The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 38

IM4 Sl'NDAT CALL-CHRONICLE. Allentown, Feb. 10, 1974 y.wv'y.TWW jTT.jrWTij.uiiiii-iiiinninniyiitn Conservative Voice 1 Playboy's Philosophy Isn't the Ultimate Word -i- i p- i By VVM. F. BUCKLEY JR.

It was widely supposed that the Supreme Court decision of a year ago would put an end to the controversy over abortion. It appears not. There is very i rable agitation to permit the House of Representatives to vote on a con-stitution al amendme nt and here and there legislators fe1ic- tosWw via. t-- Buckley 5C tot sLJ but films of bestiality (Linda Lovelace's leading males, it transpires, aren't always humans) and sex with children were, he said, 'weirdo junk' which 'even dedicated swingers' 'might' find 'hard to He didn't go so far as to call for police action, or even to speak of a 'shock to the He couldn't: he could only sniff, mustering up the withering contempt of the tastemaker, that kiddie and doggie sex are sort of infra dig, or infra dog, as the case may be." Of course. If 200 million Americans are absolute arbiters of porn, then indeed it is presumptuous to pronounce something as being obscene: indeed, presumptuous even to use the word.

The argument can be made, and is made, by deeply sensitive people that abortion-on-demand is all right by them. This is a responsible position. But it becomes irresponsible to extend that argument to saying: A position that argues against abortion-on-demand is presumptuous insofar as it seeks to exert authority other than over the person making it. It is the point of argumentation to convince others: that Linda Lovelace's movies are pornographic, for instance; that bestiality is more than merely offensive to Playboy's tastemakers; that abortion-on-demand is a violation of human metaphysics. It is the argument that needs to be listened to, rather than foreclosed, by the thoughtlessness of the Playboy philosophy.

gin to understand that the opponents, if they are right, are right on a universal point. And that is that if the taking of the life of a fetus licentiously indeed, unwincingly is wrong, then it is wrong irrespective of whether the mother thinks it is right. That didn't used to be too hard a distinction to insist upon, but it has lately got to be very difficult, in part because of the individualization of ethics, of which of course the sexual revolution has been the driving wedge. I am indebted to M.J. Sobran Jr.

for his exquisite essay on Hugh Hefner's Playboy. In four pages he does more damage to the philosophical pretentiousness of that magazine than has ever been done anywhere, by anybody. Here, for instance, was a Playboy editorial, scolding the Supreme Court for its recent decision on obscenity. "The obscene is a subjective concept, existing only in the minds of the beholders There are ultimately 200 million qualified judges of obscenity in the United States and each has a right to his (effective) opinion" raising the question, as Sobran points out, "what can 'qualified' possibly mean? Or 'obscenity'? Or 'right'?" Look at the trouble even Playboy gets into. "When in a survey of current porn films, Contributing Editor Bruce Williamson tried to put his foot down, there was nowhere to put it.

Straight and even gay films were O.K. with him, are discovering that the resolute opposition to abortion-on demand is neither an exclusively Catholic hang-up, nor the preoccupation of career causists who, having in recent years gone through the impeachment of Earl Warren and the resistance to fluoridated water, are now arrived at the abortion issue, and are pitching their tents until a fresher cause comes up. At the crux of the dispute, surely, is the question whether abortion is a matter of private morality. Granted the argument extends beyond that even if one answers the first question in the affirmative. Whose morality? That gets into the question whether the mother has absolute rights over the fetus.

But the very first question is the critical one, and here and there one finds evidence that there are those who, not themselves opposing abortion, be Beautiful Lehigh Valley world may be dazzled and even possibly frightened by the light's attack upon what had previously seemed a placid living surface. (Call-Chronicle photo by Dick Mantz) The sun's rays break into molecules of light which coat Lake Muhlenberg, Allentown, with the brilliance of diamonds. Two ducks hugging what seems the last bit of solid matter in this sparkling water- Approach Campaign-Financing Reforms With Caution Another Week By Edward D. Miller turns to require that such funds be distributed equally between the two major parties. This amendment was sponsored by Sen.

Hubert Humphrey, who, it should be noted, racked up $6 million in debts running against Richard Nixon in 1968 and more than $1 million in his futile 1972 effort. Humphrey's provision would deny individuals from designating the party of their choice. The advent of Watergate revelations brought a flood of new proposals to extend the public financing idea. The most prominent one has been proposed by Sen. Kennedy.

As itemized by a recent story in U.S. News World Report, the Kennedy proposal would: Raise the political checkoff to $2 per taxpayer, or $4 on joint returns. Hike the tax credit to $50 for individuals, $100 for couples. Boost the deduction for political subsidies to $100, or $200. Require taxpayers to state affirmatively that they do not want any of their tax money to be used for political purposes.

