The Argument of Tyrants

Lima News (Lima, Ohio) Apr 19, 1956

A Daily Thought

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves! — William Pitt

New Castle News (New Castle, Pennsylvania) Jun 30, 1928

“How Liberty is Lost”

Insofar as the present dictatorships in Europe are concerned, Mr. Lippmann demonstrates satisfactorily that they have been caused by the knuckling in of people who surrendered to tyrants because of their fear, fear concerning their individual futures, fear about their jobs, fear of their truculent neighbors, always fear, fear, fear.

That sort of a condition cannot arise in a country that keeps its mind upon a fair distribution of wealth. Such a distribution does not mean, and can never mean, the ladling of money out of the public coffers to the undeserving. It does mean a wide distribution of jobs and of opportunities and a careful husbanding of the savings or accumulations of those who are smart enough to keep an eye out for the future.
…..

The American citizen of today who is blinded by constant sobbing references to his condition, to the “goodness” of the present administration, needs cast his attention upon the methods employed which have resulted in continued and widespread fear, the fear that grows on the tree of insecurity.

And there is no greater insecurity than to depend for one’s life upon the nod of an ambitious man looking for more power.

Appleton Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) Jul 20, 1938

Sen. Goldwater may be a super, right-wing Republican, but that has not kept him from some fundamental points in what follows:

To understand the importance of the federal Constitution, we must recognize that it is primarily a system of restraints against the natural tendency of government to expand in the direction of absolutism.

We all know the main components of the system. The first is the limitation of the federal government’s authority to specific, delegated powers. The second, a corollary of the first, is the reservation to the states and the people of all power not delegated to the federal government. The third is a careful division of the federal government’s power among three separate branches. The fourth is a prohibition against impetuous, alteration of the system — namely, Article V’s tortuous but wise, amendment procedures.

Was it then a democracy the framers created? Hardly. The system of restraints on the face of it, was directed not only against individual tyrants, but also against a tyranny of the masses. The framers were well aware of the danger posed by self-seeking demagogues — that they might persuade a majority of the people to confer on government vast powers in return for deceptive promises of economic gain.

And so they forbade such a transfer of power — first by declaring, in effect, that certain activities are outside the natural and legitimate scope of the public authority, and secondly by dispersing public authority among several levels and branches of government in the hope that each seat of authority, jealous of its own prerogatives, would have a natural incentive to resist aggression by the others.

But the framers were not visionaries. They knew that rules of government, however brilliantly calculated to cope with the imperfect nature of man, however carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of power, would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them.

In the last analysis of their system of government would prosper only if the governed were sufficiently determined that it should.

“What have you given us?” a woman asked Ben Franklin toward the close of the Constitutional Convention.

“A republic,” he said, “if you can keep it!”

We have not kept it. The system of restraints has fallen into disrepair. The federal government has moved into every field in which it believes its services are needed.

The state governments are either excluded from their rightful functions by federal pre-emption, or they are allowed to act at the sufferance of the federal government. Inside the federal government both the executive and judicial branches have roamed far outside their constitutional boundary lines.

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The Constitution is not an antique document. It is as pertinent today as it was when it was written. Our great error has been in departing from the Constitution as a document to restrain the concentration of power.

How do you stand, sir?

Daily Chronicle (Centralia, Washington) May 9, 1960

Delaware County Daily Times (Pennsylvania) Feb 22, 1966

Not Yet! The Spirit of Liberty Still Survives

Image from RightWingStuff

ADDRESS

DELIVERED ON JULY 4, 1863, AT PADUCAH, KY., TO THE CITIZENS, AND THE 111TH REG. ILL. VOL.

BY JAMES BASSETT, ESQ.
[excerpt]

Fellow citizens! God intended us as one consolidated and great people, our physical geography so teaches. Whence our seaboard along the Atlantic, the Mexican Gulf and the Pacific, whence our lakes; whence our arterial rivers and our boundless plains, but to teach the lesson, that from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and from the sunny Mexican Gulf to frigid Canada, we are to be one people, having a grand mission of liberty, which is the exponent of Christianity, the only great idea of liberty to man promulgated by God.

