Doubts About the Great Society

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE

of the editorial/opinion page staff

published by the StarTribune 

August 8, 1965

   THE GREAT SOCIETY rests on abundance and liberty for all, says President Johnson.  This is a tall order, but surely none but the completely cynical can dismiss the plethora of administration programs as political devices designed to enchant the yokels and keep the Democrats in power.  Through education, occupational training and firmer health and economic security, the country is embarked on a challenging task to end deprivation, unemployment and inequality.

   One in every five Americans is poor--not even close to minimal standards in food, shelter and medical care.  Some children sleep on floors in burlap bags.  Cardboard substitutes for glass at the window and refrigerators don't refrigerate but do keep food from the rats.

   THERE ARE compelling reasons for medicare, aid to education, the Job Corps, domestic Peace Corps and other facets of the drive for a better America.  And yet, there is something vaguely disquieting in this bright federal promise of all things for all people--something foreign to the doctrine of enterprise in the assurances that the individual need not worry his silly head about the future because Big Daddy is there to help with the rent money, to help provide a job or job training, to send Junior to work camp or to put a young one into Operation Head Start.

   Many of us who admire President Johnson's adroitness in pushing legislation through Congress don't care much for those corn-pone homilies about peace, nobility and goodwill which were so abundant in his July 28 television report on Viet Nam and which characterize so many of his utterances.

   We'd feel more confident that he truly championed justice and those virtues rooted in American tradition if his reflexes were less responsive to politics.  It's not easy, while hearing about the aims of the Great Society, to forget Bobby Baker, that protege of Mr. Johnson who did such profitable but unethical moonlighting while secretary to the Senate majority.  Persisting in the mind also is the hanky-panky involving Billie Sol Estes.  Had the Baker and Billie Sol investigations been cleared of roadblocks and subterfuge, had the investigators been given the go-ahead to smoke out everything, our cheers for the President now would be less restrained.

   With all his professed concern for human rights, we wonder why he doesn't bring pressure on the State Department to put Otto Otepka, the former chief of the department's security division, back in good standing.  Otepka's telephone was bugged and he was rebuked, demoted and ostracized because he was diligent in his duty and, particularly, because he testified before a Senate subcommittee.

   WE CONFESS a definite hunch that individual destiny is being shaped more and more by the government, and that group thought and conformity are nearing full flower, with Uncle Sam increasingly the master and snooper.

   The Great Society has far to go before it's an established success.  It may breed indolence and dilute ambition.  Still its aims are lofty and it should be given our best.  In these complex times, so remote from the horse and buggy, it may be our only rational course.

   But we'd be more content to follow it were it not so engulfed in soothing syrup and were the leadership less paternalistic and benign.   

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