GIarM141an lmuun Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedon EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS AT-LARGE Captives In A Native Land Ly NEIL SHISTER ,__ . Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail- NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: NEAL BRUSS W7 ' Nixon Runs; Man Bites Dog AM TIRED ... really tired . . . of doom and gloom. The doom is impending but I'll be damned If I am going to blow my mind being gloomy about it. When it comes it will come, and we will wonder how it happened and secretly know and lose ourselves in platitude of righteousness that we already invoke. I say this all to Sainte Annie one day last week and then we decide we'll take a trip. Really we don't decide like that at all. We just go. She calls my bluff and we're on the road one early morning, leaving while Ann Arbor is dark and still. The country rolls easily by. Thirteen hours of super- highway endlessness, punctuated only by gas stations and Howard Johnson's Restaurants where we stop and have the same coffee it seems we had a few hours be- fore. The flat-land of Ohio and then the coal-hillls of Pennsylvania float past while the Top Ten Tunes be-bop a steady background. A hundred miles before Philadelphia we stopped. The people we were with went in, and while they did Sainte Annie showed me the flag of the land, flying above the dusky silhouettes of a few farms and a church steeple and crimson clouds The flag is blowing, striped-and- starred and we both think how grand this land might have been. IT IS AMERICA Where we were born, Sainte Annie and me. We stand there, next to the road for a few moments, and glory in the sun setting and the quiet and the peace. This is the country that once was ours and may again be. Today it is not ours, for we are captives. As perhaps we shall forever be captives to the nameless fear that enslaves us as a nation. We think how glorious it is that we are privately peaceful for this moment, and then return to the car. The radio is telling, for the fiftieth time this Thurs- day, that the President has activated 15,000 Reserve Soldiers and that the world is yet again perched on an- other brink. And we quiver inside, knowing how quickly collective madness intrudes upon private peace. But Sainte Annie smiles and I think that she may be destroyed but never beaten. We are on our way to New York City, Sainte Annie and I. And although it was I who had more often been to the city, it was she who was my guide. Sainte Annie is American Royalty, the heir apparent to the throne that the land may someday be worthy of possessing. Whether or not she is real is less important than the fact that she exists, and can do with the grace of a natural aristocrat what most of us can only clumsily attempt. Sainte Anie's thing is that she loves. Without trying and without knowing. Naturally. So tripping out with Sainte Annie is turning on to a world worth knowing. And in the city she showed me things I didn't even know I didn't know. NEW YORK IS, of course, it's own world. Seething and sprawling up instead of out, separate clusters and knots tied together by underground tunnels from which one is constantly ascending or descending. It is a hungry town. and on-the-make town where pound-for-pound the best of America's creative and entrepeneurical elite are gathered, snipping at each other's heels and dream- ing of gnawing on the biggest bone. This is the place Sainte Annie conquered with her gentleness. We arrived on the night of the call-up, coming across from New Jersey and into Greenwich Village, the old west village, where we stayed. By the end of the evening, a night passed drinking dark beer and shelling the peanuts of a bar named Ninth Circle, we were wander- ing through Washington Square Park, dosie-doeing the arch Sainte Annie is the hippie's hippie in penny loafers who can do what others do with drugs without them. To meet her once is to leave her undiscovered, for she wears her beauty so quietly and unassumingly that you will miss it. But after a while it grows on you, and pretty soon you see what she sees and start smiling too. So you walk around next to her, stoned. Laughing and saying hello to people who don't know you and feeling good inside and understanding that when the world goes up at least you'll be a bit less empty than you might have been. OURS WAS A QUIET ODYSSEY. The adventures we encountered were the kind you stumble across every day and never realize. We met a lady who had two dogs she bought from England and we met Hank the Bum who hustles 40 cents so that he can get himself a bottle of port wine and we met Pat Hingle the actor whose eyes bulge when he leers at you about why he decided to become an actor. Fourth, Street and mumbles, 'daredevil' to anybody who And we say the guy who rides his bicycle late along challenges his right to the road. And the fellow who carries around a briefcase full of grass to sell because he- is "working his way through an off-Broadway show." All the time while we're wandering and tasting, the United Nations Security Council is in special session and The Times is running five column headlines and we don't care. Maybe we don't care anymore because we used to care too much. And still do. IN THE END WE CAME BACK. Maybe we never did, but we are here now. Me and Sainte Annie. And the world is better because she is in it and it is better be- cause she taught me a little of what she knows. That is the point of this column. Nothing more pro- found than to tell that Sainte Annie is around, and that while we fight our way through the muck and the mire of our polluted souls, hers is around for the asking. So ask. fy 4 n 1 !r~ ti 1\ * On Books: Outside Student Politics *1 71w Inhkr 2=kfth1LA aLvoAa4patfig. -c It's Downhill All the Way J HAVE FOUND some answers to the problems confronting the United States," pronounced Richard Nixon yesterday, virtually choking up those of us who have been waiting so patient- ly so long. ' I learned the awesome nature of the great decisions a President faces," declared