Making a bid for the Wallace vote, Spiro Agnew (sic), allegedly the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, has been sounding like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from the ’40s. Particularly astute analysis of what’s happening on campuses, was offered at a New York press conference Saturday, September 7.
Agnew has concluded that the student uprisings revolve basically around “the sort of poison willing to be identified with Communist causes—but he didn’t specify which ones are.
The only paltry evidence Agnew cited was the fact that last spring Columbia university students carried placards that “indicated support for Ho Chi Minh and Castro.” He didn’t even know enough about the scene to mention the numbers of young people today who are willing to publicly call themselves Communists, those who not only carry placards but those who have attempted to take down an American flag flying shamelessly over Chicago, those who not only carry placards but who are convinced that Ho Chi Minh and Che (Agnew probably got them mixed up) are more honest, dedicated men than Lyndon Johnson or even Richard Nixon, those who see the need for a revolution in America.
Wake up, Spiro Agnew! While you sit idly by and make mild charges which merely give Students for a Democratic Society some good publicity, there are communists, anarchists, Americong, Vietcong, revolutionaries and all kinds of things growing up around you. And nothing, NOTHING is being done to stop them. In fact, everything is being done to encourage them. Maybe, Spiro, college administrations, police depts., the federal government, and all the rest of American society is infested with communist instigators who are just purposely trying to do things to convince young people that America needs radical change very badly. You don’t think that just a bunch of schoolchildren and niggers could cause so much agitation, without leadership. You better really get at the insidious root of the problem—and fast, while the flag still flies high, American soldiers die bravely in Vietnam and Crest sells its giant economy size for 98 cents on special.