EXECUTIVE STUPIDITY AGAIN

A frenzy of suppression has seized the regulators of morality. Not satisfied with exposing their humorloss deficiencies by calling a parody an intentional blasphemy, the postal authorities have taken another misstep into the morass of moral judgment in refusing the use of the mails to the Dial number of the Advocate. The definition of obscenity is one of the most perilous tasks which confront the executive. It is a judgment which must be made with modesty and diffidence rather than with the arrogance and assertiveness of the present suppression.

The pomp of authority often conceals its very human fallibilities, which remain to be pointed out by following generations. And in no field is authority so liable to blunder as in that of moral distinction. Each generation has corrected and even reversed the standards of obscenity and beauty which its predecessors respected. The constant modification of moral critoria should teach the postal authorities that they cannot be too cautious of hasty and outright condemnation.

The same government which protects the liberties of its citizens must define the boundaries within which that liberty may be exercised. But hypocrisy and cant must not be allowed to dictate those boundaries. The field of human freedom must be kept as wide as possible, and the arbitrary definition of moral standards by insincere and prurient politicians is an infringement upon that field of free activity. On Friday the final decision will be made by the postal authorities, to readmit or bar the Dial parody. To disqualify the Advocate would be not less a slander upon its public and the University than a stigma upon the intelligence and sincerity of the postal authorities. A reinstatement in the privileges of the mails will be a vindication of the Advocate's excellent parody and proof incontrovertible of the sense of fairness and intellectual honesty which must govern the decisions of the political agents of a free people.