NOTES IN THE NEWS
Polls and Patriotism Whenever he is asked about rising public concern over our escalating role in Vietnam, President Johnson reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the latest public opinion...
...military task can be completed by the end of 1965, although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S...
...The simple fact is that RPI seems to have no sense of history...
...What is at stake is the right of a democratic nation to have the truth...
...Supreme Court's "one man, one vote" rulings, they will have lost their last chance to preserve minority control of state legislatures...
...Martin Luther King Jr., subsequently acclaimed the conviction of white killers by all-white juries in Alabama, but urgently contended that new legislative safeguards were necessary to protect Negroes and civil rights workers...
...But their case is well-documented and is reinforced by the U.S...
...Thus, Dirksen fell only seven votes short of the two-thirds vote needed for Senate passage...
...Redistricting moves have begun in fourteen other states...
...George J. Oliver, president of RPI, a state liberal arts college, called the barring of the student "arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable" and an "incursion upon a student's rights and violation of the fundamental principles of academic freedom...
...and to extend the executive housing order to cover all housing in which the Federal government has an interest...
...After that moral and military humiliation, President Kennedy was handed a public opinion poll showing that an incredible eighty-two per cent of the people stoutly approved his performance...
...The government has asked only for logistical support...
...Previously, eleven per cent of the people elected a majority of the state senate...
...If they cannot get the present Congress to adopt their proposed Constitutional amendment to nullify the effect of the U.S...
...Perhaps the most dramatic example of the people's readiness to support the President even in the most insane foreign adventure occurred at the time of the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961...
...military personnel...
...The ever more populous United States desperately needs a workable partnership of Federal and state governments...
...Apart from any violation of academic freedom, RPI's action must trouble the spirits of many of the South's bearded heroes, including Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, not to mention the Northern hero who took Richmond—Ulysses S. Grant...
...It extends to the Dominican crisis last year as well...
...various suggestions were offered, all aimed at insuring a truly representative selection of jurors...
...Kennedy, whose wry sense of humor did not fail him as he glanced at the poll, commented: "The worse I do, the more popular I get...
...December, 1963...
...Thus: "Progress in the last eight to ten weeks has been great...
...Murder, assault, and other crimes directed at Negroes or civil rights workers because of race or espousal of racial equality should be made Federal crimes...
...The major part of the U.S...
...Defeat of his amendment is crucial for the country's future—and the greater the margin of defeat, the healthier the outlook for American democracy and the aspirations of the Great Society...
...Its Christmas special for 1965 was a set of twelve one-dollar books boxed and wrapped under the title, One Dozen Candles...
...The Federal judiciary and some state courts have given superb support to the Supreme Court's "one man, one vote" decisions...
...Civil Rights Now The recent White House civil rights conference handed the Johnson Administration a jarring reminder of Thomas Jefferson's admonition that "The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them...
...More Duplicity The Administration's duplicity in the conduct of foreign affairs has not been confined to Vietnam...
...Where minority control of legislatures produced plans that would freeze voting inequities, the courts have written their own redistricting plans...
...Nor is all the evidence available even now...
...to expand greatly the number of Federal registrars under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and to provide them with more flexible techniques designed to encourage Negroes to register for voting...
...Kennedy's rueful reflection on at least one adventure in foreign affairs, "The worse I do, the more popular I get," and Mr...
...During 1965 the Birch Society, it has been estimated, spent between $5 million and $6 million, almost twice as much as the Republican National Committee...
...We have every reason to believe that [U.S...
...Last month, McNamara flew to Vietnam again...
...The Administration refuses to approve release of the official transcript of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because, as Frankel observed, "it would rekindle a bitter debate and furnish new ammunition to its critics...
...To restrict such expression "tends to create an inhibiting atmosphere...
...That is why it is so important for the President to shed his sensitivity to criticism, and, however great the embarrassment, permit disclosure of the official report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...Supreme Court, and the PTA...
...Federal judges, in par-t'cular, have defeated many legislative stratagems designed to prevent equality of voting...
...The President opened the White House conference with the clear inference that further progress depended on Congress passing new measures...
...attacking civil rights campaigns, the United Nations, the U.S...
...The Virginia school refused to reregister a student returning for his senior year this fall because of his beard and long hair...
...We can no longer afford what The Washington Post has called "the illusion that voluntary compliance can be relied upon to produce equality for Negroes in the South...
...reading scores of extremist books and pamphlets and buying and distributing them as widely as possible...
