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There are some remarkable parallels between the Watergate scandals and the energy crisis—the two biggest front-page stories in recent months. Both are the product of a politics of fear and intimidation, a use of power to obscure public issues with scare words like black-outs and Black Panthers, while stealing Americans blind. In the name of law-andorder, the Watergate tricksters nearly stole the government. In the name of supply-and-demand, the energy companies would have us finance their attempt to further monopolize the world's energy resources. But more of us are seeing through these kinds of tricks. On a national level, perhaps television has produced a more sophisticated audience, one capable of discerning a second-rate used car salesman or a fast buck hoax in an instant. That's certainly ironic considering the way TV has become the media for presidental campaigning and the oil companies' good-guy apologies. Of course, Southerners should have a slight edge in spotting a fraud. After all, we've had decades of demagogues and statehouse gangs. telling us what was best for "the little people." Not that we've had a monopoly on such corruption. Nationally, the worst enemies of democracy and free enterprise consistently prove to be those who claim to be those systems' protectors. Still, the South has a special relation to these latest crises. And that's what this issue of our journal is all about. There is increasing evidence that the cronies and the cash that made Watergate a Nixon policy came from the southern USA. Kirkpatrick Sale explores this thought in his analysis of the emerging political clout of what he calls "the southern rim."

Contributors: Beverly A. Asbury, Ann Beard, James Branscome, Will D. Campbell, Duncan Gray, Jr., John Howard Griffin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Vincent Harding, James Y. Holloway, Loyal Jones, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, William P. Randall, Pete Young.