With the advent of spring, Anno Domini 1975, which is the sixty-fourth year of our Republic, it is meet and fitting for us to make a general assessment and examination of some of the aspects of events, significant or less significant, during the past year. The purpose of this examination is for a clearer understanding through an inductive process of sifting and the collation of reports of events and policies that have come out during the last quarter of 1974 in the United States. These events and policies will have their bearing on the future and will come into focus during the coming years-their effect salubrious or insalubrious, rehabilitating or debilitating, as they fall into place in the mosaic of the political and socio-economic scheme of things.
For the moment, what seems to rivet the attention of many people around the world as well as my compatriots on this island province is the much touted U.S.-Soviet and the U.S. Chinese Communist renewed effort at detente during the latter part of 1974. For, indeed, the success or failure in a solution to maintaining peace, rather than mere detente, will have global implications and ramifications. And it is a viable solution that interests us all.
At this time I wish to take exception with certain news reports that we, the people of the Republic of China, are "deflated" presumably because some individuals voiced their personal opinion that they did not like the goings on, the seven visits of the U.S. Secretary of State to the mainland or impressions gathered upon interviewing two young students - one girl and one boy - who evinced no more than indifference other than their personal anxieties. For the benefit of all here now and for the future, I wish to say to those of their ilk that we do not inflate nor do we deflate. We are not volatile. Inflation and deflation connote mercurial volatility. We deplore such characteristics in people. Furthermore the observation that the seat of the Chinese Communist regime is so-called Peiping (Northern Peace) rather than Peking (Northern Capital) originated with us is entirely erroneous. The appellation Peiping was given to the locale in the Ming Dynasty. I regret it is this kind of distortion and misinformation with tenuous implications that is most misleading. I should think that in journalism veracity is a most important requirement.
Many of our countrymen overseas around the world are naturally concerned with detente and the prevention of thermonuclear war but our compatriots on the mainland are even more concerned. Let me tell you what they think as I have surmised from various sources.
I shall bypass the concerns and shades of concern of our overseas compatriots, since you can gauge their thinking easily enough from the news media or through contacts with friends and acquaintances. You can also well know what their fears are without my expatiating on them, except to say that their sympathy for the mainlanders is motivated by emotions of kith and kin, remote as it may be in consanguinity, plus the commonly shared innate desire for freedom of the person. And it is in this manner that they feel spiritual kinship to our mainland brethren.
Mainlanders seek survival
The concern and interest of our people on the mainland are much different from ours. In Free China, our concern and interest are twofold: firstly, it is our determination to keep building up the spiritual and material well-being of our people, and secondly, to hold on course to the articles of faith as laid down by the Father of our Republic and his continuator and disciple, so as to conserve and maintain this freedom. The mainlanders, however, their aim necessarily through force of circumstance is simpler - namely, how to avoid death and survive under conditions of peonage and oppression and to hope for the breaking of dawn and eventual freedom.
We know that the people on the mainland are not given information other than what the Communist authority wants them to know - for example, no news of the present U.S.-U.S.S.R. detente is known to them in the context that is understood by the outside Free World. What they do know and hear, from time to time, are violent orchestrated vituperations, perorations and abuses of the U.S.S.R. and such spoon-fed versions on the reception given to Dr. Kissinger who has been made very welcome in recent years as the representative of the United States (at times synonymous with the "paper tiger," capitalistic blood-sucking ghoul of a country), and the playing of an outlandish tune called "Turkey in the Straw" by the Communist army band in his honor. Being isolated from the rest of the world, the greatest majority of the Chinese people have not the slightest idea as to why on earth this sudden change to a mellifluous attitude towards America and why such a funny tune is played at all. Many have wondered of all American songs that could be played, why "Turkey in the Straw"? The elucidation came from a member of the cadre, who is ascribed to know, with an "enlightening" explanation. First of all, the turkey is a peculiarly indigenous fowl to North America discovered by the Pilgrims after they landed at Plymouth Rock in what is now the State of Massachusetts. The rapid gait in conjunction with its chameleon-like eyelids with the somnolent look, all the while emitting that silly "gobble-gobble" noise and ambling from side to side in quick spurts is awkwardness personified. The ridiculous-looking bird with its peculiarly red blue hued, loosely hanging streaking epidermis around its neck, which at times is compared to the neck of an old crone, is the United States. The gobbler contentedly pecks away at the straw on relict kernels of wheat, happily oblivious that when it has been fattened, it will have its throat slit, its feathers plucked, and be basted in a hot oven ready to be served on a platter to be eaten on Thanksgiving - presumably by the Chinese Communists.
Great Wall tapestry
This little skit of a scenario together with the gobbler tune will be batted back and forth in full discussions in the future with a vengeance by the cadre as taming of the U.S. tiger and was deemed specially appropriate in welcoming the Secretary of State. This kind of Rabelaisian invective is further corroborated by Teng Hsiao-ping's quip that the U.S. is a "fat man" who is gradually being "carved up by the Soviets" and as Time magazine of February 3rd reported it has been repeated all over China. What devious thinking! What gallows humor if one can call it humor!
In the analogue of another morsel of their perverse thinking, the Chinese Communists have sent the Great Wall tapestry to the U.N. to replace the Confucian plaque of "Great Harmony Under Heaven," taken down by Chinese Communist ukase. Any Chinese child before the advent of the Maoist cabal on the mainland could tell you or sing the folklore song of the wife pining away for her husband who was press-ganged into indentured slavery with many hundreds of thousands by the Emperor Ch'in to build the Great Wall. True enough, it has been a tourist attraction over many decades but it has never been boasted about or flaunted by any Chinese Government over the centuries brazenly and ostentatiously as a "must" show piece, much less to take official V.I.P.'s to see, nor has it been rhapsodized in poetry and songs as are Hangchow, Soochow, Kweilin, the Yangtze Gorges, the Five Sacred Mountains and other places of renown.
Insult to United Nations
The Chinese Communists are far from being unaware of the singular connotation of oppression that the Great Wall signifies and what it represents to the Chinese people, yet they deliberately sent the tapestry to the U.N. to replace the Confucian tablet. Therefore it can only be for their own reason and nonce. I can only believe that it is again their macabre humor working overtime. To draw a parallel, can anyone in his right mind picture the French Government giving guided tours to invited V.I.P. guests where Robespierre and the Paris Commune sans culottes guillotined Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and lopped off the heads of the French aristocracy during its reign of terror? Nor can I imagine the French Government sending a gory tapestry of the original guillotine to the U.N.