Otherwise, if a taxpayer, by oversight, failed to make such a declaration, the political checkoff would be deducted automatically from his return. The issue of public financing of elections is a classic example of a dilemma the choice between two equally undesirable alternatives. One choice is to continue along the same path of private financing, the course that brought us Watergate and related White House horrors. The alternative is to finance federal elections out of the public treasury at the cost of further eroding our freedoms of speech and choice. The undesirable nature of the first choice has been more than adequately demonstrated as the nation has learned of pressures on corporations to make illegal contributions, the laundering of private funds to hide their soiirce, the trading of cash for political favors and the inclination to spend surplus campaign funds on a host of dirty tricks.

As Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield has said, "If Watergate hasn't shown a need for this legislation, I don't know what will." Numerous attempts have been made to correct the problems of private financing. One of them is the checkoff provision on individual income tax forms allowing taxpayers to deduct contributions from their taxes. Begun in 1971, this provision was amended to cover this year's re sors have said such restrictions are not legal under the Constitution. The need for reform is obvious, but if in the process we restrict some of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, have we effected reform or have we simply failed to solve one problem while creating others? What most people overlook in this debate is that there is a whole body of law that currently governs election procedures. It can be argued that if these laws were enforced, only minor modifications would be needed to prevent further Watergates.

Just as there is no guarantee that current laws are enforceable, there is no guarantee that reforms such as those suggested would work any better. Indeed, it can be argued that total bans on private contributions and rigid spending limits on candidates would be unenforceable and would invite circumvention, thus making the problem worse than it already is. This is not to say that some form of public financing is not desirable and practical. I merely contend that such a format has yet to be devised and that a headlong stampede into reform may compound rather than correct the problem. about $21 million for each party in the 1972 presidential campaign.

Provide full funding for Senate and House candidates in general elections, but not primaries. Prohibit voluntary contributions by any individual citizens out of their own money to any candidates for president, vice president, senator or representative in general-election campaigns. Permit private contributions in primaries not to exceed $3,000 to each candidate, or a total of $25,000 from any individual to all candidates for federal offices in any election year. The difficulties in this and similar proposals are being overlooked in the rush to reform. A number of questions ought to be asked: Is it legal to limit the spending of candidates? In November a federal court said no, declaring that limitation to be an unconstitutional prior restraint on freedom of speech.

Is it legal to force parties to disclose campaign-fund sources? The same court said probably not, since it "casts a chilling effect upon an individual's right to associate freely." Is it legal to ban individual contributions? A number of law profes Authorize Congress to appropriate out of general revenue any sums necessary to cover campaign costs in case the tax checkoff failed to generate enough money. Provide matching grants of up to $7 million each for contenders in presidential primaries, with a limit of $15 million that could be spent by each candidate in the preconvention period. Permit full funding by taxpayers of campaign costs for presidential slates of the major parties in general elections, based on a formula of 15 cents times the voting-age population. This would have amounted to Observer: You'll Be Shocked Shocked! by Washington By RUSSELL BAKER WASHINGTON A couple of week ago, Sens. Jackson and Percy were grilling the oil barons.

They characters any more than Jekyll could stop from turning into Hyde. Lyndon Johnson must have turned into John Wayne, or maybe Gary Cooper, any number of times during the Vietnam War, which kept turning into World War II propaganda movies by Warner Brothers. Johnson surely hated himself for playing Cooper and Wayne, for he was a hard-headed man, but how could he stop himself from doing it as long as Vietnam insisted on becoming Hollywood's World War II? They say that Hollywood is gone now, but it has only gone to Washington. (c) N. Y.

Times News Service but it is. Senators who have grown up with movies instinctively turn into Claude Rains right before our eyes. The Senate caucus room, execution chamber for so many in recent years, rearranges slick, powerful, oilman postures to suggest doomed soldiers from Stanley Kubrick's Cinema France. The White House is scarcely ever explicable any more in real terms. Gen.

Haig's talk about "a sinister force" at work against the President conjures up "Rosemary's Baby." Scarcely a day goes by over there without something being revived from "The Manchurian Candidate," get into the ring with Hemingway and Old Mister Tolstoy. It is hard to pinpoint a date when Washington first began to become an old movie. It was certainly almost entirely real or "dull," as present-day inhabitants of old-movie Washington always say during the 1950s. The Kennedy years were more real at the time than they have become since, although the rapidity with which they were turned into "Camelot" makes one wonder if they were ever as real as they seemed. The terrible thing about all this is that people down here can no more stop themselves from turning into old-movie which may be the most widespread old movie now being lived through in Washington.

