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Show 'Who needs skis? I'm just here to breathe the air DESERET NEWS SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH e Srcr.d For Ire Constitution Of The Unired As Having Been Divirelv Insoired 10 A EDITORIAL PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ' Ignorant ' Saes I am certainly not one of the silent majority or I woukn't be writing tus letter. If, as President Nixon has said, the silent majority is in favor of his poliev in Vietnam, then I think we should change the appelation to the ignorant majority." Surely they are ignorant of the facts so often published in DECEMBER A, 1769 THURSDAY, Majority Vote Gives Nixon Time On Vietnam this column. In this and other manors I see no difference in Fuchaid Nixon ana Lyndon Johnson. We voted for change but are getting more of the same Johnson burgiirg. Likewise, there is vcy little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. 1 propose they unite under the nme of and instead of talking about a third party in America let's have a second faction and name it the party. The very name would ,,tate an opposition to the atheistic violations of the Constitution that go on every day among the Democrats and Republicans alike. -R- ALPH BADDLEY Sandy i Demo-Rppnbhca- 337 to o.T vote this wick I., tMek PjrsiJei.t Nixons plan to en-- i the Vietnam war is both gi at. tying and fraught with responsibility. Gratifying because it gives the President maneuvering room in seeking some type of settlement to the Vietnam war will still avert sellout of South Vietnam to the that 'I - v. rv. h( Irmi.g House s Oiristian-Constitutio- hojx-full- Communists. Fraught with responsibility because the mandate handed to the President is contingent upon actively pursuing efforts to withdraw U.S. troops and reach an agreement with an implacable enemy. Although the House vote was no blanket endorsement of the Presidents Vietnam policies (several members voted for the proposal with reservations), nevertheless it rightfully showed gieat statesmanship in allowing the President more tune to solve this dilemma wMch has so seriously split America. Too Many People From Lidice The terrible sickness exposed at e may be certain, w ill not be Myiai. cured by an emotional here at home. A sense of blood-lettin- long-rang- Smoke Industry-N- ot In answer to a Deseret News inquiry, the State Industrial Promotion Division says that the new copper wire fabricating mill hopefully planned for Salt Lake Valley will not cause a;r or water pollution. Fine. Salt Lake Valley already has enough of that. No more is needed. Not for any economic advantage. No price tag can be placed on human lungs. Studies made by the Utah Tuberculosis and Health Association show clearly that Salt Lake Valley smog is more than just deteriorating the environment and obscuring our beautiful mountains. It has now reached the point it is endangering human health. That is why the UTHA is using funds from this years Christmas Seal contributions to combat air pollution. Any new industry which can raise the economy, in the case of the copper wire plant by an estimated 15 million & year is to be welcomed and not cause additional air pollution with open arms. All Utah can use more industrial expansion that. But state officials have a heavy obligation to be sure the promises are kept. Industrial progress is desired and needed. But if it comes io the point as it has of choosing between industrial progress and human health, the latter has to take higher priority. like ron-polluti- Drugs Aren't 'Hip' Curbing the nation's spiraling drug abuse problem, as President Nixon wisely observed this week, is not so much a matter of more harsh punishments as it is a matter of more understanding and education. Too often, as he warned a special governors conference on narcotics and dangerous drugs, penalties are brought into use only when the damage is already done. Moreover, youths who become heavily involved in drug use are often victims of already including family punishments which prompt them to and social rejections of many kinds tui n to drugs to overcome insecurities and fill voids. This is why President Nixon has asked Congress for a overhaul of drug laws which date back to 1914 and 1937, and why he warned governors that "All of us must go back to our communities and wage a campaign of education and information that will reach all cf the people of our states and inform them of the evils of drug abuse. Utah, for example, already has a massive drug education program underon Drug Abuse. lay. sponsored by the Governors Committee As John E. Ingersoll. director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, also warned governors. One cannot overemphasize the deleterious effect drug use and abuse is having in the nation, particularly among the youth. Because of this, he explained, the federal government plans to mount an education campaign through the mass media to refute the idea among the young that drug taking is "hip. "We v ant to demonstrate the squareness of hippiness and document tic fact that drugs are a hazard to the body.' President Nixon's program, which includes a scaling town of the severity of certain drag laws, should