Opinions from past add perspective
Looking Back reviews opinions published in The Spokesman-Review during this week in history.
Whipping post, July 20, 1936
An S-R editorial praised the Washington State Bar Association’s plan to ask the Legislature to authorize the whipping post for “incorrigible criminals.”
“Common sense tells us that we have men in the United States who are a disgrace to American citizenship. They can not be reached by appeals to patriotism or sense of duty. Incarceration makes them confirmed criminals, using those snug retreats to plan further criminality upon their release. The one thing they can comprehend is physical pain, which can be inflicted without brutality or injury below the cuticle.
“In recent years the rod has gone out of fashion in the American home, but the fact remains that for 300 years after the first settlements along the Atlantic, millions of upright God-fearing American parents did apply that discipline to their beloved chidlren, and the laws of God and man upheld them in that duty.”
Attacks on police, July 24, 1966
In an op-ed, U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd wrote about the issue of police officers being attacked as civil disobedience demonstrations grew.
“Are we attaining civil rights or civil war? Several police officers were shot in the back by snipers in recent weeks in Chicago and Cleveland. These men were performing their sworn duty as fully as our brave young men are doing in Viet Nam. But in Viet Nam we are at war. Has it come to civil war in our nation?”
He noted: “It is a bloody fact of life here in our nation that 53 police officers were murdered by criminal assaults during 1965; and 11 out of every 100 were criminally assaulted.”
He concluded: “I firmly believe that the time is far overdue for law-abiding Americans to rally to the cause of law and order. I believe the time is long past when we can sit idly by and let the police stand alone in fulfilling our common civic responsibility. I believe it is high time that every citizen face up to the fact that civil rights go hand in hand with civil responsibilities, and these responsibilities include obedience to the law, and support and respect for those who enforce it.”
Nepotism, July 22, 1976
An editorial headlined “County nepotism a problem” urges action before there is a scandal.
“The hiring of people with friends in county office in preference to those without connection or relatives in office is wrong. It is wrong because it discriminates against one class in favor of another. It is wrong in the sense that it shakes public faith in the quality of public servants. The current suggestion is about 10 percent of county employees have connections with other county employees.
“Even if the figure is no higher than suggested, patrons of the courthouse may well wonder whether the county employee with whom they deal got his job through ability or through pull.”