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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 15, 1986)
Friday, August 15, 1986 Page 4 Daily Nebraskan ji Bob Asmussen, Editor, 472,1766 James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor Kent Endacott, News Editor Jeff Korbelik, Associate News Editor Jeff Apel, Sports Editor Charles Lieurance, A rts & Entertainment Editor Nebra&kan University ol Nebraska-Lincoln Editor says immer emd E gads, not another "So Long to the Daily Nebraskan" editorial. At the conclusion of each semester's Daily Nebraskan, or in this case at the conclusion of the summer Daily Nebraskan, it seems the editor writes a sappy, sentimental journey through the past semester's DN. Along with this is the usual praise for the loyal employees that have made the semester "an experience I will never forget and one that I will always cherish." What's really needed on this last day of publication is a check of how we did what we said we were going to try to do. Political candidates are always faced with the question of accountability for the promises that they made during the campaign. Editors of student papers should be expec ted to at least try and answer those questions, too. One thing we promised was to listen to our readers. For those few readers that cared to be heard, we did listen. Question of accountability on that point is answered in the affirmative. Another promise made was that the Daily Nebraskan would have a good staff. Without get Left or right? DN welcomes competition The times, they do seem to be a changin'. For over two decades now, many have considered col lege campuses to be the unques tioned purveyors of liberalism. And within American universi ties the student newspaper has been considered one of the more strident expressions of this lib eralism. Now there are some that be lieve that this true protector of the liberal tradition seems to have undergone a change of heart. The Wall Street Journal re cently reported that the Center for National Policy, a liberal think-tank has called a group of students together to discuss the "creation of liberal newspapers on the nation's college cam puses." Some student newspap ers are considered too consist ently conservative and that there is a liberal "void" on college campuses. Some think that the Daily Nebraskan has moved in a too conservative direction. For exam ple, earlier this summer, a lib eral student columnist received a letter from a reader asking whether he had been forced to stop writing columns because he was too liberal and was now only allowed to report. (Of course, no such action had been taken.) The belief that the DN is too conservative, however, exists only among a comparative minority. 'so long' ting sappy, let's just say that this summer's staff met and surpassed this editor's expectations. This summer's staff was able to handle the difficult dilemma that was presented with having only two days a week to publish. Timeliness was hard to maintain in the stories, yet even when timeliness had to be sacrificed, the DN staff was able to shed new light on stories that had been heard previously from only one side. The mix of "new" news and "old important" news seemed to be a good one. All the major sto ries were covered, even if they were a few days old. We hope that we were able to serve our summer readers to the best of our abilities. We know that we tried as hard as we could to present a readable and infor mative paper. Our only problem was that when we went to press on Mon day, the big story seemed to happen Tuesday. When we went to press Thursday, all the big stories seemed to happen on Friday. All we can hope in the future is that the news does a little bit better jab of adhering to our schedule. Thank you and, of course, have a courteous day. There are many more that still believe the. DN is a heavily left leaning newspaper. Recently, for example, a right-wing magazine disparagingly quoted a DN edi torial as evidence that campus newspapers are as leftist as al ways. Additionally, conservative Christians on campus have plans to publish an occassional "alter native" paper. We can hope these attempts at founding additional papers on college campuses succeed. Uni versities are uniquely situated to facilitate the positive exchange of ideas. Papers expressing di verse ideological positions are certainly ideal realizations of such a goal. Universities need alternative voices. All in all newspapers over the past 20 years seem to have been too uniformly liberal manifesting more of a herd in stinct rather than a reasoned commitment to liberal princi ples. The solution to such a prob lem, however, is not to have a bunch of college newspapers tur ning out conservative material in a similarly unthinking fashion. Competing newspapers serve as the best solution to the problem of the herd instinct in college newspapers and perhaps a mong the student body as a whole. ; ri-.i-7iTn.Mii 111 i" KT " "1 . 