94P Amidsgan Baiy
Sevent y-n ine years of editorial freedoinm
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By MICHAEL DAVIS
the death of the
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: DANIEL ZWERDLING
I e radic alization
of Warren Burger
IT APPEARS that either the Supreme
Court will survive Warren Burger, or
it has an overwhelmingly successful radi-
calizing process that should be studied
by recruiters for the New Left.
In two sessions it has agreed to hear
two rather controversial cases that the
Nixon administration would have pre-
ferred for it to ignore, one dealing with
the status of conscientious objectors and
the other with the rights of welfare
recipients.
A YEA VOTE on the former would
permit men to apply for a conscien-
tious objector classification, even if they
are not members of any particular relig-
ious group. Generally, only those who
were members of religious faiths that had
expressed open opposition to the Vietnam
War, or to the concept of fighting in any
non defensive war were granted CO de-
ferments.
A positive concensus on the welfare is-
sue would declare state mandatory resi-
dence laws for people applying for econ-
omic assistance unconstitutional. The
Supreme Court will be hearing an appeal
from New York state, which was dissatis-
field by a ruling from the northeast
federal district court which had ruled
its mandatory residence law unconstitu-
tional.
HE REASON given by state legislators,
who voted in favor of the residence
Miseonception
THE FUROR at Cornell University,
roused last spring when black students
toting unloaded guns occupied a build-
ing, has now been duly analyzed and
summarized.
A survey commissioned by the univer-
sity's trustees was released this week
showing that 21 per cent of the students
questioned "approve of violent or dis-
ruptive protest under exceptional c i r-
cumstances."
WHAT IS DISMAYING is the fact that,
in their desire to understand stu-
dent dissent, university officials are so
dependent on statistics and so short on
thoughtful analysis. For example, the
Cornell survey concludes, almost despite
its statistics, that a "small, hard
core of militants, dedicated to destruc-
tion," are really responsible for the major
protest in April. It contributes no new
analysis to the area of student protests.
In fact, if anything can be gleaned
from the findings, it is that a disruptive
hard core is being phased out of the
leadership of student movements.
FROM THE CORNELL survey, it should
not simply be noted that a lot of
students are now willing to condone dis-
ruptive action by their peers, but rather
that the increasingly large minority and
not the disruptive hard core is respon-
sible for unrest on the campuses.
-H1. G.
law, was that it was an effort to reduce
the number of people migrating to New
York in order to receive higher welfare
benefits than those offered by neighbor-
ing states.
The New York State Department of
Social Services has reported that t h e
number of welfare recipients for the state
has remained constant since the enact-
ment of the residence law.
But if the high court should uphold
the decision of the federal appelate court,
which ruled that residence laws were an
impingement on the rights of people, par-
ticularly those who are poor, to seek
means of adequately supporting them-
selves, then states across the nation
would have to revoke their residency
laws.
IN ADDITION those states which re-
jected welfare applicants because they
did not satisfy state residence require-
ments would be compelled to notify those
people who had applied that they were
now qualified for public assistance.
Also, if those people still wanted to be
registered on that state's welfare r o 11,
then the state would be further obligat-
ed to reimburse the would-be-recipients
from the date of original application to
the date of state notification.
A favorable decision would have far
reaching monumental effects through-
out the nation. New York state has esti-
mated that it would cost $7 million to re-
imburse turned away applicants for a six
month period.
AND WEDNESDAY night, the Supreme
Court decided unanimously that 15
years had been an undue retardation of
the "all deliberate speed" clause pre-
scribed in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of
Education desegregation case. It denied
Atty. Gen. Mitchell's order for a delay
in integration of Mississippi's p u b I i c
schools.
The high court dispelled all doubts of
their judgment when it announced that
it was "the obligation of every school
district to terminate dual school systems
at once and to operate now and here-
after unitary schools."
The U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans
had granted the joint justice department
- Mississippi move to delay desegregation
in 30 Mississippi school districts until the
state could overcome some "logistical"
problems it expected to incur by con-
verting to a fully integrated system. The
decision by the circuit court was one rea-
son for dissension in the justice depart-
ment between young civil rights attorn-
eys and Att. Gen. Mitchell.
OBVIOUSLY the Supreme Court - par-
ticularly its newest member - is
relatively free from the carnival atmos-
phere of political popularity contests,
and balks at the notion of treading still
waters, and sidestepping controversial is-
sues. Hopefully, the court will continue
to interpret the spirit and not the letter
of the laws.
