The Charlotte News
Friday, August 17, 1956
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the Democratic convention in Chicago that a great scramble was on this date for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination, which had been thrown open to the convention the previous night by Adlai Stevenson immediately after he had obtained the presidential nomination on the first ballot, with 905.5 votes to 210 for Governor Averell Harriman and 80 for Senator Lyndon Johnson. (An inside page contains a state by state tabulation of the votes.) Five hopefuls were being put forward for the number two spot, with Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee appearing to be in the lead, some of his supporters claiming that he would have over 700 votes on the first ballot, with 686.5 needed to nominate. The other four were Senators John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Albert Gore of Tennessee, plus Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City. Senator Gore had been a late starter in the scramble for the number two spot, his bid having come into the open when he showed up at the Pennsylvania delegation's caucus to seek support, telling newsmen when asked that he had just become a candidate. Senator Johnson, who could have easily obtained the votes of many Southerners for the position, was seeking to take himself out of consideration, saying he was not interested in the vice-presidency. Despite the claims made on behalf of Senator Kefauver, it was plain that there were cross-currents of sentiment among the delegates caucusing in downtown hotels and filtering back to the hall for an afternoon session, during which the balloting would take place.
Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina this date had listed his personal preferences for the vice-presidential nomination, with Senator Johnson being first, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri second and Senator Kennedy third, saying, however, that his mind was still open on the choice. He said that Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee, who had delivered the keynote address to the convention on Monday, would be active this date and had received good support in an informal poll of the North Carolina delegation on Tuesday. Senator Kefauver, who had one champion within the delegation, was not expected to obtain strong support in the initial balloting from the delegation. Governor Hodges said that he liked Mr. Stevenson's approach of throwing the nomination open to the convention. Both Senators Kefauver and Kennedy had appeared before the North Carolina caucus during the morning. Senator Kerr Scott of North Carolina told the caucus that he thought they ought to stay close to home, meaning the South, in selecting a nominee. He indicated that the talk "designed to please us by some candidates is just plain stuff." When asked to repeat his last word, he spelled "stuff" and reiterated the word three times. Senator Sam J. Ervin of North Carolina, who had declined a bid for a favorite-son role in the vice-presidential race, said that he personally favored Senator Gore but knew that he would not have a chance, adding that he would rather not come out flatly for one man at that point. He was against Senator Kefauver as he believed, though he liked him personally, that he did not stand with the South, that he had never known him to do so on any subject. He said that he also liked Senator Humphrey in the number two spot, as he was a great debater, had "battle scars", and would "tear Vice-President Nixon up." (Whether he was practicing, in a fashion, augury for 1968, we leave to the reader to discern.) In the end, a one-half plurality of the delegation would vote for Senator Kennedy, who received 17.5 votes, to 9.5 for Senator Kefauver, 7.5 for Senator Gore and .5 for Senator Humphrey. On the first ballot, the delegation cast its votes for Governor Hodges as a favorite son.
Following the first ballot, led by Senator Kefauver but not achieving a majority, the convention, during the second round, would go through
a fluid balloting process for the vice-presidential nomination
After the nomination of the
vice-presidential candidates and the balloting in the afternoon, the
evening session of the convention would hear addresses from former
President Truman and acceptance speeches by Senator Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson
Mr. Stevenson paid a brief call on former President Truman this date and emerged smiling, telling newsmen that the former President, who had opposed him for the nomination in favor of Governor Harriman, had telephoned him in his hotel where both had headquarters and offered to walk down two floors to congratulate him, at which point Mr. Stevenson told the President that he would come up. He visited with the former President for about five minutes and aides of Mr. Truman said that they did not know what the two men had discussed.
