A OPINION Page 4 Sunday, September 7, 1980 The Michigan Daily Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Vol. XCI, No. 4 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Feifffer cmss. /zsa aiu5T L - -flA6 T~t) CAf'RC5 NO Scr Fw1$(CPJ. Editorials represent a majority opinion of The Daily's Editorial Board Funding the marching band / 7l eX CctJP QCAL)PX} C He' P(RCtHflr 7HS FE: S~ T A ? - 6MI LAJII uq- 7 H I T KIND OF COMES down to war movies in the plush surroundings of the Campus Inn hotel or "Hail to the :Victors" in Columbus, Ohio. Every Friday night before a home football game, yousee, the Michigan Wolverines-nearly 100 of them-and their coaches and trainers-nearly 30 of them-reportedly enjoy movies such as Patton and The Green Berets in the comfort of the East Huron Street hotel-where Coach Bo Schembechler can keep a safe watch over them. Meanwhile, the nationally- acclaimed Michigan Marching Band can't scrape together enough funds to travel to away games this year. The athletic department pays for the hotel holidays. It won't give more than about $15,000 to the marching band, a figure which ~can't begin to cover travel or hotel costs, let alone equipment and uniform expenses. As far as the athletic department is concerned, funding the marching band is the responsibility of the School of Music. But the music school is faced with budget constraints like almost all other University schools and colleges. It can't increase its financial support for the band to compensate for the loss of private donations that had sustained the group for many years, but have now fallen off. The athletic-department, however, is one University body that does not seem to be suffering financially. It is fiscally independent of the University's general fund; many of its revenues are derived from football ticket sales. And the, marching band is an impor- tant attraction at football games-it functions principally for the benefit of the football team and the athletic department. We are not necessarily suggesting that the department cease funding the hotel holidays-we suppose a case can be made for secluding the team mem- bers so they don't exhaust too much pre-game energy on unsportsmanlike pursuits. And the showing of war movies strikes us as a rather creative way to foster the competitive. aggression needed during football con- tests. But we do believe the athletic depar- tment can and should find money for the marching band. That it can afford the Campus Inn rates shows it has few money problems. Without athletic department funds, the band will be playing "Hail to the Vanquished." I 6 -p. , r a^n( Freedom for the weirdos, too Reagan stumbles onward EMOCRATS NEVER expected to to have it so good. They thought that once former Governor Ronald Reagan no longer had to deal with the likes of George Bush, Phil Crane, John Connally, and John Anderson, he'd be able to tighten up his operation and keep his traditional disregard for the truth and for intellectual soundness a secret. When other GOP candidates were his competitors, the septuagenarian's only major boo-boos were his expressed ignorance of the term "parity" as it applies to farmers and his frequently voiced belief that there was more oil beneath Alaska than beneath Saudi -Arabia (the U.S. Geological Survey doesn't quite see it that way). But Reagan's misstatements have flourished since he captured the Republican prize. Some of them have smelt only of mildly confused thinking, like his criticism of President Carter for opening his campaign in Tuscum- bia, Alabama-"the birthplace of the Klan," according to Reagan, but not according to the history books. He had a few apologetic phone calls to make on that one. More frightening is Reagan's ap- parent intent to untie the knot his predecessors have fastened with the People's Republic of China. There is not even much of a human rights con- sideration on the China issue, as both the Communist republic and its tiny counterpart, Taiwan, are starkly op- pressive by American standards. An alliance with the Communists, however, will do far more to secure U.S. safety than ties to Formosa possibly could. Reagan doesn't seem to care. You can hear the wheels turning in that machine-lie mind: Communist bad; capitalist good." No Reagan gem, though, is as flawed as his characterization of the Vietnam War as a "noble effort." The war was not even supported by most of the people it was intended to defend. To call it "noble" ranks with the most idiotic, jingoistic remarks of any recent campaign. But then, that's what the governor's campaign is all about. Amonghe weightier duties of the editors of tpage,of whom I am one, is selecting the issues that our editorials will address. While we try to select the most newsworthy and significant issues objectively, it is never- theless true that our personal