...Prophet Secretary of Defense Robert S. Mc-Namara is doubtless one of the ablest and most dedicated men in the Johnson Administration...
...in Colorado, the voters approved a plan to apportion one legislative house on a basis other than population...
...Mohr's report on the "steady stream of misinformation about the war in Vietnam," the polls that President Johnson finds so comforting are not nearly so impressive as he says they are...
...Most Americans who rely on their local newspaper or radio or television have no way of knowing the extent to which their government has employed half-truths, misrepresentation, and downright deceit in presenting the "facts" about our diplomatic and military policies in Vietnam...
...His periodic journeys to Vietnam have produced prophecies that would indicate he packs a second-hand crystal ball rather than a spanking new computer when he travels abroad...
...In recent months, for instance, the Birch crusade against civil rights has been getting unusually heavy treatment in his monthly bulletin and in American Opinion, the Society's monthly magazine...
...This is no isolated example...
...At least twenty-two states have completed or nearly completed reapportionment action in a form satisfactory to the courts...
...Los Angeles county will have fourteen senate seats...
...See Sidney Lens' article, "Vietnam: A Policy of Deceit," on Page 13 of this issue...
...Welch's emphasis...
...A deadening climate of conformity can result...
...For it is expected that by election day in November, voters in the cities and suburbs of most states will—at long last—cast ballots for legislative seats on a par with their country cousins...
...The civil rights leaders may have rudely jolted Mr...
...Among them were these: H Far more Federal officials should be assigned to communities where violence has occurred, and they should be empowered to make on-the-scene arrests...
...Supreme Court—a fact which would give pause to most college administrations...
...The Administration should read the storm warnings raised by the civil rights leaders and heed the counsel of Thomas Jefferson by taking firm enforcement action without delay...
...Presidents, the ACLU contended that although individual opinion is usually expressed through the written or spoken word, "personal taste in dress and grooming is another technique of self-expression...
...His State Department has now been forced to admit that twice in 1964 the Communists agreed to talk with us in Rangoon and that we refused...
...But RPI barred Thomas anyway, who last spring gave up a college scholarship and his editorship of the RPI art and literary magazine in protest against the administration's "high handedness" in its "arbitrary" rulings on student dress and grooming...
...Civil Rights Commission—a report The Washington Post labeled "a catalogue of horrors—of wanton cruelty, of calculated degradation, of official responsibility ignored, of law enforcement turned to the protection of lawlessness...
...He pointed out that the campaign for the amendment will be run by "the well-known California public relations firm of Whitaker & Baxter, which for years led the fight against the Medicare bill...
...His most vivid impression, he said, is that "we have stopped losing the war...
...The American Civil Liberties Union has so advised the Richmond Professional Institute...
...Polls and Patriotism Whenever he is asked about rising public concern over our escalating role in Vietnam, President Johnson reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the latest public opinion poll...
...It is understandably human, of course, to want to withhold ammunition from your critics...
...Although there was no credible evidence of significant Communist involvement, a vital point The Progressive emphasized then and repeats now, the United States, Frankel reported, "was determined to prevent the return of former President Juan Bosch and to prevent a victory by his rebel supporters because it believed they had made 'an effective alliance' with Dominican Communists...
...On his return he seemed to have learned his lesson...
...In the 1965 session, the Dirksen amendment was supported by fifty-seven Senators—twenty-nine Republicans and twenty-eight Democrats...
...It will be a long war," he said...
...Thirty-six Democrats and three Republicans voted against it...
...He had nothing to say about the urgent need to launch a major drive toward negotiations that might make it clear whether there is any basis for an honorable resolution of this senseless war...
...Thousands of Negro leaders and millions of their followers, as well as the National Council of ChurcheSj the Catholic clergy, the leaders of Amerir can Judaism, major labor unions, and a host of other organizations and individuals, including President Johnson, have labored mightily on behalf of the, civil rights revolution...
...Senator William Proxmire, the Wisconsin Democrat who has been a leader of the Senate's liberal bloc that derailed Dirksen's previous attempts to scuttle reapportionment, has warned against underrating the last-ditch campaign led by the Illinois Republican...
...This is a dismal record of deceit and double-talk...
...Unquestionably there is need for further legislation to continue closing the gaps in the wall of civil rights protection...
...What is at stake, too, is the need to prevent a recurrence of the Dominican disaster, and this is possible only if we know how and why we went wrong in that crisis...
...The Supreme Court declared such voter approval had no force in view of its rulings...