Saul Pett of the Associated Press reports that as the delegate vote had been coming in the previous night, the former President had appeared in his box to be "frozen in glum immobility" until he began to stir, apparently conscious that eyes and cameras were watching, trying a few "lame, self conscious smiles" which had quickly faded. He says it was a bad night for Mr. Truman and the country had known it. He had said in his memoirs that he did not want to be known as an elder statesman because such a person was a "dead politician". But in the minds of many the previous night, Mr. Truman had become an elder statesman when the chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation announced that it was casting 67 votes for Mr. Stevenson and seven for Governor Harriman, enough votes to nominate Mr. Stevenson. Demonstrations for Mr. Stevenson on the floor immediately began, until Speaker Sam Rayburn, chairman of the convention, pounded the gavel and ordered the demonstrations to cease until the roll call was completed. When it was and Mr. Stevenson had garnered his 905.5 votes, Mr. Rayburn asked if any states wanted to change their vote, whereupon Oklahoma had moved that the nomination be made unanimous, at which point Mr. Rayburn gaveled the hall into relative silence, called for a voice vote, and hearing no nays, declared Mr. Stevenson the nominee by acclamation.
Drew Pearson, in a piece on the front page, reports that when Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina sought to join the rest of the South Carolina delegation on the floor of the convention, an usher had politely told him that his credentials were not in order. A bit miffed at not being recognized, the Senator returned with two huge gold delegate badges featuring red, white and blue ribbons, strode to the door with one on each lapel, but again was rebuffed by the usher, who explained that whether or not he was a delegate, he could not get in unless he had a red-bordered celluloid badge marked "main floor". Mr. Pearson indicates that the behavior of the ushers was unheard of in previous conventions, where party bigwigs were recognized by their faces. But Senator Johnston had turned away to procure further credentials and when he returned, his lapels drooped with identification, appearing more as a Confederate general than a Senator. Along with his delegate badges, he had identification admitting him to the main floor, the arena circling just around the main floor and the mezzanine which ran around the top of the amphitheater. Pointing to his many badges, he announced that he could go anywhere, and the usher allowed him to enter. One of his fellow delegates shouted that he ought to obtain a game warden's tag and then he would have made the whole circuit.
In Washington, the FBI this date arrested two former convicts in connection with the acid-blinding of labor columnist Victor Riesel, indicating that the person who had actually thrown the acid was dead. The announcement stated that FBI agents had developed evidence that the acid had been thrown into the face of Mr. Riesel in New York City the prior April 5 by a man whose body, with a bullet hole in the back of the head, had been found on a Lower East Side street in the early morning of July 28. The dead man had a long police record. Mr. Riesel had been actively cooperating with the U.S. Attorney in New York in a labor racketeering investigation. The two arrested men were alleged to have acted in concert with the dead man, and were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. They were arraigned before a U.S. commissioner. The FBI declined to state whether any progress had been made toward a solution of the slaying of the dead man. Mr. Riesel was carrying on a crusade against labor racketeers. The conspiracy charge alleged that one of the arrested men had been in Lindy's Restaurant shortly before Mr. Riesel had left it, whereupon the attack had occurred on the street. The FBI said that the other arrested man had met the man who had thrown the acid and had driven him to a hideout in the vicinity of Youngstown, O., a few weeks after the incident. The charge of obstruction provided for up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine and the charge of conspiracy to violate that law, for up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine or both.
