The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 22, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page opens with a darkly version of an esquillous Currier & Ives-esque print, the Russian soldiers, says the caption, dashing through the snow, in a guise such as Vixen and Cupid, pushing now the Nazi toward Vyazma, away from Mozhaisk.

Meanwhile, amid the rolling thunder, the British Hurricanes, flown by the RAF, battered the Japanese in defense of Singapore. Nevertheless, few days remained for the embattled British in Malaya.

A shaggy snag arose in the Pan American Conference at Rio. Argentina, while now supporting the declaration of breaking off diplomatic relations with the Axis nations in theory, wished to supplant the wording of the ratiocination, before it could eventually be committed to any subscribed paper. First objection: substitute the word "unanimous" for "collective" in reference to the modifier of "agreement", the word "collective" apparently indicative to the Argentine of some degree of unanimity greater than unanimous, signal of some embrace of their fellow South Americans in ways which they did not wish to imply to the world, that is "collective", conveying apparently to them, idiomatically, some shade of the communal. Perhaps, to them the word implied socialism. After all, the United States had "collective bargaining", and weren't they socialists now?

Second objection: we really don't know what it was, as it was on the continuation page which we did not acquire, and, given the first objection, quite frankly...

Aneta, the Netherlands East Indies news agency, reported more accurately than had the War Department regarding the type of American planes in the hands of Dutch pilots, which had sunk a 10,000-ton Japanese tanker and a cruiser south of Jolo in the Philippines. They were Flying Fortresses, not just "six bombers", as the War Department had suggested, ordinary bombers being significantly smaller than the Flying Fortresses. We are happy that the correction was deemed significant enough to warrant front-page space; else, we might have missed that startling news.

Dispatches from Bangkok indicated that the Japanese were riding elephants into Burma. The report, however, would be later corrected by the War Department to indicate more accurately that the beast of burden thus utilized was in fact, in whole train, a series of jackasses.

The Japanese had sent a fleet of eleven ships to attack New Britain, that, along with the attack reported the previous day on neighboring New Ireland to the north, at its northern tip Kavieng, being the first direct attacks of Australian territory, these in Papua New Guinea. It was presumed that New Britain had been abandoned by the Australians in advance of the attack.

And in the Senate, Senator Vandenburg of Michigan announced the withdrawal of the Quartermaster's bid for 1,000 spittoon mats to be employed by the Congress, that, after the matter of the mats became public knowledge, in an effort to cut down on unnecessary war expected expense, otherwise spewing spurious spreadsheet spurions to spur on the allocation of funds by demonstration of their consumption the previous year, as well, no doubt, reducing expelled expectoration. Speaking of which...

More oil wells were reported destroyed in Borneo as the Japanese prepared to attack the most productive of the Borneo reserves at Balik Papan. Thus, while the Japanese had sought with the attack at Pearl Harbor to delay by at least six months the American Navy's ability to engage fully in direct support of the British, Australian, Filipino and Dutch fighters in the Pacific, the cutting of rubber trees in Malaya and the burning of oil wells in N.E.I. had the effect of delaying, by at least six months in the case of oil and five years in the case of the oozings of the cut rubber trees, Japanese acquisition of the principal resources for which it attacked Pearl Harbor, thus having only the immediate impact of cutting off rubber the while to the Allies. In the meantime, the attacks to acquire these southern territories were costing Japan enormous numbers of its most seasoned ground troops and pilots, even if the attack on Pearl Harbor itself had resulted in only 55 Japanese dead.

Meanwhile, Rommel was getting frisky in Libya as his remaining tanks struck British positions, advancing ten miles the previous day until being turned back during the night.

The editorial page reports that a North Carolina judge had sentenced William Dudley Pelley of Asheville, the commander of the Nazi-supporting Silver Shirts, to two to three years pursuant to his conviction for sedition and libel against the President, fraudulent advertising, and contempt of court, the latter apparently for violating some previous order to desist. The page also reprinted an excerpt from The Hour recapitulating some of Pelley's more bizarre statements found in his publication, The Galilean.

If no more absurd than that which he put forward in these relatively innocuous excerpts--which were far outdone by some of Charles Lindbergh's public statements at America First rallies--, we find this individual little more than a buffoon to be dismissed with the back of the hand, not set up publicly as an exemplary traitor, by way of criminal conviction and a prison term. If the statements were no worse than that printed in The Hour, they were protected speech, subject to Justice Holmes's "marketplace of ideas" concept, that the listener was free to agree or disagree based on that which was stated, certainly not sedition or libel. They were obvious statements of hyperbolic opinion, not stated as factually based either on false representations of fact or on incomplete facts, only some of which were provided.

"Roosevelt, it is known, secretly conspired with Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier to drag the United States into war: such are the facts, details need not be provided: Munich tells all." That, probably a libelous statement, is to be contrasted with: "Roosevelt never cared a whit for the American people because he allowed America to be sold down the river at Munich, into the treacherous deal which allowed Hitler an additional year to prepare his Wehrmacht forces for the assault on Poland while in the meantime breaking the Pact and raping Czechoslovakia, just as done with the annexation of Austria, the forecast of what anyone save an idiot would have foreseen at Munich." That latter statement is subject to the marketplace of ideas, as it communicates no false fact, merely establishes an opinion based on the undisputed facts of the agreement of America to the Munich Pact, its breach by Hitler, and in consequence the war. The idiots may accept it as true, conveniently foregoing the fact that it was Hitler, neither Roosevelt, nor Chamberlain, nor Daladier, who violated the Pact; that in any event, it was Chamberlain's Britain and Daladier's France, for proximity and immediacy to the European fronts in the event of Hitler starting a war over the refusal to annex to him the Sudetenland, not Roosevelt's America, who would need provide the initial waves of salient sacrifices, frontline protectors, in such a conflict. Thus ignoring a fuller explication of history, embracing the facile outline devoid of fact, they might blithely and ignorantly persist in their stoogedom, or reject the statement for what it is, puling puerile nonsense.

