As a part of the Herald celebrating its 40th anniversary, each Wednesday we will be running some of our classic editorials from the early years of the Opinion page. Today, we offer an archival editorial board statement responding to the Sterling Hall bombing of Aug. 24, 1970.

There is a widespread opinion on the Left that the bombing of Sterling Hall was the logical culmination of years of frustrated attempts to remove the Army Math Research Center through peaceful means. “Finally, some members of this movement decided to top talking, to stop asking that the place be shut down, and so they blew the place up,” read a Cardinal editorial.

The dedicated young idealists on the Left, those wishy-washy sheep that fight their way down State Street to free the central Madison peasantry, seem to have the erroneous idea that if a nation is a democracy and an opinion is loudly articulated, then that opinion must become a matter of public policy. If it doesn’t, then the nation is an oppressive fascist regime unresponsive to the people. Therefore, the logic goes, the only just alternative to those who hold frustrated political goals is to blow up the substance and the symbols of the public policy they oppose.

One can envision a loud protest group being frustrated in its attempts to repeal the Bill of Rights. After blowing up the National Archives, it would claim it “hadn’t been listened to,” and all the sheep would nod and understand.

If a group holds an opinion in a Democracy, it does not follow that the opinion necessarily becomes public policy. The fact is every person and every group is politically frustrated in some way. Both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party have a national conspiracy to take over the nation, and both have been frustrated countless times. But neither has decided to blow up the White House when it lost a presidential election, and both have been willing to share power with other groups.

A democracy can be viewed as a market place of ideas. A student minority, or a student majority for that matter, cannot claim the exclusive right to monopolize public policy. They are not the only legitimate political power, so cannot demand that public policy coincide with only its ideas. But the Left persists to claim authority by doing everything “in the name of the People,” despite the plain truth that “the People” aren’t so simple and single minded. The Left must share political power with a variety of institutions and interest groups, many of which have a more legitimate claim to authority than any mass of students.