ustxtxb_obs_1963_04_04_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

free society. I find it extraordinarily discouraging to reflect that Eisenhower knew about the menace of this new complex all along but did not have the guts to tell his fellow countrymen about it until he was leaving office. I cannot even imagine a successful challenge to the military industrial complex, other than a democratic revolutionary of toughness and eloquence waging a long and relentless verbal war on the new battleground of democracy, television. It is the import of some despairing observations emanating from the peace movement that the militarizing of the country has gone so far, and is so reinforced by the materialistic interests millions of ordinary people now have in its continuation, that there is no hope. It seems entirely possible to me, however, that great leaders of the people might now or soon come forward from among us. Whether they will depends, I think, 14 The Texas Observer on a question from the reflections on the human condition in which most thinking people from time to timeengage. Is individuality an indestructible attribute of human nature? All around us we see signs that most individuals are being frozen into what James Agee called “the glacier”the socialistic state, the corporate hierarchy, the union hierarchy, the administrative hierarchy of the college or university. \(As Paul Goodman says, we have lost even the idea of the true university, the community of scholars, gathered together person your mental gaze across the 1?road horizon of American politics. Do you see one daring leader in high elected public office?one man who regularly speaks to us his personally seen and fearlessly formulated truth about the present and the future of democracy? Stevenson, 1952, one thinks; look what happened to him. Well! Many must try for any to succeed! Why does not a single senator insist ently advocate the decommercialization of television or a national educational network? Why did only eleven senators oppose the Kennedy giveaway of the space communications monopoly? Why does not a single senator propose the nationalization of that notorious monopoly, A.T.&T.? Why do so many of the good fights go down to the same dismal defeat? Not because we do not have men of courage; because we do not have men of great charismatic power among these men of courage. What I plead for, gentlemen, whoever you are and wherever you read this, is for men to go into public affairs who have faith that one man can really change the state of things; who are determined to speak out what so many of us know in our hearts, yet fear to say; and who are not afraid of anything. We need those able political people who are ready to walk barefoot through the world if need be in pursuit of the good life, but for all of us, abroad and at home, who will act as they really think they should, say what they really believe, fight the democratic game to win, contemplate defeat or victory without shrinking, and then grow old, lost or empowered, in the very private strength of a Paine or a Jefferson, who did not have to wonder whether he was an individual, since of course he was, what else was there to be? R.D. DON BROWN Sun Life of Canada Austin, Texas GR 6-1942 CONSIDER YOUR NATURAL ENEMY! hate penguins Elephant Hill School Of Economic Theory “Wellspring of Hateful Thoughts” P.O. Box 66103 -:Houston 6, Tex. AMERICAN INCOME LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIANA Underwriters of the American Income Labor Disability Policy Executive Offices: P. 0. Box 208 Waco, Texas Bernard Rapoport, President