1 n iwes Columnist asks, 'How I photocopy and keep articles that I find interesting. This sometimes inadvertently introduces me to other articles as well especially if the issue is a symposium issue. For exam ple, when I photocopy a journal article many times I get the last page of the previous article and the first page of the following article. If the issue is a symposium on one topic, these articles may be interesting as well. Jim Rogers This phenomenon recently occurred when I photocopied an article out of a philosophical journal titled "Ethics" which published a symposium on rights. The last line in the article just proceed ing the intended article caught my eye. Quoting somebody named Rhees, the author concluded, "For the man devoted to liberty, there is nothing which makes liberty important, and he has no reason for his devotion." Agent gives up guarding President to follow 'entrepreneurial spirit' One of things a public relations firm does to earn its fee is create public interest in its clients. And one of the ways it does this is by sending press releases to newspapers and broadcasting stations telling us why we should interview their clients and provide them with publicity. I seldom pay attention to these news releases because I've always believed that people who have interesting sto ries seldom hire a public relations firm to help them tell it. And in Chicago, with our brand of politics, it's often the slippery charac ter trying to hide something who is the most fascinating. But a news release came in the other day that caught my eye. I'm sure if you read it, it would have drawn your inter est, too. The opening paragraph said: "After working for seven years as an agent of the U.S. Treasury Department guarding the President and Vice Presi dent plus other U.S. and foreign digni taries, as well as investigating gun and explosive violations, Sam Holt needed more excitement in his life. "Only this time he opted for . . ." You must concede that it is a pro vocative beginning. But what comes next? . .-vvWT ... . A, . .... ,11 freedom symposium would you like your Referring farther up the page, the author contends that freedom does not take a policy position above "normal" policy issues. That is, just as some men prefer highways and bananas (as con sumer goods), other men prefer free dom and apples. He writes, "Liberalism is to be regarded as a form of moral and politi cal practice, a species of partisanship, rather than as a deduction from con ceptual analysis of or from rationally certified principles. Arguments and considerations may move people to adopt liberal (i.e., classical or 19th century liberal) positions on specific issues, and they may deepen (or weaken) liberal commitment where it already exists. "No sort of reasoning is available, however, which can bring about unity among exponents of rival political and moral traditions." He claims, then, that the only method of argument is to argue from people's taste for freedom in some areas to their recognition of the "freedom taste" in other areas. Sort of like arguing that if you like steak, you ought to like prime rib. According to the author, the propo sition that "freedom is good" is no more compelling to an individual brought up in a, say, non-Western cul ture that does not value freedom, than the proposition "dog soup is good" is compelling upon the Western man's Indulge me for a moment. Try to guess what federal agent Sam "opted for" when he felt the need for more excitement in his life. Come on, let your imagination roam. Put yourself in federal agent Sam Holt's place. You've been guarding a president and a vice president, scanning those big crowds for crazed assassins. You know how easy it is, in a nation of guns Mike Royko and loonies, for someone to work their way close, draw, open fire. If it happens 1 you'll have only a split second to react, to get between the gun and the presi dent. So you watch their eyes, looking for the strange gaze, and their hands, alert for the sudden movement. After that kind of career, where do you turn to get your adrenalin flowing even more? Think. If you were a federal agent who decided that tracking down evil types who build bombs or sell illegal arsenals was too tame, what would you if v steak and dog soup? conscience. Responding to Nobel prize-winning economist Hayek's conception of free dom, the author observes: "What Hayek resists is the recognition that a con ception of individual rights can be defended only as abstraction from pol itical experience. "A liberal conception of individual rights must accordingly be seen as no more (and no less) than an abridge ment of maxim and considerations intimated in a historically specific pol itical tradition. It can have nojustifica tory force for any one who is not already in some measure attached to the tradi tion it seeks to explore." The claims of the article itself merit reflection. Basic questions of political life are all too often ignored. In the modern welfare state and with increas ing claims of censorship and other "a bridgements" of freedom and choice arising, reflection on what constitutes freedom and its contours is of some importance. I think I disagree with the author's conclusion (although I'd need to read the entire article to find the entire argument for his claim). But the question of why freedom is important and what, precisely, makes it impor tant is something which could use a little thought. Well, make that a lot of thought. Rogers, typically an economics graduate and law student, is picking up some math hours this summer. do for kicks? Maybe leading jungle safaris? No, that's become too easy even the tents are now air-conditioned. Setting out to scale Mount Everest? Maybe, but it's been done so often. Diving to find the wreck of the Titanic? Someone beat you to it. Do you give up? Is the suspense get ting to you? You want to know what Sam Holt did to bring even more excitement into his life? OK, brace yourself. The news release goes on to say: ". . . Only this time he opted for a new type of business venture. "Presently, Holt, 38, is president and co-founder of the New Orleans-based franchise system Zack's Famous Fro zen Yogurt." Doesn't that get the pulse racing? He sells frozen yogurt. And it makes sense to me. One day you're yawning through the routine of looking for assassins or mad bombers and you say to yourself: "Sam, is this all there is? Get some gusto in your life. Get out there and sell some yogurt. Franchise, man, fran chise." . What could be more logical in this See ROYKO on 5