“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
January 26, 1961
NO MORE COLLEGE!
The time has come to junk the peculiar institution known as the Electoral College. Our Democracy has long since grown beyond the point where a selected elite was required to cast our vote for us.
Over one hundred times, legislation has been introduced into Congress to put an end to this unnecessary and foolish arrangement. Each time, it has thus far failed of its purpose.
In the recent election, we have seen the uproar which can be caused when electors vote – or threaten to vote – as they see fit, rather than according to the majority vote in their state. No law binds them to follow the majority; it is legally possible for them to meet and select Elvis Presley or Mr. Magoo, and the voters have no recourse whatsoever.
President Kennedy is in a particularly suitable spot to urge electoral reform. So narrow was his popular margin in the recent victory that he nearly had to win on his electoral majority against a Nixon popular vote which could actually have been greater than his own. This has happened in the past.
It would be a mark of real generosity on his part for him to throw away this disreputable old crutch on which he nearly – bu not quite – had to depend. Future generation will thank him, and every congressman who votes with him, for putting national elections on an honest basis, and abolishing for good the farce of the Electoral College.
February 9, 1961
A LAST WARNING
We wonder how many people really read what Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his final message to Congress as Chief of State?
The entire country was busy president-watching, but they had eyes only for the new one. Republicans studied Kennedy's appointments; many of them moderates, several actually Republicans, and began to voice tentative approval of the man the Democrats elected. Certainly John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address and his first State of the Union message are historic documents which gripped the imagination of the public.
Let us take some note, however, of the departing President's final words.
Whatever his shortcomings as a thinker and as an executive, Ike was sincere, and he had the interest of his nation at heart.
What did he say? We need not repeat those parts of his message which everyone expected, such as “Balance the budget”, “Look out for Communists”, and “Keep your shoelaces tied.” No-one was surprised when he described his administration as a period of progress and great accomplishments.
One statement came as a surprise. Ike issued a solemn warning against the “inordinate and growing power” of the “military-industrial combine” and its danger to democracy.
From Eisenhower, career military officer and “Big Business” candidate, this was no less than amazing.
It was so amazing, in fact, that some publications failed even to report it. TIME magazine, the house organ of that same military-industrial combine, overlooked it much as if the good man had uttered a loud belch in the middle of is speech, and it would have been ill-bred to mention it!
Good churchmen and sincere pacifists have been saying this for a long time. Nobody listens. Now the President has said it, and STILL NOBODY LISTENS!
Washington is hag-ridden by lobbyists for the rocket-makers, the shipbuilders, the munitions men and all the others who profit from war. They spend big money in the right places. They have eager allies among the squabbling Big Brass in the Pentagon.
These people sell war scares the way others sell soap chips, because war hysteria means bigger contracts for armaments.
The annual presentations before the appropriate congressional committees are heart-rending affairs. The Navy has got to have as many billions as the Air Force, or they will weep an ocean of salt tears.
Can Kennedy unify the Services and control this hydra-headed monster? We asked this question of a lower-echelon clerk at the Pentagon. “Nah”, he sniggered. “We're bigger than he is!”
Senator Paul Douglas has been damned for a “radical” when he suggested there was something improper in the way military men retire and at once accept fat jobs with the suppliers they recently dealt with. Now Eisenhower has warned us these people are a menace to our democracy.
The taxpayers are by now are conditioned to empty their pockets for armaments every time the Communist bogey-man is shook in their faces. It is time to realize that military “containment” of Communism is like scooping up water with a fishnet. Communism is not a military force, to be fought with tanks and planes. It is an idea, and it can only be stopped by replacing it with a better idea.
Almost any fool in the country can get into print with an article urging us to “get tough” with the Russians. Why not read the man who really knows what the Russians have in mind? Read Nikolai Lenin.
People wondered (afterward) why no-one read Hitler's “Mein Kampf” and took it seriously. In it he detailed exactly what the Nazis intended to do – and did!
Nikolai Lenin was the strategist of Bolshevism. In his writings he explains that Communism will overcome Capitalism (he thinks) NOT BY OPEN WARFARE BUT BY KEEPING THE WEST IN SUCH A STATE OF HYSTERIA WE WILL SPEND OURSELVES BANKRUPT ON ARMAMENTS.
They have nearly done it.
They will do it we continue to award the big manufacturers cost-plus contracts WITHOUT COMPETITIVE BIDDING.
They will do it if we fail to face up to the need for step-by-step disarmament. “Disarmament”, like “Peace”, has become a dirty word. When you use it, loud screams are heard from that same military-industrial combine which Ike warned us of.
It is a strange dilemma; that the all-out effort to “defend us” from Communism, is the one course that will most surely bring it on. Lenin predicted that after the military-industrial combine had spent us broke on guns and planes, that our whole economy would collapse, and after hunger and despair, the foul germ of Bolshevism would find root and grow here in America.
It can happen just that way if we, the common people, do not keep our own “brass hats” and corporate thieves in check.
Eisenhower saw it, great soldier and friend of the industrialists though he was; let us not forget!