Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 7, 1990 TAG: 9003071870
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Any government based on pure communism (selflessness) or pure capitalism (selfishness) cannot stand long. Without a mixture of personal motivation to succeed and a social conscience about the welfare of our neighbors, any government will lean too far and eventually topple.
What these changes in Europe really mean is a grass-roots rejection of tyranny. Tyranny in these communist states was based on an inflexible governmental system or inflexible leaders, but it was tyranny nonetheless.
Tyranny can come from many directions and from any system. The fate of Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania paralleled in many respects the fate of Benito Mussolini of Italy during World War II. In both instances, angry mobs of their own people executed them. One was a communist leader, the other fascist - systems diametric and mortal enemies. Yet their fates were the same.
Somoza in Nicaragua, the Shah of Iran, Pol Pot in Camobida, Louis XIV of France - the list is long, and what they had in common was not a particular political system, but that they were tyrants all. The situation in South Africa smacks of another brand of tyranny - and it too shall change. And perhaps one day the People's Republic of China will live up to its name.
The U.S. political system has worked as well as it has because built into it is a structured method of dealing with leaders - we can throw the bums out. This is the heart of a democracy: institutionalized rebellion. Rebellion that is guaranteed as a right of the people.
That many of the framers of the Constitution were from Virginia is evident in Virginia's motto, for it embodies the answer both to why dictatorships eventually fail and why our system just may last. Sic Semper Tyrannis: Thus Always to Tyrants.
HARRY W. YEATTS JR.\ BLACKSBURG
by CNB