LETERS: LAW OF THE JUNGLE IS DANGEROUS SYSTEM

To the editor:

Many years ago I moved to a city that had a reported population of 8 million inhabitants. While driving down an avenue that day, there seemed to be no semaphores or stop signs. I asked my friend who was driving if they had no traffic laws in that city. Eduardo looked at me and said, "Yes, we have one. It is the law of the jungle." Since then many controls have been added, and the populations is now estimated at 11 million.

In many aspects of life there are certain controls which seem to guide human behavior. The trend now seems to be to give them ample leeway. In a desire to utilize our guaranteed freedoms at times, we tend to overlook the rights of others and demand privileges which may exceed what one might call fair and honest.

In the realm of sports or athletic contests, one must win at any cost. In football it has become necessary to arrest and penalize players who may use methods which injure or maim the opponent in order to assure victory. Basketball used to be called a non-contact sport, but with all the scratching and clawing along with pushing and shoving and holding, the game certainly includes quite a bit of rough contact.

Someone has said that it is easy to destroy in a day or two that which has taken our ancestors generations to do. At present, there seems to be a growing spirit among the malcontents to destroy that which has been accomplished. They want to throw out the baby with the bath water, because they don't like the baby or the bath water. They feel that by taking the law into their own hands they can get rid of the imperfections in our culture by destroying it and doing things their way. I have lived for more than a score of years where from time to time different groups would organize to bring about a rapid solution to grievances but which would often result in anarchy or chaos. I don't think that is what we want.

Sometimes we forget that many of our Founding Fathers had to struggle to obtain unity among a group of colonies and states to form what became in name the United States of America. They were even called Federalists and wanted to form a nation to develop strength and cooperation to match the reality of facing other nations. We readily realize that mistake have been made in a desire to achieve what we like to call democracy.

We still have a system of checks and balances as well as occasional elections on a fairly regular basis through which we can express our differences and bring about orderly change rather than self-destruction.

As we try to overcome the areas of tension and hatred which seem quite prevalent, let us hope that good judgment, common sense and reason will prevail so that the extremists will not destroy the gains made to assure freedoms for the vast majority.

Maybe we need a little of the patience of Job to be rational and reasonable and not try to take the law into our own hands and act like savages. In that approach we may soon run into some animal which is larger and more violent than we are.

IVAN NOTHDURFT

Cape Girardeau