4 OPINION 't ..: Patge 4 Friday, November 7, 1980 The Michigan Daily f. w S4 Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan 4, Vl. XI, N. 56420 Maynard St. Vo I No.56Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board The tar-and-feather brigades prepare for the autocracy -- _ _ '4, r t h than I the pi Agent stiain blarii The tlie se gover miate al-pun Otbive Xer ptiint- discr( does of car shoul the ui ago Univ( stude Yet CIA s Let. the CIA interview WAS QUITE a show in front of interviews on campus. ie Law Quad yesterday. More The University thrives because it is 100 protesters, gathered to oppose an open forum for ideas. The very resence of a Central Intelligence nature of this community, then, cy recruiter on campus, battled demands that any individual or group is of "The Star Spangled Banner" be permitted to have its say, stage its ng from a nearby fraternity. demonstration, or try to recruit mem- protesters were disgusted that bers to its side. ame agency that has overthrown . rnments in Iran, Chile, and We have a fundamental trust n the emala and trained secret police abilities of members of the University id the world in torture techniques community to think for themselves and on campus trying to attract choose those organizations to which rsity law students to its ranks. they will listen. 'tainly the protesters had a That magic gift of discretion is what -the CIA, with hundreds of in- 'keeps the Ku Klux Klan or the neo- etions and atrocities to its credit, Nazis from establishing any- con- not appear to represent the type stituency in our community. And it is *eer for which University students what provided the CIA recruiter with d be striving. Indeed, we recall only - a dozen prospective employees apleasant time less than a decade yesterday. when the CIA apparently used We have reached a sorry state in- ersity professors to encourage deed when we no longer trust ourselves nts to join the Agency. to discern right from wrong and must , for all its heinous activities, the restrict certain organizations from in- 3hould be allowed to conduct job terviewing on campus. Maybe we can cause conseTvatus interruptus It would probably be akin-if I were religious-to having my religion declared illegal. I am a liberal. All my friends are liberals, either strident or moderate. How very easy it is to feel smug and righteous when everyone around you thinks the same way you do. It took the incredible dimensions of Ronald Reagan's election sweep to hammer home the blunt, brutal fact that to live in Ann Arbor is to live in a dream world;W're not America-we're not the kingdom of Oz,nof Pepperland, of Tralfamadore. WE BASK GRATUITOUSLY in our 4 Coming Apart By Christopher Potter -41 O NLY THREE DAYS after Ronald Reagan was elected 40th, president of the United States, the rift in the American people's thinking could not be more evident. Despite his 10-to-1 victory margin in Electoral College votes, Reagan's popular vote total amounted to less than 51 per- cent-not precisely a ringing mandate. Already, the media are awash both, wit) conservative commentators rub- bing their hands with glee over the return of Nixon's "Silent Majority" (or is it Moral Majority?) and with liberals glumly shaking their heads over the collapse of the Democratic coalition. Ronald Reagan probably doesn't mind all the bickering going on in the press over the meaning and prospects of his election; there are 10 weeks yet before he assumes office, and he might tightly assume that much of the debate will have petered out by the time Jim- Tiay Carter has packed his bags. SIn fact, there is a tradition among the Washington press that a new resident gets a "honeymoon" period-a few months to settle in and get used to the routine elements of the lob and the duties and responsibilities that are unique to the American Aresidency. After that, the tradition goes, the press can legitimately begin t criticize and analyze the president's performance. While the necessity for and fairness of that "honeymoon" period may be obvious in the case of political jour- nalists, no such practice exists among the citizenry. January 20 would be a fine day for the rest of the nation to begin scrutinizing the Reagan presidency and to begin .making itself heard as each new aspect of the Republican niaster plan emerges from the conservative closet. Students at the University of. California at Berkeley seem to have begun the Reagan watch already. Beginning on the night of November 4, the U-C campus has seen almost con- tinuous demonstrations spurred by the prospect of the state's former governor in the White House. Berkeley students have a right to be concerned: It was in response to protests spawned at that university that then-Governor Reagan uttered his famous threat: "If it takes a blood- bath, let's get it over with ... No more appeasement." The University of Michigan, itself no slouch in past years of political ac- tivism, ought to join its cousin to the west in spearheading criticism as Reagan and his Republican Senate begin to take their giant leaps back- ward. It might even be nice to have a flag about which to rally once again. haughty political self-enlightenment while the rest of the country laughs at us. We are not loved or even respected; we are tolerated at best, passionately despised at worst. Our day has come and gone-the tar-and-feather brigades may even now be organizing for late January. The scope of the Republican blitz is in- calculable. Its reverberations will change the course of domestic and world events to a degee unimagined by the wisest pre-election prophet. It is a victory not of party or of in- dividual, but unmistakably of ideology. Our darkest fears about Moral Majority and The Conservative Caucus, about the unlikely evolution of specific dogma into a vibrant national movement, have proved terrifyingly apt: Americans are mad as hell, and, while the wine-and-cheese crowd stood by helplessly, the disenchanted went out and changed the face of history. The bloodied, cringing remnants of congressional liberalism bear out the reality of the hyper- sonic massacre of the political philosophy that dominated America for half a century. THE MIND REELS at the scope of devastation: McGovern gone. Bayh gone. Church gone. The guts of progressivism rip- ped out. The handful of survivors so shell- shocked that they will likely surrender to Ronald Reagan's encircling army in January without firing a shot. In ages to