WASHINGTON REPORT: A Liberal George Wallace

...The re-port suggests, for example, that a prison, by definition, exists to deprive a man of his freedom, that it simply cannot be an effective place of rehabilitation and, there-fore, that prisons should be accepted without guilt as places to keep law-breakers away from the law-abiding public...

...Actually, what would help the country more nowadays are political leaders who broadly understand what's bothering most Americans, regardless of race, creed, color or political persuasion...

...Lest it occur to anyone that there are available such leaders who lead, not follow, it should be quickly noted that none of the candidates on the boards, or preening themselves in the wings, fits the casting requirements...

...Equal distribution of education resources is the problem, he added, "instead of going after integration...

...It may take a different kind of liberal to rescue liberals from themselves-some-one other than an FDR or a Stevenson aristocratic liberal...

...And demand, nourished by the political right, rises for a return to the whipping post and the gallows-demands that are being met in the states...

...And it is in Congress, most of all, that programs to benefit low-income Americans, black and white, are being placed on the back-burner...

...among the others, aging and youngish alike, each plans to take his seat in the presidential nominating conventions next year in hopes his number will be drawn, if the more prominent falter...

...Nor does this preclude efforts to insist that pri-sons be tolerable, sentencing be procedurally sound, pre-dictable, uniform and reviewable, the courts and law-enforcement' offices properly staffed and organized so as to assure prompt disposal of cases between the time of arrest and trial-and that policemen treat all citizens fairly, including suspects...

...Liberals, those who still band together, are somewhat demoralized...

...Moses would not have led his people from Egypt, the Founding Fathers would not have gathered at Philadel-phia, and Lincoln would not have taken the train to Gettysburg, had the Scammons and Wattenbergs been the counselors at-hand...

...Beginning this year, William Raspberry, a black colum-nist for the Washington Post, has begun to display his reservations and those of the black about busing...

...Leaders who speak shirt-sleeved English in a constructive fashion-to dem-onstrate that however much water is in our glass, the glass can be made fuller and not snidely suggest that our glass is being tapped by the inferior orders...

...A liberal George Wallace who can acknowledge the validity of 20 percent of what George Wallace of Alabama is saying, but expose the rest as hokum and un-American...

...It is possible to affirm and propagate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the Constitu-tion and yet insist on swift, sure punishment for the con-victed...

...Political institutions appear to offer less hope of redemption...

...More than seven-dozen new members entered the House of Repre-sentatives six months ago with a blaring of trumphets -and, today, they grope about in their assembly, over-run by successful presidential vetoes...

...They've taken easy refuge by both blaming poverty as a culprit- not the offender himself-and by reliance upon long-range societal "cures," the source of which reaffirms the Shavian dictum that those, who can, do and those, who can't, teach...

...Liberals are being overrun on these two issues...

...Aging men, abiding by aged political scripts, demon-strate before us...

...Almost all liberals, more in the Senate than in the House, have kept pro-busing positions, although arm-chair strategists in the academic and school structures and, more importantly, some black civil-rights leaders themselves are now acknowledging the futility and di-visiveness of busing and are suggesting that housing patterns, not school-enrollment patterns, should have been the object of change...

...James Coleman recently spoke up...

...A bus does not a schoolhouse make, these parents are saying, and there is growing dissatisfaction with the schoolhouses themselves, despite the $20-billion in federal funds spent on them in the last ten years...

...Their legislative programs to reduce crime have floun-dered...

...The general position of political liberals in the Con-gress is further breached by the "busing issue...

...Leaders who know the difference between a spade and a shovel, horse manure and cow manure, a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse, and day and night...

...Prof...

...Political liberals had better shift on both issues, crime and busing, or risk further withering away of their ap-peal...

...Once a week, they should resolve to drive home by another route-north on Seventh street and then left on R street, northwest, in order to gain a glimpse into the bleak, intermingled world of blacks and whites for whom they assert they are knowledgeably legislating...

...There is growing disenchantment among blacks as well as whites with (school) busing...

...If they would pay attention to the literature, they'd understand that penologists are pessimistic these days...

...And, if this continues, the future for liberalism in America is not enhanced-pro-spects for achieving far-reaching reforms on broader issues enhanced no more...

...Well, no use crying over unspilt ashes...

...Liberals have been inclined to treat calls for "law and order" as so much lawmen's shop talk...

...But these leaders are long gone -"executed," one may persuasively argue-and their replacements have not appeared...

...Nevertheless, more and more black and white parents alike are telling their congressional repre-sentatives that they want most of all their Jacks and Jills to read, write and add and subtract and multiply...

...Just as a man can be a liberal without being a spendthrift (it took Alf Landon to say this), so liberals can be "tough" on law-breakers, without being cast in a brown uniform, or oppose busing, without being cast in a white robe...

