THE WEEK

The young man who said he would never go to the Summit without adequate preparation went to the Summit last week fully prepared after two weeks of concentrated study. The warrior who said he would not talk about Laos until a cease-fire was established went to the Summit and talked about establishing a cease-fire. The President, after he heard Mr. Khrushchev say that “no man is neutral,” agreed to work for a neutral Laos. Mr. Kennedy informs us that Mr. Khrushchev uses such words as “democracy,” “popular will,” “war,” “peace,” “aggression,” “internal affair,” “right and wrong” in meanings wholly foreign to the accepted sense in our language, but he says his discussion with Khrushchev was “immensely useful.” Presumably Mr. Kennedy reaffirmed to de Gaulle and Macmillan our intention to defend West Berlin—in phrases whose real import, in view of the West’s perennial retreat, Mr. Khrushchev has as much right to question as Mr. Kennedy should have to doubt Khrushchev’s use of the word neutrality in relation to Laos. If we read the signs aright—Mr. Kennedy’s haste to withdraw his pre-Summit demands, Mr. Stevenson apologizing to Latin America for our gaffe in Cuba, our retreat to neutrality in Laos after spending $300 million for anti-Communist arms there—if we read the signs, we see a new turn in foreign policy, a turn toward that ancient engine of withdrawal, called Appeasement. Appeasement leads to war.

“The formal opportunity to be educated is beyond question one of the basic accepted and indispensable expectations in contemporary society,” says the Justice Department, in a brief seeking to prove that the Constitution requires the states to maintain public schools. “The practice of medicine is a public trust,” says Abraham Ribicoff, who predicts that The People will expect adequate medical care to be included in their ditty-bag of basic rights. And the farmers expect to live like the auto workers; so, the government should make it possible—right? And the labor unions. And the aged. Everyone has rights, these days, everyone has desires and claims and stunted plans and unslaked yearnings—but is the government therefore required to be the sole protector, nurse, and counselor? Surely the right to marriage is more basic than the right to medical care: is Mr. Ribicoff therefore required to serve as National Marriage Broker? We have the right to improve our minds in our leisure time: must we therefore establish a National Culture Administration? We have the right to travel about: does this require the states to provide public transportation? We also have the right to predict that a time will come when one half of the country has no rights at all, but only the “national duty” to work full-time to satisfy the claims of the other half, who wrap their pride and greed and sloth in the gorgeous folds of “basic rights” and then sit back, commanding their slaves to produce. To which half will you give the right to support the other half, Mr. Ribicoff? The incredible claim by the Attorney General, whose acceptance by the court would have the effect of repealing the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, is the direst threat to freedom and states’ rights to have been voiced by a responsible government official in fifteen years.

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The young man who said he would never go to the Summit without adequate preparation went to the Summit last week fully prepared after two weeks of concentrated study. The warrior who said he would not talk about Laos until a cease-fire was established went to the Summit and talked about establishing a cease-fire. The President, after he heard Mr. Khrushchev say that “no man is neutral,” agreed to work for a neutral Laos. Mr. Kennedy informs us that Mr. Khrushchev uses such words as “democracy,” “popular will,” “war,” “peace,” “aggression,” “internal affair,” “right and wrong” in meanings wholly foreign to the accepted sense in our language, but he says his discussion with Khrushchev was “immensely useful.” Presumably Mr. Kennedy reaffirmed to de Gaulle and Macmillan our intention to defend West Berlin—in phrases whose real import, in view of the West’s perennial retreat, Mr. Khrushchev has as much right to question as Mr. Kennedy should have to doubt Khrushchev’s use of the word neutrality in relation to Laos. If we read the signs aright—Mr. Kennedy’s haste to withdraw his pre-Summit demands, Mr. Stevenson apologizing to Latin America for our gaffe in Cuba, our retreat to neutrality in Laos after spending $300 million for anti-Communist arms there—if we read the signs, we see a new turn in foreign policy, a turn toward that ancient engine of withdrawal, called Appeasement. Appeasement leads to war.

“The formal opportunity to be educated is beyond question one of the basic accepted and indispensable expectations in contemporary society,” says the Justice Department, in a brief seeking to prove that the Constitution requires the states to maintain public schools. “The practice of medicine is a public trust,” says Abraham Ribicoff, who predicts that The People will expect adequate medical care to be included in their ditty-bag of basic rights. And the farmers expect to live like the auto workers; so, the government should make it possible—right? And the labor unions. And the aged. Everyone has rights, these days, everyone has desires and claims and stunted plans and unslaked yearnings—but is the government therefore required to be the sole protector, nurse, and counselor? Surely the right to marriage is more basic than the right to medical care: is Mr. Ribicoff therefore required to serve as National Marriage Broker? We have the right to improve our minds in our leisure time: must we therefore establish a National Culture Administration? We have the right to travel about: does this require the states to provide public transportation? We also have the right to predict that a time will come when one half of the country has no rights at all, but only the “national duty” to work full-time to satisfy the claims of the other half, who wrap their pride and greed and sloth in the gorgeous folds of “basic rights” and then sit back, commanding their slaves to produce. To which half will you give the right to support the other half, Mr. Ribicoff? The incredible claim by the Attorney General, whose acceptance by the court would have the effect of repealing the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, is the direst threat to freedom and states’ rights to have been voiced by a responsible government official in fifteen years.