liberal syllogism: 1) We give hundreds of millions of dollars to Indonesia’s Sukarno. 2) Sukarno buys hundreds of millions of dollars worth of guns, jet planes, naval vessels, etc., from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. 3) Sukarno mobilizes his army, fleet and air force, and issues an ultimatum to our ally, the Netherlands: hand over western New Guinea, and no nonsense about letting the inhabitants have a say about how they want to be governed or by whom. Therefore, 4) What we need is more foreign aid.
Newburgh, New York, has got the word from the New York State Supreme Court: all but one of its thirteen revolutionary proposals concerning civic “welfare” administration are illegal (the exception: requiring welfare recipients to report to City Hall once a month). Although Newburgh and its City Manager, Joseph Mitchell, have no recourse now (except appeal), they can look back on a job well done, for they aroused the nation to a reappraisal of the welfare structure so searching that even Abraham Ribicoff, Secretary of the Healthy Wealthy & Wise Dept., has announced he’ll try to abolish cheating; and Mitchell can look forward to an enormous job remaining ahead, the mobilization of popular demand directed at state capitals and at Washington in order to rewrite the welfare laws so that commonsensical proposals such as Newburgh’s may one day be not only rational but also legal.
Comments