European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 13, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 Colour Iris the stars and stripes Tom Teepen America owes much of its greatness to liberals if it weren t for liberalism George Bush would t have the pledge of allegiance with which to Flay Michae Dukakis. We d All be singing god save the  yet the vice president used the first presidential quasi do Batch with the Gover nor to continue his Odd insistence thai americans must not indeed dare not elect or. Dukakis because he is Liber Ai. That has been a subplot of the Republican drive for political Hegemony eve since Ronald Reagan took up the party s Standard in 1980, but it remained for or Bush whose own conservatism is doubled by his party s right to make anti liberalism a National crusade. La is of course a preposterous notion every bit As silly As its hip Side would beef or. Dukakis were telling voters that All conservatives of whatever Stripe disposition or Talent were anathema and beyond electoral consideration. American voters have always shunned extremes whether of the left or of the right. But in its seasons he electorate has unhesitatingly elected both conserva Tives and liberals to the presidency and to state and local offices it is a cramped forbidding politics which now proposes that one of these traditions should be declared a pariah. We have liberals to thank for our very nation. The founding fathers were Liberal in varying degree. If they had not been they would be the in rounding fathers. Our declaration of in dependence and Constitution Are among history s most glorious political documents. They arc profoundly Liberal by the usual definition of the word. It is thanks to spells of liberalism in our National affairs that the vote has spread from propertied White mates toll citizens that we have antitrust legis lation Laws against child labor social Security and Strong civil liberties among he humane and enriching features of George   us or Al  1h� people free owing fr6�lvs gcn6roos, Tyler astr. Our common life. And the preservation of essential values we have the conservative Ira Dilion to from generation to generation thank for the prudently representative even those Well meant generalizations nature of our democracy for a Back line arc crude for certainly there Are con scr defense of property rights for an App re Alivs who see the value of social secure citation of the importance of continuity to just As there Are liberals or. Duka Kis among them who nurture America s evolved values. Yes the democratic party has tended to be Liberal through most of this cent Ryand the Republican party conservative. But neither has sought to enforce a Stem ideological purity either for itself or for the nation. Keagan ism has moved us closet such a claim of doctrinal authority and or. Bush As Ronald Reagan s would be political heir has become especially shrill in the demand. His Campaign ceaselessly calumnies or. Dukakis As Liberal and his state Massachusetts As such a spawning ground of liberalism that the rest of us should t Swallow any thing from there except lobsters. This ought to leave or. Bush in a awkward position trying o explain then Why the slate legislature twice passed the pledge of allegiance Bill that he says or. Dukakis should have signed despite its unconstitutionality but no one has called him on the Point. So the debate found the vice president in his desperation to equate Massachusetts Ander. Dukakis with liberalism accusing the governor of using Boston Adjer  this is nonsense to is in fact Gibber ish 1 Don t know what a Boston adjective is. You Don t know. George Bush does know. He just Hopes most listeners will sup Cal it must be something pretty Hor rid and probably in american. The vice president is saying americans should declare one of heir two great political traditions null android and deny themselves this year and henceforth its benefits and talents. It Isan absurd formulation if you think about it. Or. Bush i trusting that no one will. Tom Teepen is editor of the Atlanta Constitution s editorial pages pm news new let Juk assassination novel is literary vandalism Dallas Don Delillo s ninth novel Libra asserts hat what happened Here in Daley Plaza Quarter of a Century ago became the seven seconds that broke the Back of the american  if this hyperventilating Book were merely what that sentence s overwrought and a historical it would no matter that Libra is a bestseller but the Book one of about 20 pouring Forth on the Kennedy assassination is an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship. Delillo s attempt to follow the bullets trajectories Back into the minds of Lee Harvey Oswald and others becomes yet another exercise in blaming Ameri Ca for Oswald s act of derangement. It is valuable Only As a reminder of he toll that ideological virulence takes on literary Talent. The Story is that a cadre of Cia operatives furious about the halfhearted Ness of the Bay of pigs invasion plans an electrifying event to galvanize the country against Fidel Castro. They decide on a Surgi Cal miss of president Kennedy by a gunman who would leave a paper Trail to Cuba. But one thing leads to another and to the Man in the sixth floor window of the Texas Book depository. Dilillo says he is just filling in some of he Blank spaces in the known  but there is no Blank space Large enough to accommodate and not a particle of evidence for Delillo s Lunatic conspiracy theory. In the Book s Wea Selly afterword he says he has made no attempt 10 furnish factual  Bui in a Newyork times interview he says i purposely chose the most obvious theory because i wanted to do Justice to historical  Delillo Traduce an ethic of literature. Novelists using the raw material of history real Well known important events should be constrained by concern for truthfulness by respect for the record and a Judi Cious weighing of probabilities. History says a Dilillo character is the sum total of All the things they Aren t telling  of course.  that  pronoun haunts the fevered imaginations of Parano tacs. For conspiracy addicts like Delillo the utter absence of evidence after 25 years of searching proves not that Here was no conspiracy but thai the conspiracy was diabolically Clever. He says that because of the seven seconds in Dallas we have been educated in  scepticism Delillo is a study in credulity regarding the Crudi ties of the american left. He says the assassination was the turning Point in consciousness for americans that we have been suspicious Ever since concerning the secret manipulation of  in Dallas we entered the world of randomness reminded by Oswald thai nothing is assured spare us such Sandbox existentialism. Delillo rejects randomness. His intimation is that America is a sick society hat Breeds extremism and conspiracies and that Oswald was a National Type a product of the culture. From the unremarkable fact that recent Assas sins or would be assassins Sirhan Ray Bremer Hinckley have been marginal men not social successes ideologists of the left weave indictments of America. Delillo s indictment is interestingly uninteresting. It is the familiar banal thought that Oswald was a lonely neurotic who tried to shed ordinariness by lung ing into the theater of the Kennedy. And guess what Deruuo has said consumerism is a form of mass anaesthesia. It makes people  Delillo s lurid imaginings win soothe immature people who want to believe that behind Large events there must be Large idea or impersonal forces or conspiracies. It takes a steady adult nerve to sure Unble kingly at the act that history can be jarred sideways by an acl that signifies nothing but an addled individual t inner turmoil. The mind of an Assassin can be a deep and de manding subject. But the More Delillo explains i work the shallower it and he seem. In a burst of soph Tomorie self dramatization he Sayr the Wynier is the person who stands outside society Independent of of Nii Lions the writer is the Man or woman who automatically talks a stance against his or her govern  automatically As in unthinkingly. Delillo eel bration of the writer As unaffiliated outsider is hackneyed and in historical. Henry James Jane aus Len George Eliot and others were hardly outsider Delillo s Celebration flops just it Short step from de Claring the writer As Kin to Oswald who As � defector was the ultimate outsider. It is Well to be reminded by books like this of he virulence of the loathing some intellectual feel for american society and of the frivolous thinking Bat fuels it. Delillo is a talented writer whose Talent u subordinated to and obviated by puerile political stances. What was unfairly said of a far greater writer . Eliot Bora in so Louis 100 Yean ago hut month must be said of Delillo he i a Good Anler and � bad influence. We Langton Talwin group the opinion expressed in the columns us cwt on on Ihli Page represent those of the Totua Udu few Way to be considered u rear Eintini the Fien of to stirs end stripes or the United stain government