prejudices sometimes interfere with the objectivity of our decision making. I would like to begin by pleading guilty to the sin of prejudice-perhaps to an extreme degree. My particular pet issue is the second clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. I am strictly and irrevocably opposed to any in- fringement of freedom of speech, no matter how heinous the group or individual trying to do the speaking. IN EDITORIAL Board discussions at The Daily, I have defended the Danish News, a local purveyor of erotica, against ardent feminists. I have fenced with liberals on behalf of the Ku Klux Klan's right to march through Skokie, Illinois. I have stood up for Brother Jed Smock's right to spout his evangelist nonsense from his favorite bench on the Diag. I am really quite unconcerned with the specified brand of rubbish ideologues want to peddle, so long as they attempt to enact their ideas through persuasion and not through force. For all my absolutist posturing, I have recently become increasingly aware that my rhetorical monologues have too often omitted" what perhaps is the most important arena of all. I speak, of course, of the American elec- tion process. I see a de facto conspiracy in this country the effect of which is nothing less than the vir- tal squelching of any view deemed too far from the mainstream. NOW SOME READERS will proudly point to President Carter and Ronald Reagan, two leaders whose beliefs are supposedly widely divergent. Indeed, it could be argued that our choices in 1980 are as distinct as any since Adlai Stevenson challenged that balding Republican fellow in 1956. But to suggest that all points on the political spectrum are adequately represented today is to wear blinders. To name just ten of the fundamental questions on which Carter and Reagan are in at least basic agreement: Both think it necessary that the U.S. in- crease military spending. Both oppose any substantial move toward nuclear disarmament. I AM, OF course, allied with the candidates on some of these points (the third, fourth, and tenth, if you must know), and opposed on others, but that is not my concern here. My concern is that neither of the candidates is ever forced publicly to re-examine the issues on which they agree, even though there are millions 4o Americans who would fight them on each and every point. Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party regards "free enterprise" as a tool of slavery in large measure. I suspect that were he ac- corded a fair chance to air his views, he would win many more supporters than he has. Ed Clark of the Libertarian Party would like ultimately to see a society wherein do- gooders are free to donate their own money to the poor, but not free to exact "donations" from unwilling taxpayers. THE SOCIALIST Party, Socialist workers Party, Socialist Labor Party, Communist Party, Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, and dozens of other leftist factions would like to "liberate" (nationalize) all in- dustry. The John Birch Society and the KKK would purge Martin Luther King's name from our list of folk heroes. 'Ours would be a healthier nation if all these ideas were given equal opportunityto reach the public. But the media aren't interested; The political fringes have been pronounced "not viable." Obliquity By Joshua Peck Both favor a free market economy. Both support some sort of minimal guaran- teed income through welfare programs. Both favor some restriction of abortion rights. Both support Israel's right to exist and op- pose full rights being accorded the Palestine Liberation Organization. Both favor capital punishment in some cases. Both are Christians. Both are inclined to reduce firearms restrictions. Both seem to favor racial equality, though their methods are different. Even within the major parties, the largest media organs seem to be terrified of stances outside the fold. Press political analysts were so busy predicting Reagan's victory in the Republican-race that there was scarcely any space left to contrast his record and positions with those of his opponents. Naturally. Reagan won; in lieu of any other information, voters just naturally went with the man the media (endlessly) called the frontrunner. OF COURSE, THE chief culprits in the anti-third, -fourth, and -fifth party cabal are not the media, but the Republican and Democratic parties. They have arranged 0 funding scheme that virtually excludes any but their own. They have conspired to enact laws that make ballot access for minor parties positively labyrinthine. They have generally made themselves unavailable for questioning from minority viewpoint publications, and this year Carter has gone so far as to attempt to bar John An- derson, a candidate with a respectable per- centage of the electorate behind him, from debate. What are they afraid of? I'M NOT