Spiro Agnew seems te have been dwelling on "The Manchurian Candidate" since his retirement. He is said to be writing a novel about a vice president of the United States whose mind is being manipulated by sinister foreign powers. Can this be real? It sounds like a plot outline to-one of those slick William Powell comedies of the 1930s. Powell would have made an excellent Agnew, particularly in the bland satirical passages in which the forcibly retired vice president tells his scoffing family that he intends to had lined the barons up side by side across the Senate caucus room in a way that reminded me of the execution scene in "Paths of Glory" when the French soldiers who have to be shot for coff, Javits and so on were going at them, and the senators were shocked shocked! to hear that the oil business was making big profits and paying small taxes. Slowly I was possessed by an eerie certainty that all this had happened before, and not once but many times.

Slowly I remembered where. It was a scene in "Casablanca." The Nazi colonel (Conrad Veidt) is in a fury about the un-Nazi way of life in Rick's (Humphrey Bogart's) saloon. Summoning the police chief (Claude Rains) from Bogart's illicit gambling table, where Rains is always allowed to win, Veidt orders Rains to shut the place. On what grounds? asks Bogart. Rains replies that he is shocked shocked! to learn that Baker the larger good of the army are being propped up lor the firing squad.

An odd connection for the mind to make, but there it was. They were lined up and Sens. Jackson, Percy, Ribi- Public Opinion there is gambling going on. Now, here were these senators doing this scene from a 30-year-old movie, playing Claude Rains to the oil-baron Bogarts, professing shock shock! at learning that oil makes big profits and pays small taxes. Some shock.

Small boys who swim in the fountain at Union Station know that oil makes big profits and pays small taxes, and they also know that one of the main reasons for this is the Senate, and that other main reasons include the House of Representatives and the White House. The rules were written that way at rule-writing headquarters the Senate, the House and the White House. At Bogart's saloon, the police chief alw-ays wins; the same for oil in Washington. Still, when Nazi colonels make a scene one must give them a show. To carry this to its logical end, I'm afraid, would make us millions of oil consumers the Nazi colonel of the scene, since the politicians presumably think we are mad enough to hand them over to the Gestapo unless they ostentatiously kick some oilmen around.

This does not concern logic, however. If it did, why would the sight of high-profit, low-taxed oil barons evoke the sympathetic memory of those miserable soliders going to death in "Paths of We are dealing here with something beyond logic. Washington is turning into old movies. I don't know why, Reading Co. Disputes Reporter preserve commuter service.

My answer was that if passenger service is deemed so important, and I assumed it was in light of the current energy problems, then certainly this concept was not impossible to conceive. Second, the fate of the com muter service is not neces- SUNDAY CALL-CHRONICLE Call-Chronicle Newspapers, Inc. 101 N. 6th Allentown, Pa. 18105 THE MORNING CALL, EVENING CHRONICLE, SUNDAY CALL-CHRONICLE DONALD P.

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Broad St. 18951 Phone 536-7113 STROUDSBURG: 43 N. 7th St. 18360 Phone 421-6500 TELEPHONE 433-4241 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Sunday Only Weekday Sunday Weekdays 1 Week 35 .95 .60 Months .10 54.50 15.M 1 Year 18.20 49.00 30.80 Postage added for out-of-area mail at Second Class Rate. other towns and cities wished they had, including the deteriorating stations and old equipment, the exterior of which gets pretty dirty in the winter because of the lack of an indoor washing facility.

Mr. Koch also did me a injustice by attributing quotations to me that were never even mentioned in our conversation, by omission, and by paraphrasing some of my remarks and putting quotes around them. First, I did not '-joke" when we discussed having a public authority such as SEPTA extend into Lehigh County to the overall impression created was that Reading Co. management "couldn't care less." If Reading Co. management held this attitude, we can assure you that the commuter service, including that to and from Bethlehem, would have been discontinued long ago in this region and our financial problems would be far less severe today.

By the grace of a few far-sighted people, along with Reading Co. management's cooperation, the citizens of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and yes, Lehigh County, today have something that a lot of Editor Sunday Call-Chronicle Sir: An article by John H. Koch appearing in your Feb. 3 issue on Reading Co. passenger service unfortunately contained numerous errors and created a totally false impression of Reading attitude toward and interest in this Bethlehem-Philadelphia service.

By using selected, negative quotes attributed to various commuters and by ignoring completely the financial problems that are very much a part of the story of the Reading's total commuter service, sari ly tied to the fate of Read-Co. Rather it is more in hands of the commuters th themselves and their elected rtnresentatives at various levels of government who must decide whether this service is Continued on Page B-15, Col. 1.