Knowing what we know, we can only surmise that the Great Wall tapestry was sent on purpose with its loud and clear inference to insult the sense of propriety of the assembled body of countries represented in the U.N. and as a defiant forewarning of the Red Chinese future behavior in the world scene. Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leadership want it known that they delight in playing at will cruel shenanigans on other peoples. We need but recall their many mass deceptions when literally 20 million* of our compadres were tragically caught in the dragnet for taking Mao at his word and began voicing criticisms and bitter dissatisfactions. Recall, again, the dehabilitation and rehabilitation of so many of their high leaders, too many to mention here, among them Teng Hsiao-ping, now nominally the second man to Chou En-lai, who was literally pulled out of the garbage pail considering the fact that during his humiliation he was trussed up like a common criminal wearing a dunce cap, expectorated upon and physically assaulted. Now ever more blatant and contemptible, Mao Tse-tung and his lackeys openly espouse and revere Emperor Ch'in, regarded indubitably by all Chinese historicity as the tyrant of all tyrants.
In their perversity the Maoists are serving open notice to the world that like it or not, they will ram their "thing" their way "down the throats" of the Free World and eventually on the Third World. How true, how very applicable it is to the present situation of the age-old adage, oft repeated: He listens but hears not, He looks but sees not.
To continue with the main strand of thought from where I left off, let me say that to our people on the mainland, as they understand "detente", it simply means again, the further giving in by the Free World to their Chinese Communist overlords. "Detente" also means to the people on the mainland the kind of compromising of fundamental principles - on the order of Munich con ducted by Neville Chamberlain - in placing further strictures upon them with U.S. approval and connivance. It reminds many so much of Chamberlain's "peace in our time" do-gooding that sent six million Jews and six million non-Jew Europeans to their deaths in concentration camps, augmented by millions of American, British, French, Polish, Russian as well as German civilians and soldiers killed, maimed or mutilated because of the feckless and vacillating British and French policy of the time. Tragic as it was, the present world conditions are not entirely analogous with those of 1937-1945. I shall give my reasons as I continue.
*The National Catholic Register of March 9th 1975 states a U.S. Senate report last year estimated Mao had killed 39 million people since 1949.
Detente leads nowhere
Throughout the ages and in the consensus of non-Chinese peoples, our compatriots, tutored or untutored, lettered or unlettered, were noted for their high native and instinctive intelligence, while even the more sanguine regard detente with the Chinese Communists not as gaining peace for our time, but merely a transitional period of postponed "suspended suspense" and temporization, leading ultimately to nowhere. Teleologically, our people on the mainland firmly believe that detente will inevitably lead to eventual wholesale carnage bordering on genocide of the Chinese people on the mainland, bound on a head-on collision course with the U.S.S.R., or possibly with the U.S.S.R. and her satellite ally or allies, including the United States.
Masters of deceit
They believe as we believe, no one can rule out the emergence of a Communist Attila or Genghis Khan with commensurate complexes and delusions of grandeur, blundering into the momentum of war. This to them is very real, with further possibility of either side or both sides reaching a point of no return so that every capability of destruction, tactical and strategic, at its disposal will be put to use to gain every advantage over the enemy. In that event, logic dictates that U.S.-Chinese Communist detente will not mean lessening but rather the opening up to a greater probability from the metaphysics of "possible reality" into "ontological reality" of a thermo nuclear war. One may agree or disagree with this thinking at will but still this thinking and this possibility cannot be ruled out at convenience.
Those of us who think of the United States as the great exponent and proponent of humanitarian concepts of liberty, equality, civil rights of the individual as explicitly delineated in the U.S. Bill of Rights, also know that it is the product, though by no means the final end product, of the sum total of tortuous and painful accumulation of man's experience in governance and desire for human betterment as a whole. And Communism at best champions only the dictatorship of the proletariat-an open admission that only the proletariat is fit to enjoy human rights. Are all others precluded? And what does the proletariat embody by definition and practice-only those who support or are used by the Communist regime.
It is otiose and trite to say that detente with a Communist regime is strewn with a plenitude of hidden and dangerous pitfalls, especially with the Chinese Communist regime which takes a surreptitious pride in trickery and deceit. We all know that they practice it on our own people on the mainland. It has been reported that unlike the Russians and the North Vietnamese, Secretary Kissinger has never found them to go back on their word. Not going back on one's word is an age-old virtue with the Chinese, but unfortunately the Chinese Communists use it only eclectically. They stand by their word when they feel they need to or renege when it suits their purpose. I know and those of us who have dealt with them in the past know. Their great designs of insidiousness most of us in the Free World are well acquainted with yet do not profit by the lessons learned vicariously or from personal experience. Given the fact that the Free World has now come to be calloused and inured, glossing over and even singing praises of the menacing fundamental ideological differences and Draconian inhumanities, still the Communists do not relax and take kindly to the ways of the Free World. They remain wary and are constantly on their guard. For us to be shouting the need for transcending human values of freedom and decency from the rooftops, as it were, is now quite futile and will not change as with the trusting sheep innocently being led to slaughter by opportunists imbued with the lure of quick temporary advantages. This is the mood and frame of mind that the United States as the Establishment has to contend with externally. Internally the United States has problems galore to face and to solve.
Problems of America
Let us look at some of the current endogenous socio-economic problems as well as some of the exogenous international political problems that beset and ineffectuate the United States. In this regard I think it is worthwhile to bring out some samples of the vexatiousness that plague the morale and sap the spiritual strength of the United States so that we may be more understanding of and sympathetic to the problems that are saddled on that great country. I shall give them to you at random and in a non-sequitur order.