...Equally important in evaluating the significance of the polls on Vietnam policy that Mr...
...Several hundred thousand copies of this essay, the bulletin reported, have been distributed, and it has "already been placed as a full-page advertisement by our members in newspapers with a total circulation of about one million copies...
...military] plans will be successful in 1964...
...But much more is at stake than Mr...
...It was not available to the public at the time President Johnson was flourishing polls of public opinion recording widespread popular support of his course of action in the Dominican Republic...
...But the planning was overshadowed by sharp criticism of the Administration for failing to enforce effectively the civil rights legislation already signed into law and by demands for prompt action...
...They know this is the Gettysburg of their war to preserve their arbitrary power in the states...
...The New York Times, February 19, 1964...
...In the many states which have submitted the issue to the electorate, the principle of "one man, one vote" gained majority approval with only one exception...
...Johnson's tender sensibilities...
...All of these—and more—are steps the Administration could take with the authority it commands right now...
...to withhold Federal funds from hospital and health agencies that continue segregation...
...Moreover, at the time the Administration was "still professing nonintervention," it "worked behind the scenes to bolster the military forces" bent on smashing the popular revolution...
...Public opinion has been on the side of equitable reapportionment...
...If this weird nonsense continues to grow, it will be the rest of the country—the true conservatives, the middle-of-the-roaders, and the liberals—that will be jumping up and down in amazement and alarm...
...But a concurrent order of business is to enforce fully those laws we already have...
...The President, for example, solemnly assured the nation last summer that North Vietnam had rejected every proposal for negotiations...
...we put together the late Mr...
...McKinley's Last Stand The McKinley part of the many-faceted Senator Everett McKinley Dirk-sen will be busy in the second session of the Eighty-ninth Congress leading a renewed and final effort to return the state legislatures to the era of President McKinley...
...Redistricting will result in less dramatic transfers of power from rural to metropolitan areas in most other states, but the cumulative effect will be to enable at least some states to free themselves of minority domination in order to cope more effectively with the needs of growing populations...
...In a belated November bulletin—whose 146 pages contain membership marching orders on dozens of assignments for the next few months—Welch wrote: "As J. Edgar Hoover has wisely pointed out, the Communists have no slightest [sid interest in really improving the lot of the American Negroes, but only in using the Negroes and the racial problem to promote Communist purposes...
...Said Dean Erwin Griswold, a member of the Commission: "So long as disregard of national law rules the Southern scene, national power must make itself felt...
...There have been several versions of the Dirksen amendment but in essence, in its present form it would permit the states to apportion one house of their legislatures on a basis other than population...
...Basing his report on leaks of secret testimony taken by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Frankel revealed that the Johnson Administration "explicitly solicited from a rump military junta the urgent request last April 28 that it send troops to protect American lives...
...The Non-conforming Beard Personal expression is "a vital element of academic freedom," and wearing a goatee and long hair is a form of personal expression...
...What Mr...
...Birch v. Civil Rights Any Birch Society member who attempted to carry out even half the missions urged upon him each month by his national leader, Robert Welch, would have to devote full time to the effort and, in addition, hire two assistants to help with the chores...
...Civil Rights Commission...
...The rural, racist, and business interests that for decades have employed their legislative control to fashion state governments as they saw fit are backing Senator Dirksen's amendment drive in the current Congress to the hilt...
...hopes to withdraw most of its troops from South Vietnam before the end of 1965...
...The corner has been definitely turned toward victory" in South Vietnam.—May, 1963...
...The two-day conference of civil rights leaders had been called to make plans for a large-scale, springtime White House conference "to fulfill these rights...
...If...
...The fact remains," he says, after reciting the figures in much the manner of a boy who has brought home a perfect report card, "that the great majority of Americans do support our course of action in Vietnam...
...His bulletin listed the names and prices of sixteen books, pamphlets, and article reprints, including "What's Wrong with Civil Rights?," the Welch essay from which the previous excerpt is taken...
...Often it is not so much support of a policy as it is "standing behind" the President in a time of overseas conflict...
...With many of the legislatures already reapportioned on the basis of population, or on the verge of doing so, and other state redistricting plans now before the courts, time is running out for the Dirksen forces...
...After reminding Dr...
...October, 1963...
...Johnson does not go on to say is that Americans, like most people everywhere, tend to believe that patriotism requires them to "support" their own government in times of foreign crisis even if they think its course of action is wrong...
...But Welch attributes its' progress to a Communist conspiracy that has duped nearly everyone but him...
