ustxtxb_obs_1958_09_19_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

Bartlett Appears Exclusively in the Texas Observer Snarl from the North Wixas Mon= Let those flatter who fear, it is not an American art.JEFFERSON `You Mean He Stole Something in There?’ 5wice, z y ncion The Johnson for President “boom,” thunderous as a San Antonio Express headline, has been launched, not by the Democrats in convention, perhaps half of whom yelled no, but by the Johnson sycophants in the Republican big-city press of the state. We have some questions for them. Johnson and Rayburn now affect repugnance at the Governor’s coarse purging of two caucus nominees to the SDEC. Why were they silent during the 1956 purges at Fort Worth by the same Price Daniel? Why didn’t they learn about him at Fort Worth when they joined him in stealing the convention from the liberals by throwing out legal El Paso and Harris County delegations? Johnson and Rayburn are supposed to be the congressional lead Part y The farcical nature of the state Democratic convention at San Antonio is illuminated by the fact that except for the speeches nominating candidates for temporary chairman and Maury Maverick’s one brief statement of a point of order, there was no free debate during the convention proper. With only two microphones for the 5,000 delegates, both of them under armed guard, and with the platform stage blocked off from the delegates by other armed policemen, the convention was a travesty on open democratic deliberations. For the second convention running, the issues were settled by a Little Caesar’s violent gavel. The on Ral p h People who ask us not to criticize Senator Yarborough make points we agree with, except for their main one. Of course he is a fine senator, has stood by his friends, is as good a liberal as we have had in Washington since who laid the first chunk ; of course. From a high regard for a public man, however, to self-throttling silence on his mistakes is a logical leap we will leave to the partisans. Yarborough is wrong on integration,, the oil depletion allowance, and oil imports, and we are not reassured by his glancing askance at foreign economic aid. He is right on most everything else, is one of the score of invaluable liberal Democrats in the Senate, except for those few issues. It is no newspaper’s business to deceive the people about a man’s weak points and blow up his strong ones ; though just about every newspaper in Texas does it. Published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd. SEPTEMBER 19, 1958 Ronnie Dugger Editor and General Manager Larry Goodwyn, Associate Editor Sarah Payne, Office Manager Dean Johnston, Circulation-Advertising EDITORIAL and BUSINESS OFFICE: 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas. Phone GReenwood 7-0746. HOUSTON OFFICE: 1012 Dennis, Mrs. R. D. Randolph, Dean Johnston. Entered as second-class matter, April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. ers of the great national liberal party. Why, then, have they for two conventions running lovingly entwined fingers with Price Daniel and Allan Shivers to defeat the lib-, eral Democrats? Who, after all, has been steadfastly supporting the Democratic nominees all these years ?Price Daniel ? Allan Shivers ? Jake Pickle ? Bill Blakley ?or Ralph Yarborough? Mrs. R. D. Randolph ? Jim Sewell ? Jerry Holleman? Who speaks for the staunch loyal Democrats, Yarborough or Daniel? Then what were Johnson and Rayburn doing in bed with Daniel? Those questions will not be answered. Johnson cannot expect the summer-and-winter Democrats to forget what he has done for the second convention in a row. buried assumption was that once the test vote was taken on the temporary chairman, other votes were superfluous. In other words, none of the delegates there were individuals with opinions : they were members of blocs whose decisions had been made for them by their bosses. The prevalence of the “unit rule” system, whereby a majority from a precinct, a county, or a senatorial district binds the minority to vote with the majority, is as destructive of effective majority rule as any of these other practices. It ought to be illegal for a local majority to deprive the local minority of a proportional voice at the state convention simply by dint of its temporary status as the majority. The “unit rule” system should be scrubbed out of party affairs from top to bottom by a law against a majority binding a minority to vote with the majority. A more efficient system ought to be established for roll call votes so they can be taken with a democratic frequency. Chairmen of county delegations could simply poll their delegations on an issue and turn in the resulting vote in a _sealed ballot, signed ; then, with appointed supervisors watching, a roll call would then be nothing but an adding up of votes while other business was being carried on. Such simple ideas as these seem not to have occurred to the top-dog Democrats of the state. They like it the way it’s