| Show 8A Wednesday June 2 1999 Opinion Standard-Examin- Standard-Examin- er SERVING THE TOP OF UTAH SINCE 1888 Scott Trundte Pjbkstvr Don Porter EtMonal Page Editor Ron Thornburg Uanapng Editor OUR VIEW Ogden should unify its many celebrations events should be coordinated so Junction City’s many late-Juldon’t compete and other each they complement y When the month of events are coordinated through the city’s parks streets or events offices But that’s not the case for all of them there’s a blizzard of places to go and things to see In the Top of Utah nowhere is that more true than in Ogden In the week or so surrounding the annual Pioneer Day (July 24) holiday you have to keep a careful calendar and schedule to fit everything in including: Pioneer Days Rodeo Pioneer Days Parade Pioneer Days Fireside Ogden Street Festival Annual Cowboy Poetry It would make sense for all the various civic committees and government departments that design these happenings to work together in the 12 months - or more - they spend painstakingly mapping out their strategy That way they could organize around common themes avoid overlapping dates and times pool resources for advertising and public relations and attempt to make it simpler for the region’s residents to enjoy all the season has to offer Round-U- p Lindquist Family Summer Pops Concert and Fireworks Parade Miss Rodeo Utah Royal Reception for Pioneer Days Queens Pioneer Days Children’s Parade Pioneer Skills & Crafts All-Hor- se We use the example of Ogden because of its large numbers of activities and events But forming partnerships between private and public organizations would certainly benefit the various counties and cities in the Top of Utah - all of which have celebrations of their own during the busy month of July Show Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum open house Top of the West Barrel Jackpot And there’s even more to do But you get the idea Some of these activities and The Three Musketeers had it right: “All for one and one for all” makes a lot of sense AMOTHER VIEW Hyprocritical Barbour Former GOP boss has on the issue of Medicare spending and is making no apologies for his stance flip-flopp- ed Barbour could be poster boy for the that makes citizens cynical about Washington politics Haley defend his obvious inconsistency And why should he? It is business as usual in the nation’s capital Barbour is part of a culture of Washington shape-shiftewho feel no shame about shifting their ideology and political allegiance with each trip through the revolving door rs Back when Barbour was Re- publican national chairman he orchestrated the party’s campaign to limit the growth of Medicare Four years ago Barbour roamed the corridors of Capitol Hill warning that the rapid growth of Medicare was threatening to bankrupt the program It was Barbour who was the driving force behind legislation that ultimately limited Medicare spending And it was Barbour who worked side by side with then-HouSpeaker Newt Gingrich to craft the Republican agenda on Medicare se Barbour is one of dozens of lobbyists and lawmakers who pass back and forth between politics and business Political scientists have estimated as of the many as one-thir- d members of Congress who leave office eventually become part of the Washington influence industry Barbour who has been in Washington since 1985 when he became the director of the Barbour’s term as party White House Office of Politichairman ended in 1997 and cal Affairs under Ronald he recently went to work as a Reagan says he sees no conlobbyist for the nursing home tradiction between his old and industry Then something innew roles But anyone trying teresting happened Barbour is to get an honest view of the fistill lobbying Congress on the nancial picture of Medicare Medicare issue but now he’s should at least know better begging his lawmaker buddies than to take Barbour seriousto increase spending on the ly regardless of which side of same program he fought to the issue he finds himself from slash one day to the next - St Petersburg Times Barbour doesn’t even try to 1964 the font of today’s social changes to From LBJ’s win the Beatles this was a pivotal year WASHINGTON - Thirty-fiv- e years ago today a signal event in American politics occurred On that day Barry Goldwater defeated Nelson Rockefeller by 48953 votes out of more than 2 million cast in the California presidential primary thereby cinching the Republican nomination The Goldwater victory was an upset After a stumbling start Rockefeller then governor of New York had come on strong winning the Oregon primary for California that was the stage-settNine days before the California vote the senator from Arizona climaxed a series of costly gaffes by telling television interviewers he favored the use of “low-yiel- d atomic weapons” to “defoliate” the jungles in Vietnam With unlimited finances a lead in the polls the support of the former governor and senior senator plus the crack political consulting team of Stu Spencer and Bill Roberts Rockefeller was sitting pretty in California But three days before the primary Rockefeller’s second wife Happy gave birth to their first son Nelson Jr And California Republicans were reminded that Rockefeller was not just a liberal - a champion of civil rights who had worked for Franklin D Roosevelt - but a libertine a man who had divorced his wife to marry a younger woman who had walked out on her own husband and children to hook up with him History was changed by Goldwater’s winning the final primary of the year In the general election his casual belligerence alarmed voters helping Lyndon Johnson to a landslide victory and electing a lopsidedly Democratic Congress America was transformed by the civil er rights bills the Medicare program and the rest of the Great Society legislation enacted by that Congress But it also endorsed Johnson’s fatal Vietnam policies In subsequent years Democrats lost the South and all but one of the next six presidential elections The Goldwater campaign gave Ronald Reagan his first national platform and two years later he was governor of California Reagan redefined the Republican mainstream became the first two-terGOP president since Eisenhower and handed off to George Bush whose son is now the establishment candidate for the presidential nomination of 2000 The story of that California primary takes only a few pages in Jon Margolis’ newly published social and political history “The Last Innocent Yean America