...The idea is to transport hitherto poorly educated black children to better financed schools, where enrollment is all or mostly white, and local school officials, their faces rubbed in the mess, would be obliged educationally to treat all pupils equally...

...Along the way, they'd see the lousy schools, for which busing is no remedy, and crimes of violence openly committed on street-corners as if they were commonplace business transactions...

...Finally, someone who can not only tell it "like it is," as the reactionary George Wallace prides himself on doing, but also can tell it as it ought to be-and show the way...

...Even eight years ago, the Mar-tinson report, surveying a quarter-century of effort, con-cluded that no programs of rehabilitation anywhere have provided solid evidence that they are effective...

...But there is no evidence in the prescriptive theme of penal legislation before the congressional committees that liberals are mending their ways...

...Fifty years or so later, the coun-try is again rattled by bad times and a good five-cent cigar is still unavailable, or a good twenty-five-cent one for that matter...

...youngish Hotspurs, speaking fashion-ably radical rhetoric, seek our recognition...

...White parents have either taken off to other parts of town, transferred their children to private schools, or taken to the streets as in South Boston...

...Anti-busing legislation, including proposed amend-ments to the Constitution, is gaining support-even the patently unconstitutional ones, such as the Gurney amendment, which two years ago was supported by nearly one-half of the 100 Senators...

...One may not subscribe to the specific programs of King and the two Kennedys and yet acknowledge their leaderships were of a constructive bent-persuading recalcitrant segments in America to accept, if grudgingly, the taking of those important second steps forward on behalf of the maltreated segments in America...

...The liberals' reluctance to change is more un-derstanding on this issue than on the crime issue, be-cause the dreams of black Americans are being deferred in so many ways, as Charles Hampden-Turner poignantly pointed out in a recent article in this magazine...

...It demonstrably hasn't worked out that way...

...If sunnier political and economic climes prevailed, it would be possible for liberals to continue to get by with their flawed programs and pronouncements dealing with these two issues...

...Relatively better-off economically than most Americans and living in ghettos of their own, they've been unable to comprehend the fear generated in low-income ghettos the morning after the house-breaking next door or the holdup around the corner...

...They are noticeably unable to deal effectively with two home-and hearth issues that are becoming more prominent...

...He said that his 1966 study of school integration and equal educa-tional opportunity was misused to justify massive school-busing programs for purposes of integration...

...One offering hope, not fear and retrenchment, in this racially troubled present...

...This as-pect of constructive leadership, although overlooked, is as important as that directly employed in helping the maltreated themselves...

...Maybe, unattractive as it may appear at first mention, a "liberal George Wallace," blunt, unfashion-able, even rash, as he frankly discounts programs that won't work and those that will and those that only in-dividual responsibility, not legislation, can remedy...

...And, these parents continue, the closer to home their children learn these basic skills the better...

...And transportation was never the issue...

...The issues are crime and school-busing as a vehicle to bring about public-school integration...

...In addition to slighting crime's victims, with the po-tentially sinister political consequences this ultimately may bring, liberals are on a slippery slope in talking about cures and remedies...

...Last month, Rasp-berry, the columnist, wrote: "Busing hasn't solved any-thing because busing can't solve anything but trans-portation problems...

...Furthermore, these men, seeking the prize, are being advised, assisted, counseled, prodded, poked and directed by hired help to whom the public opinion poll of the moment becomes a written tablet in stone, and the political TV "spot" and brochure and billboard become the political reality of the issues...

...Liberals, leaving the insulated atmosphere of Capitol Hill, drive home along the pretty parkways and tree-lined avenues of Washington to their middle-class ghettos-there to be greeted by their children enrolled in well-financed schools more often private than public ones...

...SISYPHUS...

...one suggesting that stumbling blocks can be converted into stepping stones...

...The Philadelphia regional office of the Federal Reserve Bank recently in-dicated in a report that 70 percent of those being grad-uated from high school in that metropolitan area can not read beyond an eighth-grade level...

...Liberals have been derelict, even negligent, in respond-ing to increasing crime...

...One, who may slurp his soup, but loves America for what it ought to be and can convince the American electorate...

...A few liberals are beginning to support anti-busing legislation, although they find themselves in pretty gamy company in the persons of the Louise Day Hicks's of the Congress...

...And, in the doing, leaders who do not strum the aspirations of voters be-yond attainment and are also willing to concede there are some things that can't be legislated or otherwise regulated into or out of being...

...But one prominent civil-rights leader, holding to busing, recently asked, almost pleaded with a national liberal Democrat, under pressure in his home-state to modify his position, not to change...

...The Vietnam war and the Nixon drive toward dictatorship have further weak-ened any resolve for a stronger commonweal...

...However, few liberals have shown any desire to be the first to move...