KINDER'S COMMENTARY: BIG KICKOFF SET TO PUSH SCHOOL BONDS

Weather, the Senate schedule and St. Louis rush-hour traffic permitting, I will have arrived in town tonight to make the kickoff rally for passage of the proposed bond issue for the Cape Girardeau School District at Central High School's auditorium. The ceremony, coordinated by Julia Jorgenson of the Renaissance program, begins at 6 p.m. We received a tremendous boost when our request in the amount of $3.1 million for a new Cape Girardeau Area Vocational-Technical School was included in the governor's budget. This is a major state commitment and shows that Cape schools are finally getting something back from all the higher taxes we have been paying since 1993.

We have three school buildings, all badly in need of replacement, which date from around the World War I era -- and this as we look to the 21st century. The district has credible new leadership. It is time, between now and the first week of April, for public-spirited citizens to get involved and try to help pass a bond issue to do something about our facilities. Hope to see you there tonight.

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Tuesday night's double-overtime, 96-94 victory by the Missouri Tigers over the No. 1-ranked Kansas Jayhawks, in Columbia, was one of the most thrilling and electrifying sporting events I have ever witnessed. Kansas, which entered the contest with a glittering 22-0 record, is an enormously talented, classy and well-coached team. Only one of the most heroic efforts ever put forth by any Missouri team was enough to earn a victory. As a Senate colleague and I took our seats just before tipoff, I looked back to greet Cape chamber president John Mehner and economic developer Mitch Robinson, in town for a meeting, seated immediately behind us. Surely, this was intercollegiate athletics at its very finest. And to think that the Tigers' opponent this Sunday afternoon is No. 2-ranked Wake Forest!

For me, though, sadly, much of the sheer magic of such an unforgettable event is marred when young students engage in the kind of obscene, gutter-like "cheering" that marked Tuesday night's game. Several thousand young people among the 13,600 present insisted on shouting, in thunderous repetition directed at the KU bench: "MIZF---KU!"

Even 20 years ago, open, flagrant violation of basic manners on this scale would have been unthinkable. How far and how fast we have fallen! We hear much talk of restoring standards of civility. Any such effort will have to begin with an effort to re-acquaint young people with the notion that such a thing as objective standards or norms, based on objective truth, still exist, regardless of a youngster's opinion of them. Today's anything-goes, no-guardrails society doesn't lack for free speech. Indeed, such episodes remind us of the wisdom of the late Malcolm Muggeridge, the great British writer and Christian apologist. Muggeridge wrote of what he called a "fearful symmetry" increasingly apparent in modern life (not to mention our example from this week's fame in Columbia), among which was this telling observation: "The more free speech, the less truth (is) spoken. ..."

Perhaps a good place to start would be for university officials to announce a policy that any such future obscenities will be met by armed police officers' beginning to escort these punks -- first by the dozens, then by the hundreds, if necessary -- out of the arena. Then bar them from future games until they sign a pledge making clear that they have learned and prepared to demonstrate manners that every fourth-grader used to learn at home. The first university president or chancellor to follow through with such a policy might just find himself a national hero.

Somehow, little by little, we must begin to take back our public places and our public ceremonies from the barbarians. Or we can continue to our descent into the brutish darkness.

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Hope to see you also at the First Friday Coffee at 7:30 a.m. Friday at the Show Me Center. I will be introducing three experts on the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed new rules on air quality, how they could shut down business and development on our state and our effort to resist them.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.