The Charlotte News
Friday, June 17, 1955
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Montevideo in Uruguay that Roman Catholic churches in Argentina had been attacked by rioters, climaxing the revolt of the previous day against the regime of El Presidente Juan Peron, as indirectly confirmed by El Presidente this date in a 13-minute noon broadcast to his countrymen, blaming Communists for depredations against the churches, counseling priests to obey police orders, promising that the Government would not allow any further depredations against the churches, but providing no details. He said that the revolt had ended, that the navy had been responsible for it and that Argentina was under a state of siege. Unconfirmed reports reaching Montevideo had stated that six or seven churches in Buenos Aires had been set on fire. El Presidente expressed condolences to relatives of those who had died in the previous day's air attacks by about 40 planes, striking mainly the Government House in central Buenos Aires, which housed the principal Government offices, including that of El Presidente. There was no reliable estimate of the total casualties, but they were unquestionably heavy within Buenos Aires and in other parts of the country. At the time El Presidente had spoken this date, there had been a communications blackout for 15 hours in Buenos Aires. El Presidente promised that justice would be meted out to those who sought to stage the coup against him, but declared that it would be performed under law, despite virtually all due process rights having been suspended in Argentina under the state of siege. He sought to blame the Roman Catholic priests as being partially responsible for the start of the rebellion the prior weekend. He had been seeking for seven months to curb the powers of the Church in the country, and the previous day, just prior to the beginning of the revolt, had been excommunicated by the Vatican after he had expelled two prelates from the country for supposedly urging the weekend violence. He declared that his Government was prepared to prevent any Communistic or other disorders, that he remained a Catholic and was not opposed to religion, advising Catholics of Argentina to await a referendum of his proposal to separate the church from the state.
Russia was reported this date to have expelled three U.S. military attaches who were part of the Embassy staff in Moscow, with the Soviet Foreign Office having declared them persona non grata because of alleged improper activities. There was no immediate word whether the Americans had already departed Russia. Almost a year earlier, on the previous July 3, Russia had expelled two other American Embassy attaches, charging that both had attempted to carry out espionage work. The State Department rejected the Soviet charges at the time and said that it was obvious that the expulsion of the two men had been in retaliation for earlier U.S. expulsion of three Soviet Embassy officials who had conducted espionage within the U.S.
In New York, by a voice vote, 5,140 National Maritime Union members this date provided approval of a new contract agreement, clearing the way for the end of a work stoppage along the East Coast. The terms provided for an unemployment benefits system for seamen. Union officials told the men that they were thus free to end their strike and to sign onto ships and resume working, but that they should not leave the port until two smaller unions had agreed to new contracts. Those unions, representing engineers, radiomen and others, traditionally followed the lead of the NMU.
In London, Cunard Line officials chartered a fleet of planes this date to carry more than 1,100 America-bound passengers stranded in Britain by a wildcat seamen's strike, saving each traveler at least $14 plus tips. The 1,500 strikers who had tied up eight trans-Atlantic liners and threatened to spread their walkout to the inbound Queen Elizabeth, had been warned that they faced drafting into the Army, from which merchant seamen were exempt while at sea in Britain, subject to call-up, however, if they were to be 14 days or more without a ship. After the cancellation the previous day of the voyage of the Queen Mary, Cunard provided for the special airlift of the scheduled passengers.
In Belgrade, it was reported that Yugoslavia opened commercial air traffic between Belgrade and London for the first time.
In Charleston, S.C., a fire rampaged through three warehouses at Tidewater Terminals this date, igniting buildings and trees more than a city block away. Two policemen and an unidentified man were feared trapped in one of the three waterfront buildings. No damage estimate was yet available, but was expected to exceed a million dollars. No cause of the fire is reported.
In Birmingham, Ala., Albert Fuller, former chief deputy sheriff of Phenix City, began serving a life term of imprisonment for the murder of A. L. Patterson, who had been assassinated on June 18, 1954, shortly after having won his primary election to become the new State Attorney General, having campaigned on a platform of cleaning up the vice and corruption of Phenix City, just across the border from Fort Benning, Ga., thus attractive to the Army personnel of that base, enabling gambling and prostitution interests to thrive. Mr. Fuller's motion for a new trial on grounds of newly discovered evidence had been rejected by the court the previous day. He had been sentenced on March 11 following his conviction.