Richard Nixon yesterday, as he reminded the nation of his close association during those great years of decision with Dwight "Wait - a - few - minutes - and - I'll - think - of - Nix- on's - contributions" Eisenhower. "During the past eight years I have had the chance to reflect on the les- sons of public office, to measure the nation's tasks and problems from a fresh perspective," asserted Richard Nixon yesterday, who urges a strong continuation of our Vietnam effort, the "unleashing" of local police, pass- ing "new laws to fit new kinds of crimes," and other assorted political panaceas. AND THUS WITH the closing of entries into the New Hampshire sweepstakes, the Republican candi- dates are off and running. There is George Romney, erstwhile prophet of the American ethic, Harold Stassen, symbol of American perseverance, Richard Nixon, dean of the moribund G.O.P., and Florida Gov. Claude Kirk, who was entered without his knowl- edge by an enthusiastic supporter. Pretty exciting election, isn't it? -ROBERT KLIVANS Editorial Director By RAY MUNGO Liberation News Service STUDENT POLITICS by Sey- mour Martin Lipset, Basic Books (1967), 403 pp., $8.95 AGREAT DEAL has been written already about student politics both abroad and in the U.S. But, apparently, Seymour Martin Lip- set and a host of intimates, fund- ed by "Ford and Carnegie and federal and state grants," mean to write a great deal more. This book, we are told, is only the first in an upcoming series called "Student Movements - Past and Present," all edited by Lipset. Yet if succeeding volumes are as bloated with classic footnotery, as obviously predisposed against radical student action, as devoid of even one word written by an actual student anywhere, as ut- terly incapable of coming to defi- nite conclusions without quali- fications which negate their sig- nificance, as dependent on often absurd sources, and as studiously lacking any of the passion and experience of the student revolu- tionary - if succeeding volumes are like this one, brothers, the movement is dead. It will be club- bed unconscious by parasitic social scientists who claim to have no meaner motives at heart than the gathering of pure knowledge. LIPSET AND fourteen other scholars, " ten of whom worked with him in Berkeley's Compara- tive Student Project, have gath- ered, with widely varying degrees of objectivity and clarity, 403 pages and 550 footnotes which analyze student activists in many countries. The data is all there-- their parents, their incomes, their allegedly prolonged virginity, their religions, their campus environ- ments and, most of all, their teachers - but hardly ever their complete political programs and serious objections to establishment moralities. "Activism" is persis- tently stigmatized as "indisci- pline," and manifests a lack of what Lipset calls "satisfactory social adjustment." George Z. F. Bereday classifies the 1964 Berke- ley demonstrators as "rioters" who "seem to have received their training and developed their style in civil rights demonstrations." LIPSET AND Philip C. Altbach impugn both SDS and SNCC as members of a disorganized, un- reasonable "extreme" element and prefer the "responsible criticism of American foreign policy" which they see emerging from the Young Democrats, student YMCA groups, etc. Principled youth idealism, we are led to conclude, is as inevitable, harmless, and al- most as foolish as spring panty raids, since "in all countries, of course, reality is usually at var- iance with principles," and (pre- sumably) must continue to be. Tables, charts, and percentages follow in exhaustive procession. Among the findings: . 82 per cent of American stu- dents believe the U.S. has "an ob- ligation to provide military assist- ance to Vietnam." (Source: A Playboy survey published in No- vember, 1965.)' 0 "Free University" courses, which "range from Marxist phi- losophy and revolutionary theory to discussions of erotic literature and the social uses of narcotics" (a pretty nefarious range, eh?) "vary greatly in quality" and "in- volve only a tiny fraction of the student population." (Source: an article, "Students of Left Set Up Colleges," in The New York Times.) * "Right-wing student activi- ty" (not to be confused with the apolitical majority) "probably still includes many more students in its membership than does the organized left." (Only source cited: "the president of the most significant such group, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).) 0 "A comprehensive study" in- dicates fewer than five per cent of students are activists at every college in the naton excluding one-half of one per cent of them. (Source: 849 Deans of Students!) The entire data-gathering orgy rises to the level of high comedy, however, on page' 220, where we learn that "almost four-fifths (78 per cent) of those sitting-in (at the University of Chicago) report- ed family incomes of over $15,000 a year." Notwithstanding the ob- vious point that almost any sam- ple of students at a major bour- geois university would largely come from such an income bracket, try to imagine the angry, committed sitters-in pausing to chorus their "reports" on Dad's income for the data-gatherers. It's a premise worthy of a Lenny Bruce routine. AS A STUDY of student poli- tics here and elsewhere, then, this book actually flaunts its two most disastrous faults. The first is that it neglects even a puny attempt to recreate the experience of the student in revolt, preferring to re- flect him in the same statistical terms which university adminis- trations use to 'characterize" im- mense student bodies. The second fault is that it ironically repre- sents in itself many of the edu- cational irrelevances which are pushing students to coordinated revolution. If Americans do not sympa- thize with black insurgency or the nationalist fervor of the tVie Cong, for example, it is not be- cause they don't know the statis- tics on black unemployment, the deprivations of ghetto housing, or the atrocities of the Diem et, seq. regime in South Vietnam. It is because they have not