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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 14, 1986)
Page 2/The BattalionAThursday, August 14, 1986 Opinion Heiee- on PeflTH JZcu>, SoicitF PREVCNT/OM IS A Ht£*M PRIORITV. *5ffC < 4US« r AT €>l RNG$T f vTOlJ UANT GAU-COJ S, iOtr OOtCC. K/t-t NO CRIMINAL i$eFca<r n/s ~nH€ foe'u. SPFNb THOVSANbS TC «AV<r A nAU Uitio ATTEMPTS Sui^tbE, ANt> ^TWousAwds morb to exec ore mm. awAw . i i!X* ■‘SC ii >• ■n ^vo •v^- '•'*44^?? 'ISSfSfi'flllSf- iii4f^ MiSjffriffliiiiStj ■■ fefivS.’ .V>S'fc>SS mmsm '$$a£'4ftk -a«rAat^ mw® mttW l?^6 Chariots of the Fundamentalists? What ever happened to the ancient astronauts? About 10 years ago there were tons of books and itrticles about them. Erich von Daniken came up with the theory that astronauts from other planets came to Earth thousands of years ago and in fluenced the development of the hu man race. In his book. Chariots of the Gods, von Daniken proposed that our ancestors weren’t intelligent enough to build the pyramids in Egypt or Central America, the stone heads at Easter Is- Karl Pallmeyer land, Stonehenge or any other of the world’s wonders.Von Daniken said that these monuments might have been built with the aid of extraterrestial vistors who wanted to leave be hind a record of their visit. There are few people around today who believe in an cient astronauts, but there are several who choose to believe that mankind is useless. These people call themselves Funda mentalists. It didn’t take long before von Daniken’s theories were proven to be garbage. His theory that the natives of Easter Is land weren’t able to mine the granite, carve it into stone heads, drag the heads uphill for several miles and stick them in the ground without the help of creatures from outer space was disproven by Thor Heyerdahl. Last month a group of Fundamentalist parents led by Vicki Frost launched a legal attack against the Hawkins County public schools because of some textbooks the schools have been using. The Fundamentalists are upset that their children are being exposed to books that “teach other forms of salvation, other than faith in Jesus Christ alone.” Heyerdahl and his men went to Easter Island and assisted the natives in erecting a new set of stone heads using nothing but primitive tools and a lot of muscle. Heyerdahl made seve ral ocean voyages in small, primitive rafts that showed our human ancestors, not extraterrestials, were capable of travel ing the globe and spreading their knowledge. The funniest example that showed how silly the von Dan iken hoax was came when a BBC documentary team went searching for ancient astronauts. Von Daniken had found a rock that had a drawing carved onto its face. The drawing looked like a doctor performing an operation on a person’s heart. Von Daniken said the rock was over 4,000 years old and was proof that beings from another world came to Earth and taught the Egyptians how to perform open-heart sur gery. Basically the Fundamentalists are saying that mankind is useless and wouldn’t have been able to do anything without outside influence. The Fundamentalists are saying that man is incapable of even the most basic acts without the constant supervision of the Almighty. The BBC team went to Egypt and found the man who made that rock. This man had a nice little business of carving cute little pictures on rocks and selling them to tourists. Car bon-dating tests on von Daniken’s rock determined it was about 10 years old. Man has several admirable traits that should be devel oped more fully. Whether these traits come from God or from man himself is debatable. If those traits are truly God- given then he must have intended us to develop them to the best of our abilities. Although the scientific community laughed at these the ories, von Daniken and several others made a mint of money on books, articles, movies and television shows about the gods from outer space. The saddest part of the whole story is not that people were willing to shell out bucks for this garbage, but that some people actually believed it. Karl Pallmeyer is a senior jounalism major and a columnist for The Battlion. Mail Call Fattening Soviets on U.S wheat subsidies “I guess,” said New York Times- man Tom Wicker over television on Sunday, “no one has been more op posed to this ad ministration than I have been.” But, he went on to say to the panel that included George Will, Sam Don- William F. Buckley Jr, The idea that mankind was helped along the way by vis- tors from other worlds might make for a good piece of sci ence Fiction but it doesn’t say much for the human race. Ba sically von Daniken was saying that mankind is useless and wouldn’t have been able to do anything without outside influ ence. I used to think that our ancestors were pretty smart to be able to construct pyramids and other great things, but von Daniken would have had us believe that someone else was re sponsible. According to him, man is nothing without the an cient astronauts. aldson and David Brinkley, he had to sympathize with the action of the ad ministration, which has granted a sub sidy for wheat sent to the Soviet Union. You see, Wicker explained to his dis mally ignorant audience, in a democ racy, politics has to be taken into consid eration. And there are 20 Republican senators coming up for election and re- election next November who will be campaigning in the farm states. So — what can you expect? George Will gave him one of his fine no-nonsense answers. What he said was that the Reagan administration has been the most spectacularly anti-Soviet ad ministration rhetorically in the last gen eration, but that people are simply going to stop taking that anti-commu nism seriously, which among other things would have the effect of less ening Wicker’s antagonism to the ad ministration. One of the books that has come under attack is L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. Most everyone who has read the book or seen the movie remembers that when Dorothy and her friends go back to the Wizard to get their heart, brain, courage and ride home, the Wizard tells them that they have those qualities inside themselves and all they have to do is work on developing them. The Fundamentalists are upset that their children are being taught that they should develop qualities of compassion, intelligence and courage on their own. The Fundamentalists believe that these qualities come only from God. Political considerations, as Wicker stresses, are legitimate democratic con