In New York, enmity between two rival juvenile gangs in Brooklyn had cost the life of another teenage boy, as three gang members had fired from a rooftop with a .22-caliber rifle at two rival gang members walking on the sidewalk the previous night, with one of the two below, a 16-year old boy, having shouted for the shooters on the roof to go ahead and shoot again after the first shot or two, after which there was another shot, and the 16-year old boy was struck fatally in the back of his head. His companion, also 16, managed to reach safety. A few hours later, police arrested the three boys who had allegedly shot from the roof, one 16-year old and two 15-year old boys, charging all three with homicide. Police said that the shooting stemmed from an earlier killing in which a 15-year old boy was slain by a 16-year old boy during a quarrel over a girl the previous October. The latter had been a member of the El Quinto gang and the 15-year old victim had been a member of the Chaplains, causing the latter gang to seek revenge since the shooting. The previous night, according to police, members of a third gang, the Tiny Tims, friendly with the El Quinto gang, had taunted several Chaplains about the slaying in a street encounter, and, enraged, three of the Chaplains then obtained a rifle and posted themselves on the rooftop to ambush the first rival gang members whom they saw.
In Raleigh, in the fourth day of the second-degree murder trial of the 21-year old man charged with fatally shooting a woman on a sidewalk in Raleigh from his hotel room window, contending that the shooting was accidental after he had picked up the gun from the floor and it suddenly had gone off, not realizing that the bullet had exited the window or had hit anyone, the jury this date heard from a civil engineer who provided measurements he had made the previous day from the hotel room to the parking lot in which the victim had been hit by the bullet. By the testimony, the State apparently was seeking to prove that the defendant was standing closer to the window than he had stated in his testimony when the gun had discharged. Both sides had rested their cases the previous day, but the judge had permitted the request of the solicitor to reopen the State's case to allow the testimony of the civil engineer. The court had granted a motion for directed verdict on the second-degree murder charge the previous day on the ground that the State had not presented sufficient evidence to support the charge, leaving the defendant facing only the charge of involuntary manslaughter by negligent homicide, carrying a twenty-year maximum term, compared to thirty years on the second-degree murder charge. The civil engineer testified that he had set up a surveyor's transit at the point where the woman had fatally been hit on the sidewalk and then sighted up to the bullet hole in the window screen of the hotel room, ran a string along that line to obtain the height at which the pistol would have been at various distances from the window. The defendant had testified that he was standing between the two beds in the room at the time the gun fired, estimating that he was about 12 feet from the window. But the civil engineer said that his measurements showed that at 12 feet from the window, the gun would have been positioned 7 feet, 9 inches above the floor, while at a point between the beds which was 7 feet, 2 inches from the window, the gun would have been about at a level of 5 feet, 7.5 inches above the floor, thus a difference of about five feet in distance from the window. The defense counsel had strongly objected to the reopening of the case, as he contended that all of that evidence had been available earlier. There was no indication as to when the jury would receive the case. The defendant, during vigorous cross-examination the previous day, had stuck to his version of events, that the shooting was entirely accidental, that he thought his German Luger pistol was unloaded when he began dismantling it and it had then gone off as he picked it up from the floor. After he had completed his testimony, the defense had called a list of several character witnesses who testified to the good character of the defendant, including an official of his employer, Row Peterson Publishing Co., a University of Chicago professor who had taught him as an undergraduate, a New Mexico rancher and a Santa Fe anthropologist for the U.S. Museum, all indicating that they had traveled to Raleigh at their own expense. A UNC research sociologist, to whose home the defendant had gone from Raleigh just after the shooting incident, and at which he had been arrested some three hours later, testified that the defendant had told him consistently the same story that he had indicated to police and in his testimony, that he had not known the gun was loaded and did not know the fired bullet had hit anyone when he checked out of the hotel about ten minutes after the shooting and proceeded to the home of his friend in Chapel Hill.
From New York to Raleigh, it's not
safe to walk down the street anymore, lest you be felled by gunfire.