On the education scene: Dr. Mario Fantini, a Harvard educator, incumbent dean of education at the State University of New York, who was once in charge of "giving away" hundreds of millions of dollars, is calling for the fulfilling of the children's "basic right to literacy." We may or may not agree with his method of achieving that basic right to literacy. But it is clear from what Dr. Fantini is saying that after billions upon billions of dollars have been spent by Federal and State governments, foundations and funds from private sources, except for a few isolated bright spots here and there, the literacy drive has been a dismal failure. In fact we know that the quality of education nowadays has retrograded despite the impressive statistic that 74 million, one-third of the nation, is enrolled in schools. The fact remains that many, too many, children of the present generation who have finished grade school simply cannot read, let alone spell.
Premature learning
In Kanawha County of West Virginia, parents have been up in arms because selections from "Jump Rope Jingles and Other Useful Rhymes" used in junior and senior high schools taught disrespect for authority and the limerick-like excerpts from "Allen Ginsberg at Columbia" definitely serve no educational purpose and are needlessly obscene. It is coarse if not altogether gutter language. There are those who argue in defense that the facts of life should be made known to children even at a tender age since they would know about "the birds and the bees" in the future in any event. I find such argument extremely mindless as well as fallacious. It is equivalent to saying that since learning to drive a car is a necessity in a child's future or that hunting is a good healthy sport, therefore a child should be given a car or a gun to play with before he is old enough to realize the lethalness of the two instruments of convenience and of sport.
The racial issue between black and white students in South Boston, so unnecessary, has had tension running high all these months. Time magazine of November 4th, 1974, reported that a black driver was beaten severely by four white youths with a baseball bat in South Boston, and on December 15th, a white student was stabbed by a black in a South Boston school with ensuing protest marches, which only added fuel to the fire, first by the blacks led by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and then followed by the whites, mostly Italians and Irish including the mother of the stabbed boy, the next day at Boston Commons. To control widespread violence, Massachusetts State troopers had to use metal detection gates for students entering the school or submit them to a frisking with hand-held metal scanners. A sad commentary on education and the educational system.
U.S. prestige of old
On the drug scene: December of last year, there was a mass arrest in Los Angeles of 160 students who were peddling dope at school; 120 of the less culpable ones were freed. As assistant dean of students of the University of Chicago, James Vice recalls, even fifteen years ago the use of drugs on a major scale was unheard of, and suddenly in the sixties extensive use of drugs in the campuses spread like wildfire. It has been estimated that some 26 million Americans have tried marijuana. Dr. Robert Dupont has announced conclusively the deleterious effect of "grass" yet we are told that the usage among the youngsters is still on the increase. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics show that in 1973, nearly half a million in the U.S. (420,700 to be exact) used hard drugs. In four years it has doubled that of 1969. These are indeed frightening figures to contemplate. It comes to mind that even a weak and debilitated China under the inefficient, corrupt and lackadaisical Manchu Dynasty fought the toxication of the Chinese people by the Europeans. It took the victory of the British in the infamous Opium War and the humiliating Treaty of Nanking, August 29th, 1842, with the ceding of Hong Kong and the opening of five treaty ports to force the Manchu Government to comply to the free importation of opium into China without let or hindrance. And now tragically the American youths are doing it all to themselves by their own volition and without external pressure in the use of hardcore drugs. What a great national calamity that the flower of youth, the hope of the nation is thus being wasted.
I can recall vividly in the past my impressions of the spontaneous warmth respect and love for the United States which were extremely high and pervasive both before and for some years after World War II all over the world. It was satisfying to see that individual Americans abroad simply being Americans enjoyed high prestige and welcome. Then came the sixties, with the advent of the hippies, boys and girls who, degraded by pot and hard drugs, roamed from Marrakesh to Katmandu searching for cheap drugs - unkempt and unwashed with matted streaky hair, looking and behaving like cornered animals or beggars with all sense of self-respect and self-pride perished and gone. It was a pitiful sight to contemplate or to behold. Many, all too many, languished in the jails of Mexico, South America, Spain, Turkey and other European and Middle Eastern countries. America's image correspondingly plummeted. What I deplore most is that because of a comparative few behaving criminally, arrogantly outrageously or misbehaving eccentrically, coupled with termagant U.S. net weaving policies of inconsistencies and captiousness as well as timidity and hesitancies so that now she finds that the weight of her moral leadership is not only being impugned but much of her primacy in undisputed moral and political leadership is lost in the eyes of the world, both Free and Communist. America being my second country where I spent many of my happy childhood years and for which I have warm affection, it cuts me to the quick when oft and anon I hear her denigrated, and castigated.
Poisoning by narcotics
Approximately a fortnight before Christmas last, New York papers reported the arrest of a $25 million cocaine ring kingpin. And on its heels another arrest of a certain LeRoy Barnes who offered a six figure bribe to the police to be set free. It was also reported that there are some one hundred top drug rings similar to the cocaine ring broken up plying its deadly trade in New York City - one of the major distributing centers for the Eastern seaboard of the United States. It is not officially known how many more such rings exist in the whole of the United States. But it is within reason to assume that there are quite a few scores around the country. As a related foot note to the press reports, it is ironic that one New York newspaper headlined the head culprit of the cocaine ring as a "dope genius." We do not see why such lowly of the lowliest people are glamorized since they profit and prosper mightily building on the misery as well as the despoiling and degrading of other human beings.
It distresses me greatly to think that the poisoning of the United States is further exacerbated and intensified by Chinese although they are Chinese Communists who use Chinese soil to plant poppies and are now using the Portuguese enclave of Macao some forty miles away from Hong Kong at the mouth of Pearl River to facilitate and further their many-based nefarious plans. Congressman James Symington of Missouri is delicately suggesting circuitously and diplomatically that the State Department talk to the Chinese Communists to keep an eye out for the U.S., since Yunnan Province in Southeast China is propinquus to the infamous Golden Triangle. Portugal, which no longer can afford an empire, and has even given independence to little islands such as Principe and Sao Tome, not to say huge territories such as Angola and Mozambique, is told to hold on to Macao on sufferance, acting as surrogate of the master Mao and the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, to facilitate them in their heinous and Mephistophelian activities with a Portuguese face-mask and with the Portuguese doing their bidding. From the Red Chinese point of view, a cheap way to finance a lucrative money earner for exportation of their vaunted "revolution" abroad.