not be misconstrued as a get soft" approach. While offering to first, time offenders, duped by misfortune or misinformation into drug use, a way back from drugs, he has expressed no such mercy for the hardened pusher who profits from his victim's downfall. As the President warned, civilizations which have turned to drug use on a broad scale inevitably lose their spirit. .They go down. They are destroyed." too-har- sh t Afterthought ... t 4 Zealots of both the left and trr right have only" & partial view of Utopia; for if Utopia ever nures. it will be only when enough people are genuinely radical in their thinking, genuinely liberal in their feeling, and genuinely conservative in their acting. This is why it will take so long. cannot pressed shams be supit ought not to be sup- but reapressed son will serve us better than revul- sion. v 1 Jo Pinkvifle JAMES J. KILPATRICK g national Coupled with the new draft lottery, the House vote takes much of the heat for instant Vietnam solutions off the President. That is no reason for complacency, however. On the contrary, it signals much hard work ahead to convince Americans. through actions, that substantial progress is being made. Nor, since the hot breath of the draft has been talon off many young men. should the President's policies be quite so susceptible to the college militants. Although the lottery syse tem does not eliminate the need for and thorough diaft reforms, it at least ameliorates the status of those draP-ag- e youths who now can reasonably plan their lives with some assurance of their future draft status. The House vote does not increase the choice of alternatives in ending the war. A U.S. pullout is now virtually certain. But, hopefully, the President can now bargain with more assurance of stabilizing the military situation with Vietnam troops and avoiding the Communist takeover and blood bath that most certainly would follow a precipitous American evacuation at the present. .. n T he damning facts are now unfoldirg one by from there. If anything of value can be sahaged from Myiai. a hart of questions must be answered. V.hy was the story so lorg in breaking? How could these graves stay covered up for 20 months? This poor platoon was part of a vast organization, the US. Army, that crawls like a centipede upon its own reports. For five years, correspondents at Saigon have been fed on It is impossible to believe one. It is tempting that no report of the Mvlai incident was to say that "we ever filed. We have to assume, out of some gendont know" what happened at Myiai that day in March of 1968. True; but true eral knowledge of these things, that there were indeed reports, tips, telephone only in a lawyer's eye. It can no longer be denied that something happened that calls, handshaking conferences in Washa platoon from Company C, First Battalington and Saigon. Who failed to follow ion. 20th Infantry, 11th Brigade, entered up? H timely action had been taken a village in the Pinkvilie sector, and months ago, at least the forms of decenthere gunned the peasants down. cy and order might have been preserved: a presidential apology, official Mr. Kilwibick will speak tonight condemnation of the acts, courts martial at 8 p.m. at the BYU Forum is the for the men involved. Now the most fervent expression of national regret must Assembly Hall on Temple Square. have a faintly hollow ring, as if we rued It is immaterial it is merely a dionly the sin of being caught; and mort of mension of the news to ask how many Ube madmen (for so we must suppose died. The shame of 300 is not six times them) have left sendee and escaped the the shame of 50. It is the act itself that risk of trial. sears the soul. These were our men, Defense Secretary Laird already has bearing our flag; and some of them, at put his sleuths to backtracking through the maze of pigeonholed reports and least, committed wanton murder on command. classified papers. A separate line of inThat is the reality, the point of beginquiry suggests itself: Are the Army, ning. We work forward and backward procedures sufficient truly sufficient body-count- s. for detecting battle fatigue before men snap and brearc? The massacre at Myiai was not the first such incident in warfare; doubtless it will not be the last But perhaps the Army has something more to learn from scholars of behavioral science. Military training makes men kill, but it ought not, in the usual sense, to make killers out of men. It is not enough, of coure, merely to pursue stupidity or to lock barn doors. If any deep value is to be drawn from the shock of Myiai, it will come with a renewed examination of war as an instrument of national policy not merely in Vietnam, but everywhere else in this dw indling world. Some of these considerations were in the President's mind last week, when he renounced the use of bacterial weapons. In the somber mood of national that has developed with the disclosures of Myiai, perhaps a fresh start can be made toward greater renunciations stQL The arms limitation talks at Helsinki offer a convenient and immediate forum. And the personal, human aspects of the Pinkvilie massacre provide a motivation that is oddly mere powerful than the unimaginable terrors of nuclear