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WILTGEN
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Valuable politics should not be compromised
Last week I caught a few minutes
of Iowa’s U.S. Senate debate
between incumbent Democrat Sen.
Tran Harkin and Republican chal
lenger, Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot.
Sen.
Harkin, who is
seeking his third
in the
Senate, said
unethingthat
r politicians
said before:
“I’m main
stream, not
extreme.”
Of course, Sen. Harkin was
implying that Rep. Lightfoot was the
“extreme” candidate, with the further
implication that being extreme is
bad.
But is being “mainstream, not
extreme” something to brag about?
Given the sorry track record that
“mainstream” politicians have
compiled during the past 30 years,
the answer is a resounding no.
Countless political races have
been characterized by candidates
trying to label each other as “extrem
ists” of one type or another, while
trying to avoid being labeled
“extremists” themselves. Indeed,
“extremism” has become more of an
insult than a description of anyone’s
actual views.
This leaves almost every politi
cian scrambling to appear “main
stream,” or more accurately, “moder
ate.” The result has been a catastro
phe as the rights of the people have
taken a back seat to the maniacal
fervor for “compromise” and
«
If the Founding Fathers had only a
‘moderate’ belief in individual liberty and
representative government, would they
have waged a war against England?”
“nonideological” policies.
If the Founding Fathers had only a
“moderate” belief in individual
liberty and representative govern
ment, would they have waged a war
against England?
Of course not. They were not
willing to compromise liberty; they
had an ideological belief in certain
inalienable human rights and
demanded the recognition in full of
those rights.
One of America’s early thinkers,
Thomas Paine, once said,“Modera
tion in temper is always a virtue; but
moderation in principle is always a
vice.”
Our American predecessors real
ized that extremism is not a synonym
of evil, nor is it a synonym of good
ness; it merely describes unwavering
belief in an ideal or principle.
To truly defend any good cause,
you must have an “extreme” belief in
it — you must believe in it 100 per
cent. Put simply, the only way to com
promise a good belief is by introduc
ing evil into it.' * * >o « I
We are currently at a point where
practically every legislative decision
our government makes is subject to
endless caveats, compromises and
deal-cutting. Nearly every bill that
makes it to the floor of the House or
Senate or Unicameral is pages and
pages long, full of little exemptions and
exceptions and regulations and quali
fications.
Whatever happened to fundamen
tal principles as a guiding force in gov
ernment? I have no idea, except to note
that they’re pretty much gone from the
two major parties.
Today’s politicians don’t advocate
the end of federal taxation; they
compromise your right to keep what
is yours in order to pay for all their
government programs.
Today’s politicians don’t defend
the First Amendment’s guarantee to
freedom of speech; they want to
compromise it by banning flag
burning, or hate speech, or sexually
explicit material, etc.
Today’s politicians don’t defend
the First Amendment’s guarantee to
freedom of association; they compro
mise it with affirmative action
programs that force employers, to hhrd
people they don’t want to hire.
Today’s politicians don’t defend
the Second Amendment’s guarantee
of the right to bear arms; they want to
compromise it by using the few thugs
who use firearms recklessly to justify
taking guns away from the vast
majority who use them for legal,
moral uses like self-defense.
Today’s politicians don’t defend
the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee
to freedom from unwarranted search
and seizure; they want to compro
mise it by allowing the police to
search your person and property
without a warrant and without any
provocation whatsoever, just to
sustain the hysterical war on drugs.
Today’s politicians don’t defend
the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee to
a trial by jury in criminal cases; they
have already compromised it with
asset forfeiture laws that allow the
government to seize your property
before you’ve even been charged
with a crime.
This is only a partial list. Nearly
every politician claims to stand up
h for those rights and others; however,
by compromising even the slightest f
issue, they continually render •'
themselves hypocritical.
Our Constitutional freedoms will
only be fully recognized when we
elect officials who are unwavering—
that is, extreme—in their defense of
individual liberty, and who will not
“moderate” our liberty with arbitrary
restrictions. • X.*
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Wiltgen is a junior broadcasting " ' *
and meteorology major and a
Daily Nebraskan columnist.
Kasey
KERBER
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On a sour note
*• . • • v
Here at UNL, everyone likes to
talk tradition.
“This” is a tradition. “That” is a
tradition... it seems that at some
point, every part of this campus is
-—- destined to be a
tradition.
Yet do we
ever fully stop to
look at the
traditions that
die? Or the ones
that spring up
like weak
flowers from a
_graveyard of
“immortal” traditions?
Maybe we should.
This column is about two UNL
traditions. One is nearly dead. The
other has just entered the world.
And since births generally do
precede deaths (except in the case of
reincarnation), we’ll take a lode at
the new tradition first.
The UNL alma mater.
Let me be frank—I like the alma
mater as much as I like the parking
police.
Yet there’s one main difference
between the UNL parking police and
the alma mater—one involves
5 students. , 1 \
Care to take a guess which?
Parking police are students,
U--—-—
Let me be frank — I like the alma mater
as much as I like the parking police "
whereas the alma mater was written,
chosen and implemented as UNL’s
school song with virtually no student
input.
It bothers me to know that this
song (which no students had a say in)
will be “our song,” whether we like it
or not.
You see, the alma mater will be
given a “trial run," to quote Chancel
lor James Moeser, and the run will
last a period of years.
So here's the end result—the
alma mater is now a UNL tradition.
If you didn’t contribute to it, too
bad.
If there was no vote on it, too bad.
If you think the theme song of the
“Dukes of Hazzard” has a better
rhythm, well, too bad.
After all, you are just a UNL
student and apparently your input
doesn’t mean too much.
On the other end of the spectrum,
there is a different UNL tradition that
is dying—possibly more quickly
than we realize.
Broyhill Fountain.
Now I have to admit, this is only
‘my second year at UNL, but already
I feel some connection to Broyhill.
It’s a place to meet your friends,
visit when you’re on a date or gather
for student events.
I recently had the opportunity to
speak with the daughter of Broyhill *
Fountain’s designer. She told me that
her father had designed Broyhill
specifically with the purpose of
bringing students together.
That’s just one part of the fountain
that will be lost. But we all have
memories of Broyhill — some crazy,
some romantic, and some that we
can’t really throw into print. .
Yet, in a matter of days, the
Broyhill we know may be gone.
You see, (Mice the cold weather
sets in, Broyhill will have to be shut
off, A cold front is predicted to hit us
later this week.
Then, two months after Broyhill is
shut off, it will be tom down.
Personally, I’m not angry that
Broyhill will be destroyed to make
room few the Nebraska Union
expansion.
The union board made every
attempt to inform students about the
situation and to gather their input on
what will eventually replace Broyhill.
Yet it still saddens me.
. A few nights ago, I took my
girlfriend to Broyhill to take a few
pictures of her sitting on its edge.
Maybe it’s overly sentimental, but
it was my way of ensuring that I
would not forget Broyhill.
It was also my last chance to
enjoy the fountain with the girl I
love. In the future, a lot of couples
won’t have that opportunity.
Let me just end by saying this:
When we come back after the winter
break, Broyhill Fountain won’t be
here.
There might just be a hole in the
ground where it once stood.
Broyhill will have become another
dead UNL tradition, leaving a similar _
hole in each of our hearts and
memories.
•
Kerber is a sophomore news
editorial major and a Daily
Nebraskan columnist.
■ ;