Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
October 4, 1962
THE STRUGGLE JOINS
We want to apologize here to any and all whom we many not get to see in the normal course of affairs during these next hectic weeks. We have extra people on the way to take care of the newspaper during the final rush; they are qualified people, and we assure our readers that we will continue to reach you every week in your mailbox both during the height of the campaign, and afterward whatever the outcome.
We are happy to report to you that political endeavor is a fascinating and challenging pursuit. Many more of you should undertake to run for office, as one learns many things in the process, whether one stands for election to a school board, a county office, or, as in our instance, to the United States House of Representatives. It is all a part of our great free-choice system, where the American people learn from childhood how to conduct a meeting with good order but fairness to all; how to elect officers, how to adopt resolutions. The national scene is only the local scene magnified.
A political campaign, like the work of the national legislature after election, is not really so much the changing of people's minds by “oratory” as it is the careful and steady gathering of a coalition of forces that need action and will work together in order to get it.
The public appearances, however, are the obvious part of the effort. Where a candidate is “marking time” or simply running to fill out the ticket, these are routine affairs gone through in a perfunctory fashion. The same may be said of an Incumbent officeholder who has nothing new to offer and has accumulated a voting record that would defeat him if it became known. Such a man smiles, shakes hands, and says nothing about the real issues. Generally he sets up straw men, such as the threat of invasion from Cuba or something similar, in order to draw attention away from his voting record. In such cases, the crowds are polite but small. A sense of uneasiness hangs over the gatherings, and there is a general wish that the campaign were done with quickly so that the voters would vote their habits of years standing, and not get too deeply into the issues.
In our own case, there was a long period of building, from January onward. By now, the schedule book is becoming so crowded that the final weeks will see us making painful decisions which meeting to attend and which to pass up, and how to race from the Illinois River almost to the borders of Indiana in order to reach two and three meetings in one evening. Even before the primary, the crowds at our meetings were large. By now they are overflowing halls; people stand in the corridors and the streets outside to listen; the people who organize barbecues and fish frys are seized with panic when they see the lines of people waiting to be fed. In six or eight instances we have met in the same building as the opposition (on different nights, of course, because we have still gotten no reply to our invitation to debate) and have shared the evening with crowds twice, three times, four times larger than the other party had.
This is a part of a general reawakening of interest in the Democratic Party and what it can do for farmers, working people, and small businessmen. We had Republican times, in which the country felt it needed Dwight Eisenhower. This was a time for consolidating gains, for the people to “catch their breath” under a conservative leaders. As problems accumulated, people gathered the confidence and the will to face them. The mood of the nation is now one of readiness to go forward and find solutions, to go forward and win.
Many of the new people in our audiences are “Independents”, people who make up their own minds and vote for what they feel to be are the best qualified candidates.
The record is there on the books; our primary vote was five thousand closer to that of the Sitting Congressman than any opponent had ever been, and the activity since that time has shown a powerful gathering of enthusiasm and interest.
We repeat that many more people should run for office. Any candidate finds loyal friends at his side, and is also subject to vilest and most ridiculous slanders. As one old-timer once put it, “You can run for office and you'll find out what kind of jayhawk you really are!” The magnificent thing about great challenges is the response they bring forth; most of us become equal to the things we demand of ourselves. Eighty-year-old women have climbed Pike's Peak; where on the other hand anyone who spends a drowsy three hours in front of the TV set finds it an almost impossible burden to ask themselves to get up and go for a drink.
The partisanship of a campaign irritates many people, because they may know people on both sides for whom good things may be said. The process is necessary, however, in order that the voters may have a contrast and a choice, and may choose those people for government who are nearest to their liking.
Ours is a great and a reasonable system, despite the hokum and the noise. Warfare is no longer required to change rulers when we have and use a workable system of free elections. The conflict becomes one of ideas, as it should. There can be no greater experience than to know your cause, to know your weapons, and to move joyously into battle!
October 25, 1962
NO TIME FOR PANIC
No matter with what dismay they received the news of possible hostilities, the American people almost without exception lined up behind our President once the decision was made.