And "Gunsmoke" has not yet even premiered on the
television, still three months away. Of course, the masked man and
his Injun sidekick are busy every week rounding up mangy varmints
Charles Kuralt, in his third bylined article on the front page of the newspaper since recently joining the staff of The News after his graduation from UNC, indicates that the operators of six local nursing homes which had been condemned as fire hazards by the City Building Department and desired a hearing before the City Council, would have to go before the Council themselves, as City officials of the Building Department would not take the matter to the Council for them, according to City Manager Henry Yancey. Originally, the acting chief building inspector had said that he would ask the Council the following Wednesday to provide the nursing homes a 90-day extension to comply with the notice which had given them only 30 days to comply, the problem being that they were two-story wooden structures when the local ordinance required that such nursing homes be only one-story. Mr. Yancey had said he had scheduled a talk with the City Attorney to discuss an extension and would announce within about a week the determination. Just get you some chainsaws out and lop off that top story real quick, while propping up the roof externally with flying buttresses or something like that, and then let her drop on down on some chains or something like that. Get that sucker done in about a day. Meanwhile, all the old folks can clear out and go for a much-needed hike or something like that in the woods, provided the weather is good, or go out on the road with Mr. Kuralt, who will be entertaining to them.
Helen Parks of The News indicates that the Billy Graham Evangelistic team might soon receive an invitation to conduct meetings in Russia, according to the evangelist's right-hand man, Grady Wilson, who had returned to Charlotte for a two-week vacation before beginning crusade meetings in Rocky Mount, Atlanta and other parts of the South. He said this date that he had heard unofficially that the Communists would not oppose Rev. Graham's visit to Russia, provided he stuck to preaching and remained out of politics. He said that there were many Christians in Russia and many non-Communists who would like to have Rev. Graham conduct meetings there. During the recent London crusade, Mr. Graham had been questioned many times about whether a Communist could be a true Christian, emphatically saying that it was not the case. Mr. Wilson said that during the Scotland and England meetings, they had much opposition from the Communists, especially from the Daily Worker, which had printed that they were sponsored overseas by the capitalists of America. He said that both he and Mr. Graham had preached sermons denying that statement, trying to impart to the people that the farmers and the low-wage workers, the unwealthy people, were also sponsoring them with their gifts. Mr. Wilson had departed Rev. Graham in Germany, following a quick tour of France and Italy, indicating that in the Paris meetings, the Communists had dominated the opposition they faced, but that they believed Communism was on the decline in both France and Italy. He said that Charlotte was one of six cities which the Graham team was considering for a large-scale future crusade within the United States in the ensuing two years, that they were also considering New York, Louisville, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Oklahoma City. He said that the Rev. Graham would be in Charlotte on September 11 at the opening of the new Charlotte Coliseum, from which their international radio program, "Hour of Decision", would originate on that afternoon. Mr. Wilson was a boyhood friend of Mr. Graham, and estimated that more than 200,000 decisions for Christ had been made since the team had been organized over seven years earlier. He also said that he did not understand the hostility they had faced in the London newspapers recently, that the previous year when they had conducted a crusade in London, they had been received by the press in a friendly manner, but that during the most recent tour, the press had seemed remote and indifferent, although mellowing after Mr. Graham had preached at a few gatherings.
On the editorial page, "A Logical Extension of a Good Idea" tells of the United Appeal having been an effective principle in Charlotte, gathering under one annual drive the operating funds for all of the participating service agencies, providing some of those agencies more funding than had been collected during their individual campaigns previously, while rescuing the donors within the public from repeated harassment from various individual charity drives.
United Community Services, by naming a capital funds committee to conduct building-fund drives in the same manner, had logically and properly extended the United Appeal concept. Donors would want to ensure that their donations were used economically and on the basis of overall benefit to the community. UCS was presently conducting a survey to determine what facilities the various agencies needed and the most economical manner in which to provide them. It predicts that some of the member agencies might not be entirely satisfied with the apportionment of the construction money, and that it would be natural for them to be jealous for the particular agency with which they were associated. But it hopes that any disappointments would not cause problems for the United Appeal and the orderly channel it provided for public giving to the health, recreation and welfare agencies of Charlotte.
"Inspiration to Shackled Souls" tells of El Presidente Juan Peron of Argentina having said years earlier, "A people without hope end in losing their faith; and when a country loses its faith, no one can predict its future." It suggests that the words might eventually come back to haunt him, as no exponent of totalitarianism, not even Hitler and Mussolini, had perfected the "art of divide-and-conquer to the fine edge of excellence of Dictator Peron." He had managed to pit faction against faction, class against class, race against race, and the recent history of his country showed repeated angry struggles, with only El Presidente and his henchmen remaining unscathed at the end of each, even more firmly entrenched as potential rivals canceled each other out.
