Voice of Reason: Call to the Center

Twenty years ago, her target was a single Senator, Joseph R. McCarthy, who sat smirking behind her as she spoke. Without once mentioning his name, she charged him with debasing the Senate to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination. That junior Senator from Wisconsin is long gone, and the years have had their effect on the senior Senator from Maine. Now 72, Margaret Chase Smith travels the Senate corridors on a motorized golf cart, or she uses a walking cane. But she remains among the most thoughtful and respected members of the Senate, her rose in place, her bearing erect, her hair lustrously silver. Last week, precisely two decades to the day of her anti-McCarthy speech, she stood in the Senate chamber, again making an eloquent and pointed appeal to the forces of moderation. Excerpts:

TODAY I am not proud of the way in which our national television networks and campuses have been made publicity platforms for irresponsible sensationalism. Nor am I proud of the countercriticism against the networks and the campuses that has gone beyond bounds of reasonableness and propriety, and has fanned, instead of drenching, the fires of division.

I have admired much of the candid and justified defense of our Government in reply to the news media and the militant dissenters. But some of the defense has been too extreme and unfair and too repetitive. Today I speak be cause of what I consider to be the great threat from the radical left that advocates and practices violence and defiance of the law. This presents us with the ultimate result of repressive reaction from the political right.

The President denies that we are in a revolution. But there are many who would disagree with him, although anarchy may seem nearer to many of us than it really is. The antidemocratic arrogance and nihilism from the political extreme left is an extremism that has spawned a polarization of our people and is increasingly forcing upon the people the narrow choice between anarchy and repression.

And make no mistake about it, if that narrow choice has to be made, the

American people, even if with reluctance and misgiving, will choose repression. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that:

Trespass is trespass--whether on the campus or off.

Violence is violence--whether on the campus or off.

Arson is arson--whether on the campus or off.

Killing is killing--whether on the campus or off.

The campus cannot degenerate into a privileged sanctuary for obscenity, trespass, violence, arson and killing with special immunity for participants in such acts. Criminal acts, active or by negligence, cannot be condoned or excused because of panic, whether the offender be a policeman, a national guardsman, a student, or one of us in this legislative body. Repression is preferable to anarchy to most Americans.

It is time that the great center of our people, those who reject the violence and unreasonableness of both the extreme right and the extreme left, searched their consciences, mustered their moral and physical courage, shed their intimidated silence and declared their consciences.

It is time that with dignity, firmness and friendliness, they reason with, rather than capitulate to, the extremists on both sides--at all levels--and caution that their patience ends at the border of violence and anarchy that threatens our American democracy.

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