the small society
by Brickman
Washington Star Syndicate. Inc.
Gens'-
Candidate argues
GOP should unite
By DAVID S. BRODER
DES MOINES — For sheer eloquence,
there was no one in the Republican pres
idential candidates’ debate here the other
night who bested Rep. John B. Anderson of
Illinois. But Anderson was arguing a prop
osition which Republican conventions have
rejected consistently for two decades —
even when it was propounded by such lav
ishly financed progressive as the late Nel
son A. Rockefeller.
The liberal congressman from Rockford
with the low-budget campaign argued that
Republicans should be “pragmatic” enough
to realize that their normal conservative
approach has enlisted the support of only
“one of four voters in the country. ”
To become a majority party, Anderson
said, Republicans must combine their
“frugality and prudence” on fiscal matters
with a demonstration that they are “com
passionate on social questions.”
That sounds like a sensible suggestion,
but no Republican presidential nominee in
a generation has sought to build a coalition
with the kind of “independents and dis
affected Democrats” Anderson has in mind
those who support social reforms and
civil rights. Republicans win many elec
tions at the state level that way, but not
presidential nominations.
Yet it is obvious that there are “dis-
afiected Democrats” of a somewhat diffe
rent stripe who might be brought into a
Republican coalition. One of them, Jeane
Kirkpatrick, a Georgetown University poli
tical scientist, has expressed the views of
her group in a provocative article in the
new issue of Commonsense, the lively
scholarly journal published by the Republi
can National Committee.
Kirkpatrick is one of the leaders on the
Coalition for a Democratic Majority, an
assemblage of Humphrey-Jackson-
Moynihan supporters who, as she puts it,
believe that “the Carter administration has
given us a brand of McGovernism without
McGovern that is, at best, only slightly less
objectionable than the authentic, original
product. ”
“We see its foreign policy as more wor
ried about restraining the use of American
power than about containing the new phase
of Soviet expansionism, ” Kirkpatrick com
plains. “Its economic policies (are) too
punitive of business interests, too careless
of labor’s concerns; its social policies . .
too coercive and too subversive of such
fundamental principles as merit.”
The alternatives to Carter within the
Democratic Party — Ted Kennedy and Jer
ry Brown — are worse, Kirkpatrick says
Are she and her friends then ripe for
conversion to Republicanism? No, she
says. “It is hard for people who care about
politics to switch party,” and, besides, “Re
publicans . . . remind us of corporate board
rooms and country clubs.” So much, it
would seem, for John Connally and George
Bush — and probably for Ronald Reagan as
well. Who then?
Bob Dole talked in the debate of his
-sponsorship of catastrophic health insur
ance and of his concern for the handicap
ped. But Dole is remembered by most
Democrats as the slashing partisan who
said all the military casualties of this cen
tury resulted from “Democrat wars.”
Howard Baker has drawn significant
black support in his Tennessee races, and
has sponsored a welfare-reform plan that
meets some Democratic goals. But Baker
organized the Senate filibuster that killed
the labor-law reform bill and is no friend of
the unions.
Kirkpatrick’s article is evidence of the
existence of a large number of disaffected
Democrats. But it is equally proof that cov-
nerting them to the Republican cause will
not be easy.
Thotz
Bi/ Doug Graham
The Battalion
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The Battalion
Monday
Texas A&M University
January 14, 1979
Americans not sure which
foreign country to hate today
By DICK WEST
Many citizens find themselves in the
perplexing position of not being entirely
sure which foreign country to hate the most
in the world today.
Official policy itself apparently has not
fully crystalized.
Seeking some guidance in this matter, I
contacted a highly placed source in the
office of the deputy vice assistant associate
under secretary of state for national
emnity.
“At the moment,” he confided, “we are
tilting toward Russia. I would say you could
hardly go wrong if you directed the main
force of your disaffection in that direction. ”
I said, “That’s going to required a rather
abrupt shift in momentum. My anti-Soviet
animosity has been in a holding pattern
even since the onset of detente, and I’m not
certain I can get the pressure built back up
to Cold War level. Could you give me
something odious to focus on?”
“Glad to,” the enmity expert graciously
replied. “A good way to start getting work
ed up is by seething over the Soviet inter
vention in Afghanistan, where they have
installed a pro-Russian puppet govern
ment.”
“But Afghanistan already had a pro-
Russian puppet government,” I pointed
out. “It’s a little difficult for me to fly into a
rage over the overthrow of a pro-Russian
puppet.” r
“Concentrate on it a little harder,” my
mentor advised. “Remind yourself the pro-
Russian puppet overthrown by the Rus
sians was not as pro-Russian as the puppet
they brought in as a replacement. Also let
yourself be provoked by the menace of
Soviet troops in that country.”
“I think I’m beginning to feel it,” I said,
voice rising. “Wherein does the chief
menace lie?”
“The chief menace is to Iran. Once pock
ets of Moslem resistance have been elimin
ated in Afghanistan, Soviet troops will be in
position to move across the border into
Iran.”
“Now I’m losing it again,” I said. “No
country that threatens Iran can be all bad.
If Khomeini is overthrown by Soviet
troops, he will be getting what he holly well
deserves.”
“Tush, tush,” the emnity official admo
nished, which is the way they talk at the
state department. “You must not allow the
hostile feelings you harbor toward Ii
temper your sense of outrage over the
newal of Soviet aggression.”