in 1964” But along with the many other events and incidents Margolis recounts it supports his thesis that much of what shapes our current world took form during the 12 months from John Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 to Johnson’s election A retired Chicago Tribune reporter Margolis recreates the scenes and characters of that year in a series of short sharply edged vignettes moving easily from the Beatles’ invasion of America to n bout to the horrors of the m Clay-Listo- the civil rights murders in Neshoba County Miss and the shocks of the “Free Speech Movement” in Berkeley It was a year when old institutions were cracking under the strain of new forces and Lyndon Johnson the complex man who had craved the presidency but never convinced himself he belonged there was struggling constantly to understand these changes - and shape them to his own ends The chief antagonist in his mind was not Goldwater but Robert Kennedy the survivor and the keeper of a legacy Johnson saw as deeply threatening to his own legitimacy Margolis exploiting all the resources of the presidential libraries recreates their unequal struggle as an elemental Cain and Abel rivalry one which ultimately destroyed both men That destruction climaxed in 1968 the worst year in the last half century for America whose miseries were well captured in a volume published a few years ago by another journalist Jules Witcov-e- r But the unraveling began in 1964 and of our new age -including as Margolis reminds us the start-u- p of the first fully computerized bakery at the Sara Lee Company site in Deerfield 111 An Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution asked policymakers to consider what steps should be taken to assure that the social consequences of the computer age would be not mass unemployment but liberation from “repetitive and meaningless toil” and freedom to pursue the travel and recreation so many millions of Americans enjoyed this past weekend David Broder’s column runs on Sundays and Wednesdays so did the construction Finding truth in the new South Africa As Mandela showed us forgiveness is the first step (Editor’s note: This week’s column b a n account by Patrbia Gonzales) first-perso- CAPE TOWN South Africa - Just for a moment I stood locked inside the jail cell of Nelson Mandela the place where he spent many of his 27 imprisoned years I experienced the same screech of the lock the same cold in the thick walls the same weight of the door and just for a moment the truth of a place No matter what his tormentors did to his body they could not capture his spirit nor imprison truth I was part of a delegation that explored the building of a new South Africa I did a lot of praying in Mandela’s cell and along the rocks and shells of Robben Island I faced the ocean and prayed never to fear and never to walk away from change because the conditions for change do not yet exist I prayed for young people fighting injustice and for suffering people as they search for the truth of their lives In the new South Africa prisoners give tours of the island They have changed the meaning of this place and of their suffering It’s a place where they prevailed The bus driver an prisoner tells of how comrades were tortured with rape and sodomy It’s truth-tellin- g His voice trembles shaking out the honesty of the moment “This will never happen again” says an merican civil rights elder as we all silently watched the island disappear into the wash of the sunset I wanted to understand the role of truth in restoring a country where the call to heal the nation is written into the constitution The Truth and Reconcilia African-A- tion Commission has accomplished more than any other around the world despite an unrealistic mandate How can reconciliation of hundreds of years of colonialism and 30 years of brutal apartheid be accomplished with limited time and resources? There were transformative moments where survivors forgave so that perpetrators might become human again and others where people could not be legislated to forgive heal or speak truth And yet just to know what happened is healing said one white South African we met who experienced repression because he supported the black majority during apartheid And there is the ongoing tension beg tween and justice “We compromised justice to achieve truth and on the basis of truth hope to rebuild South Africa" said Hugo van der Merwe at the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation Some mediators believe South Africa wasted the opportunity for reconciliation among biacks and whites Others such as Thabo Mbcki who will likely be elected as the country’s president on June 2 say real reconciliation cannot occur until there is democracy and economic justice Laurie Nathan at the Center for Conflict Resolution spoke of truth and recognition: “The TRC managed not collec peace-makin- tive healing the but collective recognition of past” And a former South African exile noted “What matters now is what is done with the truth” People must be part of the process of truth to understand their country writes Antjie Krog in “Country of My Skull” (Times Books $2750) - something the United States has yet to experience in such an intentional way Many believe g can construct a shared moral narrative to rebuild a country It is a process in which victims the survivors write history In keeping with the idea of “ubuntu” - a communal humanism that says people are formed by their community and in relationship to others - let’s hope that South Africa in its monumental task of rebuilding democracy does not neglect the spiritual foundation of healing from structural violence truth-tellin- Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls Robben Island a place of reconciliation There I understood the reconciliation with myself that occurs before any reconciliation outside me Some of us were so struck by Mandela’s ability to forgive his jailers to befriend them to not dehumanize them as they had he that we wrote letters of forgiveness We offered them to the ocean which swept them out to sea More than forgiveness I understood the power of releasing the freedom in releasing my spirit from oppression’s grip while still believing in the potential humanity of those who commit such wrongs I understood that someday we can face truth together Patrbia Gonzales and Roberto Rodriguez are a husband-wif- e team of columnbts based in Albuquerque NM Their column b published once each week |
