MISSOURI WATCH: AN ABUNDANCE OF IRONY

America has always had its share of irony, starting as early as the Revolution and extending, in full measure, to this very moment. A touch of it came across our television screens the other day as most of the Western world observed the fiftieth anniversary of V-E Day, the end of World War II in the European theater of operations. The entire war didn't end until later in 1945, when Japan declared its unconditional surrender after President Truman ordered two atomic bomb runs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Observing the half-century mark of V-E Day were America's allies in that war: England, France and Russia, the latter known 50 years ago as the USSR. Observing it on a less grandiose scale was Germany, which along with Italy, were the allies' two formidable foes in Europe and parts of Africa from the late 1930s through the mid-Forties. The irony attached to the end of V-E Day was the inception of another kind of war, the cold variety, that the U.S. and England and France waged against their former allies, the Soviets. No sooner did World War II end than we began a Cold War, that on occasion was a very heated one, against the former Soviet Union. In many ways, the threat of destruction in the war against Communism was as frightening as the specter of defeat at the hands of the Axis powers.

Today, 50 years later, we have made peace with our former enemies in both wars, and American concerns today are of a different nature than they were a half-century ago. While we worried constantly about the armed might of Germany and then later the nuclear threat presented by the Russians, our concern today is over their weaknesses, both economic and political. Now we fretfully agonize whether the historically free western portion of Germany can financially assimilate the bankrupt economy of its sister state to the east. As for the dismantled Soviet empire, its leadership causes us to hesitate and wonder whether there is sufficient strength to withstand the political and economic freedoms that are a part of a democratic society.

How ironic that we worry today over the weaknesses of our former enemies, who only a few decades ago concerned us in equal measure with their perceived strengths. Historians in the next 50 years will no doubt wonder at the dichotomy, puzzling over our inability to properly assess both our national friends and enemies.

Going back a couple of centuries, the irony of the creation of what we today call the American Dream is even now seldom noted by historians. When America's first political intellectuals drafted first a declaration of independence and then later a constitutional charter for the 13 colonies, they relied not only on the genius of such men as John Locke but compelling documents such as the Magna Carta, adding to it their own convictions and visions. The irony is that the genius of our original government was provided, for the most part, by slaveholders who insisted, none the less, on inserting the phrase "secure the blessings of liberty" at the same moment they held other humans, indentured to a lifetime of servitude and slavery.

Only a handful at the time seemed to notice, and the irony has seldom been cited even up to this moment. It is striking that even the cleverest of revisionists of American history have shied away from attempting to explain this startling dichotomy.

There are enough ironies attached to the nation's political history to last a lifetime of study and contemplation, and they extend throughout the last two decades of the 18th century, clear through the 19th century and throughout virtually all of the present century. The party of Jefferson, which was to become the Democratic Party of today, has been filled with ironies almost from its inception. Although not physically present when the first Constitution was being written, Jefferson's influence could be felt all the way from Paris where he had gone to represent the new nation and secure badly needed assistance from the French monarchy.

Jefferson felt strongly about the need to end slavery in the United States, but his party from the late 18th century through the end of the second World War never seriously considered ending the minority status of the ancestors of slaves, and a large portion of the Federalist-Democratic party went to war to preserve segregation. It remained for a Missourian irony named Harry S. Truman, who was steeped in southern tradition, to take the first positive steps toward ending the abhorrent practice of discrimination, ordering its end within the ranks of the armed services and later within federal agencies.

The great Democrats that preceded him never objected to segregation with the vigor of HST, lending their voices with tones of questionable conviction but never using the spiritual force of the presidency to overcome this long-standing injustice against an entire race.

Truman has never received his just due for his sincere determination to "secure the blessings of liberty" for all Americans, an irony that crossed the minds of some the other day as a few among us observed, as we do each year, the anniversary of HST's birth.

There are almost as many ironies as there are politicians in Washington, but one of our favorites is the one attached to the declarations of the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Newt Gingrich recently wrote, and I quote him directly: "The modern welfare state basically says to you: 'Tell us what kind of victim you are, and we'll tell you how big a check you get'...In the elite culture model, we focus on losers." The latest Statistical Index of the U.S. Bureau of the Census reports that the congressional district receiving the largest amount of federal funds is the Sixth Congressional District of Georgia. It doesn't take an irony buff to know who represents that district, does it?

Jack Stapleton of Kennett if the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.