I said, “I’m just spitballing now,
pose the Soviet troops now in
were to invade Iran, overthrow
Khomeini regime and release the
ican hostages being held in Tehran,
how would we feel?”
iuke
“In that event, we might have toreo:
our priorities,” the official admitted,
xibility is the watchword in the e
office. We have to keep our optionsope
You, of course, are free to let yours
pathy flow in any manner your choose. Ci
I intend to adopt a wait-and-see attitudr
my age, these sudden changes in aniine
can be hard on the spleen.
Parochial schools flourish in France
despite government aid to state system
United Press
MONROE, La.
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AN
By FRANCOIS DUPUIS
PARIS — Sylvie Lucaire, a young Pari
sian mother, had such bad memories of her
religious education that she once rebelled
against all authority by joining a radical
extremist group. A few months ago, she
withdrew her two children from public
school and enrolled them in a private
Catholic institution run by nuns.
She is somewhat ashamed of herself, but
she is no different from a growing number
of French families that are abandoning a
system of public education for which their
grandparents fought bitterly to defend
around the turn of the century.
Like most French, these families are not
particularly pious, and many might, like
Sylvie Lucaire, express anticlerical views.
Yet they are increasingly critical of public
schools that lack discipline and are fre
quently disrupted by both student and
teacher strikes. Above all, they resent the
reduction of educational levels to the
lowest common denominator.
Of 12 million French school children,
nearly 2 million now attend private schools.
And the overwhelming majority of them go
to some 10,000 Catholic primary and
secondary schools. Very few French kids
attend the kinds of private boarding and
day schools that exist in the United States
and Britain.
The proportion of those quitting the pub
lic system would undoubtedly be higher
were it not for the fact that parochial
schools, already bursting at the seams, are
turning away candidates.
The director of St. Elisabeth’s, a Catholic
school here, reported the other day that
she could only accept 200 pupils out of 500
applicants this semester. Father Bernard
Faivre, principal of a Jesuit high school,
says: “The demand for admission is so great
that we could double the size of the student
body. ”
The same refrain is echoed in provincial
towns like Soreze, in southwestern France,
where a Dominican school is now jammed
after having been half-empty for more than
a decade.
Much of this change stems from the anar
chistic atmosphere that first pervaded the
public schools during the spring of 1968,
when Paris students escalated their grie
vances into a sort of cultural revolution that
degenerated into riots. One legacy of that
upheaval has been a rise of violence in the
schools.
There is nothing here that quite com
pares with the blackboard jungles of Amer
ica. But for French parents, who expect
their children to behave in class, even rare
cases of violence are shocking.
Such cases are becoming common in the
sprawling suburbs of big cities like Paris,
Lyon and Marseilles, where kids packed
into huge schools insult, teachers, scribble
obscenities on walls and prowl in the hall
ways, interrupting classes.
A couple of months ago, in a suburban
high school near here, a 12-year-old boy
killed one of his friends with a knife. The
incident, which might have escaped public
notice in New York or Chicago, made head
lines in the Paris newspapers. And it contri
buted to the panic of French parents, who
have traditionally regarded schools to be as
quiet and orderly as churches.
Like public schools everywhere, those
here in France are overcrowded, with the
result that teachers are hard put to offer
pupils much attention. Parochial schools,
in contrast, appear to be model institu
tions.
Their classes are small, with never more
than 25 pupils. They do not hesitate to fail
children whose academic performance is
below par. And they demand strict obedi
ence and good conduct. Unlike public
schools, for example, Catholic establish
ments forbid kids from chewing gum.
Paradoxically, the parochial schools have
benefited significantly from laws passed by
a government that is supposedly dedicated
to the improvement of the public educa
tional system.
Unlike 1960, religious schools received
only minor government subsidies and had
to rely for funds on tuition paid by pupils.
About that time, however, France was
flooded by a wave of youngsters — the
consequence of a soaring birthrate that fol
lowed the end of World War II.
The government faced the choiceofo |
strutting new public schools and trai:
teachers to staff them, or financing]® )
hial schools that had plenty of room
accommodate the emerging generatto
took the latter course, mainly to««
Come s
ment o
Under this year’s budget, Franc
parochial schools will be subsidizedtol
tune of $2.5 billion. That is only lOpeit
of the country’s total expenditure on edn (
tion. But it is ample to cover the cost!
teaching the 16 percent of the school-:
population that attends Catholic ML
tions.
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visa & j
For one thing, parochial school tead
are usually members of religious oi
who work for lower wages than pi
school teachers. In addition, their
pay fees of about $250 per year,
makes up the deficit.
Examination scores prove that thei
gious schools are successful. While bn
more than half of public school kidsp
tough baccalaureate test that markst!
of their secondary education, all
handful of parochial school pupils mak
For more and more French parents,)
alone is worth the sacrifice of their
principles.
GDOftMS
I HATE THESE LONG LINES
AT DELAYED REGISTRATION,
BUTUHAT REALLY BUGS HE
15 THE COLD inPERSONAL
MATURE OF THE UHOLE
THING.
UHAT5 Ym SOCIAL
SECURITY NUfABER?
Ogt-M-GT^oI
YOU DON’T mil)
IF I CALL YOU
I ALWAYS LIKED
THOSE NUmERS, BESIDE
THE UHOLE NUMBER
SEEHS SO FORAAL.
NOW, FILL THESE OUT
4 AND TAKE THUS OVER
TO A1ISS 70/MND
AAYISAY, IT5 BEEN
A PLEASURE PROCESSIWS
YOU.
I WOULDN’T MIND 11
IMPERSONALITY IF
THEY DIDN’T ACT
LIKE THEY WERE
BEING SO PERSON!
ABOUT IT