PROTEST AND THE TEACH-IN

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The plans to shut up the pro-war speakers Friday are both wrong and stupid. By mimicking opponents who are totalitarian in outlook, our radicals suggest that the whole choice lies between the totalitarians in power and those lusting after it. The "masses," unless starving, have always chosen "the oppressor they know and love."

Just as "man" should mean more than "animal," "argument" should be valued above "noise." A flock of crows would surely silence these speakers effectively. Obstructors deny their own "human worth," to use the least ridiculous phrase left when they deny such worth in opponents. And having put a mental X across the enemy faces one might as well, for efficiency, toss in an anti-personal grenade (though Etymology, a certain old bleeding-heart professor-emeritus, might whimper that "anti-personnel" is "substantially equivalent" to "in-human").

But perhaps radicals don't admit any humanist absolutes. Still, obstruction and violence are extreme forms of blustering. Cicero, you recall, advised speakers to bluster when they had no case and to speak dispassionately when the facts were with them. Thus it is a great political disappointment as well, that though the facts are with us, many radicals have really demonstrated that they have no faith in their own cause.