Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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JIM FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR EDITORIALS **A A A . M DECK THE HALl-S WI... %E"CAfA"1A-'A SUU I- FAKIS TNEYSAt BETAT TH/IR SDS'D INTO PLONSNARES' VN44 /N6CAiYPTAQ'N Harret Van Horn Affluence "What ails people nowadays, anyway?" An old question, more terrifying in its implications every day. In any overindulged culture, the sons degenerate from the sire. Tradition molders, discipline declines and morals become a matter of jest. But in our society the degeneration verges on self destruction. The hideous damage done the John F Kennedy Center for the Perforn ing' Arts illustrates my point. Tourists-a word that often seems interchangeable with "vandals"--have wreaked such havoc upon this handsome new memorial that the trustees have had to ask Congress for a $1.5 million emergency appropriation to keep the center open. According to one account, visitors have stolen pictures off the walls, snipped swatches out of draperies and carpets, stripped crystal chandeliers of their prismi, even pried faucets from bathroom basins. Ashtrays, china, glassware and silver have been stolen in quan tities from the center's restaurant. This suggests -that the vandalism cannot be blamed-as it so often is on rowdy black school children or adult delinquents from the ghetto. The thieving habits of the prosperous are a troubling phenomenon of our time. C. P. Snow had some astute comments on the problem when he visited New York last year. "The more affluent a society becomes," he noted, "the more Badistic violence seems to run loose. That's one of the bitter Ironies." Our times Butz' figi BY SMITH HEMPSTONE Columnist It is incredible, when one thinks about it, that a four-vote swing in the Senate last week could have blocked the appointment of Dr. Earl L. Butz as secretary of Agriculture. And this has very little to do with the merits or demerits of the 62-year-old Purdue University dean. The Constitution provides that the President shall appoint cabinet members "with the advice and consent of the Senate." But in practice, even when an unpopular President has faced an opposition - controlled upper house, the Senate has in general conceded the chief executive's right to appoint those he wishes as his closest associates for the duration of his term in office. So strong is this tradition that only five Presidents have had to submit to the rebuff of a Senate refusal to confirm a cabinet nomination. In 1834, when Andrew Jackson was battling Congress on financial policy, the Senate rejected Roger B. Taney's nomination as Treasury secretary, only to con firm him later as Chief Justice (he became one of the great ones) of the Supreme Court. Hapless John Tyler saw four of his cabinet nominees turned down during a period of less than two years (1843-44). But Tyler, a one term President who had to beat back an impeachment attempt ib6rrhie--wn-Mh1g.party.had'{et breeds d( The idle affluent tend to become bored at an early age, Lord Snow continued. In England, he said, "it is not the poor who have time to think up sadistic acts." Tourists, who presumably know better, have stolen virtually everything "reachable and detachable" from the Kennedy Center. They've walked out with plants, posters, paintings, menus and the brass shiel.ds from electric outlets. In the appropriation center chairman Roger L. Stevens is seeking, the sum of $227,000 is earmarked for "security," meaning guards and policemen. With 20,000 visitors arriving in a single day (as they did the day after Thanksgiving),-the amount may not be sufficient. Exercising the greatest charity, one cannot call thieving tourists "souvenir seekers." They are a new breed in America, irresponsible as apes. In all of them there seems to be a need to destroy beauty and order, to desecrate the shrines- 1nd pull down the pillars. The Goths descending upon Rome behaved this way. But they had an excuse: It was their first encounter with civilization. Pilferage and vandalism cost this country $2 billion a year. Schools are now built without windows because youngsters considered it fine sport to hurl rocks through the plate glass. Each item you buy in a super market or a department store costs at least 5 per cent more than it would if the stores were not subject to so much pilferage. What underlies this sick destructive behavior? it in persi face both the rebelling Whigs (with whom he had quarrelled over economic policy) and the op position Democrats. In 1868, the Senate refused to confirm the nomination for At torney General of Henry Stanbery by Andrew Johnson, another target of an impeachment attempt (it is worth noting that Tyler and Johnson had been vice presidents who had reached the White House through the deaths of chief executives and hence lacked the political clout of popularly elected Presidents). In this century, only Coolidge and Eisenhower have received a snub of this sort from the Senate. In 1925, the upper house rejected "Silent Cal's" appointment of former ambassador to Japan and Mexico Charles B. Warren to be Attoreny General. After the Teapot Dome and Veterans' Bureau scandals of the Harding administration, the Republican-controlled Senate felt that the Attorney General, like Caesar's wife, had to be above suspicion. And the Michigan corporation lawyer's ties to the sugar interests were felt to be a little too close for comfort. In 1959, a Democratic Senate rejected Eisenhower's nomination of Lewis L. Strauss as Commerce secretary. Strauss, the brilliant longtime head of the Atomic Energy Commission, was turned down primarily because of his aroant p naht,y wJichi.d* .struction Lord Snow blames the boredom of the affluent. Others say the stealing is done mostly by hostile blacks, resentful that the rich white folks have so much while they are starving on welfare. Drug addiction is also blamed along with permissiveness, corrupt police, too lit tle love at home and the wor sening of relations between angry blacks and the authorities. Overpopulation might be cited as .a caus.e of vandalism. The abrasions of a .crowded life can unsettle reason. We've too many people who cannot be absorbed into the economy. We've a seething, restless subculture that refuses to be educated, refuses to accept the old ethic of hard work and honesty. They see a world run by a smug Establishment and they want in, even if "in" means only a prism snatched from a glittering chandelier. It is often said that we live in a st ate of unacknowledged civil war. There are hordes of Americans who, if left to follow their own in stincts, would behave exactly as Nazi soldiers behaved in the countries they occupied. Some poison in the air, rising frorn the cruelties of life today, has invaded their minds. Storm Jameson, in her superb autobiography ("Journey from the North"), describes the behavior of Nazis quartered in the Polish National Museum. "Bored, the soldiers amused themselves by dressing .up in the ancient costumes before tearing them to shreds, cut up the Gobelin tapestries to use as blankets, bayonetted the Egyptian mum (Continued on Page 3) )ective hatred of Senator Clinton P. An derson of New Mexico. Strauss' rejection, by a 49-46 Senate vote, ended his public career and An derson's presence at the White House bridge table. Placed in this perspective, the confirmation of Butz by a 51-44 vot e indicates the depth of feeling against both the new Secretary of Agriculture and his sponsor, President Nixon. Butz was faulted because of his association as un dersecretary with Eisenhower's unpopular Agriculture secretary, Ezra Taft Benson, for his con nections with agribusiness (huge corporate farms) and for an alleged insensitivity to the problems of the poor. That many small farmers are suspicious of Butz is not in question. The four Republican senators who opposed him were from agricultural states (Iowa, North Dakota and Kentucky). Mr. Nixon in 1968 barely won the presidency despite taking all the farm states with the exceptions of Arkansas and Minnesota. So it is fair to ask what Mr. Nixon t hinks he is about. The only logical explanation is that the President is planning to implement a farm policy (for it will be HIS policy, not Bu'z') which will appeal to the small farmers whose votes he will need next year. And to do this he has picked a man eminently qualified to do so because he knows the other side of the coin, ,qgribusiness,,b,a.ckJrge,and