In Rockingham, N.C., members of the Richmond County Sheriff's Department had arrested three men in connection with the slaying of a woman, with the sheriff indicating that one of the men would definitely be charged with her murder. Her nude and stabbed body had been found in a lake near the town on August 6. He said that the other two men, all three of whom were in their mid-twenties, might also be charged with murder and, if not, with being accessories after the fact. He said that all three had signed confessions, with the man who would definitely be charged with murder having admitted his part in the killing but indicating that the other two had also been involved. The other two, however, said that the first man had told them that he had killed the woman and forced the two to help dispose of her body. A woman and a male farmer said they had seen men dragging the woman, still alive, into a wooded area near Laurel Hill on the night of August 3. The couple admitted having been with the dead woman all of that day and that it was the last time they had seen her alive. They were also being held in the jail as material witnesses. The sheriff said that he had first suspected the man who would definitely be charged with murder shortly after the crime had been committed, recalling a somewhat similar case several years earlier, in which the man had been accused of assaulting a soldier. When he had been initially arrested, he had denied any connection with the case, was taken to the jail for possible identification by the couple, but the woman said that he was not the person she had seen, and he had been released. He was later rearrested, and the other two men were also subsequently arrested. The sheriff said that the woman of the couple had furnished all but the last two digits of the license plate number of the car the men had allegedly been driving the night of the assault on the woman. The sheriff said that the car was splashed with green paint and one of the men had told him that the paint was splashed on it to cover the dead woman's blood which had gotten on the car.
Julian Scheer of The News reports further of the 17-year old Charlotte youth who had built a rocket in his basement, which had been scheduled to be fired the following Tuesday at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, but which had been canceled by the Army after preliminary tests had proved unsatisfactory, deeming the rocket "fundamentally" sound but finding that the "hazard of explosion" was too high to permit firing. The youth was offered, however, future employment at the facility. The boy wanted to attend MIT or Cal Tech and then would worry about future employment in the rocket industry, but thanked the commander of the Arsenal for making his complimentary statements. He said that he guessed he would place his six-foot rocket in the attic. He said he understood what might be the problem but would not know for certain until he talked to the experts, and that he might rebuild the rocket if encouraged to do so, but doubted that he would, that he might build more motors with different fuel combinations.
In Kinston, N.C., a deputy sheriff, responding to a call about a suspicious-looking stranger in the wee hours of the morning this date, had found a man jogging along with a towel over his head. The man, a 62-year old salesman from Chicago, saw nothing unusual about what he was doing, stating that he ran five miles every night and had been doing so for 35 years, did not smoke or drink and was not disturbing anyone. He was preparing to leave Kinston later in the day and had one request of the deputy sheriff, that he be allowed to complete his five miles, as he had only run three miles thus far. He was allowed to do so.
In Pasadena, Calif., the city's radar speed trap had undergone its first test case in court successfully, after a jury convicted a man of driving 42 mph in a 25 mph zone the previous June 28, the defendant having argued on his own behalf that the radar could be "mechanically inaccurate" and could not specify a particular car in a group of cars.
In San Diego, swallows hatched above the door of the San Diego Zoo's restaurant in a nest which the mother swallow had started while concrete in the door structure of the new building had been still wet.
On the editorial page, "Luther Hodges at the Convention Was the Man with Seven-League Boots" indicates that the Governor's deft political touch had been a thing of wonder in the state since he had first become Governor in November, 1954 at the death of Governor William B. Umstead. He was now the Governor-nominate in 1956 for a full term.
It finds that his steady and sure handling of the responsibilities of the office during a period of social unrest, culminating in legislative affirmation of his school program in the July special session of the General Assembly, had marked him as the state's dominant political figure. Those who had opposed him were left shaking their heads, awaiting a mistake.
It suggests that he could have made a major mistake by backing Adlai Stevenson at the convention, as he had for months prior to the convention, while other Southern governors were giving the candidate faint praise or no comment. While he had gone through the motions of cooperating with the movement for a Southern ultimatum to the convention regarding the civil rights plank, Governor Hodges kept hoping for a solution which would permit enthusiastic support by Mr. Stevenson. The latter's statement which had advocated endorsement of the Brown v. Board of Education decision had put the Governor in a tight spot. If Mr. Stevenson had attempted to dictate that idea into the platform or had been forced to do so by the tactics of the camp of Governor Averell Harriman, Governor Hodges would have been in trouble, either having to depart from the Stevenson bandwagon or risk offending large segments of the North Carolina population.
As it turned out, events had supported the Governor's hopes, as Mr. Stevenson had said no more about civil rights, and the platform committee, with Senator Sam Ervin effectively representing the South's views, had delivered an acceptable plank.