SUGGESTING that the courts force the media and major parties to open the door to more minority viewpoints. But with an ever smaller percentage of the citizenry voting each election year and a higher per- centage of the voters dissatisfied with their choices each time around, one would think that even the party bosses themselves would begin to welcome a freer marketplace of ideas. The relative inaccessibility of the ex- treme left and the right can only serve to make them more appealing. ' Four years ago, an odd sort of coalition formed of just about every offbeat political. organization in Ann Arbor. The whole focus of the coalition Was to get people to vote for a candidate-any candidate-who stood outside the Establishment. In 1976, I thought the coalition bizzare and wondered why any socialist group would compromise itself by joining up with the libertarians. Now, nauseated with the Georgian and the Californian, bored by their ever-converging rhetoric, I may just opt for the weirdest can- didate I can find. Joshua Peck is the Daily's Opinion page. appear every Sunday. co-editor of His column The will The new, young righ-to-lifers - - E NT4 CU/NA N / ,.i Wearing an Indian cotton blouse and peasant skirt, Valerie Evans switches on a Grateful Dead album and sits down to discuss her political activism. A veteran of anti-nuclear and anti- draft demonstrations, the 20- year-old Berkeley student seems the very picture of youthful protest, 1980-style. Except for one thing: She is against abortion. EVANS IS PART of a new generation of young people joining the ranks of the anti- abortion movement out of an un- swerving commitment to the sanctity of human life-and not because of conservative political views. Some are anti-nuclear ac- tivists whose concern for the next generation grew from studying the effects of radiation on the un- born. Some work for the rights of the disabled or retarded and fear that infanticide will be practiced on those born with mental or physical handicaps. Others are pacifists who find they can no longer support abortion while op- r~n i ._ ttn on oni - ne political convictions is cited as the number one reason most young progressives join the right- to-life camp. Juli Loesch, an anti- nuclear activist in Erie, Pa., says right-to-life groups challenged her thinking on abortion when she spoke to them about the dangers of nuclear power: "How could I talk about saving unborn children from the potential hazards of radiation while I was ignoring the real danger from abortion?" Given an unpleasant choice between unwanted pregnancy or unwanted abortion, this new generation of idealists argues that both are unacceptable. "Abortion is viewed as a solution to problems for which it really isn't," Valerie Evans says. "The answer to rape is not abortion, it's stopping rape. The answer to people not being able to feed their children is not to abort them, it is jobs and changing the system." PART OF THEIR agenda to "change the system" em- phasizes better methods of con- Nevertheless, . their own rationale leaves some critical questions in the abortion con- troversy unanswered. Young right-to-lifers have some dif- ficulty rebutting the charge that to make abortion illegal will result in the proliferation of dangerous back-alley abortions once again. And, in their commitment to the preservation of human life, the pacifist pro-lifers would even deny abortions in the case of rape or incest. In such cases, they in- sist, the woman is still carrying an innocent human life. She should get support and love during her pregnancy and, if necessary, give the child up for adoption after it is born. MOREOVER, WHATEVER their convictions on other mat- ters, young right-to-lifers may still be portrayed as part of the reactionary right wing. Political year 1980 was long ago targeted by new right groups as the time for a big push against abortion, By Mary Claire Blakeman ting with older, more conser- vative right-to-lifers could also be the beginning of a whole new set of political alliances. For the new pro- lifers, the throw-away mentality which disturbs ecologists also is a threat to future generations. The argument about unwanted children, they say, turns infants into consumer products, to be discarded at will. Taking this idea one step further, they fear that acceptance of abortion will allow society to rationalize the elimination of defective humans. "The people who make the 'quality of life' argument say that if it's okay to detect and abort a Down's Syndrome child before birth-then why not after birth also?," observes Rose Evans, Valerie's mother, who teaches retarded children. "It's the same child. I think that's a dangerous trend." But it's not the only trend which ties the new right-to-lifers into a larger network of groups that regard any manipulation of human life as dangerous.