Friday, April 26, 1985
Pago 4
Daily Nebraskan
av the
w
hen the budget ax comes down, it often
lops off the other half of education the
arts.
That appears to be the case with the proposed
cuts in the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery budget.
At peril are evening and weekend hours at the
gallery, three film series programs and music
programming. At peril also is some of the quality
of an education at UNL
Some philosophies of education, which are
inherently anti-intellectual in their vocational
ism, view the arts as frivolities as some sort of
lace on the fringes of a "real" education. How
ever, we believe the arts are avital and necessary
part of higher education, which has a duty
beyond stuffing information into students and
meting out diplomas.
The Sheldon Art Gallery and the Sheldon Film
Theatre function admirably in performing that
duty. They provide students the opportunity to
see something different, to grow intellectually,
morally and perhaps even spiritually. And growth
is what education is supposed to be about.
The programs threatened by the proposed
Sheldon cuts affect such growth in a number of
ways. The English department Film Studies Ser
ies provides the materials for several classes.
Many foreign language classes rely heavily on the
Foreign Film Series. And the Sheldon Film Ser
ies provides quality thought-provoking and en
tertaining films to the university community.
If the budget ax does come down, Sheldon
Film Theatre Director Dan Ladely will be, if not
unemployed at least handcuffed by limited
funds and shorter gallery hours. He will be
unable to continue the fine job of building the
Sheldon's film programs which he and the
Friends of The Sheldon Film Theatre have made
nationally known.
But being nationally known isn't what mat
ters. In the end, what matters is that foreign
language students are able to see foreign films,
English students are able to see the films they're
studying and students in fields foreign to art are
able to see a world outside their own.
That's not frivolity. It's not even "the other
half of education." Ask a film studies student
how much he or she can learn about a movie by
just reading about it.
Want more proof that we need quality arts
programs? National Public Radio reported Thurs
day that "Wheel of Fortune" is the most popular
television show in the United States, drawing 40
million viewers daily to surpass the former
leader, "The A-Team."
Daily
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PUBLICATIONS BOARD
CHAIRPERSON
PROFESSIONAL ADVISER
Chrli Walsch, 472-1766
Danll Shatlll
Katharine Pollcky
Tom Byrns
Kelly Mangan
Slav Meyer
Mlchlela l human
Lauri Hopple
Judl Nygrtn
Vlckl Ruhge
Christopher Burbach
Ward W. Trlplatt III
Steele Thomas
Ad Hudler
Gah V. Huay
Stavt Kill
Tony Schcppaugh
Chria Choate, 472-8788
Don Walton, 473-7301
The Dally Nebraskan (USPS 144 080) is published by the
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1S84 DAILY NEBRASKAN
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Congress kills contra aid and American clout
This is the most important congressional
moment since May 1947, when Congress
supported U.S. intervention-through-aid on
the anti-communist side in the Greek civil war.
Congress thereby transformed containment from
a theory into a policy. Congress has now effec
tively killed aid for the anti-communist side in
Nicaragua's civil war. Congress has forbidden
even modest financial support of the military
effort of a mass movement prepared to do the
dying to prevent consolidation of the second
Soviet satellite in this hemisphere and the first
on the North American continent. The eviscera
tion of containment is complete.
uu mm
George
Will
What Reagan's aides are calling a compromise
(aid restricted to nonmilitary uses) is a shatter
ing defeat. He sought military support for a mil
itary movement and lost, utterly. On an issue he
characterized correctly in the starkest
moral and national-security terms, his charac
terization was disproportionate to his effort. He
did not go to the country on television. A great
communicator does not deal exclusively in good
news (it is time for a tax cut; America is back
and standing tall). He also rallies majorities for
hard decisions. Reagan has chosen to hoard his
political capital for what? The great battle
over Amtrak subsidies?
In 1947 President Truman told Congress: "I
believe it must be the policy of the United States
to support free people who are resisting subjuga
tion by armed minorities or by outside pressure."
Reagan's policy was the past tense is required
the Truman Doctrine after 38 years of commu
nist advance. An armed Nicaraguan minority
sustained by outside (Soviet, Cuban, East Ger
man, etc.) forces, is sovietizing Nicaragua in the
way that was being done in Eastern Europe in
1947.