-LORNA CHEROT
Daily Guest Writer
11HOSE CONCERNED with death die be-
fore those concerned -ith life. Three
years ago I thought the Moveniont was the
same thing as the New Left. To:ay I
know better. The Movement remains pri-
marily a peace movement t h o u g h
"peace" has here a meaning almost in-
distinguishable from "life".
The New Left prints posters glorifying
war, urges bloody revolution, and every
day hates more ferociously. The Movement
continues to grow, to find new sources
of power, to come closer to accomplishing
the aims set for it. The New Left is no
longer a mass movement: SNCC is dead;
SDS, divided and dying; the Black Pan-
thers, badly mauled and reformist now in
all but word. What happened?
There is a private and a public answer
to that question. The private answer in-
volves an analysis of the psychology of
those who formed the New Left. Because
I don't believe myself in a position to make
such an anlysis now, I shall not attempt
one here and would be grateful if some-
one else would undertake it. The public
answer is this
THE NEW LEFT has always made its
decisions by a complex though informal
process of consensus. Some time between
1966 and 1968, the New Left, by that
process, chose between nonviolence and
violence. They chose violence, arguing:
--that nonviolence had failed to achieve
the ends already set for it (full civil rights
for Blacks, power for students over their
own lives, and decent conditions for the
poor) and therefore could not be expected
to achieve the new end proposed for it
tending the Vietnam War and preventing
other wars like it>:
-that the violence of Vietnam made
nonviolence at home morally and emo-
tionally impossible: and
-that the New Left could not worry
about their own interests where those in-
terests opposed ending American aggres-
sion in Vietnam lor some other oppressed
country)
The poverty, oppression, and desperation
of what Sukarno had called the T h i r d
World, had become too much for the New
Left. Th-y did not feel they had a riuht
to help win privileges for people who, by
the standards of the Third World, were al-
ready privileged.
-Daily-Jay Cassidy
New Left
Once SDS lost its ability to express itself
in language, its importance on campus
decreased quickly. To compensate, SDS
directed its organizing efforts toward two
groups notably less, verbal and more vio-
lent --- poor high school students a n d
w.rking youth.
The move failed. Black high school stu-
dents could be organized around Black
Power, though the demands had a mid-
dieciass ring. And middle class high school
students could be organized around stu-
dent power and the war, though only in
the way their older brothers and sisters
had been organized. The poor white, whe-
ther in high school or out, while some-
times impressed by SDS daring, remained
untouched by SDS politics. They remained
largely unorganized. SDS membership
shrank.
BY 1968 SDS was no longer making its
membership figures public, Meanwhile,
what remained of the SNCC organization
was secret. The Panthers were already
fighting one another for power inside a
mutilated organization. Because the New
Left could no longer persuade, they could
not increase their numbers by persuasion.
Violence had failed to gain them any-
thing more than police counterviolence.
They had no other way to enlarge their
membership without giving up their spir-
itual alliance with the Vietcong, having
destroyed their reserves of authority,
money and force.
To conserve what strength they had left,
they closed ranks, tried to adopt a strict
discipline, and relied on secrecy for what
argument, money, and numbers had done
before. They chose to sacrifice all possibil-
ity of local gain in membership for a
chance to do anything, no matter how
small, to hasten world revolution.
The result was what anyone familiar
with the history of the Old Left would
have predicted: schism followed by schism,
effective infiltration and disruption by the
police, fraternal throat-cutting, spasms of
senseless action, and eventual paralysis
and despair.
THE NEW LEFT proved at the end
three truths they had known at the be-
ginning and forgotten:
" The strength of the New Left came
from its ability to reason things out, to
argue till there was a consensus inside the
organization and then carry the process of
arguing to wherever people gathered t
discuss the same issue.
It was possible to reason things out be-
cause each person trusted the judgment
and woad faith of every other.
That trust was possible because each
individual spoke for himself and no one
was bound to vote one way or the other
by some obligation to a faction which
thouvht it knew the truth and came to
the discussion already decided. Secrecy,
discipline, and ideology breed faction.
f Only the oppressed can be radicals,
and even their radicalism is defined by
their oppression. The man who wants to
help the oppressed without being one of
them cannot help being what the N ew
Left itself scorned as "liberal," a man too
distant from oppression to sense what is
appropriate for him to do in his situation.
