0 v a OPINION Page 4 Friday, October 31, 1980 The Michigan Daily _ a The Tisch plan: A mutated plebeian fervor 0. "The U of M's been putting it over on us for years," declared Bob, my workmate at a local golf course. "They don't need half the money they squeeze everyone for. Hell, if they'd spend within their means like the rest of us, they wouldn't have to go crying to the goddamn government." He hunched forward intensely, surveying the Coming Apart By Christopher Potter thirsts for revenge for a multitude of socio- economic slights, real or imagined. And he has found his elixir in Robert Tisch's Draconian Proposal D. The Tisch proposal's mass-propelled momentum is fraught with poli- tical irony. It is participatory democracy in the most basic sense, the kind of movement your junior high civics teacher used to patriotically bill and coo over: "Isn't-it-- wonderful-we-have-a-direct-voice-in-our-gov- ernment." Letthe Europeans keep their class- based societies; let the communists keep their masses enslaved. America was different. Politicians could come and go-still the basic, homely wisdom of the common man remained sacrosanct. We boasted a sagacity canonized in the music of Aaron Copeland, in the films of Frank Capra: You might fool the people for a while, but eventually they'd catch on to any megalomanical phoney who might temporarily catch our collective ear. Sure, we had our problems, but nothing that a little down-home common sense couldn't set to rights. We were Americans. We were special. AND NOW WE have Tisch. In conception and in campaign format, the proposal is the quintessence of the mystique so championed in word and song by our national poets: A group of fed-up Americans determine to stand up to the biggies, to break free from the entrenched establishment. Few in number but high in ideals, they form a grass-roots movement which soon begins to spread across Michigan. It is a movement financed not by corporate or government, interests, but by small con- tributions from average citizens disgruntled with what they perceive as economic op- pression. The movement gains more and more momentum, marching bravely in the face of the combined opposition of virtually every government-business-labor 'interest in the state. The struggle continues neck-and-neck into the final week, with no sure victor in sight. Will the bosses maintain control, or will the people emerge triumphant? It's enough to make your eyes mist over while you break into a chorus of "God Bless America;" it is also enough to render conventional logic almost im- potent. Tisch is the populist mystique run amok, plebeian fervor mutated into a crusade of prideful, trumpeted ignorance. The proposition is the latest Frankenstein monster begat by the current, torrid American love affair with government-by-referendum. It is a par- ticipatory democracy at its most basic, a living emblem of the system we haughtily cherish as unique. And, like many a good idea carried to its extreme, it threatens someday to destroy the very system that spawned it. IT FAZES TISCH'S' disciples not one bit that Proposal D (which would cleave property taxes in half with no provisions for making up the subsequent lost income) is maliciously bankrupt in both philosophy and implemen- tation; that if enacted it would effectively destroy Michigan's higher education system, its social services, its already beleaguered mental health program. They see only a vision of swift, magically painless tax savings and, more deeply, a-.chance for a little vengeful bloodletting. My friend Bob resents both the elitism of the collegiate upper crust and the welfarism of the unemployed. If Tisch were to bring both classes down, he wouldn't mind a bit. He is symptomatic of thousands, perhaps millions of members of the middle class who have coalesced around Proposal D-a solidarity only dreamed of by the '60s anti-war activists, who labored endlessly and futilely for mass blue- collar support a decade ago. Tisch's emotional motivations are drenched in paradoxical similarity to the old American Left: 'An infec- tious up-the-establishment romanticism, a conspiratorial us-vs.-them zeal firing the movement to a near-religious pitch. The virtual unanimity of opposition to Proposal D from Michigan's organs of media, commerce, and officialdom have doubtless served to unite and spread the movement even further. Everyone loves to root for the underdog. TISCH'S PARTISANS are in essence the new American revolutionaries, bent on changing our way of life. Yet their battle cry rings ofc ignorance, vengeance, and parsimony. They have come to symbolize the small-spirited, me- first domestic xenophobia that has continually,, warred with Americans' nobler instincts these,' 200 years. And they may win this war. Tisch failed<, decisively at the ballot box two years ago.. Though its specifics are even more extreme; this year, if it fails it will be by a frighteningly c smaller margin. It will doubtless than be back-. two years hence for a third try, then a fourth-,. i and a fifth if necessary, until its crusdaders y finally ram home their blueprints for a new state and nation. And before that moment arrives, the rest of us ought to resolve to do all in our grasp to per-. suade, to educate, to instill in others a sense of logical pride in our structure of a' represen- tational form of