It cites as an example one of the fascist-minded military sects of El Presidente having proclaimed: "Our generation will be sacrificed for an ideal—the Argentine fatherland. Viva Argentina!" Until recently, the powerful Catholic Church in the country had remained safely above the fray of the internal conflict and immune from attack. But now, El Presidente had managed to bring the Church into the domestic political arena, linking it to the old land-owning oligarchy, the ancient scapegoat for the trade union movement, arousing a noisy faction of the public against it, hinting that they constituted the "admirable and patient Argentine people … taking justice into its own hands."
Open revolt against the Government had been unexpected, since the dictator had the army, police, guns and tanks, plus a sizable gang of civilian thugs specializing in storming newspaper offices and burning art galleries and libraries, all on his side. (Sort of resembles the gang of Nixon in 1970-72.) Yet, a revolt had erupted the previous day in the center of Buenos Aires, triggered with the help of naval aviation forces, albeit weak and poorly organized but bloody.
As one anti-Peron Argentine Congressman had written in 1950, "The history of humanity is the history of struggles for liberty and the essential rights of man in its various forms." The piece concludes that the dictator had trampled the rights of his countrymen, in so doing, had attempted to rob them of their hope, and the fact that a few people could, in the face of overwhelming odds, still find the will to resist, was heartening, thereby offering inspiration to other peoples throughout the world who were similarly shackled.
"When a Fruit Becomes an Oyster" suggests that it was going to be a bad summer for hogs and humans, as sacrifice would hit the usually plentiful summer dining table. New crop peaches from California were selling at $37.50 per bushel in Louisville, Ky., during the week, compared with the average of $3.50 to $4.50 for the first crop of Georgia and Carolina peaches, of which there would be few during the year. And there would be no available cull peaches likely, usually the fodder for hogs. Peach pits, it decides, even from culls, were going to be like pearls and it was safe to bet that they were not "going to be scattered freely, before either folks or swine."
A piece from the Milwaukee Journal, titled "Craving for Black Autos", tells of a wisecrack making the rounds, that it took a showoff to buy a plain black car at the present time, as staid, solid citizens stayed with "pompano peach, three-tone yellows, sungold and ivory, rollicking reds, passionate purples and seasick greens", provided they did not wish to be conspicuous. One manufacturer was contemplating whether to put out a 1956 model colored in a rose-orange, which one of its agents had discovered from a Chinese tapestry dating to 1400 A.D. One of the lower-priced cars offered 17 basic colors during this current model year, and its manufacturer pointed out that they could be purchased in 286 different combinations, while another manufacturer had formulas for 5,600 different colors from which to pick the following year.
Color experts could differentiate between at least 300,000 different colors within the automotive industry, and as the Wall Street Journal had pointed out, utilizing the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue, while tossing in various slugs of white and black, would then permit a computer to see how many different variations could be generated.
The automotive color experts were planning secretly their color schemes for the 1956 and 1957 model years, seeming to have decided that they had gone far enough. They had taken a survey and found that the number of persons who actually wanted black cars the following year had jumped by more than 50 percent, and that the number who preferred grays and maroons over shocking pink had grown tremendously in the previous year. It concludes that maybe everyone was not all quite nuts, after all.
Drew Pearson tells of Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce making a secret backstage bid for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 1956, believing it was time for a woman to become President, and had confided her plans to House Minority Leader Joseph Martin in some detail recently. She had rushed home from Rome, where she was doing a good job as Ambassador, ostensibly to report on the Italian Government's alarming left-wing swing, and had dropped in on former Speaker Martin, who had once given her fatherly advice while she was in Congress. Mrs. Luce had let it be known during the 1952 Republican convention that she was available for the vice-presidency, but had entered the race so late that few politicians had taken her seriously. This time, she informed Mr. Martin, she would begin her efforts early. She argued that the Republican Party needed a woman on the ticket to attract female voters, and made it a point that she would be a candidate at the 1956 convention. It was taken for granted that husband Henry Luce's Time, Life and Fortune magazines would support her candidacy. Mr. Martin had agreed with her that a female vice-presidential candidate might have voter appeal and promised her that he would do what he could to help her.