Approximately five months ago it was reported in the papers that President Suleiman Franjieh of Lebanon was politely reminded that his entourage was not to carry drugs from Lebanon to New York when he attended the U.N. Much to the credit of the President of Lebanon, no drugs were sniffed out by the "narco" trained dogs and the State Department apologized for the sniffing canines, attributing the faux pas to the U.S. Customs. We do know that the Chinese Communists accredited to the U.N. are made of different stuff. We do not know whether they were so admonished but report has it that they do what they wish and would not even be fazed by a reclame should they be "accidentally" sniffed out. A double standard would indeed be another blow to the image of moral rectitude and credibility of the United States.
Welfare "rip off' case
On the non-violent "rip off' scene I shall but mention three of them, each of which is of a different character:
In Chicago a certain Linda Taylor was reported to have filched $354,200 in a year's time through welfare under fourteen aliases. It is no secret that for many a year it has been bruited of huge wholesale welfare fraud, thieving and abuse of funds in the U.S. Under the aegis of limousine riding, condominium-living leftist activists always at the ready to take up cudgels with or without cause, together with the join-the-bandwagon sympathizers with their paranoid fear of being labeled insensitive to the poor and the needy, the fertile ground was laid for the cancerous growth of cheating the welfare system. Any effort to look into the system and the agencies administrating them, for some reason or other, did not get far. Any doubt that there is anything improper in the administration of the programs was jumped upon as anti-poor. The anti-poverty program, good and bad, prudential or profligate, became the sacred cow. Thus terrible mismanagement, purloining and peculating of welfare funds were all but hushed up. Linda Taylor's case is but one classic example of a welfare "rip off' that came to be publicized.
Nursing home conditions
The second type of a "rip off' is in the nursing home industry. Recently official reports have surfaced to show that nursing care of the aged in many of the nursing homes around the country is substandard, some better than others. The U.S. Federal Government subsidizes them to the tune of three billion dollars yearly. Thus a presumably humanitarian institution such as the nursing home has become a money-stealing business, a get-rich quick avenue. The latest one to come to public attention is the nursing home run by a Bernard Bergman in New York. Let me give you the testimony of Anastasia Hopper, a former State Health Department inspector. On a visit to Bergman's Towers Nursing Home, she found: " ...beds jammed three deep in hallways ...no heat ...old women with cold hands and knees 'icy' to the touch, and five exits blocked by beds. The kitchen was a mess, the boilers weren't working, the bathrooms were dirty." Furthermore the State Inspector General's office found more than one million dollars in overcharges and another $1.18 million in Medicaid bills that could not be accounted for by check or voucher. What is extremely interesting to note is that Mrs. Hopper, the inspector, made the inspection visit in February 1971. The press report only came out in December 1974 about four years later.
On the violent "rip off' scenes of corruption, crime and murder, there is a plethora. Space permits me to give only a few samplings.
The Commissioner of Investigation of New York City, Nicholas Scopetta, in December 1974, announced that his Department had completed the investigation of the inspectors of the City Buildings Department and found 170 of its employees were corrupt and on the take.
Violence in New York
It is also reported that New York City in 1974 lost $87 million in city tax on cigarettes alone due to smuggling. Trucks carrying cigarettes into the City were forewarned as to where the inspection team would be so that the smugglers would take another route. A New York police officer, William Phillips, recently found guilty of murder in a "shakedown" case, came out with a book entitled "On the Pad." He gives much insight into police corruption in New York City. The Knapp Commission Report of 1972 (established to investigate police corruption) and the recent large-scale dismissal of police officers, the largest number ever in the history of the Police Department of New York City, indicate how deep and prevalent corruption has affected the guardians of the law.
In the newspapers robbery and muggings are of common daily occurrence. They are again too numerous to mention, suffice it to say that the victims have even been members of the cloth. There has been quite a number of murders of rabbis and Catholic fathers who were killed for their bingo receipts. Even the Church poor boxes have been raided and ripped out of walls.
The New York Times by-lined by Max Siegel that Alitalia's flight engineer, Mario Lenne, while walking with his wife at 8:00 p.m. last Christmas day, was stabbed to death on Vanderbilt Avenue . Anyone who is a little familiar with New York City knows that this is a part of town that is most heavily peopled by pedestrians almost at all hours of the day or night since Times Square, Grand Central subway and railway stations as well as the Pan Am, Chrysler and other skyscraper buildings are all situated around the area.
The New York Times of December 8th, 1974, has a Washington Associated Press report that the rate of murder has risen with the growth of the post-World War II baby boom. The National Center for Health statistics show that there were more than 20,000 persons murdered in 1973, and that far too many of the those arrested for homicide were between the ages of 15 and 29.
In December the F.B.I. reports that for the nine months ending September 30th, 1974, serious crime was up 16 percent.
Many arrests, few trials
Before I go on to present to you the external problems that grip the United States, let me give you two keys to the malaise by quoting two revealing figures from an article entitled "Our Disgraceful System of Combating Crime," written by Patrick V. Murphy, former Commissioner of Police of New York City. The quoting of these two comprehensive figures should suffice to give us a very good idea as to how the present judicial system works in that City. Commissioner Murphy writes that in 1970 New York City police made 94,042 arrests for felonies (felonies are serious and not venial crimes) and only 552 of these cases came to trial. This is the bane of the judicial system. The other affliction is permissiveness. Permissiveness is granted in every phase in the bringing up of children. Laxity and permissiveness are surely the two main causes of evil.
Unfortunately the number of strikes that seem to follow one on top of the other at this crucial period of energy shortage bodes great harm to the U.S. The news media reported that the miners were on strike when coal as energy is so much in demand. It was followed by the milk strike in New York City, overlooking the welfare of the sick in the hospitals, and infants and the invalids in nursing homes. We hear of other possible wildcat strikes brewing during the country's difficulties in order to advance their own cause and position. Has patriotism become a dirty emotion in this day and age?
At this moment of writing, I am reminded of the real Magna Carta of the working man in the United States. It is embodied in the Landrum Griffin Act, and originally was designed to protect workers from the labor bosses. What travesty of purpose that this Act has been twisted into a weapon to break the individual's right to work instead of protecting him. I hope that the collective good sense of the unions that once stood to protect the individual worker against the robber barons will in time come to realize that extremism on their part may reap them short-term rewards but it will also in time reap its own whirlwind, as did the robber barons in their day of insouciance.