government-or the day may come when our righteous democratic ardor gives birth to a mob rule so virulent that an American Mussolini may provide the only orderly antidote. twelfth green. "All those students bitchin' about higher tuition if Tisch passes. Hell, most of them never worked a day in their lives. Walkin' around with their noses in the air-hell, let 'em go out and work their butts off the way we do! They'd learn more doing that than they ever learned at the goddamn U of M!" MY FRIEND BOB is most assuredly mad as hell and not going to take it any more. His passion is commensurate with the words he speaks, his fury scornful and boundless; he Christopher Potter is a Daily staff critic. His column will appear every Friday. .1 I,. i ix Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Vol. XCI, No. 50 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Weasel. WHAT T141i5?y UT AAN~ OTHRoF.? ON4 GREAT, YUEAAM S O RW LOAN WAS EWW0o9ou14N ON APPROVEQ .A N flEt' cH tI KNOW 2L PROBLEM FCKME. How so? 5 wELL,1 ALWAYS UseD -M WOP-R ( ABOUT MY FUTURE, w[lAT I! P Do AFTrmR 6RPOuATION, WRF-RE VP 00, WDLX-D T BCE ASIZ 'b FINP A lZ5? BUT Nor ANYMORE! NOW r KNOW OUST WAERE ILL BE AFTER Z GRADUAlr- t r /"" by Robert Lence W {Rf's THAT? . ,,TACKOM Srlf- P I30W Ime"1o I" A win for Tisch foes ROBERT TISCH, the author of the ballot proposal that could cripple The University of Michigan and other state institutions, took a fortunate loss yesterday in an Ingham County cour- Tis.h believes state officials are u irg public funds in their campaign' agairtst his tax-cut plan-Proposal D. Those state officials-including University. President Harold Shapiro-have denied the charge. (Shapiro has said he is using non- restrictive gift funds to help in the fight against Proposal D.) Yesterday, Cir- cuit Court Judge Ray Hotchkiss ruled against Tisch's request for an injun- ction -that would keep Governor William Milliken and other state leaders from using the budgets and facilities under their control to defeat, Proposal D. Interestingly, the same issue that surfaced in Ingham County yesterday has also been bandied around on cam- pus. Wednesday night, for instance, some students at the regental candid- ates debate asked the candidates if they believed the Michigan Student Assem- bly should be able to sponsor anti-Tisch propaganda with student dollars. All four candidates in attendance indicated they felt the studbnt government should not use its funds, which are drawn from students as part of their tuition payments to the University, for political purposes. We could not disagree more. The members of MSA are elected to serve, studentrinterests in whatever way seems appropriate. They are entrusted to find the best methods possible for advancing the cause of their con- stituents. How could MSA do that job any better than to put its resources in- to defeating a proposal that could mean the end of many students' stay in Ann Arbor? V The fact that there may be some students on campus who support the Tisch amendment, as the ones at the debate did, is of no concern. The Assembly members are not obligated to poll the student body at every turn, particularly when the response they would get is so obvious. It is a fact of life in any represen- tative system of government that tax dollars will sometimes be used in ways some taxpayers might find objec- tionalble. MSA should be commended for subjugating the desires of the anti- Tisch lobby to the pressing needs of the majority. May their efforts only prove to have been successful come Novem- ber 4. id 0 LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Column fraught with skewed logic .; 4"' v ~"' _ To the Daily: The title of Joshua Peck's weekly column in the Daily, "Obliquity," is certainly apt. Ac- cording to Webster's New World Dictionary, one definition of obliquity is "a turning aside from moral conduct or sound thinking." His October 19 column, largely an attack on the Spartacus Youth League, is an anti-communist tract fraught with inaccuracies and skewed logic. Despite his protestations to the contrary, the reason Peck flails at us with such a vengeance is not because of our public speaking style, but because of our politics: We hate the fasc- ists and we defend the Soviet Union. It"is simply bombast and brazen hypocrisy for Peck to preach to us about "First Amen- dment rights." As an editor of the Daily, Peck has a consistent record of refusing to print letters we have submitted to him because he does not agree with the content. On the infrequent oc- casions when he. has deigned to print our letters, they often an- peared in an "edited" or outright distorted version. But worst of all, as editor of the. Daily Opinion page, Peck is directly responsible for an insidious editorial printed last winter (February 14, 1980) linking us to a bomb threat called into the Michigan Theater. The SYL certainly sympathizes with the sentiment expressed by those people who heckled Muskie several weeks ago. As secretary of state, Muskie represents the bloodiest imperialist power on earth, the United States. He is a central perpetrator of the anti- Soviet war drive, aimed at the destruction of the USSR. Criminals like Muskie must be exposed, denounced and driven off campus! In his column, Peck expressed opposition to our position against the "right" of fascists to free speech. And