MORAL DEPRAVITY

To the Editors of The Crimson:

If there were special citations for moral depravity, Dan Swanson's editorial of September 26--in which he criticizes former Chilean president Salvador Allende for not slaughtering his political opponents--would win several.

Regrettably, however, there is nothing unique about Mr. Swanson's final solution of the Chilean truck driver problem. It simply marks the logical culmination of a systematic campaign to distort the facts about the Allende regime and its overthrow.

Allende, the Crimson would have us believe, was a benevolent man whose sole desire was greater freedom, justice, and prosperity for all Chileans. The violations of individual rights--the seizures of property, the attempts to censor or repress the opposition--have been ignored, or rationalized according to the altruist "morality." The connections between the economic fallacies of socialism and the inflation and shortages that crippled the Chilean economy have been evaded. The Chilean entrepreneurs and professionals who refused to submit to government plunder and enslavement have been vilified. Those who dare to speak out against Allende's tyranny have been smeared as fascists and lumped with the supporters of the military junta and its alleged atrocities.

There are some people who, out of respect for the law of contradiction, might begin to question an "ideal" when it produces results like the bloody disaster that is Chile today. Mr. Swanson and the Crimson staff are apparently not among them.

On the contrary, Mr. Swanson continues to espouse the philosophy of collectivism with impressive consistency. I must therefore await his next editorial, which will, no doubt, endorse Stalin's extermination of the kulaks or Hitler's immolation of six million Jews. Robert Campbell '74