To illustrate further how in today's ethos of fighting against poverty and elevating the standard of the common man it has spilled into the area of the absurd. U. S. News & World Report of June 24th, 1974, listed Federal projects such as an outlay of $375,000 for a Pentagon study of the Frisbee, another $159,000 to teach mothers how to play with their babies, $121,000 to find out why some people say "ain't", $20,342 for a study of the mating calls of the Central African toad and $80,000 to develop a zero gravity toilet. All these can be on-going studies for years and years to come. And an understanding or a solution can be elusive enough to go on for year after year unless some other as worthwhile projects are found to terminate the above or more other brilliant projects are found to supplant the ones above. Whatever their merits the projects are par excellence ingenious ways to expand Federal spending. Perhaps it is remarkable in an oblique way that those heavy thinkers are not at all embarrassed by coming up with these flashes of circuitous genius.
The American Dream
As I come across facts upon facts, I cannot but come back to the same haunting question: What has become of the Great American Dream, refined through time encompassing decency, fortitude, resourcefulness, generosity of spirit, and propriety-which were attributes highly regarded when I was a child in the United States? What has happened to the America of 1942 and 1943 which I revisited and saw the magnificent effort and spirit at work, together with its pervasive, vibrant, buoyant, strength, patriotism and infectious enthusiasm? The United States has been and is the greatest and the most successful experiment of democracy writ large ever since the Greeks conceived this concept for their own city states. Surely it deserves infinitely better than to be on the decline gradually whilst the country is nearing its bicentennial. When has the American spirit become listless and bootless? Will her great system become a mere shallow imprint on the sands of time, as have other democracies of bygone times?
This thought has crossed my mind innumerable times in recent years with lingering sadness, almost a tour de force of the kaleidoscopic interior problems that tax and trouble the United States. In my overview, I have chosen much of the material from New York City journalistic reports because often they give more complete reportage of the whole country and because New York City affords the best cross section and more comprehensive microcosm of the country. It is the habitat of some eight million people which makes it the largest city in the world outside of Tokyo and because it embraces a diversity of ethnic groups, cultural background, customs and mores. Its variegated life patterns of religions, ideologies, ideas and interests can be from the very far out to the very conservative - in other words very kooky or very square, and many nuances and shades in-between. Be that as it may, New York City is undoubtedly one exceptional microcosm within the macrocosm of America.
Long hair and beards
Now we come to some of the more recent external or exogenous problems of the United States.
A radio flash in December of last year brought the news that in the United States sector of Berlin, 1,600 soldiers of an artillery regiment went on strike in sympathy with those who were told to cut their long hair short and trim their beards. Initially, it was reported that twenty-seven of them refused to obey the order; eventually ten of them gave in, but the other seventeen were obdurate, and the latest report says six have been or will be court-martialed. One can well imagine what sort of impression this little caper and recalcitrance gave not only to the Russian and the Warsaw Pact members of the Armed Forces, and even to European NATO officers and men but also to Russian and European civilians at large as well not only of a certain image of the U.S. Armed Forces but a certain image of the United States. For, like it or not, countries are judged by events and behavior of even a few individuals, let alone a representative arm of their country. It comes into sharper focus when they are committed abroad. Senegal's President Leopold Senghor was flabbergasted when on a state visit to Holland a unit of the Limburg Hunters, presumably the crack brigade of guards of the Netherlands' armed forces acting as honor guard, had long hair hung below their shoulders, their shoes unpolished and their leggings stained. President Senghor turned and whispered to Queen Juliana, "Your Majesty, is this really the Dutch Army?" We do not know what her reply was; but we can well conjecture the thoughts that ran through the scholarly Senghor's mind and the acute embarrassment the Dutch Queen must have suffered. This image will no doubt spread far and wide in Africa and the Middle East, the present tinderbox in that part of the world. It will be magnified and exaggerated to encompass all NATO forces except possibly the West German.
Let us now go on to the more weighty matters. The New York Times of December 7th, 1974, head lined, "United States warns UN on Trend to Tyranny of Majority and Says Support Wanes." Ambassador John Scali said in effect in his speech that (a) the American people cannot support this kind of a U.N., (b) the U.S. will withdraw from a U.N. run by a bulldozing tyrannical majority. Without reflecting on Ambassador Scali in any way, a picture on the same front page of the New York Times showed him delivering his speech as U.S. spokesman on the rostrum with more than most of the seats in the auditorium empty except perhaps for some thirteen or fourteen people sprinkled around to hear him. I am sure the U.S. State Department realizes full well what has and is happening to the U.N. even if it did not two years ago, or else bitter words such as "tyranny of the majority" and "withdrawal of support" would not be used. In the diplomatic world such words are not called on in vain unless extremely helpless and frustrated, especially in an open forum like the U.N.
But the tyranny of the majority rolled on unheedingly to the warning.
Decline of U.S. prestige
The New York Times of December 11th, 1974, bylined by Paul Hoffman reports that the Legal Committee of the General Assembly recommends that the proposal for United Nation's action against international violence be put off for another year. It was approved. Only a paltry few - West Germany, the U.S., Israel and some Latin American states - deplored the delay. Some months ago, seventy-one U.S. Senators wrote President Ford that the advocacy and use of indiscriminate violence has hurt the United Nations in the principles it stands for. Now because of Israel, UNESCO (U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and UNICEF (U.N. International Children's Emergency Fund) are in trouble. It is an infinite pity that had the Charter member countries stood initially on basic principles, the disintegration of the U.N. would not have come to pass. I mention these facts in passing as it is not only the decline of the United Nations that we all deplore; it is the decline of the prestige of the United States to affect its ability to do good in the U.N. that is so unfortunate, so much so that now it is clear that any band of irresponsible members of the U.N. in the future could impulsively and at will wreak their whims at and drolleries on the U.N. in total disregard to the stabilizing, restraining and sane influences upon which the U.N. was meant to exercise. By their collective actions they have once more made a mockery of the U.N., and we must admit that they have succeeded too well to sound the eventual death knell of that organization. Lately I see skepticism upon skepticism on the validity and worth of the U.N. The United States Government through its chief spokesman at the U.N. puts it well when it publicly though more than a little belatedly admitted the full import of what has happened to the world organization. The bevy of Generals and covey of Admirals still assigned to the U.N. have enough brainpower to run the Defense Department-are now in a superannuated status-getting paid for twiddling their thumbs in the U.N. a fact privately admitted by many in the U.S. Delegation. To all intent and purpose except for some minor functions, the U.N. is in fact now quite moribund.