Word of the conversation had leaked through the RNC, and most party leaders let it be known that they could not see Mrs. Luce becoming the vice-presidential nominee, that if any woman were to receive the nomination, they argued, it ought be Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine. Mr. Pearson suggests that it could lead to a convention fight in 1956 between the two women, should the Republican high command decide to have a female in the second spot on the ticket. He suggests that it could also lead to the nomination and election of a Catholic for Vice-President for the first time in history, as Mrs. Luce had been converted to Catholicism while serving in Congress. He suggests that her candidacy would also solve the problem of the dissension caused within the party by renomination of Vice-President Nixon, with the California leadership of Governor Goodwin Knight and Senator William Knowland solidly opposed to his renomination. (Had that occurred, it would have been a great favor to the nation in the long run.)
A letter writer suggests that most beer outlets within the city were honest about the sale of beer to minors, but that there were exceptions on the part of those who wanted money and so were careless about checking the ages of the consumers. He urges not overlooking the revenue taken from the sale of beer on Sunday, as people came from surrounding counties and from South Carolina to Charlotte because it was the largest nearby city. He indicates that beer companies would help eliminate sales of their products to minors, finding the situation remindful of a crowd of people hunting down a snake, finding it and jumping on it, stamping it to death, but still having snakes in their gardens because they forgot to go to the nest and destroy the eggs, where the trouble had started.
A letter writer indicates that as long as beer joints and liquor joints were big business, and homes were stocked with the stuff, children and teenagers would follow the crowd, buy alcohol and get drunk.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper for the editorial of June 13, indicating that it had done the Presbyterians of the area a great service by calling to mind their heritage and reminding them of future obligations, expresses gratitude for the support provided the Mecklenburg Presbyterian bicentennial.
A letter writer from Morganton indicates that as a lifelong Democrat over age 70, she was glad to have voted for Republican Congressman Charles Jonas, as he placed the interests of the people back home over trying to obtain votes.
A letter from the chairman of the teenage program of United Church Women thanks the newspaper for its interest and concern in the Teenage Summer Employment Program, and for suggesting that the newspaper run an advertisement for it. She also thanks the newspaper for its publicity given the program, especially by reporter Helen Parks.
A letter writer from Cheraw, S.C., finds that the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education had not merely interpreted the law and so finds it not binding on any state or people, as it had never been enacted by Congress.
He is very confused, not understanding that the Court held that state laws which allow for segregation in the public schools were unconstitutional per se by virtue of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The lawmaking ability of Congress, beyond the limited area of public schools on Federal land or within the District of Columbia—dealt with in the companion case of Bolling v. Sharpe under the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause for deprivation of a liberty interest represented by public school education—, was not imported by the decision regarding the invalidity of the state laws. The only thing which Congress, theoretically, could have done would have been to offer for ratification to the states an amendment repealing the 14th Amendment, requiring a two-thirds vote of each house and then being sent to the states for ratification by three-fourths of their number. Good luck with that one. The country fought a bitter Civil War between 1861 and 1865 to get to the point where the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed and ratified. No one, not out of their goddamned minds, would wish to return to that condition. For this time, were slavery allowed again, the letter writer and his friends might be those picking the cotton in the hot sun under the whip of ol' massa and his ovaseea.
Speaking of which, that is Bolling v. Sharpe and so-called substantive due process, that one was left out of the concurrence of Justice Clarence Thomas a couple of days ago in Dobbs v. Jackson, overruling Roe v. Wade and its progeny, holding that the right of privacy in the Constitution under the Ninth Amendment penumbral rights, as related to abortion, is no longer viable after 49 years as precedent—despite there being no pattern of failure of administration being prevalent in abortion clinics administered under medically supervised conditions, as, for instance had been the primary underlying reason for overruling Plessy v. Ferguson in both Brown and Sharpe, that the 1896 separate-but-equal doctrine had never pervasively formed separate-but-equal facilities in public education and so could no longer pass muster under the Fourteenth Amendment after 58 years of stumbling and bumbling, trying through the crying, as comin' thro' the rye
But Justice Thomas's finding that Griswold stood for "substantive due process" rather than the right of marital privacy is quite misplaced, as the bulk of the opinion in Griswold dealt with the right of privacy and how it was ingrained in the history and fabric of the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment, with the substantive due process theory and the liberty interest attached to marital privacy being at best only a subordinate theory.