bombardment. I am surely no optimist Men have waged war since tribal cavemen carried clubs. The perils of Communist duplicity are real, not imagined. And the probabilities are that the catharisis of Mvlai will be quite invisible by, let us say, Christmas. But these pitiful peasants cry from the grave for men to reason together; and time grows short. Sports Is One Strand In Life On Wednesday, Nov. 26, there was an article In the Deseret News telling of a family who just brought its 13th child home from the l.jspital m time for Thanksgiving. Population in underdeveloped countries is eur- renily doubling in less than 30 years and in developed countries in less than 60 years. In view of this alarming population explosion, it is my opinion that giving favorable publicity to such a large family as 13 is unwise. It will tax our every resource to the limit to solve pollution and adequate food problems for today's population, let alone a doubled population the beginning of the 21. .t Century. BERYL E. WILLIAMS Ave., Apt. 6 , 5S5-2n- d inuiuai Free drugs should tie provided to addicts to make stealing to support a habit unnecessary. This was the recommendation of the commission on violence headed by Dr. Milton Eisenhower as reported in a front page story Nov. 24. Billions of dollars are requested to curb crime in America. Some of this money will be used to hasten addiction in the interest of honesty. Once a user has reached the addict level, his habit, which heretofore has been a personal financial drain, will be supported by federal aid and he no longer will steal from us directly but will realize the theft through Washington, D.C. We can visualize great crime reduction in other areas using the same "logic. Perhaps free ears auto thief, a national provided for the would-b- e bank account for those who would otherwise resort to forgery, and cash appropriated to banks for handouts to potential robbers. There's no limit to the possibilities. As crime becomes unnecessary, our prisons could be converted to poorhouses for taxpayers, reduced to poverty in an effort to foot the bin to keep the oiminal honest. THOMPSON -S- UNNIE Richfield By SYDNEY J. HARRIS Before I proceed a line further, let me make it clear that I enjoy physical exercise and sport as much as any man. I like to bat a baseball dribble h basketball, kick a soccer ball, and, most of all, swat a tennis balL A man win scorned physical activity would hardly build a tennis court on his summerhouse grounds, or use it every day. Having made this obeisance, let me now confess that I am puzzled and upset and have been for many years by the almost obsessive inter est in sports taken by the average adult American male. , Athletics is one strand in life, and even the ancient Greek philosophers recognized its imnortance. 'Rut it is hy no means the whole web, 4 as it seems to lie in cur society. If American men are not talking business, they are talking sports, or they are not talking at alL This strikes ms as an enormously adolescent, not to say retarded, attitude on the part of presumed adults. Especially w hen most of their passion and enthusiasm center around professional teams which bear no indigenous relation to the city they play for, and consist of mercenaries who will wear any towns insignia If the price is right Although I like to play, and sometimes like to watch, I cannot see what possible difference it makes which team beats which. The tactics are sometimes interesting, and certainly the prowess of the players deserves applause but most men seem to use commercial sports as a kind of narcotic, shutting out rather than heightening it. . Tfie:e is nothing more boring, in my view, than a prolonged discussion by laymen of yesterday's game. These dreary conversations are a form of social alco holism, enabling them to achieve a dubious rapport without ever once having to come to grips with a subject worthy of a grown man's concern. It is easy to see the opiate quality of sports in cur society, when tens of millions of men will spend a splendid Saturday or Sunday fall afternoon sitting stupefied in front of the TV, watching a big game, when they might be out exercising their own flaccid muscles and stimulating their lethargic corpuscles. Ironically, our obsession with professional athletics not only makes us mentally limited and conversationally dull, it also keeps us physically inert thus violating the very reason men began engaging in athletic competitions. It is tempting to call tiiis national malaise of '.spectator! tis childish except that children have more sense, and would rather run out and play themselves. Dangers Of Flying The Flag - WASHINGTON President Nixons promise to bring the country together doesnt seem to be working too well. If anything, people are more polarized ART BUCHWALD Then why are you flying the American Flag" Flying the American Flag has nothA friend of ing to do with my feelings on Vietnam, mine, Mrs. JohnBobby. It is our Flag and I believe it ston, told me the should on national be displayed other day what holidays." happened to her "What about all the innocent people when she derided to fly the Flag on whose villages have been burned and bombed, and the profiteering South Viet.4 Veterans