siderations (perhaps one day he will write a column about the political con siderations that govern the pace of de segregation in South Africa). But he needs to remember that the Reagan ad ministration is in critical respects distin guished from administrations that are unguided by an animating vision. No body expects the president of Switzer land to be elected to chase down a politi cal dream. When John F. Kennedy was elected he was startled when James Res- ton, minutes after JFK had taken the oath of office, asked him what he in tended to accomplilsh as president. The young president was struck dumb. He had run for office in order to become president. It hadn’t really occurred to him that he should have a grand design in mind. And on the whole, we are better off with caretakers than with milleniarists, but a great deal is at stake in the matter of our dealings with the Soviet Union. Friends of President Reagan do well to advise him that his credibility as an anti communist leader is mortgaged heavily by such a deal as he recently sancii; and which his secretary of conn has been defending with the kind guments that would have got his cut off in a debate with candidatt gan running for office on an ant munist ticket. George Will forcefully madedei indisputable point that our lever.; negotiating with any of our allieso: matter of tender loving care munist enterprises is flatly expes Reagan began his office by lift embargo on the sale of grain to5 His secretary of agriculture th eluded a long-term grainei; agreement with the Soviet Unit® guaranteed the Soviets, in the si communique in the annals ofU, viet diplomacy, that we would nest never agttin, interrupt our suppl grain to the Soviet Union, presm not even if the Soviet Union laum nuclear strike against us. Having done this, Reagan turn the Europeans who were using An can technology to help theSovietli build a gas pipeline all the wayfron lag to Venice. The arguments he had to do with the joint respoi the Western world not to advanct Soviets’ economic position. ThcL peans loftily disdained the impci ties of Reagan, citing his repealc grain embargo: The business of ness is business, they said, and it course Reagan had to back down, what we have just now doneitwoi: hard to exert leverage on Monaco. The tiresome and deceptive dis] tion is attempted: It’s not OK (the us) to sell the Soviets instrumeri war, but it is OK to sell theme things. True, you can’t shoot an AfjS with a piece of wheat. But thepffi who are shooting Afghans eat wb.| sustain their energy. It is depressing that politics sho.|| cause the dream of galvanized tance to communism to crumble.Wt spending something on theorderof! billion a year to appease Ame farmers. Rather than to continue ing American wheat cheaper to buy Moscow than in Washington, we’d better off buying it and throwingitii the sea. We can’t give it away in Asia,. 1 , rica or Latin America, becausetodo is to discourage local production. T| ultimate solution is the obvious Stop subsidies. But in Washington the equivalent of saying: Stop poll Meanwhile, the Soviet Uniongetsfati American subsidized wheat. Copyright 1986, Universal Press Syndictlt Man needs to work to improve himself and his world re gardless of what might lie ahead. If the God of the Funda mentalists is the same God that I’ve read about, he would pre fer that we work to help ourselves and each other instead of constantly praying for his assistance. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Editor Michelle Po*i| City Editor ...Scott Sutherlac j News Editor Sue Krentij Sports Editor KenSui'l Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper operated as a community service to Texas A&M and Brpn-Collti’ 1 Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the Editorial Board or the author and do not necessarily represent AI opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography dasses wiMl Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday andcximA tion periods. Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester, $33.25 per school year and $35 per full year. Advertising ralesf- | nished on request. Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald. Texas A&M University, College StationI 77843. Confidence in America EDITOR: They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going — that is, they’re supposed to get motivated, to get the job done, and as soon as possible. At least, that’s the American way. I think that things must work a little differently down in Mexico. There when things get tough, people really get going — out of the country and away from their troubles at home. At least that’s how the Reagan administration sees things. The Mexican illegals are not proud enough to cope with their own problems, they say up in Washington. I don’t see it that way at all. I believe that America is in part to blame for Mexico’s domestic plight — because we have not been a good neighbor. We do all sorts of things for Canada and Europe. We even do more to help the Russians than we do to help our neighbors to the south. As far as that goes, I think that it takes a lot of courage for a man to leave his home in Mexico and to take the dubious and dangerous trek northward — there to try and make some money working at some menial job that no one else will do and send back home to his loved ones. Few and far between are the U.S. citizens who would do such a thing for their families. Who are we to staunch their efforts? Our own fellow citizens sit complaisent on their rear ends, drawing unemployment and mooching off the system, taking some sort of egotistical pride in the fact that others are less fortunate. Who are we to condemn the illegal aliens when they have more faith and confidence in America than most Americans? William H. Clark II Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the address and telephone number of the writer. WAVIN TO SIM! TREATMENT, G BEEN'T^W Mep i _ n AT TUE MERCILESS P /pT „ HANES OP THE 1 sP\\ national LEAGUE m imREAPILY f ^ IPEhftlFY Vi A^LMlMl ANP TRAVAIL MWmiK ©W86 HOUSTON R3ST .cSQ'fTTHINGS AR| h Si i HOWARD ccs£l ’ r - Stc stri pc DAI senten peals < law re rors ol ciding prosec A p peals i filed fc ruled lates p tution ers be brand “We the Co tremel tion, prosec trict at Pro upheh tences trials 1 law we The jurors tence good-i time i quires consid applie A 5 cently simila consti ing. P Crimi view t Th' law in of an R< D/ gan apart not si issue prine said. IT foun Fron toda; Blad begii L United Feature Syndicate