16: 1950s Early Cold War

Virtually all of the evidence for Nixon's alleged superiority on radio is strictly anecdotal—and there isn't even much of it.

From research that other scholars have conducted, it appears that only one survey with anything approximating a scientific method of polling found Nixon to have prevailed over Kennedy among radio audiences.

So the notion that Nixon won on radio but lost the debate—and, in some tellings, the presidency—"only" because Kennedy looked better on the tube turns out to be lacking in much support.

. However, the Nixon radio victory emerged in only a single poll conducted by Sindlinger and Company. Considering other polling data reveals Sindlinger’s finding is likely the result of a Republican bias in the sample and not a mass defection of Democrats swayed by Nixon’s substantive arguments.

Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations. There they affirmed “faith in fundamental human rights” and “in the dignity and worth of the human person” and they did so “without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

If we are to judge with accuracy how far short we have fallen living up to the ideals which comprise our American heritage of freedom and equality, we must first make clear what that heritage is.

But pride is no substitute for steady and honest performance, and the record shows that at varying times in American history the gulf between ideals and practice has been wide.

In 1946 at least six persons in the United States were lynched by mobs. Three of them had not been charged, either by the police or anyone else, with an offense. Of the three that had been charged, one had been accused of stealing a saddle. (The real thieves were discovered after the lynching.) Another was said to have broken into a house. A third was charged with stabbing a man. All were Negroes.

But it is the South's segregated school system which most directly discriminates against the Negro. This segregation is found today in 17 southern states and the District of Columbia.

In the North, segregation in education is not formal, and in some states is prohibited. Nevertheless, the existence of residential restrictions in many northern cities has had discriminatory effects on Negro education. In Chicago, for example, the schools which are most crowded and employ double shift schedules are practically all in Negro neighborhoods.

<em>The restrictive covenant</em>. -- Under rulings of the Supreme Court, it is legally impossible to segregate housing on a racial or religious basis by zoning ordinance. Accordingly, the restrictive covenant has become the most effective modern method of accomplishing such segregation. Restrictive covenants generally take the form of agreements written into deeds of sale by which property owners mutually bind themselves not to sell or lease to an "undesirable." These agreements have thus far been enforceable by court action. Through these covenants large areas of land are barred against use by various classes of American citizens. Some are directed against only one minority group, others against a list of minorities. These have included Armenians, Jews, Negroes, Mexicans, Syrians, Japanese, Chinese and Indians.

<em>Discrimination in state and local services</em>. -- Where state or local facilities are allocated to Negroes, either because of segregation or as a result of geographical concentration of the colored population, the services are almost always inferior to those provided whites. For example, in 1940, in thirteen southern states providing 774 public libraries, ninety-nine, or less than one seventh, served Negroes. The streets in Negro districts in the North as well as in the South are often not kept up to the standards maintained in white areas. Public parks, beaches and playgrounds are generally closed to Negroes in the South, and on the rare occasion when substitutes are offered they are inferior. Furthermore, since the Negro schools are usually unsatisfactory, they are not suitable for community centers; thus, in 1937, about half of all the cities having Negro community centers were located in the North and West, despite the heavy concentration of Negro population in the South.

The Constitutional guarantees of individual liberties and of equal protection under the laws clearly place on the Federal Government the duty to act when state or local authorities abridge or fail to protect these Constitutional rights.

I would like to strip the fetid, stinking flesh off of this skeleton of homosexuality and tell my colleagues of the House some of the facts of nature. I cannot expose all the putrid facts as it would offend the sensibilities of some of you. It will be necessary to skirt some of the edges, and I use certain Latin terms to describe some of these individuals. Make no mistake several thousand, according to police records, are now employed by the Federal Government.

In his classic study of modern American personality, <i>The Lonely Crowd,</i> David Reisman suggests that as Americans have become more “other-directed”, their consumption has become more thoroughly socialized. That is, we consume in order to be noticed consuming by others at least as much as we consume for our own sake and our sense of ourselves is bound up in what we consume and what others think of it.