Russo-American detente
What is important now in looking ahead is not how well or how badly the U.N. fares, since it no longer serves as a moral bastion-a stabilizing force in the world. Therefore, the world must rely once more on bilateral agreements and not on the judicious and considered collective will of the U.N. Henceforward what is important to the world is what does detente between the United States and the U.S.S.R. really achieve. The under standing reached between President Ford and Secretary General Brezhnev at Vladivostok essentially spells out, in summary: (1) That each country would have a ceiling of 2,400 missile launchers. Since the U.S.S.R. has surpassed the ceiling, they will have to scrap some of their obsolete and obsolescent missiles. (2) Of the 2,400 delivery systems (launchers, planes and erectuses inclusive), each country can have 1,320 MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles) - which means that each country would be permitted to deploy a maximum of 1,320 missiles carrying multiple independently targeted warheads. The U.S.S.R. is still behind the U.S. in MIRVs and is permitted under the agreement to catch up. However, the "throw weight" or explosive power favors the U.S.S.R. missiles.
Peiping is another matter
No one should have any real qualms and anxiety or quibble about the number of missiles each country is permitted to have now agreed upon since anyone side has enough "overkill" power to destroy the human race on this planet several times over. Both superpowers have already achieved MAD power-mutual assured destruction power. What is noteworthy here is that there now exists a spirit of accord and an agreement, however general and imprecise. With the present mature and reasoned leadership in the Kremlin detente embodies the necessary goodwill to build upon. Nevertheless we must realize that it does not preclude the possibility in the future of an Ivan the Terrible or a Russian Tojo, a megalomaniac who thinks he can conquer the world through the advantage gained by preemptive strikes, by turning a Pearl Harbor.
However, detente between the U.S. and Red Chinese is another matter. It militates entirely to the advantage of the Chinese Communists in that it is now not a coequal with Russia or the United States in the delivery system or in the sophistications of the missile, nuclear warhead, throw weight, and the MIRV. Detente in this case means giving of time to the Chinese Communists to catch up in lead time, meanwhile protecting them against the U.S.S.R. during this lag period. Through some contretemps press reports emanating just prior to the last visit of Dr. Kissinger to the mainland, the Chinese Communists at first barely hid their anxiety for detente with the U.S. They wanted the time to perfect their own strike capability and they wanted the U.S. insurance against a U.S.S.R. pre-emptive strike against them. Then, sometime during Dr. Kissinger's sojourn on the mainland, the Chinese Communists thought better of it and painted a changed picture, planted another version, so that it appears that they have helped the U.S. obliquely by their intromission into the detente picture, making U.S.-U.S.S.R. detente possible. If the latter reason were true, we should ask, since when have the Chinese Communists ever been known to be solicitous or altruistic? If anything, the Chinese Communists suffer from a case of extreme and most brutal solipsism. They have always been known to manipulate and hustle the Chinese and any other peoples as well just so long as it is to their benefit. To all of us who have kept up with events, it is so clear that the Chinese Communists are biding their time for an opportunity with regard to the U.S.S.R., its northern neighbor.
No more "papering over"
If the world is not to be maneuvered into a position to fight again like "cornered rats" as England and France finally in desperation did in World War II, to use Mr. Joseph Alsop's apt description of that desperate era, we must do much serious and sustained thinking and come to real grips with the various problems. There will be some painful, unpopular and disagreeable, oyer and terminer decisions to be made if the Free World is to survive. Realpolitik demands that embellished rhetoric shying away from and putting off the day of reckoning with the airy, fairy approach to the deadly serious problems of whole sale death and destruction of mankind, just will not do. The time has come that "papering over" in the sense of covering up problems does not solve problems. It may postpone the day of reckoning although exacerbating it at the same time. Success, ephemeral success in negotiations, cannot be equated with solid achievement. All the semantical contortions and gyrations of heroes and anti-heroes so beloved by the avant-garde intellectual elitists have relegated those whom they wish to use for the moment into psychological limbo and servitude as though beholden to them. In fact, in whetting the growing appetite of the Chinese Communists, their appetite grows ever more voracious and will never be satiated. Therefore it offers no solution. At best it is to buy a little more time. But it is resigned to paying a dearer price with usurious interest for that little more time bought.
I am reminded of a vestigial Yiddishism that some doting Jewish mother admonishing her offspring in an urgent voice, shrilling after a fastly disappearing mischievous adolescent child, "Don't beschrei it." Yiddish, as we know, is the tongue of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. It is a conglomeration of words borrowed from high German, Hebrew, English, Polish and Russian. The word Beschrei in German we know means attest and this mixed Anglo-Yiddish phrase, as it is understood, has the implications of don't talk about it, don't tempt it and it will go away, as if by not talking about something it will not tempt some supernatural force, therefore it will not occur and will go away of itself. But I can assure you that by assuaging and compromising the problems plaguing the Free World they will not of themselves go away. It is an incontrovertible fact that the quota of mistakes permitted a great country such as the United States is far greater than is permitted a small nation. We also realize that she, too, has her limit as to how many she may make. The U.S. is fast reaching that limit. And often times because of the magnitude of the mistake made by a great power it can be irreparable and irreversible, affecting not only herself but the course of history and the destiny of nations. This is one end of the spectrum.
European economic crisis
On the other end of the spectrum, I wish to quote part of an article by J. Robert Schaetzel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Atlantic Affairs from 1962-1966 and Ambassador to the European Communities in Brussels from 1966-1972:
"Preoccupied with its own problems, the United States is unconsciously contributing to Europe's greatest crisis since the war. For better, for worse, the consequences are ours to share. Europe's ills are political and economic. Inflation at double-digit rates threatens the social order and democratic institutions, stirring class warfare, for instance, in England.
"The Italian and British payments deficits run to $1 billion a month, and within fifteen months Italy will have exhausted her remaining assets.