The Governor had helped to make the events which had justified his original position. When ordinary caution might have suggested that he keep still after the civil rights statement by Mr. Stevenson, the Governor had resumed his vigorous support of Mr. Stevenson, working hard to shore up support for him among the Southern delegations while wooing Northern liberals to support the moderate civil rights plank, having had a major role in preventing a floor fight on civil rights.
The request by Mr. Stevenson that Governor Hodges second his nomination had been a compliment to the whole delegation, who gave the appearance all week of knowing what they wanted and how to get it. It suggests that the Governor was still wearing his "seven-league political boots" and that there was more than a hint in the new prominence he had won during the week that he might someday enter a larger arena politically. It concludes that he had not yet made any mistakes.
Governor Hodges would be tapped by President Kennedy in 1961 to be the new Secretary of Commerce. At more than six years in office, he was the longest-serving Governor in North Carolina history until the single term limit was abandoned in 1977, with Governor Jim Hunt having been elected to a second term in 1980, the first North Carolina Governor able to do so.
The limit on gubernatorial power, including lack of veto power, likely had stemmed historically from an inherent distrust instilled in the residents during colonial times, carried forward with each new generation, with the lesson persistently cast before them of Royal governors by the preservation of Tryon Palace in New Bern, the residence of the Royal governors during the late colonial period, just prior to the Revolution, those lessons having been at least modified by the Bicentennial to make room for the notion that the nation's weakest governor was not necessarily a badge of honor for a vital state democracy, handing too much power to the Legislature and not enough deference to the concept of a three-pronged system of checks and balances consistent with the Federal system—which had, after all, displayed itself well in a recent example, with a native son at the forefront of the Constitutional process, eliminating from Government a perniciously Royal President in 1973-74.
"The South Was Wise To Stay Put" indicates that the Southern delegates were wise not to have walked out of the convention regarding civil rights, as several had during the 1948 convention. It finds the outcome of the dispute over the civil rights plank to have been attributed to that decision to remain, and that the plank which had been adopted reflected as many or more gains for the South than it had anything lost. It finds the provision stating, "we reject all proposals for the use of force to interfere with the orderly determination of these matters by the courts", to have been important, that those words had been a blow to the "pernicious idea" that a political party in power could, by taking "action", impose with swift certainty a new pattern of social attitudes and customs on millions of people.
Platforms were designed to attract votes and doubtless many would have been attracted in the North and West by a platform pledge to carry out the Brown decision. There was probably more support for such a pledge than was apparent on the floor of a convention controlled by Speaker Sam Rayburn and the party leaders around him. It finds their decision to have been correct, resulting in patient attempts to stick together and compromise.
It suggests that had the South gone to the convention in a threatening mood and ready to walk out if it did not get what it wanted, there could have been a different conclusion.
Republican Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois had suggested that the Republicans in their convention would make the vain promises which the Democrats had not. It indicates that would be effective politics for the Republicans but poor leadership, and that a confident party would not make such promises.
A piece from the Raleigh News & Observer, titled "The Disappearing Depots", indicates that with increasing frequency, announcements were being made that the State Utilities Commission was granting railroads the right to discontinue a station, finds that every time one of the old depots disappeared, something was lost in each community, as the depot had been more than just a point on the artery of commerce, acting as a place where people gathered to obtain news. "Around the pot-bellied stove history, fiction, and poetry floated incessantly. The depot was a 'public library,' without formal volumes, a debating society without rostrum and an 'inside' public park."
The arrivals and departures of trains were monumental events and people who followed baseball or elections had to get their news via the depot. On Sundays, the whole countryside rode to the depot after church to watch the trains come and go. "The town sat comfortably by while the vast, romantic world charged off to Zion on magic rails of steel."
