ustxtxb_obs_1969_12_05_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

ONE GROWS cynical about the politics of “moral protest” after years of ineffectuality. Such protest rests, as a political strategy, on the false assumption that those who own and control the American empire have a conscience which can be moved sufficiently to counter their immediate economic interests. The continuous appeals to the powers-that-be Do the names of hamlets weigh heaviest? No, they said and marched along. One GI is much to bear? I asked the girl with yellow hair. No, not much, said she and marched along. A dike? How great a burden must your dikes be. No, they said, no burden. Co Ong La Dang Trinh Li. Forty-six thousand came the marchers with their burdens and I ask her Is his name heavy? Yes, said she, but not as heavy as my heart or the tears of his father which fall in two deep streams each night in bed ten thousand miles from where he died in vain. Not as heavy as fatherless children in the womb, said another. Johnny Rogers to reverse existing policies have been the substance of liberal activity during the 1960’s. Radicals have been right to insist that corporate power has no conscience apart from the demands of power and profit and radicals have consistently and courageously striven to expose the bankruptcy of the liberal approach. In the process of denouncing liberal complicity, however, radicals have lost hold of their Buddy Starr Billy McKool. Boys are for breathing and touching and making love timid and gentle and powerful lovemaking. Bodies aren’t much good for love when the life’s gone out. Eyes won’t light a fire when the light’s gone out. Hard to make love to yourself or anybody much at all with your hands blown off. You can’t give love away ’cause it can’t run out unless you give life away which you can’t get back. Lucky bugger, Mr. Death. Old USA just made you a fine present of 40,000 times the fact of life and us we ain’t gettin’ nuthin’ in return except credit on the next war. No, not heavy, he said. What’s in a name when you take the body away? Folks down my way used to say the soul was in the body, like they told us back in the sunday school crap game. Forty thousand souls later we found out that the soul was the body. And he marched on bearing the soulless bodiless name. \(They did a body count after the napalm raid and the priest said seventy-two souls GREG CALVERT Washington, D.C. own legitimate levers of moral suasion. In place of the affirmative power of radical moral certitude which characterized the early years of the New Left, there has entered a form of radical moral nihilism which denies that political questions can be posed in terms of any moral category whatsoever. History and historical consciousness overwhelm individual experience and individual responsibility. In the face of the system’s statistical overkill, radicals pose their own criteria of revolutionary correctness. Lost in the process is the moral notion of the primacy of individual lives and the moral basis of radical action. As a response to liberal manipulation, there arise the new Lost is the basic truth that a radical alternative can only establish its worth and necessity if it poses a morally, intellectually, and culturally preferable form of civilization. W E WENT to Washington with the cynicism of those who have witnessed the ineffectuality of protest marches, and the 40-hour “March Against Death” seemed likely to represent the most impotent reformulation of symbolic protest that one could conceive. We were surprised, caught up, and made to question our assumptions. From Thursday evening through Saturday morning, a constant stream of people marched from Arlington Cemetery, across the Memorial Bridge, up, past, and around the White House, and along December 5, 1969 11 MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston Texas CA 4-0686 S & PINS SUPPORTERS OR FUND RAISERS DEMOCRAT AMERICAN REPUBL/CAN::’,.” YOUR CMCMCIL White, Blue or Black. Specify color and if Pin or Clasp wanted. Letters 24K Gen. Gold. Stones Red, ORDER NOW $1.50 each or $7.20 dozen, S75 Gross USEFUL ARTICLES P.O. Box 28217 Dallas, Texas 75228 DEMOCRAT DEMOCRAT The Long March Villages are for growing, villages are for gathering the rice into, villages are harbours for lovers are the act of love being made and remade when the sun rises and when the sun goes down, when the rains come and when the sun dries the raindrops off the leaves and off the glistening brown bodies of lovers. Villages are a protection against loneliness and cold and old age. Villages are for life not for burning. They are a warm bosom not a flaming volcano.