"The Continent is consuming and living beyond its means. As the gross national product slows to 2.5 percent, the European Community lacks the will and strength to cope by itself with the possible economic collapse of one of its members."
Hobgoblins everywhere
Again we see here the ineluctable moral and economic responsibility that the U.S. has to shoulder for Europe's cares and woes, in addition to her own. And we must constantly bear in mind that in the nature of enemies, adversaries and fair weather friends, plumbing each quantum of potential in reaching peradventure a passing depth of possible weakness, they will gauge every enduring latent resourcefulness not as a test of perseverance but another measure of our infirmity.
Such is the present plight that the U.S. is in hobgoblins to the right and hobgoblins to the left. We understand this plight well since we went through the same predicament in our particular circumstance in the nineteen forties on the main land.
It is no longer denied that the U.S. is in a period of stagnation cum recession heretofore unknown in her history, therefore I feel it was incumbent upon the President of the United States in his position of leadership to rekindle in the nation some spirit-lifting catchword, be it only a shibboleth, to find a solution to turning around the economic depression. President Ford came up with the acronym "WIN", the initials for "Whip Inflation Now." Personally I thought it rather ingenious, for aside from the fact that it is an acronym, the three alphabets put together was a word which made a lot of sense. Moreover, the three words together made a good slogan. Yet the negativists immediately pounced upon it, reversed the word and turned over the first alphabet coming up with "NIM" which is synonymous to minimal. Such an antagonistic posture is hardly constructive. It is in fact very negative. On the other side of the picture, there are those like Mr. Meredith Willson of "The Music Man" fame who have taken on upon request to write music for the "WIN" movement. This is a helpful and positive attitude. Besides, what is important is not how good the music or the lyric is but that it is an act of faith in America, as were the songs: "The Yanks Are Coming," "Johnny Get Your Gun," of World War I vintage, and "God Bless America," of World War II. Should we think that after Watergate it is proper that freedom of expression gives people the right to abuse or the right to equate the President of the United States to Bozo the Clown just because a writer does not like him personally? Judging from the results of the clemency granted to draft dodgers by President Ford, of the reported 126,500 persons eligible in one way or another to take part in the amnesty program, some time prior to the first expiration date less than three percent or 3,200 came forward. Was the amnesty uproar and the hue and cry so vociferously made just another ploy to stir up discontent and embarrassment for the Establishment?
Now the various activist groups supported by some hastily formed ad hoc associated or affiliated Christian organizations have upped their ante to demand unconditional amnesty without any regard of fairness to those who legally obeyed the laws of the country. Was it amnesty that those involved were really interested in or was it a part and parcel program to chip away the cornerstone upon which America was built? Such may be the unfortunate consequence that follows after too much easy affluence built up increment upon increment through the imagination, ingenuity and the sweat of the brow of past hardier generations.
Sketches of Marx and Mao
From another vantage point Mr. John H. Sweet wrote in the U.S. News & World Report of February 11th, 1974:
"When the Bicentennial Center in the nation's capital - a building that is the headquarters for Washington's celebration in 1976 of the 200th anniversary of the United States - was dedicated on January 14th, its walls were adorned with sketches of Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and fellow Communists, plus an unflattering caricature of President Nixon. With the exception of The Washington Star-News, the episode got scant notice in the newspapers. Our editor, Howard Flieger, devoted his page to the subject and called the display an insult to every American... "
My first reaction was incredulity. Could it be that unconsciously, those who saw the sketches of Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung have been so acclimated and accustomed to them and to such an extent that through some osmotic quirkish process in thinking as to automatically identify them with the founding fathers such as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln, or is it because their mental faculties have been so conditioned as to become insensate to doctrinal differentiation? It is not trifling when I say that sick, unhealthy, brainwashed or purposed minds can play tricks with one's mental process.
Complicated and complex
The "Energy Crunch" in the United States which Mr. Melvin Laird expatiated so succinctly in the Readers' Digest of January, 1975, is indeed noteworthy for two reasons: (1) History has shown that few societies, if any, can sustain an inflation rate of 20 percent for long without destroying the economy of a nation, which means total unemployment, paralyzation of business, disintegration of banking and the wiping out of savings, ending in complete social chaos and political anarchy; (2) According to the World Bank statistics, if purchasing of petroleum continues as at present, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will have amassed by 1980 $653 billion, three times the total of today's official currency reserves of all the nations of the world!
I have tried to show ad nauseum many tableaux vivants both endogenous and exogenous. They are problems that truly afflict the United States. They are also problems which would hurt all of us in the Free World and also Third World countries. Ironically enough, it could also hurt the U.S.S.R. just as much in another sense. The Kremlin rulers are called by the extreme Chinese Communists no longer Communists but more than bourgeois-bourgeois elitists, masking as Marxists. All in all, it is a complicated and complex picture. But withal I am optimistic and not even pessimistically optimistic of the future. For I have come to know that there are many, many people of my persuasion and thinking in the United States, open-minded people without any dogmatic prejudices and cants, the true patriots who are beginning to stand up and be counted. They are asking: What is it that is wrong with the U.S.? How has America come to this? In the past they have remained mute or sotto voce. There was a period not too long ago that when they speak publicly they only speak in praise of the U.S., however spurious and however chaotic society was before their very eyes.
Mr. Pete Axthelm writing a special column in Newsweek magazine of December 2nd, 1974, is rightly critical of today's basketball as a sport. A basketball star, at twenty-two years of age, has a six years' two million one hundred thousand dollar contract for playing ball, which comes to over three hundred thousand dollars a year. It is said that he casually breaks a contract when he does not bother to show up for a game, and offhandedly remarked, "I won't play for less than a million dollars. I'd rather go to work in a factory." Do these words connote that our athlete is being exploited with a paltry sum of over a quarter of a million in emolument a year? Can one call it a worthy utterance of a sportsman?
"Telling it like it is"
What I particularly like about Mr. Axthelm's telling summarizing of today's malaise in sports is that the sycophants, hustlers and con men of sports have poisoned many a youngster still wet behind his ears that real people and real work are objects of scorn. And the most cogent observation is that playing for such "peanuts" by professionals is a game that less talented youngsters all over the world would give their eye teeth to be permitted to play for pleasure without ever thinking of asking for one red cent in recompense. Now here is someone who has focused his attention on the subject and has come to speak up. Furthermore what Mr. Axthelm said has no political implications or ulterior motive. It is just another facet of life that is for America to take stock of herself from time to time as with other facets. Some day I hope sports will again be imbued with the clean spirit that it was intended to be with much of its immense proceeds going into worthy causes and scientific research and not to be commercialized, bought· and sold in the market place.
