Kenyon College - Reveille Yearbook (Gambier, OH)

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EDITORS HARRY M. HUMPHREYS ........ Editor-in-Chief STEPHEN K. BROWN .,.....A. Business Manager ARNOLD R. DELORENZO ...., Managing Editor FRANK W. PINE ....,....... Photography Editor H. CHARLES GORDON .A., Advertising Manager The Reveille is presented annually by the Junior Class. 1 3 VOLUME CV111

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REVEILLE 10

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FOREWORD The word coercion strikes one's semantic repertoire as being synonomous with the idea of the use of force to repress individual or group actions and to enforce obedience to a given policy or norm. Images are conjured up of the authoritarian or totalitarian state and the application of harsh, oppressive, and arbitrary police-state methods in dealing with political offenders and those per- sonages who do not pay at least lip service respect and display ostensible obedience to the dictates and rulers of the regime. The use of these tactics are obviously antithetical to the ideals and operations of a free and f or open society, and in normal times practice of such cannot, in justice, be sanctioned by any nation or government laying claim to those honorable titles. Likewise, coercion of a subtler, but sometimes more invidious, variety can be seen working in the social sphere. Moral opprobrium, ridicule, and other devices can be applied, and in many instances are applied, to force one to con- form, at least outwardly, to the norms which the social group sets, or envisions that it has set, for itself and the society at large. Under these conditions, the individual whose value system is not in fashion finds himself relegated to a position of isolation, perhaps even of alienation, vis-a-vis his peers and the so- ciety at large. Madison's fear of the tyranny of the majority, although spoken in a political context, is proven to be well-founded in the social sense. This is not to say, then, that licence, amorality, and unrestricted thought and action, masquerading under the righteous guise of freedom, should be en- couraged and permitted. It is axiomatic that every just nation, every free society, every humane culture, and every God-loving individual also owes to itself the responsibility of self-protection and preservation. Order and liberty stand in dia- metrical contradiction to confusion and anarchy, and this latter state most certain- ly would occur were we to permit our passions unbridled reign and to take action on every hastily conceived opinion and sentiment. Freedom is a wonderful thing -ask the proud Hungarians who knew it for a few days or the Germans who dared to climb over the infamous wall-but it must be responsibly exercised in ac- cord with reason, justice, propriety, and tradition. Now, were we living in the City of God, no restrictions would be neces- saryg but as mortals we must strive, and the path is never easy, for the goal of or- dered liberty. We must work to obtain for ourselves and for others equally de- serving the maximum amount of freedom that is consistent with time-tested trans- cendent values, the lofty traditions of the past, and the peculiar circumstances of the present. Were we to do otherwise, our precious heritage and universal ideal of ordered liberty- liberally but not self-defeatingly defined-might, in all proba- bility, be denied to posterity. It is with these thoughts in mind that we cry out for a world, a nation, a society of peace and freedom, not peace at any price not freedom with no re- servations, but rather, both in accordance with the tenets of natural justice and human wisdom, Can we, in these perilous times when the very fabric of Western Civilization is threatened by barbarians from within and heinous ideologies from without, meet the challenge?