The Week

The bad news is that the rate of inflation has tripled under the Carter Administration, from 4.8 per cent under Ford to over 13 per cent today. The good news is Americans are showing renewed faith in the dollar, as witness the three hundred or so bank robberies in New York City in the last two months.

Suppose, just suppose, that a prominent black leader achieves a reputation for moderation. That he urges American blacks to improve their lot not by revolutionary activity but by hard work. Suppose that leader then travels abroad—to South Africa, specifically—and engages in rhetoric indistinguishable from the kind of thing you hear in neighboring Mozambique and Angola, Communist dictatorships. He roars about the need for bloodshed and revolution, about human rights and dignity—but never adverts to the condition of his brothers in Mozambique and Angola. Suppose he goes so far as to alienate the most conspicuous opponent of South Africa’s apartheid, Chief Buthelezi. This for urging Western capital to pull out of South Africa, a move that would result—Buthelezi points out—in precisely the kind of joblessness our prominent black leader points to as the principal enemy of progress at home. Suppose— one last time—that in search of an explanation for this apparent reorientation of our leader’s political style we scrutinize his companions, and discover that the man who is traveling about South Africa as his key aide is someone who during the Fifties took the Fifth when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party; in the Sixties was gently asked by Martin Luther King please to remove himself from King’s outfit on the grounds that his pro-Communist background tended to discredit the movement; and in the Seventies is listed as an associate editor of Freedomways, whose editor is a Communist, and whose publishers are the official publishing house of the Communist Party. Okay? Our leader is, of course, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. His aide is Jack O’Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O’Dell. Is it McCarthyism to ask whether Jesse Jackson’s chief assistant during the trip to South Africa is motivated by a desire to help blacks in South Africa—or to help the cause of Communism in South Africa? When President Nixon appointed someone to the Supreme Court who 25 years earlier had made a racist statement, it was thought relevant to bring up the matter. Shouldn’t an enterprising editor question Reverend Jackson about the current motives and associations of at least this particular associate? As enterprising editors we herewith ask him exactly that question. RSVP.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

The bad news is that the rate of inflation has tripled under the Carter Administration, from 4.8 per cent under Ford to over 13 per cent today. The good news is Americans are showing renewed faith in the dollar, as witness the three hundred or so bank robberies in New York City in the last two months.

Suppose, just suppose, that a prominent black leader achieves a reputation for moderation. That he urges American blacks to improve their lot not by revolutionary activity but by hard work. Suppose that leader then travels abroad—to South Africa, specifically—and engages in rhetoric indistinguishable from the kind of thing you hear in neighboring Mozambique and Angola, Communist dictatorships. He roars about the need for bloodshed and revolution, about human rights and dignity—but never adverts to the condition of his brothers in Mozambique and Angola. Suppose he goes so far as to alienate the most conspicuous opponent of South Africa’s apartheid, Chief Buthelezi. This for urging Western capital to pull out of South Africa, a move that would result—Buthelezi points out—in precisely the kind of joblessness our prominent black leader points to as the principal enemy of progress at home. Suppose— one last time—that in search of an explanation for this apparent reorientation of our leader’s political style we scrutinize his companions, and discover that the man who is traveling about South Africa as his key aide is someone who during the Fifties took the Fifth when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party; in the Sixties was gently asked by Martin Luther King please to remove himself from King’s outfit on the grounds that his pro-Communist background tended to discredit the movement; and in the Seventies is listed as an associate editor of Freedomways, whose editor is a Communist, and whose publishers are the official publishing house of the Communist Party. Okay? Our leader is, of course, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. His aide is Jack O’Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O’Dell. Is it McCarthyism to ask whether Jesse Jackson’s chief assistant during the trip to South Africa is motivated by a desire to help blacks in South Africa—or to help the cause of Communism in South Africa? When President Nixon appointed someone to the Supreme Court who 25 years earlier had made a racist statement, it was thought relevant to bring up the matter. Shouldn’t an enterprising editor question Reverend Jackson about the current motives and associations of at least this particular associate? As enterprising editors we herewith ask him exactly that question. RSVP.