...Constitution...
...It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists, patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years...
...But then, according to our almanac, RPI was not founded until 1917 when beards were no longer in flower...
...Johnson is so fond of quoting is some assessment of the quality of the information on which people base the answers they give to public opinion interviewers...
...Oliver that beards were once prevalent in the country, and were worn even by U.S...
...If the amendment were adopted in this session of Congress—before reapportionment brings a sufficient change in the rural-urban composition of legislatures—a coalition of rural-dominated and Dixie legislatures conceivably could provide the ratification by thirty-eight states that would make the Dirksen amendment part of the U.S...
...Among the tasks that a diligent Bircher is exhorted to perforin by the Society's founder are recruiting new members...
...11 Reform of the jury system...
...This new equality of voting would, by January 1967, give the urban areas enough legislators in enough states to make it impossible for the Dirksen amendment—even if it is passed by Congress—to secure the required ratification of three-fourths of the states...
...As a direct consequence of the Supreme Court's historic decisions, reapportionment has made some impressive gains...
...He was still talking in terms of "winning" or "losing...
...Recent disclosures by Max Frank-el, diplomatic correspondent of The New York Times, confirm the interpretation placed on that unhappy episode by The Progressive at the time...
...Secretary of Defense Robert S. Mc-Namara has told members of Congress that the U.S...
...Application of the equal opportunities section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to employment practices of all agencies concerned with the administration of justice, including local and state police...
...Under prodding of state and Federal courts, the legislature has been reapportioned...
...But when he wanders away from his Pentagon maps and computers, he seems a lost soul, especially when he wraps himself in the mantle of prophet...
...It seems to believe the world began with King C. Gillette...
...backing a return to minimal government...
...The Commission and the civil rights leaders alike, after criticizing both the scope and pace of Justice Department enforcement, detailed a number of specific steps the Administration should take to make the national power felt...
...formerly it elected a single senator...
...attending meetings addressed by far-right speakers endorsed by the Society...
...The set sold for $10 and carried the guarantee to have the buyer "jump up and down in amazement and alarm"—at the extent that Communism has enveloped our country...
...It urged RPI to reverse its action...
...Writing only recently from Saigon, where he is a seasoned hand in evaluating the military and political developments in Vietnam, Charles Mohr of The New York Times reported: "A steady stream of misinformation about the war in Vietnam is reaching the American public...
...One of the states in which reapportionment may be felt most dramatically is California, the most populous state in the Union...
...supporting the local police...
...But then the old McNamara reasserted himself...
...and—above all—paying dues and contributing money to the Society so that it can save the country from Communism...
...The ACLU, in a letter to Dr...
...Nothing could wreck hopes of a productive partnership more disastrously than the addition of the Dirksen malapportionment amendment to the Federal Constitution...
...Even before the revolution, Frankel noted, the United States provided extensive aid to the civilian junta of Donald Reid Cabral, which was overthrown by the uprising, "even though it [the United States] knew from its own public opinion polls that the junta had no popular support and was planning to cancel elections scheduled for September...
...In the welter of Robert Welch's directives to his anointed band it is often difficult to determine which missions have greater urgency than others at any given time, but during the recent past he and his minions have been giving top priority to the "Communist-inspired civil rights fraud...
...In ten other states reapportionment action has been taken but is still subject to court ruling or review...
...It now claims 80,000 followers organized in 5,000 chapters, a staff of 250 paid employes, five regional public relations offices, a network of 360 bookstores, and an output of millions of books, pamphlets, magazines, recordings, films, billboards, stickers, and postcards...
...Malapportionment has been seriously wounded, Proxmire said, but the weeks just ahead "will see a campaign of very large proportions directed against individual Senators and Representatives in an effort to change their votes...
...The student's name is Norman Thomas Marshall—a name which combines the cognomens of a great American dissenter and one of the giants in the history of the U.S...
...For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the . Communists, as you now frequently hear...
...Johnson and his Administration with their near-unanimous criticism of the Administration's inadequate enforcement of existing laws...
...May, 1962...
...The conference demands, which centered on the widespread flouting of civil rights laws in the South, followed closely on the publication of a report on law enforcement by the U.S...
...In other civil rights areas, the conference leaders prodded the Administration to pursue a much more vigorous policy in enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which gives the Federal government authority to cut off funds to schools practicing racial discrimination...
...Negro leaders, led by Dr...
Vol. 30 • January 1966 • No. 1