them- selves experienced these abuses and insults, and because not enough effort has been made to bring these experiences closer to their understanding. ,My own experiences with stu- dent movements practicing con- sistent, informed rebellion against intolerable circumstances (in a subtle, flexible manner) render Lipset's data meaningless. A' se- lection of articles by students, American and overseas, would have been enormously more valu- able than all of this book, espe- cially if combined with what first- hand research there is in it, such as E. Wight Bakke's accounts of activism in six countries. Aston- ishingly, all of Lipset's conclusions about students in "underdeveloped countries"--chapter one-seem to be based on secondhand library references-114 of them in a 34- page article. THE IRONIES enmeshed in the fabric of this anthology are so powerful as to be much more fascinating than the "informa- tion" it contains. It insists, for example, that SDS is chaotic and incapable of sustained leadership to date, while admitting that SDS Is the strongest, most numerous' group in American radical stu- dent politics --which is "signifi- cant" enough to warrant all this research and more to come. It cites lack of respect for faculty members as a cause of student revolt, while itself being so ped- antic and. inconsequential as to engender that very lack. It pleads for better understanding of the activist-while offering little. At one point Lipset subtitles a chapter "The Need for More Re- search" (i.e., more systematic ac- cumulation of data) when the need is quite obviously (as some other authors in the same book sometimes suggest) for philoso- phy, poetry, and exposition. It cites academic overloads as a cause of unrest when it is apparent that a virtual army of graduate stu- dents were employed, as they fre- quently are, to gather and collate all the obscure journals and un- published theses on which so- many of these articles rest their observations. STUDENT POLITICS as an explanation of international stu- dent activism is comparable to William F. Buckley's observations on black power, or Harry Aschlin- ger's on LSD; it was written apout young people caught in a growing movement by "bald old gents with glasses" (as John Lennon would say) sitting in Burtonian poses of omniscience in the Widener and countless other libraries. And, as failure, like virtue, is its own reward, it will largely be con- fined to their vaults. w Older Myths, Newer Realities IF HANOI AND Pyongyang had been conspiring to make Washington look foolish, they couldn't have done a better job. Either for reasons of diplomacy (which Ambrose Bierce defined as "the patriotic art of lying for one's country") or unwar- ran ted .optimism (which, unfortunately, is more credible), our generals have for tihe last several months-with reports of Victory after victory-made it seem as if Vhe war was on the verge of being won. The fierce and shockingly successful Viet Cong offensive against over half of the cities of the South, including Saigon, phopped that illusion to ribbons. Less sensational-but almost as damaging_- has been our conduct of the Pueblo inci- dent. After hearing Jules Feiffer's taunt (lot course, our government has access to information we do not have . . .") for years, it is unsettling to learn that it is literally untrue... Far from having access to classified in- 'telligence, our military apparently ig- nored the danger signals in newspaper and radio reports. The events of the weeks before Captain Bucher, 83 crewmen and an intelligence ship were so blithely appropriated by the Pyongyang govern- mnent, should have prompted more caution dn our operations. South Korean ships had been seized and Seoul radio stations piped warnings from North Korea that Ameri- an, ships were the next objects of in- terest. For the past year, the Parks gov- ernment has been complaining of step- ped-up infiltration activity. With many of the Pueblo's support vessels committed to Vietliam, with our 'history of commun- .ications goof-ups stretching back to Pearli 'Harbor, why did we take the chance? SECRETARY RUSK admitted to an ing is laudable. What the secretary ig- nored is that the Cold War axioms which the administration has refused to rethink render a rational reappraisal of our elec- tronic intelligence policy impossible. For the ineptitude we displayed in al- lowing the Pueblo capture, while grow- ing out of a situation we should have known about and could have controlled, underscores our far more pervasive ig- norance of what's going on in North Korea. The United States has little diplo- matic contact with Pyongyang and neither does any of its allies; that is why Washington immediately looked to Mos- cow as an intermediary. Clearly, our ignorance is the result of our isolation. If the United States wants to know; it must either intensify its in- telligence operations a hundredfold or cease to pretend that very real govern- ments do not exist. The former is un- thinkable. While it hardly seems possible that the CIA could earn the United States any more ill will than it already has, why push our luck? Besides, to increase intel- ligence operations would leave us open to more incidents of the U-2, Pueblo variety. The latter alternative is more difficult to effect but ultimately more realistic. Hard as it may seem at this juncture to , bring about even a limited detente, the Pueblo incident and the storming of Saigon emphasize the urgency of estab- lishing speaking relationships with the Communist governments of the Far East. UNLESS THE United States takes bold diplomatic action now it is going to be increasingly frustrated. As the Pueblo crisis enters its second unsolved week, with 14,787 air-reservists called up al- ready and President Johnson studying the possibility of recalling ground re- 4 Students March: "Experience" or Statistics ? FEIFFER LISTENInbR TODAY?2 FLP'W _ :eurP P , _ o AMP I P s,.IEr 4MY ' I ni _ . MI AND 166 pip! DIP! 67 l R kA[- ANN VisL. Pubigihers Halt Splcat( MV 1 j ""' * PARhi0OA AIU T4oR~ CR65 WHO '55~ PfR16cr- IE?