Nixon's Unsilent Supporters

We don't smoke marijuana in

Muskogee.

We don't take our trips on LSD,

We don't burn our draft cards down

on Main Street,

'cause we like living right

and being free.

THOSE defiantly straight lyrics from the ballad Okie from Muskogee were rendered at the Washington Monument on Veterans Day by a close-cropped country music group from rural Virginia. They were met with roaring approval by a Freedom Rally crowd of 15,000 proudly self-proclaimed "squares." Swelled in response to the President's TV appeal for "the silent majority" to speak up, the cheering anti-Moratorium demonstrators represent a fresh force in the national controversy over the war. They praise Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, support the Government's course in Viet Nam and flaunt their patriotism. They resent, perhaps even more vehemently, all those rebellious youngsters and peace marchers who have attracted so much attention for so long.

Who are they? The Washington rally was conceived by Professor Charles Moser, faculty adviser to the Young Americans for Freedom chapter at George Washington University. Started nine years ago in Connecticut, Y.A.F. is a national organization of conservatives, mostly on campuses, devoted to "victory over rather than coexistence with" Communism. Its National Advisory Board includes such not-so-young conservatives as Senators Barry Goldwater, John Tower and Strom Thurmond.

When President Nixon invited the silent majority to express themselves, says Moser, who teaches Russian, "he got what he wanted--a visible opposition to the Moratorium crowd." But Moser hopes that Nixon may get even more than he sought. "He may have set in motion the forces that will vigorously oppose the culmination of his policies by demanding victory, not peace." Y.A.F. Director Ron Dear claims that Nixon "would not be unhappy to see his options in the war expanded by right-wing pressure--and we aim to please." -

Others expressed their anti-Moratorium sentiment in individualistic ways. In Houston, Mrs. Nancy Palm, a fiery Republican county leader known to friends as "Napalm," led a drive that quickly collected more than 8,000 signatures on a pro-Nixon petition. As peace demonstrators lay prone in Manhattan's Central Park to symbolize war dead, a lone representative of "the New York Fireman's Ad Hoc Committee for Moratoriums on Moratoriums" held high a sign: STAND UP FOR AMERICA

DON'T LIE DOWN FOR THE VIET

CONG. A Los Angeles group ran an ad bannered GIVE THE QUARTERBACK A CHANCE, claiming South Viet Nam is the gridiron, Richard Nixon the quarterback, and "only one man can call signals." In Santa Cruz, Calif., Mayor Richard Werner, a 74-year-old veteran of two World Wars, ripped a Viet Cong flag off a residence whose owner made a citizen's arrest of the mayor for malicious mischief. Werner, feeling that his act was entirely justified, pleaded not guilty.

Closer to the Nixon concept of the silent majority are the promoters of National Unity Week. This move was initiated by Edmund Dombrowski, an orthopedic surgeon from Redlands, Calif., and led by Show Business Celebrities Bob Hope and Art Linkletter. They sent telegrams urging almost all of the nation's mayors and governors to proclaim last week as "National Unity Week" and to ask their citizens to fly the flag, turn on car headlights, leave house lights on all weekend, pray for U.S. prisoners of war and sign petitions stating: "We are proud to be Americans. We support and respect the integrity of our elected leaders." The group claims that "thousands" of mayors as well as governors of California, Michigan and Florida agreed to cooperate. The group's pro-Nixon position is explained by Hope: "If we ever let the Communists win this war, we are in great danger of fighting for the rest of our lives and losing a million kids, not just the 40,000 we've already lost."

Dombrowski, a Republican who voted for John Kennedy in 1960, had never organized anything bigger than a Fourth of July parade. But campus and peace demonstrators made him angry. He talked to a group of high school students in Redlands about Moratorium activities and found that they did not like being pressured into an "either/or proposition; either you are for or against the war." They felt that the President was doing all he could to end the war, but they did not want to have to parade in the streets to show their support. They preferred a more modest expression of unity. Dombrowski donated $5,000 to promote the cause, solicited another $5,000 from Mrs. Mary Shirk, a Redlands heiress to the Kimberly-Clark fortune. He opened offices on both coasts, began distributing some 200,000 "National Unity" bumper stickers daily. "We merely want all Americans to stand up and be counted for justice, honor and integrity," he says.

More than $500,000 worth of newspaper ads inviting readers to clip and mail coupons with statements like "Mr. President: You have my support in your efforts to bring a just and lasting peace" have been placed by United We Stand, a group organized by H. Ross Perot. 39, a Dallas millionaire. No right-winger, Perot, who heads Electronic Data Systems Corp., was inspired by a recent talk with Lyndon Johnson. "He is still deeply concerned about the war and wants peace," says Perot. "In fact, the four Presidents who have administered this war have felt it necessary to stabilize Asia. I must assume that if I knew what they know, I would have acted the same way." Perot says he would be pushing the same campaign if Hubert Humphrey were President. "Regardless of your opinion of the man, the President's power is the most effective tool for bringing about a fair peace. This is not Nixon's war, not Johnson's war; it is our war, and we can help end it."

Perot argues that Nixon's critics have quite properly developed effective ways to show their dissent, but that "the average American has no opportunity to speak out on individual issues. We simply want to give the common man an entry point into the system that overwhelms him." Perot hopes that the ads, placed in more than 100 newspapers, and a half-hour television program carried Sunday on 50 stations, will inspire what he calls "the invisible American." He is convinced that nearly all Americans are united on the need to end the war. "Some 19-year-olds went out on patrol tonight and didn't come back," he says. "I think about these guys day and night and I want to see the killing stopped." Backing the President. Perot feels, is the quickest way to achieve that.

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