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Show In a newspaper article titled "Is White America Turning Yellow," Phillip Wylie, the writer, suggests a slogan for the new year. His proposal reads: "I am an American and I will not be cowed." I suppose there is little doubt that during the Sixties the American Am-erican people lost a lot of their courage, guts, backbone or fortitude, for-titude, whichever you wish to call it. Especially has this been true of Americans in the upper and middle classes. Blessed as these two classes have been with affluence, if not actual riches, members of the same have been content to see things go as they have gone. "Why get involved?" has been the common and threadbare excuse. Politically, we have seen our top nationally elected officers vote themselves scandalous and exorbitant raises in yearly salaries without doing much about it. Why didn't we raise ; such an outcry of hurt and in- , dignation that they would be forced to refuse to accept the j increase. We have seen labor and man agement continually hike wages wag-es and prices, without our raising rais-ing much fuss over the effect upon inflation and the cost of I living. Most of us had the mon ey to pay the higher costs, so why become involved? Even President Nixon said he and the Department of Labor La-bor had a "hands-off" policy regarding current and future strikes. How could Mr. Nixon do much about it, after his own $100,000 yearly raise in pay? We have witnessed the break down in our lawyer dominated criminal courts. What has our legislature, infiltrated liberally with laywers, done to remedy the situation? What have we all done to demand that they do? We have seen college presi: knuckle under to the demands of dissident Communistic dominated dom-inated minority groups, the leaders of which were not students stu-dents at all. We have tolerated in our cities groups of hippies and flower childern to live in filth and immorality and have not had the courage to insist that they shape up, clean up, wash up or shove out. Most of these human derelicts came from well to do parents, who were glad to have them out of their hair. If 1970 is to be an improvement improve-ment over 1969, a lot of Americans Amer-icans will need to follow Mr. Phillip Wylie's counsel and refuse re-fuse to continue to be cowed. Parents will need to take the running of their homes away from the children and teenagers. teenag-ers. Public officials will need to be made to understand that they were elected to serve the interests of the majority, not to make themselves rich. School administrators should be taught once more that the "schools belong to the people" and not to any beliigerent minority min-ority group. Judges should be awakened to the fact that courts were established to protect the public pub-lic as, well as the accused." Perhaps during 1970 all of us should stiffen up our backbones just a little, as we lean a little more toward what is honest, moral, right, true and brave. If so, 1970 will be a Happier New Year. So long 'til Thursday. |