St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1962-10-05
The Anti-IntelIectuals
Intelligentsia?

Editors Note: This editorial was printed here
last week but was garbled in the makeup Of the
page. part Of 1t appeared in one column and the
other paragraphs were found at the bottom Of the
next column. We had a number Of complaints
about poor proof reading and decided to
reprint this editorial In proper fOrm-we hope.
1t is nothing new in this country that civil
rights should be under attack The classical Jeffer-
sonian ideals uphoding the human mind and spirit
have never been fully accepted and in many parts
of country have been accepted at ALL (Not
to dwell on the point, but consider how the Negro
can testify to thisD
What is, seems to be, new is the development
of a body Of intellectual" opinion supporting the
positions formerly taken by the Know-Nothings the
Ku Klux Khan, and the late Senator Joe Mccarthy
Recently referred to a remarkable commentary
in a magazine called the National Review, which
anonymously combines pretenses to intellectualism
with worship Of the aforementioned Mccarthy. The
National Review commentary denounced a very
large damage award to a radio personality who had
been deprived Of his livelihood by a campaign of
Islander against him. 1t ENORMOUSLY asked If this
meant that you couldn't do this to people anymore
recent and more remarkable assault
upon the basic civil rights assumptioned occurred
in a column in the Minneapolis Tribune by Russell
Kirk the a-outest Of that curious stable Of about
extremists of the Far Right which have recently
crept into the Tribune columns led by all-outist
Richard Wilson, chief of the Cowles papers Wash
ington bureau.
Kirk reviews a book about famed civil rights
case the Sacco and Vanzetd trial in which two pro.
fessed anarchists were executed in Massachusetts
in the 1930s for a murder no informed person be.
Heves they committed. The book in question offerE
evidence mot proof that one Of the victims Sacco
might have had guilty knowledge Of the murder
There has never been credible evidence against
Vanzetd, even of guilty knowledge of the murder
for which he was executed.
On the basis of this new and circumstantial
evidence involving of those who put to
DEATH the Tribune columnist Russell Kirk chortles
that the liberals de defenders Of civil rights
stumbled into a trap of their own creation: that
they too ready to defend who held I'M
popular and extreme political opinions The i'm
pcahon is clear that Kirk believes that such people
not entitled to the protection of the Bill Of
Rights, that by embracing unpopular opinions they
sacrifice this right
Such position Is indefensible. 1t is a denial Of
the basic assumptions upon which humanity depends
everywhere in the world-for that freedom Of the
person, the mind and the spirit which essential
to the full development Of the human personality
It has sometimes been remarked that certain
groups in America, and especially Negroes, Jews,
and recent immigrants especially aggressive in
the defense Of their civil rights. This is true and
the is that they have to be. is for these
that the civil rights principles have been evolved.
Unless they assert their rights the rights dead
letters. In the South the advocates of civil rights
up against various degrees Of official and nom
official violence, today. In the north at least
authority reputable or otherwise, would again
put his name to the papers and processes that sent
Sacco and Vanzeth to their deaths-unless, Of
course, the views Of the Tribune colmnist Russell
Kirk should begin to prevail in the north.