come, there may never be another political moment somshattering as was NBC's multiple-state projection at 7:40 Tuesday evening: With one instantaneous revelation that cleaved a swath halfway across the United States, New Jersey, Pen- nsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Texas fell simultaneously into the Reagan slot. In the time it took to go get a glass of water, the elec- tion was over and the destinies of every one of us sealed for years to come. The winged era of multimedia technology had brought us in- stant prognostic death. The debacle of Jimmy Carter was also the tragedy of scores of current and would-be of- fice holders more capable and enlightened than he. Never has a sitting president been so savagely repudiated; never have so many worthy allies fallen with him. Elizabeth Holt- zman's loss in New York's Senate race was an incomprehensible obscenity, a baleful affir- mation of the fact that political, intellectual, and moral superiority to one's opponent aren't even a remote guarantee of victory. NO LESS AGONIZING was Sen. John Culver's loss in Iowa: While scads of his ideological colleagues turned tail and mouthed me-too conservative parrotings to save their jobs, Culver had the courage to lash back vocally at the forces of the Evangelical Right that had targeted him' specifically for destruction. Campaigning in a political season befouled by expediency, this decent, principled man never gave an inch; he also lost decisively. Virtue is not always its own reward-nor, evidently, is candor. Honesty is hardly enough if one is caught in the middle of a revolution on the wrong side. In all of this city and in the equally fantastic t a 4 } ' *. AP Photo A WAX RONALD REAGAN displaces Jimmy Carter in Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London Wednesday. Will the real Reagan be as malleable as the waxen image? 4 atmosphere of Madison, Wisconsin (where I spent the summer) I encountered precisely' three Ronald Reagan boosters, and only one of them was willing to brag about it. Yet they were out there, spread across America-un- told millions, waiting to strike. And they've won. Fifty-one percent may be less than a consuming landslide, yet in electoral and congressional terms Ronald Reagan has his mandate. He is beholden to no one; he can soon do just about whatever he wants. WHAT WILL HE DO? We wait quietly and wonder, trembling. It's been suggested that a Reagan administration might prove much like the Eisenhower regime: placid, passive stewardship characterized by serene platitudes and muddle-along programs. Some say Reagan lacks a killer instinct-that he's too amiable to follow through with the venomous policies forged by the ultra-right visionaries who will surround him. WHAT WISHFUL THINKING it all is. The president-elect's very congeniality will make him a sucker target for his cold, ideologue compatriots: We will see an onslaught of ob- durate gouges in social programs performed in the name of the Holy Balanced Budget-an abstract, theoretical doctrine which bears about as much relevance to human needs as does debating the number of angels on the head of a pin. We will see a relentless, premeditated assault on civil rights and civil liberties, promoted not only by a reactionary Supreme Court but likely by Congress as well (rail though it might against big government, the. American Right positively slavers at, authoritarian obtrusion in non-economic areas). In foreign affairs we will witness a radical. swell of xenophobic saber-rattling foisted upon a world desperately in need of just the opposite. We will enter the age of America the bully swaggering through a neighborhood of rival kids longing to beat the crap out of him. Might will make right, moderation will be spurned as sissy; the nuclear trigger will be gripped tight by sweaty, macho hands. And what of liberalism? Has the heritage of FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and the early LBJ been rendered irrelevant, obsolete? Children still go to bed hungry in the world; adults are still persecuted and even murdered simply for daring to be themselves. Human suffering isn't altered by theflick of a ballot lever. It took conservatives 50 years to recon- struct a working majority following the Hoover apocalypse.-American liberals don't have that long-an unstable World won't per- mit it. Either they begin to organize, now, or we had best draw the covered wagons into a circle. Under a Reagan autocracy, Ann Arbor would be one of the first to go. I 4 r- it iOWPY FOLK5! T M 411111 MW II DK(IVER tWE' LL / Q 401~ON A5 5OON A I r WHITCH UP TH' IJR5S / i'/ i %rt' " /f' ',. Christopher Potter is a Daily staff writer. His column appears every Friday. 4 LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Editorial on Church blind, shallow To the Daily: I am appalled at the blind ignorance you expressed in your criticism of the Catholic Church and its teachings. I refer to your editorial of October 25 entitled "Formula for a baby boom." Your shallow attempt at discrediting the Church's ban on birth control reveals not only your total lack of understanding of Catholicism, but also a narrow- minded view of the world's so- called "birth rate problem." into reaffirming his basic support for the ban." I fail to see why the Daily defends a bishop, American or not, who requests the Church to support a view that the bishop himself believes is wrong. And I am further at a loss to under- stand how the Church's op- position to the continued destruc- tion of human life can be described by the Daily as "sinister news." This cheap at- tempt at journalism serves only world problems. The Church's at- titudes are very significant to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Were they not, this tasteless editorial would never have been written. And had the author done any research on the "problems of poverty on the South American continent," he would have discovered that the starvation and poverty exist there not as a result of over- population, but as a result of the selfish multi-national cor- Yes, indeed the "heavenly kingdom does come first for the Catholic Church." However, it is not the Church that, on its path to paradise, causes the earth to rot. The Church offers the poor salvation from greedy multi- nationals and other ignorant insti- tutions such as The Michigan Daily. Thank you very much for your time, and God bless you. I am sincerely disgusted by your ignorance. I 7"i r1<