ustxtxb_obs_1967_05_12_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

one of the professional bidders under Wilson’s gavel, had not spent a cent. Well, how far did New York go? They went to one hundred and one. No. One-oh-four. Well, tell me, what was it all like? I could sense a shortness in Mervin’s manner as he checked in the almost unpriceable works. It was a job for someone his age, perhaps 27, to be responsible for. You’d better talk with Ric Brown, southwest director for C.R.I.A. He could tell you more than I. Just one more thing. Where will they hang it when it gets here? Hang it? Right there. He pointed to the bland empty wall behind the bar. Observations THE APOSTLES OF CONSENSUS Austin We may now be entering a period of repression similar to 1917 and to the McCarthy period. One has a sense, an apprehension, that this is true; the signs say so. If so, we will weather it through, as we have before, and we will find out who has the courage and freedom to speak, and who does not. When President Johnson had General Westmoreland return to the United States and say that American fighting men in Vietnam are “dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts here at home,” it seemed to me that Johnson’s always potentially dangerous hate of criticism had crystallized into its worst potentiality. We who experienced the manipulations of Texas by the conservative Democrats in the 1950’s know well the meaning of “unity and harmony.” It was first a demand, usually given protective cover as the wishes of Speaker Sam Rayburn, for unity within the Democratic Party in Texas. These pressures for such unity were absurd. The Democratic governor, Allan Shivers, was openly leading the Texas tory Democrats into formal, all-out support of Dwight Eisenhower for President. Unity and harmony with Shivers in that context meant Democrats’ support of the opposite party. As Rayburn’s influence waned and Johnson’s waxed, there began to be a new meaning for the “unity and harmony” we were being told we should submit to. Senator Johnson was telling us to unify 14 The Texas Observer PROFESSORS . . . STUDENTS Group subscriptions to the Observer for the summer session will be just $1.00 per student for the June through August biweekly issues if 10 or more subscribe and provided we may mail all copies of each issue in a single pacbehind him, and he was not just telling Democrats to unify; he was talking about everybody. This sounded so homiletic, so bland, somehow, that no one really took it very seriously, but people who knew how Johnson detests criticism of himself understood what he meant. He meant Agree With Me. Through his majority leadership, vice presidency, and Presidency, Johnson has had constant trouble with the press and with public figures who do not pant with approval for everything he does. His expansion of the war contained the possibility that he would be tempted, either at the level of conscious thought or subconsciously because of his deep need for approval, to use the pressures for conformity inherent in the situation to shut up his critics. With Westmoreland’s speech, it seems to me that Johnson has now gone farther down this road than he had even with his own many coercive, abusive statements about his Vietnam critics. THE SAME DAY Westmoreland spoke, Vice President Hubert Humphrey addressed the Texas legislature. The onetime liberal warrior equated patriotism with his own views. This was a shock, coming from him, a shock despite all that has gone before. There he was, standing at the microphone in our own wellknown Texas House of Representative, saying these things. It was all couched in Humphrey’s legendary optimism and gung-ho for tomorrow. “With all the headlines of disaster, difficulty, and death,” he exclaimed, “let me tell you there is good news!” And of course, there is. The cold snap is over. The Texas legislature will adjourn eventually. Stalin’s daughter has chosen the CLASSIFIED BOOKPLATES FREE CATALOGUEMany beautiful designs. Special designing too. Address BOOKPLATES, Yellow Springs 24, Ohio. “The Idler.” Send $1 for four sample back issues of lively, liberal monthly. 413 6th St. NE, Was/4g -ton, D.C. 20002. United States. Children play. And then Humphrey said: “If it seems to be old-fashioned to be an old-fashioned American patriot, then stand committed and guilty! of bein an old-fashioned American patriot.” Those who, in the American Revolution committed their lives and their sacre honor to the cause, Humphrey said, “wen the whole way they were committed that is, the patriots . . .” Even so, he said one-third of the colonists “left us, wer tories,” and even among those who stayed some were “of little faith.” Humphrey stopped just a squeak short of saying that people betray American liberalism who do not believe we should defend freedom all around the world with bombs, napalm, and American boys. He did not say this; he did not bring down the xvhip, he just laid it on the fence where it’s handy for anybody else who wants to pick it up. “Now I’ve been known all of my public life as a liberal,” he said. “I believe with all the fervor of my heart and life that it would be a betrayal of American liberalism for America itself to betray the hopes and confidences our strength has kindled among the peoples of the poverty stricken, emerging two-thirds of this world.” Then he went on to speak of “that generous impulse of responsible and compassionate liberalism,” and he said “we have a moral obligation to extend the hand of . . . help and assistance.” And he asked, “What would be the morality of a nation that regarded freedom in one part of the world as less important than freedom in another part?” In the 1950s in Texas, we heard Johnson and all who grouped around him tell us, Lay aside division, followguess who? In the 1960’s in Texas, and now also in the United States, Hubert Humphrey told us in a joint session of the Texas legislature, on April 24, 1967, as it happened: “We can and we must lay aside the rhetoric of division of workman against management, of labor against capital and capital against farmer, of haves and havenots, of races and religious and regions. This one world has no room for such divisions. These divisions, kept alive regrettably in our politics, do not serve this society. . . .” O N MAY 1 IN Washington . President Johnson said, “We must guard every man’s right to speak, but we musl defend every man’s right to answer.” Two days before, in Des Moines, the President’s sidekick, John Connally, the governor of Texas, demonstrated what Johnson means “Let it be clear that we do not question the right of dissent,” Connally said. “But we do question the right of anyone to subvert our society under the guise of dissent.” Precisely what unpatriotic acts was Westmoreland talking about? He did not say. Precisely when does dissent become subversion? Connally does not say. In fact, judging from the AP in Des Moines, Connally’s language deliberately muddies up his meaning. Quoth the governor, “. . . d e I g