beenthey can ram anything down the Democrats’ throats in the name of “the governor’s program.” Daniel, by writing his own recommendation that the convention should accept SDEC nominees who Published once a week from Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $4 per annum. Advertising rates available on request. Extra copies 10c each. Quantity prices available on orders. We will serve no group or party but will hew to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. MARSHALL The editorial board of a valued competitor of the Observer adjusted its pince-nez last Saturday and answered one of the five cardinal “w’s” of journalism : “what” is the Texas Observer? The Dallas News already knew the “who, where, when, and why?” of this lusty l’enfant terrible, and heartily disapproved of the answer to each. We didn’t know the News even cared what the Observer is; doubtless those of its backward readers who fill the News’s letter columns with fervent appeals for a law repealing the twentieth century have long before answered the question with a four letter word. ‘However, journalism being what it is, the editors must needs expatiate on the thought by accepting a definition of a liberal in politics, thus : “They have worked militantly toward a planned economy in which the individual will live in a cage of `economic security’ with the planners as keepers. … Instead of your spending your own money as you see fit, they want the state to take it and give back to you what they think you should have.” Then comes the definite answer as to the Observer’s “what”: “From Norman Thomas to the Texas Observer at Austin, and in between, is this not a good portrait sketch of the liberal?” Well, we dunno, we dunno. In the first-place, who dares put our nosethumbing imp of Austin at the opposite end of the political spectrum from poor old faltering Norman Thomas ? Haven’t the editors been reading their own columns about Roosevelt, Truman, and now Eisenhower, having stolen the socialist program, leaving old Norman far to the right of Modern Republicanism? A thumbnail sketch is often untidy and ragged around its periphery. So would support his program, in effect said he would do so. The rub came when he did not agree with others that Bernard Lifshutz and Dr. Chloe Armstrong had agreed to support his program, as they said they had. In this context his action has been interpreted as breaking a written pledge ; it is more just, we think, to say that he laid clown the rules and then broke them, as Jim Sewell did say. All of these matters call for the most intensive reforms in Texas Democratic procedures. with the cage conception of liberal -ISM: A cage, Great Guns ! The liberal devotes his life to destroying cages ! We must here call to mind an example found in a letter to the News some weeks back to explain how Sherm Adams was caught with a vicuna goldfinus hide on his back. King David’s anger, as known to the psychiatrists, was the answer. As David boiled with anger at the parable of the rich man who took the poor man’s sole little ewe lamb, not consciously recognizing it as the counterpart of his action in stealing Bathsheba from Uriah, so Sherm boiled at the thought of gifts of mink, while smuggling in vicuna. And so with the economic cage of the self-appointed portrait painters of liberalism. They consciously or unconsciously yearn to see political thought caged, with the conservatives the keepers. They wish the hand of the dead past ever on the lock, the thought product of the intellectuals pilfered and distorted so that it will profit no one. They wish to control thought far worse than the bogey they have created in their crippling comprehension as economic planners could ever wish to control economy. The anger of King DaVid finds its outlet in their reaching a frenzy in condemning Communism for doing exactly what they desire mostsuppressing all opinion contrary to the creed of the would-be suppressors. When the liberal fails to conform, when he insists his own thoughts are his own, and should be given free play in the political marketplace, these Davids imagine cages and controlled planningjust what they propose to do with all who suggest the gas-lit era is dead. It is not given them to see the liberal as a true moderate, wanting nothing of planned economywhether it be by Communism or Fascism ; but fearless of controls which will prevent our economy from rooting back to the hyena, the jungle, and the rule of fang and claw. They cannot conceive the mobility of an intellect that refuses to take anything for granted, and stands ready to move forward, backward, or to stand still as changing conditions call for changing conceptions. Abhorring the thumbnail definition, and by no means indulging in one, yet must it not be said that had our friends who cast the liberals over the shoulder with a “planned economy” cliche been present on a memorable occasion, they would have said : “The King is naked, but don’t dare control him with clothes.” FRANKLIN JONES Reforma