Drew Pearson, in Chicago, tells of Senator Johnson having literally thumbed his nose at the Northern gas-consuming cities by using a Texas natural gas lobbyist, future Secretary of the Navy under President Kennedy and Texas Governor, John Connally, as his convention campaign manager. Mr. Connally, paid by Sid Richardson, the big Texas oil and gas mogul and heavy contributor to President Eisenhower, worked closely with Elmer Patman to pull wires in Washington during the natural gas bill battle, ultimately passed by the Congress but vetoed by the President because of the lobbying shenanigans tainting the process. Mr. Patman—who had been an attorney for Superior Oil Co., named in the investigation of the controversial declined offer of $2,500 earlier in the year to Senator Francis Case, conveyed by another attorney for that company, John Neff, during the debate over the deregulation bill—, had since been indicted. Mr. Connally had since been in Chicago working for Senator Johnson while still being paid by Mr. Richardson. A question in the minds of delegates was whether some of the money for Senator Johnson's ornate headquarters in Chicago had come from Mr. Richardson or other gas moguls. (Less than an hour after Senator Kennedy had nominated Adlai Stevenson the previous afternoon, followed by the seconding speeches, Mr. Connally had placed in nomination Senator Johnson.)
Parenthetically, the bitter irony
In another odd twist of fate, intertwined with the events of this date, Senator Kefauver would die on August 10, 1963 at Bethesda Naval Hospital from complications following a heart attack on the floor of the Senate two days earlier, his death occurring a day after the death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, third surviving child of the President and Mrs. Kennedy, who died two days after birth.
The Democratic system of primary elections, designed to keep the party bosses from dominating the Federal Government, had received two setbacks in the previous four years, one being the nomination of Mr. Stevenson with the support of former President Truman and the party bosses in 1952, despite the nominee not having run in a single primary, and the other being in the current week when the former President had endorsed Governor Averell Harriman though he had not run in a primary.
Some delegates resented the fact that a wealthy person could come to the convention at the last minute with the power of the Union Pacific Railroad and the former President behind him, as Governor Harriman had, and become a major candidate. Other delegates did not see it that way, having an eye on obtaining some of the Harriman money to finance state campaigns.
Governor Happy Chandler of Kentucky was spending as much money as some of the front-runners for the nomination, the money coming from Col. John Gotlieb, a trucker who raised a lot of the Governor's campaign funds, together with some money from the Widener family of Philadelphia, who liked Kentucky horses.
Randolph Churchill, son of the former British Prime Minister, could not stay away from American political conventions, having gotten his hair cut for the current one, such that some did not recognize him.
When the manager for Senator Kefauver, Jiggs Donohue, had sought convention tickets from the DNC, he received twelve ribbons marked: "Not good for admission to the convention," asking what good they were and being told they were souvenirs. He sent them back.
Chip Robert, former DNC treasurer, could not obtain a ticket, finally having bought a box for $1,000. Richard Reynolds, Jr., the son of the big tobacco mogul from Winston-Salem, though not having actually been involved in the tobacco business, himself, could not get a ticket and also bought a box for $1,000.
Former Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., a Stevenson delegate from New York, the delegation of which was heavily for Governor Harriman, had stopped to greet Senator Herbert Lehman, also a Stevenson delegate from New York, who had been assigned a seat on the back row and said that they were punishing him for his sins. Mr. Roosevelt suggested that he take his seat near the front, to which Senator Lehman declined, saying that he had a box and would sit there. Mr. Pearson notes that both Senator Lehman and Mr. Roosevelt were being called "displaced persons" by the Harriman delegates. Mr. Roosevelt had been opposed by Mr. Harriman for the gubernatorial nomination in 1954 and the Roosevelt family had not forgiven him for it.
Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee, who had delivered the keynote address the prior Monday, said to friends that he had been scared to death the whole time, and then changed the subject to ask how his frends liked his socks, each of which was black with huge donkeys on them. Otherwise, he had been dressed for television, with a dark blue suit, light blue shirt, and dark tie. His friends agreed with him that his donkey socks were "something".
