The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

Everybody has been trying to analyze and explain the results of the November 6th election.

The puzzler is the fact that Eisenhower won by such a big majority and yet the Democrats control Congress and elected a majority of the governors.

As a matter of fact, the results were mixed up from one end of the nation to the other. It is very difficult to explain how the Republican candidate for President can win by a big majority in one state and a candidate for the United States Senate on the Democratic ticket can win by the same kind of majority on the same day and in the same state.

It is also puzzling how the Republican candidate for President can win by an overwhelming majority in one state and a Democratic candidate for governor can win by an overwhelming majority in the same state and on the same day.

All kinds of explanations are offered.

Some claim that state races are run principally on state issues and Presidents are elected on national issues; the two are separated. This view deserves some consideration.

The commentators now are advancing the idea that people no longer vote for labels. They no longer vote for parties. They claim that they are voting for individuals.

They advance the idea that people are becoming more discriminating in their tastes for candidates.

Of course, there is something to this idea.

Yet, at the same time, no one theory is exactly responsible.

So far as the Presidential race is concerned, we must all admit that the Democrats put up about the weakest candidates they could pick.

Adlai Stevenson had already demonstrated the fact that he was a poor candidate and that he was lacking in popular appeal. He is not popular in his own state.

He couldn't carry Illinois in 1952 and he couldn't carry it in 1956.

I think Stevenson's nomination was well sized up by an Irish taxicab driver in Chicago. During the Chicago convention, I left the convention late in the afternoon and caught a taxi for town. The Irish taxicab driver asked me what they were doing at the convention and I told him that they were fixing to nominate Adlai Stevenson for President.

He replied, "Yes, the Democrats are going to commit suicide again. Stevenson can't carry Chicago, much less Illinois."

This came from a life-long Democrat and one who had belonged throughout the years to the Chicago Democratic machine and expressed the views of the average man, in Chicago even.

But even this is not all of the answer. Eisenhower himself was a weak candidate and the Republican leadership was awfully weak.

When you boil it down, we must all admit that we are living in an age of confusion and conflict.

There is confusion throughout the world. There is a great battle going on between the Russian ideology and the Western ideology. Both forces are fighting for the control of the minds of men.

The conflict isn't limited to the fight between nations. The conflict is going on within the nations. It is going on right here in America.

The communists have never let up.

Financed with Russian money and by misguided individuals with more money than brains, they are still waging a campaign to take over the United States.

At times, they go underground. They avoid the direct issue. Their strategy is to gradually infiltrate, under a pose of great patriotism.

They undertake to sneak up on us and to sneak into all of our organizations and institutions.

Most of the time they do not advocate an outright communist philosophy. They just advocate some one or two ideas that fit in with the communist philosophy or some proposition that will gradually contribute to the success of the communist philosophy.

In this age of wonderful development in the fields of science and mechanics men's minds have not been able to keep progress. In our thinking we have not been able to keep pace with the progress we have made in the fields of science and mechanics.

Consequently, most of the people are today in a state of confusion and they are not too certain about their own beliefs.

The younger generations have not been taught the fundamental principles upon which our government was founded or the fundamental principles which have made this country rich and great.

Instead, they have been taught a lot of these wildcat theories and a lot about present conditions.

And, as usual, the little smattering of learning they have has proved to be a dangerous thing.

Instead of inspiring in them deep convictions as to the greatness of the fundamental principles underlying our government and system of economy, their little bit of learning has produced confusion in their own minds.

As a result, the present generation is interested in a job now and a pension when they get old. That becomes the first consideration.

To avoid their state of confusion, they seek the line of least resistance and the line of least resistance is not to think at all.

To blissfully go along without thinking and trying to think out the problems of modern-day times saves them a lot of worry and is conducive to a life dedicated to escape from responsibility.

Their government is controlled by the thinking of the great mass of the people and in this day and time when the thinking people are divided and confused, you can't expect much from the masses who are inclined to avoid thinking.

Our times can be described in the language of the military men during the last World War. They coined an expression to describe their military position from time to time as being "fluid".