If one wants to be a radical, he must
find a way in which he is oppressed, or
find a way of becoming oppressed, and
then struggle against that concrete op-
pression, allying himself with others inso-
far as he finds common ground with them.
never surrendering his interests to those
of others.
" The (professionalD revolutionary can-
not make the revolution of life. The re-
volutionary, monk-like, renounces the life
of the world. He permits himself no plea-
sure but bringing on the revolution, de-
liberately inures himself to pain, and
soon loses his capacity for feeling anything
but the abstractions of his ideology.
He is, like a monk, unfit to act in
the world because, like a monk, he tries
to act from the outside, as if the dead
could remake the world of the living. The
successful revolutionary makes everyone a
revolutionary, as dedicated and lifeless av
himself. The world has no need of such
revolutions.
THE MOVEMENT has so far not for-
gotten these truths. I hope it never does.
We cannot afford another disaster like
the death of the New Left.
They could no longer concern them-
selves with civil rights, student power, wel-
tare rights, except as a device for aiding
the - struggle of the Third World. They
now saw themselves as allies of all op-
pressed peoples, fighting inside the belly
of the monster their fight and using their
weapons -- as if a bamboo stake had the
same utility in Chicago as in some rain
forest of Vietnam.
WAR DIVIDES the world into friends
and enemies. Once the New Left had
chosen to become a wing of the Vietcong
- the 'Americong - they easily came to
believe three truths of war: those not
with me are against me; the enemy of my
enemy is my friend: and the friend of my
enemy is my enemy. Acting upon t h o s e
truths proved disasterous.
The New Left had depended on a band
of mixed opinions for much of their
strength, always welcoming the aid of
those who could support them on one issue
even if they could not on all. The New Left
later renounced all association with "lib-
erals," accused all liberals of complicity in
war crimes for any refusal of all out sup-
port, and were not surprised when liberals
stopped supporting them.
The New Left had depended heavily on
money given by radical Jews. But, since
the Arabs were friendly with the Vietcong
while Israel was the enemy of the Arabs,
the lo( ic of war made Israel the enemy of
the New Left.
The New Left issued several anti-Zionist
statements which, except to some Jews in-
side the New Left itself, were hard to dis-
tinguish from anti-Semitic statements.
Those who could not bring themselves
to be even anti-Zionist satisfied themselves
with statements accusing Israel - the only
mideastern country with a socialist econ-
omy and a democratic government - of
being capitalist, imperialist, and racist.
Since even radical Jews are likely to be-
come Jewish when other people seem
anti-Semitic, the Jewish money stopped
coming in.
TIHE NEW LEFT had once been re-
markably American expressing their ana-
lysis of America in a language close to
American experience, appealing to Amer-
ican emotions, and comprehensible to the
American mind.
But, because the Vietcong and their al-
lies were Marxist, and because the enemies
of the Vietcong were Americans, the New
Left renounced its American experience
for the experience of their allies - or
rather, for their ideology.
The language of the New Left changed.
They no longer expressed themselves iil
ordinary English, clear, precise, without
cant, and close to personal experience.
They talked instead the language of
Marxist-Leninism, still smelling of moth-
balls and practically incomprehensible
when applied to events of this half of the
twentieth century.
THE NEW LEFT could no longer ex-
press itself intelligibly 'in language to
Americans. To compensate for the failure
of language, they spiced their writing and
speech with profane ejaculations. To com-
pensate for the failure of their words, they
tried to teach by acts of unlimited and
seemingly irrational violence.
Neither the violence ( of language nor
the violence of action worked as expected.
The renunciation of nonviolence alienat-
ed many of SNCC's field secretaries, most
of the rest left SNCC when they no longer
received enough money to live on; and the
remainder drifted North to join up with
the Panthers as they found the Southern
Black to lack revolutionary potential.
The Panthers broke under the counter
-and far-more-substantial-violence of
the police, learning quickly how different
the position of the Black is from that of
the Vietcong.
But the break up of SDS, the largest or-
ganization of the New Left, was the most
dramatic.
THE MIDDLE CLASS is the least violent
and most verbal class in America; the
American university student, the least vio-
lent and most verbal member of the middle
class. As long as SDS expressed, itself
clearly, and appealed to force only as
a means of continuing serious discussion,
SDS remained the most important poli-
tical organization on every liberal cam-
pus in the country.