The most important of the backstage huddles during the convention had been one between Senator Johnson and Mr. Stevenson, with the latter asking the Senator why he had withheld the vote of the Texas delegation for his own favorite-son candidacy, to which the Senator responded that he wanted a civil rights platform which would be acceptable to his people and a DNC chairman who could unify the party, naming James Rowe, his lawyer and chief adviser. He also said that he wanted to be able to name the vice-presidential nominee, naming Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. While Mr. Stevenson was willing to capitulate on Mr. Rowe as national chairman, he said he would support the civil rights plank which the convention adopted, and refused to accept any deal regarding the vice-presidential spot.
Marquis Childs, in Chicago, suggests that if Adlai Stevenson had during the convention a moment for calm reflection, he might have thought of the contrast between his position and that of President Eisenhower. By merely assenting to run, after the Republican Party had for long made it plain their dependence on the President, he was assured of the nomination for the second term. It was harder this time than four years earlier for him to agree to run, given his health difficulties. Mr. Stevenson, on the other hand, in seeking his second successive nomination by the Democrats, had to fight the entire way, which Mr. Childs likens to the old movie serial, "The Perils of Pauline". After Mr. Stevenson's defeat in the Minnesota primary to Senator Estes Kefauver, he was hanging by a narrow rope over the cliff, with his enemies prepared to chop it off. He had barely won the Florida primary, but had handily won the California primary, after which he was on top again, but in the process had become the object of efforts to knock him off through rivalries and jealousies which could rend a party from power. The pace had quickened on the eve of the convention, with former President Truman endorsing Governor Harriman, whose supporters had made every effort to undermine the candidacy of Mr. Stevenson and break his delegate strength, with it having appeared for a while that they would succeed.
Incredible pressures had been placed on Mr. Stevenson during that time to choose a given candidate for the vice-presidency, agree to certain wording in the civil rights plank of the platform, to take a new chairman for the DNC, or to approve financing for various political ventures, all set to bring in new delegates. Mr. Stevenson had asked: "Do you think that the American people can have any idea of what it means to run for president? The pressures that are put on you? The compromises you are asked to make?"
Mr. Childs suggests that he had the right now to speak with a certain half-humorous awe of the road he had traveled since the general election of 1952, which he had lost badly to General Eisenhower, carrying only eight states, and afterward without any public office or chance of public office to serve as a forum for the future, only having the doubtful honor of being titular leader of a divided party which was deeply in debt, all of which might have led him severely to discount any political future for himself.
He suggests that Mr. Stevenson would be stronger this time than he had been in 1952, one reason being that he had to fight for the nomination this time, whereas he had been drafted as a reluctant candidate four years earlier. This time, he had crisscrossed the country and the prize was thus greater than it had been when it came to him against his wishes. He had also won the nomination over the persistent opposition of former President Truman, unlike four years earlier when the President had encouraged him to run, permitting him now to be his own man during the campaign.
He reflects that at the convention, the "museum pieces" out of the colorful Truman era, including the former President himself, were conspicuous, but behind the noisy façade from the past was a party which had been renewed and revivified in several states, giving Mr. Stevenson his second opportunity.
Walter Lippmann indicates that what the Democratic convention would do about the problem of segregation in the public schools was not merely of interest to the party but also to the nation because of its potentially explosive and divisive consequences. The political leaders of the South were conferring at the convention and negotiating with the political leaders from the North, many of whom depended for election on the black vote in the large cities. The question was whether those leaders could find common ground and not merely "weasel words", compromising otherwise irreconcilable differences. If the Democrats, who were a national party in all sections of the country, could answer that question successfully, the country would have reason to hope that a dangerous sectional crisis could be avoided. He regards that to be the primary significance of the rise of Senator Lyndon Johnson, instead of former President Truman, as the arbiter of the convention. "For by temperament, conviction, geography and political experience," Senator Johnson could find the common ground if it existed.
