Do you have sense enough to know what you want to read? What you consider to be fit to read? Apparently a number of city governing boards in the state and elsewhere do not think so. It begins to look as if there might even be competition among the municipalities to see which can surpass the others in telling the public that you can or cannot read this or that. The news this week revealed that Nashville has banned six magazines which even passed the Knoxville censors. Among them was the January issue of Modern Man, a magazine which I had never seen. However, I rushed right down, secured a copy of it, and looked through it. There is hardly anything in it that one may not see in his daily newspaper, on a roadside billboard, or any other public means of display. It is not only disturbing, but a matter of curiosity, to speculate as to why it is that community do-gooders and busybodies get it into their noodles that they and they only know what literature is; that they feel they can set themselves up as superior beings to dictate to us, the common herd, what is fit for us to read. It is not only undemocratic, but irritating. We have laws against obscenity, against salacious literature. If a magazine or other publisher violates these laws, he should be punished. Matters of this sort properly belong in a court of law, and should not be left up to private individuals and groups, acting under sanction of spineless or unthinking governing boards, to be the censors of literate morality. Wonder if they ever heard of the First Amendment to the federal Constitution?
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Closely related to the above item is a matter now pending in the Tennessee state legislature, namely, a bill sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association, that would make meetings of public commissions, boards, etc., open to the public. These commissions and boards are transacting your and my business, but apparently many of them do not wish us to know what they are doing. As one reads the statements of opponents of the measures he can, if he has imagination, visualize their smallness of stature. Is it not rather anomalous that such a bill should be needed or thought to be needed? This reporter is not talking here without benefit of some experience in the matter, for rather wide experience with boards and agencies of various types from the federal to the local level has given him firsthand knowledge of how school boards, city councils, Washington bureaus, and other similar bodies feel that their own domain is their personal empire, and what they do should be a matter of them and them only to know about. There is a moral element involved here. The people have a right to know. It was rather refreshing to live some five or six years in a state where meetings of all public agencies were open at all times to the public, and none of the dire things the timid legislators at Nashville who oppose the “right to know” bill fear happened there. Your and my duty with respect to government is to exert our influence to the end of making it better, more constructive, and cleaner. We cannot do this without information as to what is going on, and we cannot get that information unless representatives of the public are permitted to be present and report upon the transaction of public business. It is as simple as that.
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One comforting item in the week’s news should set the minds of school people at rest, and should make a lot of people red-faced. For years now school teachers and school administrators have been insisting that there is a critical shortage of classrooms in the nation’s schools. Under consideration by a House committee now is an administration bill seeking to provide $1.3 billion over the next four years in federal aid for school construction. Now comes the spokesman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, testifying before that House committee, who reveals that there is really no shortage of classrooms at all. Thomas A. Ballantine of Louisville, Kentucky, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Committee on Education said, “No critical national shortage in classrooms has been or can be demonstrated to exist.” In fact, instead of a shortage, he has discovered a 14,000 surplus. And that should settle that issue, once and for all.
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It is not my desire to ride the same horse to the point of destruction, but a number of times I have made reference to the need from both the standpoints of safety and of aesthetics to do something to regulate billboard nuisance on the projected 41,000 miles of federal highways. From Washington this week comes news that the billboard lobby is hot after Rep. Cliff Davis of Tennessee who has introduced in the House a companion bill to the one Senator Neuberger sponsored in the Senate to permit use of federal aid in buying up advertising options along these highways. Even union representatives, sign painters and electricians, are putting heat on him. I happen to be a card-carrying member of the AFL, but the welfare of the public comes before the welfare of the union, regardless of what Mr. Wilson once said in another connection. Why not write Rep. Davis and let him know how you feel about the matter? Incidentally, the AAA has for the first time in its history, backed the pending bills, and it represents over 5 million motorists.
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Of course you know that the United Nations is being urged to impose diplomatic, economic, and perhaps other sanctions against Israel because of her refusal to relinquish Gaza and the Gulf of Aqaba unless or until she receives U.N. guarantees that there will be no further raids on the part of the Arabs of Israeli territory. Without any comment upon the rightness or wrongness of her position, few would disagree with the president who said that two wrongs do not make a right, that because Egypt violated her pledge in the U.N. Charter and raided Israel is no excuse for Israel to violate her pledge in the U.N. Charter to settle her differences with other nations by peaceful means. However, any serious or concerned move to impose the same kind of sanctions against Russia for her rape of Hungary is noticeable only for its lack. Veritably, in our world of today, the way of the small transgressor is hard.
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The women’s segment of a county political organization in a neighboring county this week used as its theme “Recognizing Americanism Month,” apparently meaning February. (No mention was made about the other 11 months.) However, this reflects again how enamored some of us can get about slogans and words that mean everything or nothing. As a matter of fact, many of us have become so bored with “ism” words these last few years that we avoid them entirely. The word “Americanism” is one that has been bandied about all too much, and it is about time we either tried to define it or omit its use altogether. A few years ago some of us hoped that some cases then in the courts would force a judicial definition, but we were naive, and such was not forthcoming.
Anyway, the news item mentioned goes on to say that the speaker discussed George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others. But after all, what is Americanism? Well, it may be the heroes at Valley Forge, or at least the courage they displayed; a Mexican boy carrying the American flag in a Colorado pageant; the Negro fighting within the framework of our constitutional system for the rights that bigoted fellow-citizens of his would deny him. It is not only the George Washingtons and Abraham Lincolns, though we honor them as great; it is the Italian miner in the coal pits. Not only those whose ancestors came over in 1620; but the Hungarian refugees who aspire to become good American citizens. America is made up of all races, all creeds, all nationalities; it is composed of people who came here centuries ago, and of the ones who arrived yesterday. It is composed of not only the George Pullmans and the Andrew Carnegies, but also of the Eugene Debs and Norman Thomases; it is the beleaguered farmer of the dust bowl seeking government assistance in order to retain his homestead for his family, and it is those who resign from office because of conflicts of interest over family contracts with the government. Taken together, it is all of us who make up America. Here we have learned to reconcile our differences without conflict, to be tolerant of those whose convictions are in conflict with our own; to recognize that within the framework of our Constitution and laws under it, we have formed a society that transcends old world loyalties and traditions. It is to this Constitution that all of us owe loyalty, and anyone who respects it and abides by it is to be respected for his Americanism, regardless of his place of origin, religious or political belief, or social or economic status.