Liddy creates own solutions

By THOMAS MURSE
and SCOTT PERRY
Collegian Staff Writers

"Run for the hills liberals," according to a sign hanging in Waring Commons, "G. Gordon Liddy is coming." Liddy spoke last night in Eisenhower Auditorium and, yes, he welcomed liberals as well as conservatives.

But, Liddy made it perfectly clear that he is not just a survivor. Liddy said he prevails and, in his "Survive or Prevail" presentation last night, he explained how, why and what the difference is between simple survival and success.

Liddy's speech started with jokes about his time in prison, which was a result of his connection to the Watergate Scandal. Liddy said the introduction he received was better than the introduction he has become accustomed to: "Will the defendant please rise."

But the focus of the speech was the attitude of those who succeed and what means they use to do so.

"No one can make you a victim, you must accept victimhood," he said.

Re-enforcing his attitude about success, Liddy went on to discuss emotional responses to crises and the senselessness of them.

He said "strong people" do not allow their emotions to control them. Instead they let reason and logical thought give them the best answer to the situation at hand.

Strong people will also fail many times before they succeed, Liddy said. He related this to a friend of his who wrote 14 novels before one was accepted and this man became an "overnight sucess."

Liddy said that strong people do not use the solutions for problems that others have used, they create their own solutions. He said that one prison he was in held 96 people in an area designed for 50. Instead of fighting over the toilet with the others, Liddy said he had to find a nonviolent solution to the problem. He managed, he said, to get assigned to be the clerk of his section. He said he then forged a memo from the prison director that ordered the guards to create special toilets for those inmates who had venereal diseases. He said he had his own private toilet to protect him from that point on.

According to Liddy, prevailers think and process information with a "crocodile brain," the mid-brain that controls the nervous system.

After the speach Liddy fielded questions from the audience for about twenty minutes. The questions asked ranged from Liddy's opinion of drugs to seeing if he ever killed anyone.

Although the crowd seemed to be primarily nonstudents, Brian Heller (freshman-history) said it was a good speech.

Liddy used "a roundabout way to answer the questions," Heller said.

Liddy is known for his role in the two break-ins and burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex during the 1972 re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon. After Liddy refused to testify, he was indicted on two counts of burglary, two of intercepting wire communications, one of intercepting oral communications and one of conspiracy. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but was incarcerated for only 52 months.

Liddy also airs his conservative viewpoint on his nationally syndicated radio talk show, broadcast across the United States and Canada, and in State College "The G. Gordon Liddy Show" is aired on radio station WMAJ (1450 AM).

The Penn State Young Americans for Freedom and WMAJ sponsored the event.