this is the one thing i Oppose Proposal F on which Peck is correct: the only right for fascists that we recognize is the right for all their victims-blacks, Jews, workers, and the Left-to strip them of ther fascist insignias and teach them a lesson they won't forget. We seek to do this not because of the fascists' reactionary ideas, but because of their acts. Unlike conservative bourgeois politicians like George Wallace; right-wing propaganda groups like the John Birch Society, or- reactionary academic charlatans like William Shockley, fascist gangs like the Nazis and Ku Klux Klan are ultra-reactionary ar- med thugs in quasi-political garb who mobilize for action : terror and genocide against black people and Jews, smashing the. labor movement, exterminatiion of communists, and suppression of bourgeois-democratic rights and institutions. We of the SYL do not live in cloud-cuckoo land where there's an "open market- place of ideas," but in racist America where the KKK/Nazis murdered five leftists last year in Greensboro, where four older black women were gunned down in Chattanooga on Hitler's birth- day, where there has been a spate of bizarre and grisly racist murders in Buffalo and Atlanta, where cross-burnings and racist attacks are reaching un- precedented frequency. \To argue for "free speech for fascists" courts disaster and gives a democratic cover to the fascists' self-proclaimed open season on blacks and leftists. Peck proudly crows that he was "the first Jew on my block" to congratulate the American Civil Vote for y To the Daily: The most discouraging com- ment I hear regarding this fall's election campaign is when someone tells me that he is voting for a candidate-either Carter or Reagan-whom he does not like because he thinks he has to vote against the other man who is worse. He forgets that besides Liberties Union for defending the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. Was he also the first Jew on his block to, defend the fascist bombers of the' Paris synogogue? Or the Bologna train station? The Nazis are serious about their program. They want blood. They would be happy to make Peck the first Jew on his block a prisoner in the American concentration camps, despite his prattle about their "First Amendment rights." In contrast to Peck's starry- eyed civil libertarianism, the' SYL counterposes the only strategy that can defeat fascist0 murderers-labor/black defense. The capitalist government can- not be relied upon to suppress the, fascists, as any ban against ex~ tremist groups will always be used as a bludgeon against the left, not the right. Mass' mobilizations of blacks and the working class must crush the fascistsin the egg. The Spartacist League/SYL has taken the leads in organizing such demon- strations in Ann Arbor and, Detroit last year, and in San Francisco last spring. Given the rightward political motion in America, it is easy fors yellow journalists like Peck to hurl slanderous accusations of "disrupter" and "loudmouth" at, communists. Peck can wail and weep about the Nazis' "rights" from now until the Holocaust., The self-preservation of the: working class and minorities demands that we cut through this, abstract chatter and smash the fascist gangs by decisive and relentless action. -Michele Lubke October 27 our beliefs ween Carter and Reagan. The reality of 1980, however, is a rare opportunity to cast a meaningful vote for someone other than the- Democrat or Republican. By. voting for a different candidate' this year, the reality of 1984 or""' some future election year may be an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans who have a good a - \, t . i -, 3 4' A -,_ I ,i) To the Daily: Howard Witt's recent column, "Some Mail from Prisoners" (Daily, October 28) describes some of his reactions to the mail he receives from prisoners in various institutions. Witt ex- presses his surprise at one letter that addresses a political issue, another which expresses "thoughtful sentiments," and at the fact that one Jackson prisoner is opposed to Proposal E, a ballot proposal that would construct new prisons in Michigan. As one who works in the areaoftcriminal justice and has a great deal of contact with prisoners, I find that these prisoners' opinions are not at all surprising. Developing a political con- sciousness in prison is quite sim- ple. All one has to do is to realize that American prisons are homes for the poor and minorities, our society's solution to unem- ployment. When the white-collar crimes of corporations and justice system. Certainly our prison system is largely an- tiquated and inhumane. Con- struction of new prisons, though, never results in the closing of these older institutions. It merely adds to the total prisoner population. Michigan and the U.S. have already experienced an enor- mous growth in the numbers of people being incarcerated. While victimization rates have remained largely stable since 1973, the state prison population has almost doubled during this period from 8,000 to 15,000. The U.S. as a whole now incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any. in- dustrialized nation except South Africa and the Soviet Union. This "tough on crime" policy has had no positive effect on the crime rate, but has caused the taxpayers to spend millions of dollars on new cages. Alter- natives to incarceration do i