Mr. Kennedy's speech was a firm and resolute statement of the conditions under which we may have peace. The Russians will commit a fatal error if they suppose that American forces will not carry out his commands.
We do not have this information, and me must rely on the President's word that offense missile bases are now under construction in Cuba.
To allow the unstable government of this excitable island to acquire and mount ground-to-ground nuclear missiles would increase greatly the chance of the outbreak of what might be the final war. This could not be permitted.
There are two Jack Kennedys, one of them is the leader of his party, the other the President of the United States. Although the effect of this action on the election of his candidates cannot be predicted, Mr. Kennedy could not allow political consideration to affect or delay his action as Commander-in-Chief.
Where are the hysteria peddlers now, the Republican warhawks who have paraded up and down the land telling the people that our President was unable or unwilling to act, and demanding an immediate invasion of the Cuban island with the consequent loss of life and the terrible damage to our reputation abroad?
This was a Russian trap, and the Republicans fell into it. Some of these weak and irresponsible men heaped vicious denunciations on Mr. Kennedy; now they are saying they “have never criticized the President.”
It is a terrible thing to become so afraid of losing an election that you will say anything and do anything in order to hold onto your position.
The misuse of power is a mark of weakness, while the calm and judicious use of power in that degree which is required, is a mark of strong leadership such as that of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
History will no doubt bear him out that military action is less apt to become necessary if one spells out clearly the conditions under which one will resort to it.
Mr. Krushchev cannot fail to understand the terms and the consequences. He faces a united Western Hemisphere.
While Mr. Kennedy's statement was a firm one, there was no hysteria in it. His “quarantine” will not involve any blockade of food or medicine. He also warned the Cuban people, more in sorrow than in anger, to evacuate their families from the sites of these new missile bases which have brought such peril to their island.
We have stood fast, and will stand fast. At the same time, we hope that no-one will overlook the latter portion of the President's address.
Mr. Kennedy has not slammed the door on the possibility of peace. No sane person can fail to realize that threat and counter-threat has become a kind of dead-end diplomacy.
No-one who reads the newspapers can fail to understand that a nuclear war could destroy most of us and make the earth uninhabitable for those who remained.
The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. have entered the two ends of a narrow corridor, and are advancing toward each other with guns aimed point-blank. National pride on both sides may permit us to find at last a true coexistence – if the vaporized atoms of Russians and Americans mingle and lose their identity in one vast cloud of radioactive fallout, circling the globe where once we lived and fought each other.
Somewhere along this deadly corridor, there must be a door where both of us can step through together, and lower the guns (carefully, one inch at a time) and sit down in a quiet room and talk this over.
The United Nations, for all its seeming turmoil, is such a quiet room. It has served repeatedly in the long and difficult process of mediating conflicts. Let it serve again.
The story of human political endeavor has been on of erecting one upon another, stronger and loftier structures of law and good order to govern us in the place of human caprice.
The grandest concept of them all, a Union of the Nations precisely as we enjoy a Union of the States, is struggling now for realization.
We have two complaints of the U.N. America pays too much of the costs, and we feel it should enjoy a more direct relationship with the pocketbooks of other nations which also enjoy its benefits.
The second complaint is that our money has paid for peace-keeping efforts in Asia, in the Near East, and the Congo, while we should like to see the United Nations accept an expanded responsibility for keeping the peace, not merely in the Congo, but also right here in the Caribbean!
The mood of America is resolute but also thoughtful. The outrage we feel at discovering rockets aimed at our homes from Cuba may cause us to wonder how much of the Russian war psychosis arises from fear, induced by the bases which we have for many year maintained on their very borders.
John Kennedy has not closed the door on peace. “We have in the past made strenuous efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons”, he declares. “We have proposed the elimination of all arms and military bases in a fair and effective disarmament treaty. We are prepared to discuss new proposals for the removal of tensions on both sides--”
This is a time to stand firm on the military front, but to move ahead on the diplomatic front. We sincerely believe that solutions may be found, if we press ahead with both calmness and courage.