Thursday, December 10, 1998

Ordinary or not?

Regarding the article about a group of Abilene Christian University students swing dancing off campus, their activities are an affront to the rest of the student body, hundreds of thousands of exes, thousands of professors who have sacrificed over the years to advance the cause of Christian education, and millions of brethren worldwide who send their sons and daughters to a school where such influence has not been tolerated before.

If they wish to swing their partner, throw their partner or scoot their boots, perhaps the students should consider finishing their education elsewhere. Their parents would be well advised to send them to SMU, Baylor, Rice or any of the fine state schools that make little or no effort to control student life.

If the best the ACU administration can do is to appoint an unnamed official to wash his hands publicly and disavow university approval, while leaving students free to dance on their own as they please, then we are in bad trouble. When I was a student there in the 1950s, the administration knew how to regulate student activities in the best interest of the university and what it stands for. They were not timid about that power.

Currently, the university is promoting a new excellent history of ACU called No Ordinary University, written by Dr. John Stevens. I hope ACU is not becoming quite ordinary before the ink is dry on the book.

MICKY WALKER

Abilene

'Mob rule' of polls

In 1787 delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated the type of government they would have. Debate focused on the differences between a democracy and a republic.

James Madison considered all democracies to be "spectacles of turbulence and contention." Samuel Adams said, "There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide."

Alexander Hamilton said of democracies, “Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”

America’s founding fathers chose to establish a republic rather than a democracy. Their concerns were repeated in the U.S. Army Training Manual of 1928, which warned a democracy is based on "mob rule," that it allows the will of the people to rule, regardless of how arbitrary and impulsive it is. It results in demagogism, discontentment and anarchy.

In contrast, a republic operates by representative delegates making policies and laws consistent with a constitutional document. A republic safeguards against "mob rule" or arbitrary decisions based on the will of the people at the moment, protecting the people from themselves in weaker moments of greed, lust or vengeance.

Bill Clinton’s habit of making decisions on "mob rule" (opinion polls) is dangerous. Congress needs to recall the words of Adams, Hamilton and Madison and force our president to be guided by the principles of the U.S. Constitution rather than by his unbridled lifestyle, which he hopes will be endorsed by and demanded by "the mob."

RONALD JOHNSON

Dublin