The Week

• The Get-Out-of-Vietnam crusade, so full of chuff a few weeks ago when our forces were caught planting poison ivy behind enemy lines, is showing signs of vaporizing into those thin halations of piety by which the politically righteous exalt themselves. Thus a full-page ad in a recent edition of the New York Times, entitled “2,500 Ministers, Priests and Rabbis Say: Mr. President, In the Name of God, Stop It!” contains not one single shred of argument. There is not even a pseudo-factual rendition of the horrors we have committed—nothing for the mind to grip, except the Name of God, surrounded by a partial listing of the plaintive 2,500, who hope, perhaps, by this conjunction to invoke the peace that passeth all, or at any rate our, understanding.

• When Americans for Democratic Action assembled in Washington last week for their 18th Annual Convention, who was on hand to greet them and praise them but Lyndon Baines Johnson. They applauded his remarks warmly, cheered him once or twice, and then proceeded to adopt their program for the year, which included demands for: a) an immediate ceasefire in Vietnam and the establishment of a neutralized zone in Indochina (both of which the Johnson Administration currently opposes); b) full economic sanctions against South Africa (opposed by the State Department); c) recognition of Red China and its admission to the UN (both against current U.S. policy); d) de facto recognition of East Germany and of the Oder-Neisse line (both opposed by our NATO ally West Germany); e) immediate “free” elections in Formosa (but not in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania or the USSR). All of which proves that—what is that saying? politics makes strange bedfellows. Just five years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was more choosy—“We don’t want the suppo of odd balls on the Left or the Right—either ADA KKK.” Now he wants to outlaw the oddballs in the KKK, and solicit the favor of the oddballs in the ADA.

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• The Get-Out-of-Vietnam crusade, so full of chuff a few weeks ago when our forces were caught planting poison ivy behind enemy lines, is showing signs of vaporizing into those thin halations of piety by which the politically righteous exalt themselves. Thus a full-page ad in a recent edition of the New York Times, entitled “2,500 Ministers, Priests and Rabbis Say: Mr. President, In the Name of God, Stop It!” contains not one single shred of argument. There is not even a pseudo-factual rendition of the horrors we have committed—nothing for the mind to grip, except the Name of God, surrounded by a partial listing of the plaintive 2,500, who hope, perhaps, by this conjunction to invoke the peace that passeth all, or at any rate our, understanding.

• When Americans for Democratic Action assembled in Washington last week for their 18th Annual Convention, who was on hand to greet them and praise them but Lyndon Baines Johnson. They applauded his remarks warmly, cheered him once or twice, and then proceeded to adopt their program for the year, which included demands for: a) an immediate ceasefire in Vietnam and the establishment of a neutralized zone in Indochina (both of which the Johnson Administration currently opposes); b) full economic sanctions against South Africa (opposed by the State Department); c) recognition of Red China and its admission to the UN (both against current U.S. policy); d) de facto recognition of East Germany and of the Oder-Neisse line (both opposed by our NATO ally West Germany); e) immediate “free” elections in Formosa (but not in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania or the USSR). All of which proves that—what is that saying? politics makes strange bedfellows. Just five years ago, Lyndon Baines Johnson was more choosy—“We don’t want the suppo of odd balls on the Left or the Right—either ADA KKK.” Now he wants to outlaw the oddballs in the KKK, and solicit the favor of the oddballs in the ADA.