks who, one sensed, had dutifully responded to the news media appeals to turn out for the event...

...the Bill of Rights is a list of citizens' rights, not government powers...

...So what are they doing at a "jobs" rally...

...To anyone who gives the matter a moment's thought it is obvious that the "Coalition of Conscience" would move America further down the road to socialism...

...The idea that jobs can be created by government edict merely transfers a good deal more power to officials in Washington...

...The Daily World, the Communist daily, had no less than ten articles on the march...

...What is the "Salvadoran freedom fighter" Ruben Zamora, a left-wing terrorist, doing at an American "jobs, peace and freedom" rally...

...Peace Council...

...that there are no degrees of it...

...Trade unions are already privileged entities...

...But it is a perennial struggle for them to maintain their privileges in a market economy...

...By this I mean it will assist the implicitly socialist goals of the coalition by keeping the spotlight away from all that is explicitly socialist...

...Almost the moment I arrived some strong men came by toting a broadly coalitional banner, as wide as the road: "Communist Workers Party," it read, adding, "Self-Determination for African Americans...

...but still, it is amazing that the liberals remain so serenely indifferent to the terrible ghetto havoc that welfare has wrought...

...At the same time they play down the fact that the Communists see them as communistic, for obvious reasons...

...The Socialist Worker, "paper of the International Socialist Organization," had six such articles...

...By way of rebuttal, readers were presented with the following: "Donna Brazile, the march's national mobilization director, said Mclntyre's charge is the result of 'paranoia,' and that Communists play no role in organizing the march...

...veterans, as they say, of solemn sit-ins and many a march...

...that one is either "card-carrying" or completely unrelated to it...

...The new idea is that civil rights can be "expanded" by increasing government power-for example the power to allocate jobs and remuneration on the basis of membership in one or another privileged group...

...military and CIA figures "associating" on the platform with Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, Chilean police, and Argentine generals...

...The black illegitimacy rate has soared-it is now 65 percent in D.C.:-and the black family has largely broken down...

...music by Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul, and Mary...

...The media played up Labor Secretary Ray Donovan's associations, and Frank Sinatra's...

...You have to be willfully blind not to see that the march's agenda is appealing to Communists...

...As for blacks, their situation has in some ways deteriorated considerably since 1963...

...I had thrust upon me an incredible amount of communistic literature, replete with articles about the march...

...He does not acknowledge, and may not understand, that groups seeking to convert rights into privileges are going way beyond protecting "gains...

...At one point it looked as though Jesse Jackson might dare to say such things, but he was somehow whipped back into line and today he is nothing but a ludicrous demagogue, with his childish rhyming slogans that are congenial to the media and the Left generally...

...I noticed also a fair number of those familiar old progressive relia-ables, tanned and lined white couples, grizzled and bearded, striding forth in sensible ecological walking shoes...

...The fact that federal power was then used to overcome this wrongful application of state power led to the idea that civil rights were somehow obtained by increasing federal power...

...It almost invariably denotes an alliance of left-wingers...

...Practically the sole meaningful activity of unions is to act as "barriers to entry"-at the factory gate...

...But those who knowingly associate with criminals are liable to prosecution as accessories...

...Unions are organizations superficially antagonistic toward employers, but in fact antagonistic toward nonunion employees...

...With any luck in the nostalgic sixties they would have seen the inside of a Birmingham jail...

...Finally, the Workers' Vanguard, the "Marxist Working Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League of the U.S...

...That is why Hodding Carter is so wrong to say in the Wall Street Journal that "today, vast reserves of energy must be directed toward protecting the gains of yesterday...

...As far as civil rights are concerned, there has been quite a change since King had his dream...

...The march, or coalition, will be one more opportunity for various leftist groups to get together to hector the nation with abusive and hostile slogans...

...She is wearing a beret, he some weird old fishing hat: both are plentifully bemedaled with buttons...

...I sat down on the grassy sward beside the Reflecting Pool, amidst numerous marchers who were unpacking their Free Spirit picnic containers and opening up their double six-packer Playmate igloo coolers...