The Soviet Union's Sandinista clients have no
more right to rule Nicaragua than Vidkun Qui
sling had to rule Norway. Yet the world con
tinues to speak of Sandinista steps toward Stal
inism as "failings." The Sandinistas are not
somehow failing to implement democracy; those
"failings" are premeditated successes.
FDR spoke of "quarantining" dictators, but an
isolationist Congress resisted, until the big war
arrived. Now that today's Congress has essen
tially spurned the contras, communist dictators
on four continents will know that Congress will
not permit even small inoculations, let alone
quarantine.
The sum involved $14 million is 12
percent of the sum ($117 million) the U.S.
government had given to the Sandinista regime
by 1981. Familiar voices are saying the usual
things: that the United States "drove" the San
dinistas into Soviet clutches. But in their first
two years, the Sandinistas received more aid
from the United States than from any other coun
try five times more than the Somoza regime
received in its last two years. (Someone should
calculate the value in 1985 dollars of the aid
France gave the American Revolution. It was, I
will wager, much more than $14 million.)
During the Vietnam War, people eager to
believe were encouraged by Hanoi to believe that
South Vietnam was experiencing a "indigenous
peasant revolt" and that the ferment in Indo
china was only cosmetically communist. The
Sandinistas deny their American protectors the
comfort of that pretense. The Sandinistas do not
deign to disguise their Stalinism at home, their
"socialist solidarity" with the Soviet Union and
its other clients, their "revolution without
borders" against neighbors.
In 1947 Congress had fresh memories of the
terrible price paid becuse of nonresistance to
Hitler at the time of the re-militarism of the
Rhineland. Today the historical memory of many
members of Congress consists entirely of Viet
nam and its putative lessons. But congressional
management of U.S. policy toward Central Amer
ica too little aid, too late; pursuit of the
chimera of negotiated settlement with a regime
that does not believe in splitting differences
is a recipe for another Vietnam: another pro
tracted failure.
Surely the Americans who should talk least
about negotiated liberalization of the Sandinista
regime are those Americans who, by trying to
destroy the contras, are removing the only
serious pressure on the Sandinistas.
Today there are anti-communist insur
gencies in Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia.
Americans opposed to the contras favor, in
effect, a declaration of indifference to the only
force that might enable Nicaragua to join Portu
gal, Spain, Turkey, Argentina and Honduras on
the list of nations that have risen from tyranny to
democracy.
Mikhail Gorbachev hit the ground running
right at Pakistan, threatening reprisals if Pak
istan continues to facilitate aid for the Afghan
resistance. Now that Congress has spurned the
contras, how long will Pakistan resist Soviet
pressure? Now that Congress will not counte
nance support for the contras, the increasingly
tinny voice of the United States will have
decreased resonance in South Africa, the Philip
pines and other places where freedom is at issue.
It is said that an optimist is someone who
believes his future is uncertain. Optimism about
democracy, and not just democracy in Central
America, is irrational now that, six months after
a landslide reaffirmation of a president, Con
gress, acting in the name of fastidiousness, has
removed the keystone of his foreign policy: sup
port for democratic revolutions.
1885, Washington Post Writers Group
Letters
UNL student criticizes
use of health club ads
As a dissatisfied member of the 24-Hour Nau
tilus health club in Lincoln, I am disappointed
and disgusted that the Daily Nebraskan con
tinues to run ads enticing students to join such a
substandard health club. Although the health
club is changing ownership, these complaints
must be aired. The facility is filthy, the Lancas
ter County Health Department has received
numerous member complaints regarding the
club's unhealthy conditions, and the local tele
vision station (101 1) ran a news segment on the
club's unhealthy conditions.
It seems to me that the organization's only
concern is profit, not the health of its members.
They also use "once in a lifetime deals" and
high pressure sales tactics to convince potential
members to sign contracts.
When you continue to run its ads you are
ensuring that more students will be victimized
by such an unsavory "business" organization.
Dwight Duchek
senior
criminal justice