Day. Mrs. generals who have numbered Mr. Bocfawald Johnstons been namese in Switzerland? bank accounts Bobby Lying the American Flag every Vetersaid. ans Day without receiving much com"That has nothing to do with the fort. But this year her effort became the Flag "caue ceiebre" on the block. s "Only fly the Flag. The first person to mention it was a said Bobby, as he u aiked away in a huff. A little later Mrs. Johnston received a neighbor from across the street who concail from the lady down the street "Mrs. her for and the gratulated flying Flag asked her to Sign a petition to impeach Johnston, I noticed you're flying the Justice William Douglas of the U.S. Su- American Flag. Would you te intertsied in joining the American Legion Auxiliary? preme Court. Mrs. Johnston said, "No, my husband Mrs. Johnston said she wasnt interisn't a member of the American Legion ested in signing any petitions against tha so there is no reason for me to join the Supreme Court auxiUary. "Then why are you flying the AmeriYou had us foaled, Mrs. Johnston, can Flag? the neighbor demanded. the lady said, Tm sorry I called. "Because it's Veterans Day, she The delivery boy from the local marsaid. ket arrived at this moment and he said, "Would you be willing to go to a rally You hate me because I have long hair, tomorrow against teachirg set education dont you. Mrs. Johnston?" ;n the s bools?" the neighbor demanded. "I dont hate you, Mrs. Johnston proMrs. JohnsTon said she wouldn't. tested T e neigl.lor said ar.gnly, "And 1 "i saw the Flag outside. the delivery you were a god American. boy said. "I know how you people think." A lirle later the neighbor's sen a colHe slammed the groceries on the table Mrs. Johnston, I and left lege student, said. thought you were sympathetic to our get-tir-g Tie plumber arrived to do some out of Vietnam." work, but when he saw the Flag he I am," Mrs. Johnston said. derided Mrs. Johnston would be inter than they've ever been before. . supei-Hawh- ested in how he felt about People whe are on welfare and don't do ary work and who are always waiting ior handouts, and how the protesters ought to all be put in jaiL . . It cost Mrs. Johnston an extra S9 an hour to listen to the plumber's political philosophy. When Mr. Johnston came home from work, Mrs. Johnston told him everything that happened during the day. Dont feel bad," he told bar. I was driving without my lights on today and a taxi driver yelled at me, If you dont like America, why dont you go baric to the Soviet Union where you belong? GUEST CARTOON tan Explain, Please It is now several weeks since your stories and editorial appeared on conditions in Cedar City. As citizens, I hope we always welcome construe- criticism and helpful suggestion for improve- - - , menti It is difficult, however, to find a good motive , as to just why this town was angled out for very . unpleasant comments on the plight cf its streets and unkempt lots, not only once, but on three separate occasions. The timing almost teemed to be calculated. From where I stand, its hard to tee a reasonable n explanation. I hope there is one. LEHI M. JONES Cedar City - Control Pollution In recent weeks the problem of air pollution In Salt Lake City has been mentioned many times. It is quite evident, as the past few days have indicat- ed, that Salt Lake City is far from solving this ' problem. It seems that only one side of the issue is being J at and that Is the case against industry and ' looked . its attempts to control pollution. I am wondering if the problem is being brought I to tiie attention of the right people. In my opinion, an effort should be made to make this problem known to our congressional representatives. W should be able to convince them that the situation is becoming intolerable and that we would like to see adequate controls placed on industry. The pollution problem should have a high priori-- . ty. At the rate we are dumping pollutants into our sir it wont be long before our environment will be unable to sustain life in pleasant surroundings. LELAND BLACKWELL 377 N. 1st West . , I- . j t Remember Him It must please our Savior that some merchants, in order to help us celebrate His birthday more conveniently, are opening their doors to use on His day. It must please Him even more that many of us are taking advantage of it. ' , That we, the public, may more fully appreciate the benevolence of our merchants and the enormity of their sacrifice fa our behalf, I suggest that two plaques b placed at each of their doors. The first would bear the words of our Lord at ML Si's!: Kcsnember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. -Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: But tite seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy ' God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six dsys 111? Lord made heaven and , earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and d the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbah day. and hallowed It. re-te- I found a pot of gold ct the end of a red, white and blue rainbow The second, the words of our Savior: For what is a man profited, if be shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? MRS. DAWN BALLANTYN3 BocntifJ 1 -- , |