Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Profes From Page 5 MANY OF THOSE who would cry "Hear,Hear" would also say they are not interested in doing more than to cry "Hear, Hear. Even Washington D.C., is too far outward for many of the best and brightest young people. Let the "pals do it." Sidney Hyman, a Pulitzer Prize-winner biographer and a member of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, was surprised by the quality of state legislators when he went to teach government and law at the University of Illinois-Chicago and was subsequently named to that state's racing commission. "As people turn inward more and more, I F, think we'll see more of the brightest young cs people turn to state legislatures," he says, B4 "because they are convinced that that is ig where they are most likely to get things st1 done that most affect thenm." W4 fo A law professor in Tennessee agrees. wl "I've seen a real turn atound here. Most of U1 my students are a lot more interested now in ~ no-fault insurance than in fixingfault for pr Vietnam or Watergate or almost any other bu sin you could name. One of the games Cc teachers play is to spot the coming gover- Sa nors and senators in their classes, or at least ab spot those who you know will try to be a so, governor or a senator. The students are as He bright as ever, but they clearly aren't as I'r interested anymore in 'making it,' at least in 4 the ways people were when we were going bw through here." wi A STATE legislature implies an aci ambition too large for many Americans, fre particularly the young.They're retreating Ha all the way to the pleasures and satisfacions I of their grandparents.Children are very in lo and so Is Jesus. Rock and dope are out,' wa apple butter is in. Blowing up bands is out. fre Bluegrass music is in. ID,! N :00009 00000000000000 HAFL TO It ' ( Sw.tee By SOr Sees 'The President was a of Americans were Art Goldberg was one of the leaders of the ee Speech Movement (its detractors Iled it the Filthy Speech Movement) at rkeley; that was the movement that ited the campuses in the 196o's when idents thought they could change the rd and a lot of their elders were afraid, - a time, that they were right. Goldberg s one of many who were kicked out of the iversity of California. ie's .31 now, a lawyer (Rutgers) who actices out of a wildly painted office Ilding in Los Angeles he shares with the smic Head Shop and the Silverlake ridal Co. He told the Los Angeles Times )ut his new obesion the other day; "My k has made a whole new world for me. 's 15 months old. What a fantastic kid! i in ecstasy every day." ;olaberg has no regrets, but owers who am in the high tide at Berkeley wonder at it was they accompfished. "All we omplished," says one,"was to guarantee e speech for the Jesus freaks and the re krishna.kids." n fact, the Jesus movement was around a g time before Free Speech, but California s in fact the starting place for the Jesus aks, longhaired kids in tattered jeans and itific smiles wandering over the country IU!E I Furoecraf Real Tui nly saying what alot already thinking.' in battered old Volkswagen trucks to stand on strange street corners, tugging at the sleeves of strangers and witnessing to their faith in Jesus with a boldness a Pentecostal seminarian might envy. But they have to share some of their street corners with others, from chanting Hare Krishna kids, their shaven heads burning in the summer sun like billiard balls, to sor cerers, shamans, mystics, bards, and minstrels almost beyond number. They have in common their obsessive eagerness to share a light from deep inside. Some are, evangelizing with Oriental mysticism- what someone thinks Americans perceive Oriental mysticism to be. Some of the mysticism is a blend of Oriental juu-juu and American boosterism. The Sufis are very big in California, and coming east. Arica is a movement for the affluent (the 4oday course of "training in technology of human consciousness" costs $6oo, but there's a week-end special for only $50). Seekers in Washington, D.C., could choose last week between courses being taught at a Carmelite monastery or the Fred Astaire Dance Studio. Gurdjieff teaches by example, with lessons taught in sacred dance, in the kitchen, even in the Turkish bath.. about THEY'RE ALL PART of the touchie feelie movement, but some require strict selfdiscipline. Arica, for example, sets down rigid dietary laws, and expects obiedience. "They get it too," says one scholar of the touchie-feelie scene. "Jewish kids who would die bef they would bother keeping kosher just sit there all day, sorting through the grape nuts." In return the converts get patient in struction in how to nurture their inner selves, how to shut out the confusion and disorder of the outside world and dwell lovingly on what's going on inside their 1heads. The scene in turn confuses many others who wonder where it all could lead.Is the wave of the immediate future a national nuttiness that will in fact drown national interests? Or is It only the natural reaction to a long, costly and divisive overseas war, the yearning to return to what, in the Harding years, was called normalcy? Some people see the scene as a retreat from technology, citing the patient tolerance many Americans have shown toward the gasoline shortage that they believe was contrived by .the oil com panies."Anything that hurts cars is fine with me, even if it hurts my car," a man remarked the other weekend as he lined up oin the St. Louis Lindel. Boulevard to wait his turn at a gasoline pump. Many Americans who have gone back to the farm wear their' simple, often handmade, clothes as a badge, and a protest. One guest arrived at a recent Philadelphia dinner party with her own food-strips of carrots and slices of tomatoes and a little jar of homemade soup. "It's natural," she ex plained. No one thought it odd.