The Week

■ After accepting his country’s sincere draft and arranging appropriate severance for the former jobholders, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia paused to reflect on the Meaning of It All: the United States, he said, has the biggest, richest, cruelest, and most insolent government ever. On this side of the water, meanwhile, Mr. Bill Walton, a Trail Blazer in name only, was moved by other circumstances to voice roughly the same opinion; which evoked some adverse comment including the suggestion that he be traded for Euell Gibbons and a six-pack of carrot juice. Yet another witness was heard to the same effect during the week. Senator Barry Goldwater, in a newspaper interview, said the growing power of government could be the issue that makes the Republican Party disappear to be replaced by a new party. Thus we have the Devil, the Devil’s convert, and the Devil’s opponent all testifying that absolutist government is America’s central problem today, as it was in 1776.

■ The Equal Rights Amendment will not upset the Constitution in 1975, having been voted down by the North Carolina legislature. Actually, the Amendment’s language seems innocuous enough: “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” But the succession of defeats it has encountered lately suggests that Americans are deeply suspicious of it as yet another elastic clause with which liberals and radicals may strain the fabric of customary American life—as some proponents of the Amendment explicitly mean to do. The main reason for opposing any such profound change as a new constitutional “right” is not that it is not a right, but that we have gotten along pretty well without making a big constitutional point of it. We can’t be sure we’d get along as well with it.

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■ After accepting his country’s sincere draft and arranging appropriate severance for the former jobholders, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia paused to reflect on the Meaning of It All: the United States, he said, has the biggest, richest, cruelest, and most insolent government ever. On this side of the water, meanwhile, Mr. Bill Walton, a Trail Blazer in name only, was moved by other circumstances to voice roughly the same opinion; which evoked some adverse comment including the suggestion that he be traded for Euell Gibbons and a six-pack of carrot juice. Yet another witness was heard to the same effect during the week. Senator Barry Goldwater, in a newspaper interview, said the growing power of government could be the issue that makes the Republican Party disappear to be replaced by a new party. Thus we have the Devil, the Devil’s convert, and the Devil’s opponent all testifying that absolutist government is America’s central problem today, as it was in 1776.

■ The Equal Rights Amendment will not upset the Constitution in 1975, having been voted down by the North Carolina legislature. Actually, the Amendment’s language seems innocuous enough: “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” But the succession of defeats it has encountered lately suggests that Americans are deeply suspicious of it as yet another elastic clause with which liberals and radicals may strain the fabric of customary American life—as some proponents of the Amendment explicitly mean to do. The main reason for opposing any such profound change as a new constitutional “right” is not that it is not a right, but that we have gotten along pretty well without making a big constitutional point of it. We can’t be sure we’d get along as well with it.