Are you prepared to give up that great mission — to resign nationality — to serve under aristocratic or kingly rule, under the iron sceptre of despotism — to cease to be freemen — to give up the memory of the past — and instead of being citizens of the great nation of the United States, become, it may be, members of some small confederacy, as one has said become citizens not of the United States, whose flag is respected in every land, but become citizens of what? of a small American nation, whose flag, the Palmetto, or some other ensign, steals into the harbour of some ancient nationality, and when asked about, the answer be, it is the flag of one of the obscure republics of America. Are you prepared I ask to blot out the past, despise the future? I rather think you will adopt the sentiment of the Representative poet of American W.C. Bryant, and say “Not Yet”

“Oh! country, marvel of the earth,
Oh realm to sudden greatness grown,
The age that gloried in thy birth,
Shall it behold thee overthrown?
Shall traitors lay that greatness low?
No, Land of Hope and blessing, No!

And we who wear thy glorious name
Shall we, like cravens, stand apart,
When those whom thou hast trusted, aim
The death-blow at thy generous heart?
Forth goes the battle cry, and lo
Hosts rise in harness, shouting No!

And they who founded, in our land
The power that rules from sea to sea,
Bled they in vain, or vainly planned
To leave their country great and free!
Their sleeping ashes, from below,
Send up the thrilling murmur, No!

Knit they the gentle ties which long
These sister States were proud to wear,
And forged the kindly links so strong
For idle hands in sport to tear,
For scornful hands aside to throw?
No, by our fathers’ memory, No!

Our humming marts, our iron ways,
Our wind tossed woods on mountain crest,
The hoarse Atlantic, with its bays,
The calm, broad Ocean of the West,
And Mississippi’s torrent flow,
And loud Niagara, answer, No!

For now behold, the arm that gave
The victory in our fathers’ day,
Strong, as of old, to guard and save,
That mighty arm, which none can stay–
On clouds above, and fields below,
Writes in men’s sight, the answer, No!”

How glorious is Liberty! It is a perennial flower, ever blooming, ever fresh. Let the conqueror, the tyrant wrap the world in flames, so that the blood of millions can not quench them, the Spirit of Liberty still survives, and grows stronger and stronger, while the oppression dwindles and dies. And the tree of American liberty planted by Washington, and nurtured by the blood of the patriots in 1776, whose branches have so spread as to encircle this whole continent, and towered so high as to be seen by all the nations, shall spread wider, and rise higher and higher; so that the Eagle of Liberty perched on its topmost bough shall glory in freedom, and the desponding of every nation find shelter under its kindly branches. That tree which is like the tree in the amaranthine bowers of Paradise whose leaves are for the healing of the nations; shall never be uprooted from the soil of free America, of these United States.

Centralia Sentinel (Centralia, Illinois) Jul 26, 1863

Innisfail

INNISFAIL.

[This poem was written by Michael Davitt in Portland prison.]

In England’s felon garb we’re clad, and by her vengeance bound;
Her concentrated hate we’ve had — her justice never found.
Her laws, accurs’d, have done their worst; in vain they still assail
To crush the hearts that beat for thee, our own loved Innisfail.

Nor can the dungeon’s deepest gloom but make us love thee more;
We’d brave the terrors of the tomb to keep the oath we swore.
In chains or free, to live for thee, and never once to quail
Before the foe that wrought such woe to our loved Innisfail.

From Irish mothers’ hearts has flowed this sacred love of thee,
And Erin’s daughters’ cheeks have glowed that love in deeds to see;
A coward born fair lips will scorn, while joyously they hail
The hearts that beat for love of thee, our own loved Innisfail.

Then let our jailers scowl and roar when cheerful looks we wear;
The patriot’s God that we adore will shield us from despair.
Fair bosoms rise and love drawn sighs by mountain, stream and vale,
And day and night in prayers unite for us and Innisfail.

Here, chained beneath the tyrant’s hand, by martyrs’ blood we swear
To Freedom and to Fatherland we still allegiance bear;
Nor felon’s fate nor England’s hate nor hellish-fashioned jail
Shall stay this hand to wield a brand one day for Innisfail.

Edwardsville Intelligencer (Edwardsville, Illinois) Mar 16, 1892