I read with heartwarming approbation Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce's interview in the June 24th, 1974, issue of the U.S. News & World Report. Her various points about what is troubling the U.S. are more than well taken. They are ills which we consciously feel but somehow do not know or do not wish to articulate. What I like particularly is her "telling it like it is" to use an expressive colloquialism of bad grammar, of what troubles America instead of pussy-footing the answers and soft-pedaling the solutions.
Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr., is another person whose outspokenness and moral and physical courage were never in doubt, especially on one interesting occasion when he was in Red China. His picture came on T.V. transmitted by satellite. It showed him being his normal, natural, easy debonair self in Peiping, 1971, as contrasted with some others who looked nervous, fidgety and frightened little boys waiting to be called in by the headmaster. All the bombast, pontification, feigned fatuousness and self-assuredness that they customarily displayed while in the United States miraculously vanished. Recently I happened to come across Mr. Buckley's article written in connection with the exhibit of exhumed centuries-old Chinese art treasures from the mainland. What conspicuously stood out were the words: "We still have a lot of hardware but the national pride is oozing away, and our tanks and missiles are derelicts." This is indeed honest self-critical appraisal. For only the strong can be self-critical. From all I have been able to perceive the United States is returning to a healthy receptive mood and is capable of looking inwardly at herself once more.
Students want to learn
Truly it warms the cockles of one's heart to read that recently many college students when interviewed have come out to say that they are on the campus to learn, not to destroy or act as agents of agitprop, leading, haranguing and inciting others to campus rioting. In the Pacific Stars and Stripes of two days ago an Associated Press report states that airline pilots, journalists, electricians, police officers, textile and garment workers have united in different ways and by their own volition to work a shorter week, fewer hours or forgo vacation time and pay raises that are supposed to go into effect under union contract agreements. All signs point in the direction that the interlocking neuroses of phobias and violence of the nineteen sixties on the campuses as well as the more recent insensitivities have abated, nay, miraculously evaporating. And suddenly almost as if by a coup de theatre they are no longer the glass of fashion.
But apart from certain ontogenetic, sociological recovery signs of the U.S., I have faith that certain ineludible and fundamental principles are again emerging regnant and that self-interest, I repeat self-interest, of the superpowers will insure wiser and thought-out decisions. Fictive reality ensconced in transitory emotions and psychological, complexes seated in shallow arrogance and vanity, are in essence all exercises in futility.
Views of nine years ago
In October of 1966, I spoke before the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, California, I quote:
"The Soviet Russian-Red Chinese enmity has become not only a fight for Communist world leadership, it has come to be a problem with geo-political dimensions with these inevitable conclusions:
"1. A Communist China on Russia's southeastern border is a continuing irksome threat and headache to the Kremlin, for Russia has found to her chagrin and disappointment that to make China a satellite with her large land mass, cultural homogeneities, and enormous population is like having the tail wag the dog instead of the dog wagging the tail.
"2. Ironically, since the Czarist days, China, whatever the form of her government other than Communist, has always been much, so much easier to deal with. The once fond hope of having Red China as the dumb, thick-pated, burly broth of a devoted younger brother willingly doing the chores, running errands, and answering every bid ding of the elder brother, has been blown to smithereens.
"3. The existence of a Red China has been and always will be an ideological hairshirt to Russia. Having to be steadily on the qui vive, on the defensive as to what and when and where Peiping would hit next and stir up more trouble amongst Russia's Vassals, is frazzlingly wearing and nerve-wracking to the Kremlin. For as long as there exists a Communist regime in China which instinctively, methodologically, and operationally knows the Kremlin mentality so well, Moscow will never be safe from Peiping's scheming miasmal malevolence.
"4. The Communist satellites for their own purposes and reasons would want Red China to be obdurate, even whimsical and captious, so as to keep alive a reminder of the possible alternative to Russia-even though a dubious alternative-since it gives the satellites a choice of menus or an admixture of the two instead of a monotonously bleak diet. Moreover the livelier the contradictions and competitions between the two fighting for Communist world leadership, the easier life will be for the kibitzing satellites.
"5. It gives, too, to the Communist parties in countries outside the Communist orbit such as France, Italy, and Japan, to mention but a few, a choice to hedge or act as busy entrepreneurs darting back and forth and making themselves 'useful' if not important while ingratiating themselves with whichever bloc to which they are aligned or even to both blocs.
Satellite compensations
"6. The existence of a Communist China gives to the hard core Marxists the spiritual solace and material support they need. Were it otherwise, they would have no choice but to follow the Russian line or be read out peremptorily as Trotskyites, renegades and souls lost beyond the pale.
"For all the above salient reasons and many more which time does not permit me to relate today, the Communist satellites, rebels, and recidivists would want Red China to continue to exist so that a balance of power as well as a check to power would exist for their protection and benefit within the Communist world, just as belonging to the Communist world is a safeguard for the Communist leaders of the satellites in their stand against open societies. And it is only with the existence of two camps within the Communist world is it possible to ensure the satellite countries rewards and recompense from their liege lord with sharpened recognition and appreciation for services rendered. At the same time this ambiance allows the satellites to enjoy greater latitude in their own internal social and economic affairs and administration. Such are the built-in contradictions that work to compensate the life of the satellites-providing there is a Red China."
Situation is unchanged
The above is as it was when delivered in 1966. I have neither added nor subtracted one word from the original. Allowing for the dynamics of the natural and inevitable permutations of the flow of changing events and time in eight years (and they are considerable), except for the mutations and degree of emphasis of relevancy in the relationship between peripheral satellites to their patron states (viz. between the U.S.S.R. and Red China, with their client states), the governing relations between the U.S.S.R. and Red China have remained as I had delineated and prognosticated them at the time. The present inevitable impasse has its inner logic, given the Chinese Communist deviousness, hypocrisy, megalomaniac ambitions of world magnitude and intransige