Justice Thomas did not mention Sharpe, but that decision rested entirely on substantive due process, and so under Justice Thomas's reckoning, District of Columbia schools might have to return to segregated status, as would any public schools on Federal lands. His reasoning would definitely open that door, even if the majority opinion in Dobbs kept that door closed.
But it is unfair to ask why Justice Thomas did not include among those cases which he would revisit Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court case which held unconstitutional the miscegenation statute of Virginia, forbidding interracial marriage, which had been upheld in 1955 by the Virginia Supreme Court against attack as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause in the case of the annulment of the marriage of a white woman and a Chinese man in Naim v. Naim, and on which the U.S. Supreme Court would subsequently refuse to grant review, as the later Loving based the unconstitionality of the statute primarily on the Equal Protection Clause, only in its last paragraph, Section II of the opinion, asserting as a separate and independent ground the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, thus, even if deprived of that latter ground, having adequate independent ground left on which to rest only on Equal Protection, as involving suspect classifications of race and so importing so-called strict scrutiny. Thus, Justice Thomas, in excluding Loving from his list of "substantive due process" cases which he thinks the Court ought revisit in the future, did so appropriately and should not be assailed further for supposed hypocrisy in that omission.
The problem, however, is that he uses the favorite catch-catch-can phrase of the right, "substantive due process", in reference to those cases he would revisit, rather than the proper reference to the actual legal basis for their holdings, the right of privacy within the penumbral rights of the expressed rights, obtaining recognition through the Ninth Amendment, interwoven into the fabric of the document, as Griswold eloquently explained, the majority expressly declining the invitation to invoke due process as the basis for the decision.
Justice William O. Douglas, in writing for the 7 to 2 majority in Griswold, with Justice John Harlan concurring in the judgment but not its rationale, stated the justification for the right of privacy this way:
"The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers 'in any house' in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.' The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'"The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, as protection against all governmental invasions 'of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.' We recently referred in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 656, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a 'right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people.' See Beaney, "The Constitutional Right to Privacy", 1962 Sup. Ct. Rev. 212; Griswold, "The Right to be Let Alone", 55 Nw. U. L. Rev. 216 (1960)."
Again, Roe v. Wade was not "made up law", squarely and firmly based, as it was, in that right of privacy inherent in the fabric of the Constitution from the Founding; Dobbs, however, sure as hell is, just as the Bruen case rationale of the same six-Justice majority the day before, finding unconstitutional, on the basis of a supposed never before extant individual constitutional right of self-defense under the Second Amendment, the New York law requiring demonstration of a "special need for self-protection" before issuance of a permit for concealed carry of a firearm.
It is a simpleton sucker's argument to posit that because the phrase "the right to control one's own body", at least up to the point where one's life or well-being is not being placed in jeopardy to the extent that the state acquires an interest in protection of personal health, or the phrase "the right of privacy" is not expressly stated in the Constitution, such rights do not exist within the context of the Ninth Amendment and the penumbral rights implied by other rights expressly recognized in the Constitution, just as was the same stupid argument by the pointy-hatted crowd that the "right to equal public education" as between the races does not appear in the Constitution and so does not exist, in 1954-55 in the wake of Brown. It is an argument made from beneath the white dunce-cap and anyone making it needs to go to the corner of the classroom and sit and think for a change, while reading and learning of the whole of the Constitution, not just the catch-catch-can phrases one wants to keep in mind while conveniently discarding the rest, giving your querulous piety to the Federalist Society.
So, one might ask, why is the common law individual right of self-defense not implied by the Second Amendment as a penumbral right thereof? The answer is simple. The Second Amendment was never conceptualized at the Founding as an individual right, only as a collective right, as a member of the "well regulated militia", in lieu of a peacetime standing army, thought to be the bane to democracy at the Founding, a concept rendered entirely obsolete by modern times. While there is a right of self-defense under the laws of the various states, there never has been any such individual right recognized under the Constitution, only a collective right, as in the raising of armies under the Constitution to combat a foreign enemy or to put down internal rebellion and insurrection. But the current Supreme Court majority wants now to make the Constitution over, without amendment by the people, to fit its own despotic, extreme right-wing political agenda. El Presidente in Argentina could not have devised a better scheme for exertion of control over his minions.
