78-05-B6
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Miscellaneous
TranscriptThis is another desk-cleaning day. I thought you might be interested to know the AFL-CIO Executive council thinks the federal budget's too low! Come to think of it I can't recall a time when our top labor leaders ever suggested reducing a federal budget. It does seem to be a strange way to represent the rank and file whose taxes pay for so much government extravagance. Another item: You'll recall the State department went to great length to assure us that we were returning the Crown of St. Stephen to the people of Hungary not its communist government. The people of Hungary would never have found that out if Radio Free Europe hadn't told them over and over again that the crown had been returned. Finally the embarrassed state-controlled press in Hungary admitted to the people the crown was back. With all of the debate over the Panama Canal treaties why didn't the Senators take a look at a suggestion made by retired General Wedemeyer? He proposed postponing any definitive action till about the year 2000. He said, "Tell the Panamanians that if conditions in the interim are indisputably favorable for our military and economic security as well as theirs and other interested Latin American countries, we would then and only then look with favor upon sharing responsibilities not only with Panama but with other Latin American countries. That solution", he said, "seems realistic and is not arbitrary, yet guarantees Panama participation if their political, economic and ideological policies are compatible with our own."--UNQUOTE-- It's pretty hard to find fault with that--unless you're a dictator trying to swing a deal with a New York financial house for a long term bond issue based on Canal revenues you hope to get if the treaties are ratified. Back in May, 1976 writing in the official publication of the "War Resisters League" a fellow named Hendrick Hertzberg summed up the 1975 communist victory in South Vietnam as follows. --QUOTE--"The communists were the good guys in the Vietnamese war. Most people will be far better off than they were under Saigon-- Malevolent repression will give way to a more benevolent totalitarianism. Under Thieu (South Vietnams President) editors were arrested and newspapers were closed down. Under the Communists there will be no further need for censorship, because the press will merely be a part of the states and party apparatus. The society the Communists construct in Vietnam will not be a free society as I understand the term. But the outcome of the struggle, both there and here in the United States was: a victory for something honorable in the human spirit."--UNQUOTE-- Slavery is honorable? I thought you'd be interested in that, inasmuch as Mr. Hertzberg is now a speech writer on the White House staff. A Domestic item to close with indicates how unfree we're becoming. In California a surveyor telephoned the state capitol to ask who had drawn the costal zone line for his county. California you know, has a costal commission with so much power it can practically imprison a child for building a sand castle on the beach. The commission lawyer who took the surveyor's call didn't know the answer but he said, "The sooner you people up there realize that you have nothing to say about the property you own the better off you'll be."--UNQUOTE-- This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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