As I understood it, it meant that there was nothing stable or dependable about it. On the contrary, the word "fluid" denoted that the position was everything but stable and it was subject to change on a moment's notice.

Certainly the thinking of the people of the nation today is in a fluid state and it hasn't yet set.

Then, we must not overlook that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party has been able to develop a philosophy of government and economics to fit the inner longings of the American people.

Wherever I went during the last campaign, whether it was in the South or out of the South, I found Republicans who were somewhat disgusted with their own party, yet, they thought it was best to vote for Ike.

Wherever I went, I found that the Democrats were disgusted with their party, too. Most of them felt that they ought to go along because they could see nothing better in the Republican Party. A great many Democrats, however, felt that it was safer to vote for Ike than it was to vote for Walter Reuther. "Soap Suds" Williams, "Humpty-Dumpty" Humphrey, Mrs. Roosevelt, the Roosevelt boys, the ADA, the NAACP and the AFL-CIO, to say nothing of little Adlai the renegade from Tennessee.

Being a lifetime Democrat, I have never been able to see any salvation in the Republican Party. The Republican Party has never been the friend of the South and it looks as if it will never be.

In recent years the Party of the South has deserted the South. It has engaged in a contest with the Republicans to see which party could more effectively crucify the white people of the South.

It is a pitiful state when the only issue between the Republicans and the Democrats is the issue of which one can do the same thing best. There is no difference between the two parties. They are just as much alike as two peas in a pod and we still insist that there is not a dollar and a half's difference between them.

If the Democratic Party ever hopes to succeed and to be a great moving force for the development of this nation and for the progress and welfare of the people, it must be completely re-organized and its philosophy must be changed.

Times change and things change, but fundamental principles of right and wrong never change.

The time has come when the Democratic Party must return to the fundamental principles of government and economy which have made this country the great nation that it is.

We must return to those principles which have developed and produced the highest standard of living the world has ever known and given to us privileges and freedoms that no other people on earth have ever been able to enjoy.

To do this is going to call for the elimination of the Walter Reuthers', the "Soap Suds" Williams', the "Humpty-Dumpty" Humphreys', Mrs. Roosevelt and her clan, the Americans for Democratic Action, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Harry Truman as the controlling influence in the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party needs a revolution within the party. We need a revolt against the philosophy which causes it to be soft on communists in the United States, communists in government and to have sympathy for communists' schemes for creating a bureaucratic tyranny in America.

The communist ideal is to pour us all into the same mold and then roll us out like dough so that everybody will be just exactly alike.

To do this calls for bureaucratic tyranny and bureaucratic dictatorship. It calls for socialism. It calls for government ownership, control and operation of everything.

It calls for a master plan coming out of Washington regulating the lives of every individual.

When you get through perfecting this kind of a plan you have a communist form of government. You have socialism with one party control. That's communism.

There can only be one political party when the bureaucrats in Washington control, regulate and run your life for you. Any dissenters are immediately crucified.

Therefore, the party in power becomes a permanent party.

Everybody who believes in that kind and type of government ought to read an article appearing in the November 27, 1956 issue of Look Magazine, written by Rabbi Joseph Miller, the leader of a Jewish congregation in Brooklyn, New York.

The New York Board of Rabbis selected Dr. Miller and six other rabbis to visit Russia to learn the truth about the Jews' condition there.

Rabbi Miller wrote this article as a report on conditions that he found in Russia. Anybody reading the Rabbi's article will have his hair stand on end and it ought to be sufficient to convince every Jew and every Gentile in America that this Russian philosophy which is trying to permeate the world will destroy any people and any nation.

Below we give you a few quotes from the Rabbi's article:

"There are many ways of killing people. You can shoot them. You can starve them. You can gas them in chambers. Or, if you want to be more subtly effective, you can do what the Politburo is doing to the Jews in Russia—you can make them forget who they are."

"As a result of 40 years of post-Czarist anti-Semitism, which reached its bloody peak during Stalin's time, two and a half million Russian Jews face cultural and religious extinction—not to mention, in some cases, actual physical extermination or imprisonment in Siberia. Plainly and simply, the Red leaders want to destroy the Jew as a Jew."