He indicates that as he was writing the piece, the discussion had gone far enough to determine what the words "extreme" and "moderate" really meant, with the two poles on extreme positions being on the one hand a policy of Federal enforcement and on the other, a policy of forcible defiance and nullification, with either extreme splitting the convention irreconcilably. No political leader of influence was asking that the platform endorse either of those extremes. Once they were put aside, a great decision had been made that the problem of segregation in the public schools was to be dealt with on the plane of persuasion rather than force, a position freely and openly negotiated and agreed to by the powerful political leaders from all sections of the country, and thus an event of national importance.
The Republican convention could not negotiate such an agreement because the political leaders of the South were not represented within that party, and so the Democrats would have a legitimate right to claim that they had made a major contribution to internal unity of the country.
But while there seemed to be agreement to stand on common and moderate ground, between the two extremes of enforcement and forcible nullification, and thus to rely on persuasion, there remained the question as to what the party as a whole should declare that it wished to accomplish through persuasion. There could be no real dispute that the object was to work toward desegregation of the public schools, but the crucial question of how to do so was difficult to answer within a party platform, as it could not be the same answer in Vermont as it was in Mississippi. It could not be the same answer in every school district even within the same state, nor within the neighborhoods of a single city such as New York. Desegregation was a very difficult question in coeducational schools for teenagers in mixed neighborhoods. There, persuasion not only had to be slower but would also require radical changes in school policy, such as the policy of coeducation, and big financial contributions from the state or Federal Government would be necessary to see that the educational level was not reduced in the process.
Considerations of that kind could not be set forth in a party platform and the responsible leaders from the various sections of the country had to know that they would have to depend upon the character and general convictions of the candidate to determine what persuasion would mean if that candidate were elected.
He finds it no accident that Mr. Stevenson, who had great political strength in the South, was also the candidate being supported by Senator Hubert Humphrey and Senator Herbert Lehman, as well as Eleanor Roosevelt, the latter surely the oldest and best friend of black people. Such wide support had not come to Mr. Stevenson because he had some slick formula which meant one thing to the South and another to the North, but rather from the knowledge of the responsible leaders that Mr. Stevenson meant to solve the problem without tearing the country to pieces and that he would bring imagination, insight, deep knowledge and an old-fashioned sincerity to solution of the explosive problem.
A letter writer wonders how long the people of Charlotte would remain passive about the music situation, suggests that they could sit and do nothing if they took the attitude of the former music critic, Dick Pitts, who had written a letter to the editor recently, or a few could try to improve the situation and bring something worthwhile to those content to sit by and be satisfied with the mediocrity of the present symphony. She suggests that all it needed was a sensitive conductor and finds it no wonder that the city would not support the orchestra in its present state. She finds it hard to understand the attitude of the Symphony Board when there was so much dissension between the orchestra members and the conductor.
A letter writer indicates that another letter writer had criticized a third letter writer's knowledge of natural science and then displayed an even greater ignorance on the subject in asserting that purebred dogs were "weaker and stupider" than the "more natural mongrel", suggesting that the writer would find out how absurd the notion was if he could enter a mongrel hunting dog in a field trial with purebreds and see what happened. He says that the records of the Army's K-9 Corps and of the Master Eye Foundation would offer ample proof as to the superiority of the purebred over the mongrel, even though all dogs belonged to one species. He suggests that there were differences in the races beyond color, extending to the number of sweat glands, body scent, hair texture, facial features, resistance to various diseases and other differences.
And if you think the "white race" is completely "pure", you are among the more stupid people on the face of the earth. Just what your point is remains unclear. You might as well say that people differ in physical qualities. To compare human beings to dogs has to be one of the dumber things anybody could do. Human beings are not dogs. Or did no one ever teach you that in your one-room schoolhouse where all grades studied together? There is an old saying we used to hear frequently, that "dogs is the craziest people". But that was a joke, stupid.
