Philip Roth - Our Gang

The posters are presently in the hands of the FBI, whose laboratories have already begun the painstaking job of fingerprinting each and every poster, and submitting them to blood tests so as to determine the correlation between the obscenity printed on an individual poster and the blood type of the Boy Scout bearing the poster containing those objectionable words. If such correlations can be established with a reasonable degree of accuracyand we think they can — it will of course be of great assistance to our law enforcement agencies. Under our program of “preventive detention,” we will be able to round up those with suspect blood types before sueh demonstrations as this even get under way, thus preventing them from violating community standards of decency, and the ordinary everyday rules of courtesy, decorum and good taste that are sacred to the great majority of Americans.

As you all know from the headlines, of the approximately ten thousand Boy Scouts who assembled here in Washington during the two-day uprising to threaten the lives of our brave fighting men, it was necessary to kill only three in order to maintain law and order. That breaks down to one and one-half Scouts dead per diem, while nine thousand nine hundred and ninetyeight and a half Scouts continued to live full and active lives the first day, and nine thousand, nine hundred and ninetyseven the second.

Now I would think that by anyone’s standards, a mortality rate in a crisis of this kind of.0003 is a wonderful tribute to the very great restraint with which we were able to confront what could have been a terrible’ tragedy for our soldiers. Certainly it should give solace to all of those who detest bloodshed as much as I do, and put the lie once and for all to the vicious charge that it was the military and not the Scouts who were responsible for the violence. On the other hand, I think the fact that we did have three Scouts dead by the end of the second day is a good indication of the necessary firmness with which we always try to balance off our very great restraint.

Of course, I am sure the great majority of Americans realize that there is always going to be a small, vocal minority of cavilers and critics, who are never going to be satisfied, no matter how perfectly balanced the restraint and the firmness with which we deal with civil disruptions of this kind. Even if there should be only one person dead over a twoday period, or as little as half a person a day; even if over a two-day period there should be only one person who is slightly maimed — these critics will begin to talk as though the tragedy wasn’t the overwhelming danger to which tens of thousands of our brave soldiers were subjected, but the maiming of one person out of only ten thousand, and what is more than likely, an out-of-towner who, unlike our brave soldiers, had only to remain at home to stay out of harm’s way.

Well, to this small vocal minority, let me make one thing very clear.

I too have great sympathy for the families of the three Boy Scouts who were killed here in Washington. I am a father, and I know full well how important children can be to a man’s career; and incidentally, in that connection, a wife. As a matter of fact, my wife and I and our wonderful children had condolence messages prepared for far more than the three who died here, and were prepared to dispatch them on a moment’s notice. Throughout the crisis I was in continuous touch with the morgue here in Washington, as I am with the morgues around the country, by a special “hot line,” and had it been necessary to wire not three, but three thousand such messages, I assure you that my family and I would have seen that those words of sympathy had left the White House before the bodies were even cold. I am proud to say that my wife and my daughters were prepared to work’ far into the night in order that families less fortunate than our own might have some small comfort in their hour of need. Nor do we intend to forget these people when Christmas time rolls around.

But let there be no mistake about it: quick on the trigger as I may be with compassion for the innocent families, I am equally swift in my condemnation of these three guilty Scouts. And I say “guilty” because if they were not guilty they would not be dead. That is not the kind of country we live in.

Now I know there are those apologists for the Boy Scout uprising who have attempted to arouse sympathy for the three guilty Scouts by pointing out that while one had attained the rank of Eagle Scout, the other two were “only” Tenderfoots. If pressed they will concede that an Eagle Scout is a highly trained and disciplined youngster, capable of functioning as a guerrilla insurrectionist because of the various survival tactics he has had to master in order to attain his key position in the Scout infrastructure. But what of the two Tenderfoots, they ask. How could two little Tenderfoots pose so serious a threat to our national security as to make it necessary to kill them? Well, let me answer that question, my fellow Americans, by showing you the weapons that were found concealed, hanging from the belts, of these “two little Tenderfoot Scouts” when their bodies were searched by the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, the Military Police, the Shore Patrol, the Attorney General’s office, the Capitol Police Force, the Police Force of the District of Columbia, as well as by law enforcement officers summoned from around the country, to guarantee the probity and thoroughness of this investigation.

Now I am sure that we all still remember with a sad and mournful heart the 6.5-millimeter Italian carbine rifle purchased for $12.78 from a Chicago mail-order house by President Charisma’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, whom I mentioned earlier in connection with James Earl Ray and Charles Curtis Flood. In the mail-order catalog that rifle probably did not appear to be any more sophisticated than the weapon I am about to show you now, or any more capable of changing the course of history. And yet none of us will ever forget the impact it had upon President Charisma’s career and my own. I know that to many of you this object that I am holding in my right hand looks as innocent and harmless as that $12.78 mail-order rifle undoubtedly did in the mail-order catalog. But let there be no mistake about it, it is just as effective, if not more so.

Firstly: whereas the rifle that destroyed President Charisma’s political career measured forty inches overall, this knife that I hold here in my hand measures, with the blades sheathed, only four and five-eighths inches. This makes it an ideal weapon to use in public places, as opposed to a forty-inch rifle which might arouse suspicion on a school bus, or in a supermarket, or any of the hundred places where you and your loved ones find yourselves in the course of an ordinary day.

Secondly: it is a far more vicious weapon than an ordinary rifle and, needless to say, does not even begin to approach in humaneness a simple thousand-pound bomb, let alone a nuclear explosive. As one who was raised as a Quaker, you know, I have a particularly strong interest in being humane. That is why, since coming to office, I have done everything I can to get Congress to appropriate money for a weapons system that would make us number one in the world in that department. Surely there is no reason why a country with our scientific and technological resources cannot develop weapons with destructive powers so total and immediate as to guarantee to every man, woman and child on this planet what until now has been reserved for those few fortunate people who die in their sleep, and that is the comfort of passing unknowingly from this life into the next. Now that is the type of death people have dreamed about for themselves since time immemorial, and let it not be recorded that Trick E. Dixon lacked the moral and spiritual idealism to address himself to that dream. But now let me ask you this, my fellow Americans. What could be further from the kind of painless death for men everywhere that this administration is working so hard to bring about, than that which is experienced by the victim of a knife such as I am holding in my hand? Not only is it necessary to deliver as many as five to ten horrifyingly painful stab wounds in order to kill somebody with a weapon this small, but in order to accomplish this the murderer must exhibit a sustained viciousness, a cold-blooded determination to kill, that, I assure you, would shock and appall a combat-tried B-52 bomber pilot no less than it does you and me.