A letter writer indicates that four out of five white people who had written to the newspaper suggested what the South had done for blacks, when the foreparents of blacks had "paid for with sweat and blood from coward mobs" that for which white people had given them, which he could not see was much, while white people had done many things to hurt them. "Working us from dawn to dust, you pay us enough to eat, and you ask yourself, 'How does that fool pay his light, water, and rent bills?'" He indicates that there were some black people who had good jobs and a nice car, but that when they drove it to work, they had better park it where no one could see it, lest they be discharged from their employment. He indicates that black people did not owe white people anything, that they were forced to work for practically nothing and were charged double for credit. He says further that black people were proud of America, did not betray it, that there were very few black Communists, while there were many more who were white. He says that he liked white people as much as he did black people and that some of his best and most trustworthy friends were white, that he felt very comfortable with them, though he received more attention than any one of them. He says that as a younger person, the younger people could work out the problems associated with integration and that those people who believed that they could settle things by violence were "stupid and ignorant", that a lot of good white people were afraid to speak on behalf of blacks because of what their neighbors might say. He counsels not being concerned with what neighbors might say, but rather about what foreign nations might be saying, especially Communist nations able to use discrimination as propaganda.
A letter writer, describing himself as "an old country hick" blowing off steam "to let you know I am doggone sick", finds the Supreme Court decision in Brown "a pill" which he could not swallow and never would. He says that it was probably true that he was ignorant, but that he favored passage of a law which would require every black family head in the state to get on the tax books, to pay a poll tax and a school tax, regardless of whether they owned property, which would enable equal and better schools. He suggests that blacks in Charlotte drove Buicks and Cadillacs, which "we poor tax-burdened white people can't afford in order to give them first-class schools", but that many of the black people who drove those cars did not pay school taxes in Charlotte. He says that his little education had been obtained in a two-room schoolhouse, as when his father had moved the family to the city, he could not learn anything as he felt so inferior in his country ginghams. He was concerned that a little black child thrown into a white school would have his or her learning capacity blocked as his had been, because of that feeling of inferiority. He thinks that if everyone paid their fair share, no one would be hurt, but that the white man should not go on carrying the complete load, "especially when the Negro is trying to bite the hand that is feeding him." He suggests that if blacks would throw their funds to the support of schools, instead of supporting the NAACP, there would be better schools.
You're quite correct on one thing, you are stupid and ignorant, even if using proper grammar and orthography in your letter, which is better than most of the stupid, ignorant white people who think as you do in your voodoo.
A letter writer from Asheville indicates that the letter writers who had condemned Brown and would maintain compulsory racial segregation were uniformly vehement in their denunciation of the Supreme Court's so-called "sociological decision", as if the use of sociological knowledge was not germane to legal questions, while those same writers invariably adduced in support of their positions a variety of arguments which could only be labeled sociological, even if lacking credence. He believes that it bespoke an "untutored mind". Others assumed the knowledge of God's mind, bordering on blasphemy, stating that segregation was God's order of things because if God had wanted the races to mingle, he would have made them alike. He suggests that God must have been ignorant in permitting those intentions to be jeopardized by the fact of interracial fertility. He finds that the criticism of the NAACP as supposedly being Northern agitators who were destroying racial harmony, spoke of a type of harmony which only existed in the mind of the white Southerner, and that it would be to the everlasting credit of the NAACP that it had fought its battles in the courts in the spirit of decent, responsible American citizenship, "a refreshing contrast to the KKK barbarism and lynch law." He indicates that compulsory segregationists would do well to realize that no one wanted to "cram" black people down anyone's throat, that the Court had a duty to see that every citizen had equal rights and responsibilities before the law and that it was heartening that, at last, some consideration had been given to the rights and needs of black children commencing their education. "Those who would deny him an equal share in America's destiny would do well to remember that he was created in God's image more recently than they or I."
A Pome appears from the Atlanta Journal, "In Which A Further Recommendation Is Given For The Courageous Man:
"Acts and thinking are not
clear
If you're paralyzed with fear."
And taking tips from Lesta's mirr'r
Will make you a chicken less
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.