Editor,

In 1917, a group of revolutionaries calling themselves the majority took over the Russian Revolution and declared the Soviet Union. They, the Bolsheviks, were not a majority but they claimed to represent all the Russian people except the bourgeoisie.

In 1933, a minority German political party, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, the Nazis, took over the German state and after burning the building where the German representative democracy held their meetings, the Reichstag, they declared martial law and that they represented the German people, except for, of course, Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill among others.

In both cases, Russian and German, a dictatorship was declared because the dictators declared that it was in the best interest of the Russian and German peoples.

In 1949, Mao Tse-tung and his partners took over in China and declared they would govern by Democratic Centralism, a way of making democratic decisions for the people so they wouldn’t have to make such decisions for themselves.

In at least three of these cases the Russian, the German, and the Chinese all established their systems based along very strict ideological lines. By following these ideological principles and the leaders who espoused them, the people could be safely guided along a glorious path to greatness.

Also, economic decisions could be made more efficiently because market principles would not have to be followed. The ideologies could be, of course, exported so that the whole world could benefit, except those who failed to fit the strict guidelines the systems promoted, whether they be Jews, the bourgeoisie, different ethnicities, and other inferior peoples.

According to such ideologies, diversity of beliefs and differing ethnicities must be eliminated. Rigid dogmatism and authoritarianism would reign supreme.

Today, a minority in our congress and their supporters would risk a global depression to advance their personal ideology. This frightens me. Such a plan can only lead to eventual dictatorship.

If we wish to remain citizens and not subjects, the only reasonable ethical path we can follow in the United States, as true citizens, is government by consent of a majority of the governed, gaining a high quality of life, liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness for all.

DR. GEORGE H. WESTERGAARD

Clinton