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V Muzak prevails
Ron Kurtenbach is a UNL
graduate student studying
English. He is also actively
involved in anti-war and
anti-draft activities.
An intellectual is a person
who seriously and playfully
seeks and speaks the truth. An
intellectual who compromises
that pursuit is committing
suicide of his or her integrity.
However, seeking and
speaking the truth can entail
being vulnurable. A committed
intellectual is willing to be
cursed and plagued, if
necessary, by the attacks of
those in political power.
Ideally the competence of
an intellectual should be
powerful in itself. Tragically in
this society competence and
the truth are not enough. One
must make compromises to get
power. Sadly those
compromises can mean
thwarting truth itself.
. I realize that "truth" is a
controversial concept although
sometimes it clearly screams for
exposure. I am willing to grant
that truth often has subjective
and ambiguous qualities.
However the responsibility
remains to at least reveal
truthful subjectivity and
ambiguity.
In a society whose language
increasingly is that of coercion -and
corruption, free
intellectual discourse is
threatened. When an intellecual
community is politically under
attack so that a free exchange
of feelings and ideas cannot
take place, many intellectuals
tend to bend toward
expediency and self-censorship.
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Dear editor.
Within the article
"Agribusiness plows under
small family farms" (The Daily
Nebraskan Dec. 3), your
reporter Bart Becker quoted
candidate Wallace Peterson as
stating "The trend to larger,
corporate farms needs to be
checked, halted and reversed,"
Mr. Becker futher attributed to
Peterson the statement that
eight corporations control
most of the food processing in
the country.
, The clear implications of
these two statements are that
the food processors are taking
over agricultural production
and forcing the farmers off the
land and into the overcrowded
urban areas, and that corporate
farming must be stopped in this
nation.
Possibly Mr. Becker
misinterpreted the tenor of
Peterson's remarks, for
Peterson as a Regent's
Professor, chairman of the
Department of Economics and
a professor of Economics is
not, I would hope, so
uninformed as to imply that
farm corporations are "taking
over" United States
agricultural production,
especially in the Midwest.
At that point an intellectual
has compromised what is
sacred to a life of pursuing and
speaking the truth. To allow
unfair political considerations
to induce self-censorship is to
become a prostitute to fear and
ambition.
Intellectual prostitutes are
not free intellectuals; they are
the artificial flatterers of the
corrupt persons in power. They
are the contrived rationalized
instruments of the politically
powerful.
Sadly in this community
there are those who are
allowing themselves to be used.
A true intellectual seeks and
speaks the truth even though
that act may entail losing a job,
not getting a promotion, or
even jgoing to jail. Far too
often in this community, house
payments, car payments, and
criteria of effectiveness and
practicality get in the way of
persons seeking and speaking
the truth.
If speaking the truth entails
political powerlessness, so be .
it. If speaking, the truth is
unpopular, ineffective, or
impractical, so be it. If
speaking the truth is
embarrassing in a community
and leads to social ostracism,
so be it. For a university to
compromise in seeking the
truth is for that institution to
be a house of prostitution.
Again I realize that
reasonable and compassionate
women and men can differ as
to what and who is the truth,
but let the truth seeking and
speaking go on without
compromise for the sake of
As any student of
agriculture change knows, most
of the corporate farms in the
Midwest and plains areas of
this nation are family
corporations, so formed to
take advantage of certain
provisions in the law reserved
for that form of business
organization such as estate
planning, availability of credit,
etc.
Agricultural Economic
Report 209, Economic
Research Service, U.S.D.A.,
June,. 1971, reports 467 farm
corporations in Nebraska,
which represent only 1 per
cent of all commercial farms
and 4 per cent of all farmland.
Further, the report shows that
for the Corn Belt, 77 per cent
of the farm corporations are
either individual or family
owned, and for the northern
plains the figure is 84 per cent
of the corporations in farming
either owned by an individual
or a family. Corporate farming
of all forms accounts for only
4 per cent of total agricultural
sales in the Northern Plains, 2
per cent in the Corn Belt and 8
per cent in the United States.
I think what we are
observing in modern
agricultural production is a
movement of the larger, more
efficient family farms to choose
incorporation as a means of
business organization rather
intellectual integrity and the
truth itself. Pathetically there
are those professed truth
seekers who are willing to
opportunistically censor
themselves when the truth is
not helpful to their personal
ambitions.
Let not the Unicameral,
Board of Regents, or
University administrators (or
even our peers) prostitute us.
We should try to freely make
truthful love (even in the
dorms) and know the truth
rather than allowing ourselves
to be deceived by lies. Seeking
and speaking the truth involves
a compassionate honest
pursuit, not expedient
manipulation. Let not the
corrupt in authority pimp and
fuck us. (Even the word
"fuck" may be truthful at
times').
For an intellectual to
compromise the freedom of
her or his Camelotish
truthfully expressed fantasies is
for Camelot to become
tarnished with prostitution.
Camelot is not a whorehouse,
and Richard Burton is not
President Varner.
Let the ideals of the free
pursuit and speaking of truth
continue even though that
odyssey may not sound like
the Partridge Family. It may
even sound like Chicago and
Grand Funk at times. There is
a limit to a life of intellectual
Muzak. When Muzak begins to
sound like the truth then lies
are beginning to prevail. I hear
Muzak at the University of
Nebraska.
than the traditional partnership
or single owner. These latter
forms of organization have
often forced our young people
to leave agriculture when the
senior partner or sole owner
dies, and the estate is thrown
into the courts. The family
corporation is a means of
insuring that our youth,
through the ownership of
shares of the corporation have
a place reserved in the
management of the family
farm.
Rather than pushing for the
retrenchment of family
corporation farming, one
would think that candidate
Peterson would make sure
reporters were aware of this
technique to retain youth in
agricultural production. Too
often, the remarks attributed
to Peterson leave the reader
with the impression that
Peterson is using political,
emotionalism rather than
discussing the ' real needs of
modern agriculture. One thing
that history has proven is that
agricultura.l policy proposals
based on hypocritical
emotional appeals of
candidates have failed to raise
incomes or provide job
opportunities in agriculture.
James G. Kendrick
professor of Agricultural
Economics
TH E DAI LY NEBRASKAN
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1
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Stuff his stocking with
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Post, 144 North 14th.
I
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1971
PAGE 5
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