On Syria's ceaseless struggle
to outdo herself
By BILL DINNER
and HAROLD ROSENTHAL
SINCE IT IS the cradle of civil-
' ization, it logically could be
assumed that the Middle East
should be one of the more civilized
areas of the world. On the con-
trary, the Middle East has en-
dured more totalitarian states and
bloody coups than any other re-
gion. The history of the Middle
East is one of remarkable instabi-
lity.
The most recent Arab-Israeli
conflict and the struggles between
Lebanon and the Arab block are
recurring manifestations of the
turbulent political situation of the
area.
Although most Arab nations now
aspire to democratic socialism,
they have done little or nothing
to attain this goal and are always
distracted by the unsettled state
of the Middle East.
program and then failed to in- ,
plement it effectively. Recently, in
a burst of masochistic chauvinism
--and in an attempt to divert at-
tention from his own failings--
Nasser initiated a program for the
destruction of the state of Israel.
BUT THE domestic shortcom-
ings of Nasser's regime pale beside
those of Syria.
While the UAR has done a
poor job. Syria has done less.
P r e s i d e n t Nureddin al-Attassi
proclaims that Syria is striving
for a social democratic state, but
it is apparent that he is only
paying lip service to this goal. His
government welfare policies have
proved a sham.
A program for Arab socialism
was written prior to the Syrian
coup of 1963 by Yassin Al-Hafiz
calling for "an Arab way to so-
cialism" through educational and
party leadership in the
of the military.
A last ditch effort to
contril
regaiii
civilian leadership in 1966 failed
with the military leaders deposing
and arresting national leaders in-
cluding Al-Hafiz.
THE PRESENT leaders of Syria
claim they are still carrying out
reforms, but it is easily seen that
such is not the case.
Although 60 per cent of the
population between the ages of
6 and 12 is now in school, the
scope and limits imposed on the
teaching negate the success of the
project.
On Sept. 11, 1967, the Syrian
minister of education ordered the
nationalization of all schools. The
decree stated "all instruction in
these schools will be given by
teachers and from books approved
by the ministry." Syria's semi-of-
to make this part of the country
the breadbasket of Syria.
In the name of something like
"Arab socialism for the Arabs,"
a campaign of annihilation was
started against the Kurds in 1961
and in 1967. The Kurds were told
that they no longer had the right
to their land and should be pre-
pared to leave.
The Lebanese paper, E-Havat
(probably the least controlled of
any newspaper in an Arab coun-
try) noted "that Syrian authorny
had deprived the rights of 100.000
Kurds (in one instance) and they
were evicted from their homes and
driven into the desert."
These Kurds were denied almost
all rights to do anything, yet were
still eligible for compulsory mili-
tary service.
It is unfortunate that the Syrian
left has spoken for democratic
socialism yet in practice its ac-
population is literate compared
with under 30 per cent in Syria
and the Lebanese have tradition-
ally been the tradesmen of the
Middle East.
The main problems of Lebanon
have revolved around the diffi-
culties of its bi-national state. Al-
though the country is becoming
dominantly Moslem, the parlia-
ment is divided on the strict basis
of six Maronites, with ties to the
West, and five Moslems. who fa-
vor the Arabs.
LEBANON has been at quasi-
peace with Israel for sometime.
In fact, during the six day war,
Moslem Prime Minister Rashid
Karami (who recently resigned),
wanted to attack Israel and was
vetoed by the predominantly Ma-
ronite chiefs of staff who wanted
no part of the struggle.
It is important to note that the
Lebanese army is probably the
week in an attempt to gain better
positions from which to launch
these attacks. The Lebanese army
has exercised restraint because of
the certain destruction of prop-
erty and the loss, of untold lives
that would be the certain result of
civil war.
The sending of 300 Syrians to
Lebanon is a move on the part of
the Syrian government that has
no real meaning since Lebanon
would have no trouble in destroy-
ing this force.
Although Israel's Deputy Pre-
mier Yigal Allon said Israel
would intervene and invade Syria
if the Syrian army launched a
massive attack on Lebanon, it is
doubtful that he would do so, un-
less invited by Lebanese President
Charles Helou. It seems improb-
able that this will happen; it is
doubtful that Lebanon would ev-
en need his help.