"There is a possibility that the Bulganin-Khrushchev group will live up to their public promises to undo the wrongs done the Jews during Stalin's time. But I saw no such hopeful signs on my recent trip to Russia.

Almost nothing about the plight of the Jews there could be called encouraging. The fear, the sense of hopeless alienation, the futility that permeated the Jewish communities I visited were enough to make me weep.

"They could hardly believe us when we told them of all the religious schools in America, of the many influential Jewish citizens, of the Jewish publications, the Jewish theater, of the completely democratic life Jews in America lead. They could not believe that Jews could live a dignified, courageous life anywhere.

"We learned many things from our brethren in Moscow, many saddening, enlightening things of which we had been in total ignorance. They told us that only recently since Stalin's death, have the Jews in Russia been permitted to read the Talmud in public. Before this, their religious reading could be done only in the huddled, frightened privacy of their homes. We learned that no city, no matter how big, has more than one synagogue. We learned that no schools are allowed wherein the beliefs and traditions of the Jews can be inculcated into the young. Furthermore, there are almost no rabbis or teachers left to do any teaching even if it were permitted. Many have died in the Stalin regime's prisons.

"We were told that virtually no religious marriage ceremonies are performed any more for fear that the people involved would be reported to the government as religious fanatics. For that reason, the ancient Jewish ritual celebrating a youth's reaching manhood, the Bar Mitzvah, is almost never performed.

"We visited other rabbis and found most of them not only physically debilitated but psychologically run down as well. They spoke in hoarse whispers even in the apparent safety of their own homes. They were afraid of government reprisals. It was only too painfully clear to us, as we went from one place to another, that such men cannot possibly lead a people out of the labyrinth of their despair. Such men cannot teach the young such men cannot save a dying race."

Then the rabbis had an interview with a member of the Ministry of Religious Cults, by the name of Prychodkov.

In reference to this interview, Rabbi Miller said:

"Next, we discussed with Prychodkov the question of religious education. We told him that we were deeply disturbed because Jewish children in Russia are not permitted a religious education. Without such an education, we continued, there is no hope for the continuation of Judaism in the Soviet Union. And this will be, of course, the death of the Jew . . . .

"As usual, Prychodkov slyly begged the question: 'If we permit the Jews to set up their own publications and religious institutions, then all the other denominations will ask the same thing. We can't permit this.'

"He simply would not answer whether the Jews are considered to be a religious group or a cultural group or both. Obviously, however, the government does consider the Jews a race apart. But for reasons never clearly stated--actually, because of the official policy of anti-Semitism they are not allowed the freedom of a bona fide racial entity.

"Prychodkov kept insisting that Jews in Russia no longer want to be Jews. 'They live in a free country,' he said. 'They can intermarry any time they want. They don't want to continue the old and, to them, irrelevant Jewish rituals and traditions. They want to be Russians.'

So, the Russian theory is that there will be no Jews. They will have a melting pot and all will be Russians. That's the communist doctrine for America. They are starting out using the Negro as the goat.

They are trying to force the mixing of the Negro and the white races so that there will no longer be any separate and distinct races in the United States.

The thing that has made America great is that we have maintained racial purity and racial characteristics.

It is the distinctive character of the stock of the English, the Scotch, the Irish, the Germans, the Scandinavians and all other peoples that have made America great.

All of these people, with their individual traits of character, have developed a race of individuals.

Now to create a melting pot and destroy these racial characteristics will be to destroy the very thing that has made America great.

Yet, the communistic idea and the idea of the bureaucrats in Washington today is that we ought to all be poured in the same mold and come out the same regulation size and shape.

The Jews cry about the effort to destroy the individuality of the Jewish people in Russia.

Yet, some of them are joining in the movement to force a mixing of the races in the United States and the racial characteristics and greatness of our people.

It is time for you and I, and everybody else, to take stock and to determine that we will resist with greater intensity this effort at race mixing in America.