Everyone has that right of choice: stoogedom or better understanding. That is the marketplace concept, protected by the Constitution, to encourage rich debate as a way to obtain truth, not to be shunted aside for expediency or in haste because we haven't time to understand such complexities.

While we ourselves would greatly enjoy, subjectively, seeing the Rushing Lamebrains of the world go to jail for sedition and libel, it would infringe such persons' inherent First Amendment rights to do so, if so done on the basis of assertion only of opinions not premised on false facts but undisputed true facts, no matter how illogical the opinion so advocated. It is only actionable where statements actually communicate false facts, knowingly or recklessly made, or imply other unstated facts to go with stated true facts, and then proceed to lead the listener to a conclusion based on those one or more false facts or implied unstated facts, false assumptions as the basis for false conclusions, even if couched as opinions. (The Rushing Lamebrains regularly violate this rule anyway with impunity on a regular basis, and therefore ought be prosecuted for sedition and libel, at least have their FCC privileges revoked, but we use it only for example. As long as their fascist corporate sponsors are content to rake in money off of their alien and sedition, what us worry?)

The medium of expression, whether intended as public or private, whether thought to be subject to confidential privilege, also obviously impacts whether the statements are considered defamatory, as communication to a third party who is not the subject of the statement is a requirement for defamation. Say either one of the statements above only to President Roosevelt in his private office, and neither is defamatory, for it is not intended to be published to a third person.

Additionally, say either of these statements to a priest, a doctor, or lawyer with whom you reasonably believe to enjoy a confidential privilege against revelation of the statements to others and, likewise, they are not defamatory.

And we would be the first to defend the rights of such idiots as the Rushing Lamebrains to say as they please, even in so public a forum as the radio, so long as they are not counseling violence.

But, of course, they are idiots and liars and we have the right to say that of them, too. Much better to allow the ideas into the marketplace than to squelch, chill and duct tape them, rendering them then taboo and thus attractive to the expressions of the naive, for want of any public education to the contrary.

In short, and why not, North Carolina went over the top in prosecuting criminally and sending Mr. Pelley to jail. Such were the times in the wake of Pearl Harbor. But it is precisely at such times that we must be most assiduous in insuring the protections of the Bill of Rights. We don't suspend them simply because the seas become suddenly rough, the resultant phosphorescence blinding our sense of justice and fairness temporarily, until Vulcan and Thor wield their forging hammers in concert in aid of Mars to quiet it all down again.

The Mayflower nevertheless must fly its colors more boldly than in the relative calm of halcyon days or we are no better than the Nazis, fascists, feudalists, and other dictatorial regimes founded first and foremost on the idea of privileged speech only, that permitted by the Fuehrer, whether deemed "benign" by some, or a malignant totalitarian growth on the office which he presumes to hold or to which he was elected, in the first instance democratically or at least ostensibly so, even if sometimes rigged by the Ku Klux Klan or Storm Troops standing beside or sitting astride their horses outside the polling booths on election day.

Finally, the column acknowledges, with some degree of apology by way of negative reference to those who it considered far worse reprobates in the deeper South, those of the Talmadge and Long machines, the death of longtime Senate race-baiter from South Carolina, Cole L. Blease. Whatever their degree and stripe, our own elegy is very simple for him and his like: good riddance. It is they who gave birth and re-birth to The Birth of a Nation, that of the Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith variety: racist, xenophobic, constantly blaming the outsider, the other, for their own ills brought on by their limited intelligence and limited view and rationalization for their own obvious mistakes by projecting blame onto that outsider, the alien, the one of another caste and place in society. They hunted more for the weak and impotent than they were infected of any genuine hatred for persons of minorities or of other places. They were hungry for power and thus, as with jungle predators, fed on the weak, while pretending to nourish the poor, their understrappers who they curried for political support and allowed to vent their own ignorant frustrations on the weak among them, keeping their minds in the meantime consequently off their obeissance to the Bleases.

It was they, these politicians of the Blease stripe, the soapbox champions of liberty and free will exerted against a weaker group of others, far more than the relatively anonymous, powerless Pelleys of the world, who sold America down the river toward world war. For it is they who gave birth to Hitler's ideals, it is they who taught Hitler from the stump everything he knew about the concept of demagoguery. It was they who assassinated, for it was they who countenanced the assassins to act with impunity. It was they who lynched. It was they who were The Traitors.

The Pelleys were only the understrappers, who sometimes enough permeated the little minds of the lower rungs to garner action to their cause, but were in fact nothing without the Bleases to give them a sense of importance. And finally, without the courts then to make of the Pelleys a martyr to the cause instilling righteous indignation for in fact depriving him of freedom of speech and thus proving in a sense some truth to some in what he said.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, such courts had no more in mind than doing just that. Whatever, the case, it was a wrong to silence Mr. Pelley through criminal prosecution unless he counseled the actual overthrow of the government by violence or actually printed state secrets in aid of the enemy in time of war.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links-Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i>--</i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date -- Links-Subj.