The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Fundamental Questions As I compose this column, the debate on the Civil Rights Bill is going through its final stages. The talented and eloquent...
...But the President will have a solid majority of the people behind him, and this should help him hold the reins of government steady through any time of crisis...
...But if the dissenters on this opinion will pay strict attention to what is taking place, they will learn something about our Constitution...
...Only a few weeks ago, too, the Supreme Court ruled that membership in state legislatures must henceforth be allotted in accordance with population...
...Having the civil rights debate and the proportional representation argument going on at the same time has raised political discussion in this country to an extraordinarily high level...
...In state after state—and in my own state of Delaware, for example— the minorities of population have elected the majorities in the houses of the legislatures...
...At times the discussions in our newspapers and on the television platforms almost appear to have taken on the solemnity and depth of the 1789 Constitutional Convention...
...No man can tell what the future may produce...
...There have been loud outcries to the effect that the Constitution nowhere gives the Supreme Court the authority to dictate the elections to Federal or state legislatures...
...All of our politicians and newspaper writers have been forced into an unusually lofty discussion of constitutional principles in order to deal with these basic issues...
...It is reasonable and just to elect legislators Irom districts having like numbers of votes...
...In both cases, there are sure to be developments of great emotional intensity...
...As a constant and frightening accompaniment of the campaign will come the enforcement of the proportional representation decision and the Civil Rights law...
...Both the civil rights problem and the representation question are basic...
...The conventions have not met, the candidates have not been nominated and the party platforms have not been drawn up...
...It is fortunate that we seem to have in the President's office a man of rare judgment and discretion...
...After all, the discussion now going on will undoubtedly prove a fine preparation for the trials to come...
...Before the impending series of crucial developments are over, he may find himself in a position similar to that of Lincoln in his relation to the "Copperheads...
...More than ever before in our time, they have traced their arguments back to the fundamental questions...
...I suppose I should remind myself that the 1964 political campaign has not actually begun yet...
...For time out of mind— and not exclusively in the South —minorities have held the power...
...He can be depended upon to hold tight to the legal and constitutional advances that we have made without losing his head over any sort of violent action...
...Ever since John Marshall took charge of the Supreme Court, there has been one clear understanding: The United States has the power to do anything which it needs to do...
...The talented and eloquent Senators and Representatives from the South argued, as they have so often in the past, that the people of a state have the right to commit every sort of racial injustice...
...According to this doctrine, the people of Mississippi and Alabama have a right to pass laws enabling a hotel keeper to turn Negroes away from his door or permitting an employer to give work exclusively to white people...
...This will not wipe away the great issue that has divided our nation almost from its very beginning, of course, but it is one more positive step in that direction...
...The right to commit such wrongs is what is called a state right in the sunny South...
...By a great majority, the Southerners have been outvoted...
...But now the spell has been broken...
...Now the High Court has ruled that hereafter the American legislatures must be elected in such a way that all members shall represent approximately equal numbers of voters...
...It is therefore safe to say that, after ail the discussion, the Supreme Court's decision will prevail, and Congress will ultimately recognize that this is the way elections should be held...
...And if there are two ways of doing a thing, one of which is logical and the other ridiculous and wasteful, the former is the method favored by our Constitution...
Vol. 47 • July 1964 • No. 14