Incidentally, the two competing letters to which the above writer refers bring up a point raised during the current week in an entirely different context by the new House Speaker, a fellow who thinks, apparently, that it is a "Christian" thing, exemplary of deeply and sincerely held faith, to appear on the most politically biased interview program on the regular airwaves, that of Shown N. Sanity, and proceed to say that he believes the President shows signs of "cognitive decline", obviously quite helpful to the President's ability effectively to negotiate, for instance, the release of additional American hostages from Hamas, a process now ongoing. He said, pausing briefly to underscore, during his introductory speech to the House, immediately after his painfully discriminating election as Speaker, the process not necessarily suggestive of supreme eclecticism on the part of the Republican electors, that the Founders stated not that "all men are 'born' equal", impliedly referring to words of the Declaration of Independence, which say, "all men are created equal", going on to suggest that the phrase refers to opportunity rather than entitlement. He thus drew a distinction, intended to underscore his states' rights view of the issue of a woman's right to determine whether to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability, between "born" and "created". We suspect that the primary drafter of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, would beg to differ on that distinction, would find it one without a difference, other than that "created" was intended to refer to a "Creator", "Nature's God", who endowed each individual with "unalienable rights", as referenced in the immediately ensuing clause of the same sentence of the document, those rights founded on natural law rather than man-made statutes, acts of King George III. Obviously, Mr. Jefferson did not intend, and likely none of the signers of the Declaration even gave the matter a moment's consideration, the context which the new House Speaker suggests, anent the subject of quickening, that is when the fetus exhibits movement, versus viability, that is when the fetus is capable of living outside the mother's womb, versus a divine spark of life, as depicted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and when that spark creates life as an independent being, philosophically and under natural law, endowed with inalienable individual rights while still inside the womb. To make such distinction as the new Speaker made would probably have gotten him laughed out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia as some sort of daft joker, perhaps a fool sent to amuse them momentarily, but ultimately to be escorted from the chamber to the street to eliminate the freely associating dissociative so that the serious business of the house, regarding Revolution and its incidents, might further be discussed and prosecuted. We have never heard of any debate having been conducted in the Second Continental Congress by its representatives regarding any distinction of which they took cognizance, in the context referenced by the new Speaker, between "born" and "created".
We suggest that the present Congress work to exit this hypocritical Royalist nut from the House—a man whose cognitive abilities may not be in decline only because they were obviously never much inclining in the first instance beyond that conducive to his political avarice for a position of recognition and power—, or at least from his new role as its Speaker, with as much dispatch as permitted by the Constitution and rules of the House. Otherwise, it will have to be up to the people to exercise their franchise in doing so a year from now, to restore order in the House, so that the womb may be left alone in its natural state, to the extent possible, with proper charge thereof, for better or worse, residing in each individual mother with natural control over her own body, as she sees fit to the point of viability when an independent being is formed, no longer dependent for its sustenance on the womb, and thus no longer part of the mother's anatomy, giving rise to the state's legal interest in preservation of life under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, having nothing at all to do with mystical religion of any type or sect, not susceptible to rigid determinations via replicatable empirical inquiry within the confines of naturalism, that is rational science whereby an hypothesis is shown to be true or not through objective experiment, as opposed to subjective feelings and experiential data—a basic epistemological distinction which 2020 election deniers, for instance, need to understand far better.
Faith, or "the evidence of things not seen", represents an individual journey and must be maintained strictly on that plane, to be acquired through time and times, left to individual choice and experience to discern or not, and not made the attempted subject of laws, lest it become a despised folly, causing society to devolve monstrously to a theocratic state, given to excesses of burning at the stake, figuratively or literally, those who find that system's precepts, inevitably growing fat with wine and necessitous gain for vain power, the bane of mankind, becoming intolerable, just as the colonists found the laws of England and its King by 1776 unacceptable.
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