XXIIIPATRIOTISM AND CITIZENSHIP
From the beginning of history there have always been individuals who have chosen death rather than slavery. As intelligence has grown and has displaced ignorance, their number has increased, but it is only within the last century and a half that people have demanded liberty in sufficient numbers to make it the fundamental principle in the forming of great nations.
We, in the United States, are the inheritors of the most courageous and forward thinking of the men and women of all nations who cared enough for human liberty to break all ties of home and country in order that they might “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and for us.
These phrases from the Constitution of the United States have usually been only wordsto us. We have been safe, our homes have been secure, our loved ones have been protected. Most of us have not personally been conscious of any overwhelming injustices, and those that we have heard of have been far enough away not to be disturbing. We have come and gone as we chose; we have thought and spoken as we pleased; we have worshiped as we would; our property has been safe; we have damned the government or any man in any public office without thought of danger to ourselves; we have feared no man. Why should we have talked about liberty or human freedom—it has been secure enough. So the call to defend liberty to some has fallen on dull ears, and the demand for an awakened patriotism in some places has gone unheeded. As a people, we have forgotten about the long centuries of fighting for freedom, the tremendous cost that has been paid, and the blood that has been shed.
Think what those words, “safety, defense, tranquillity, justice,” must have meant throughout the centuries when no man’s life was safe, when not only his welfare, but that of his family, was subject to the whim of the government, when he could be thrown into prison without knowing the reasonwhy, when the honor of his wife or daughter could be taken without his being able to protest. Read your history again, of the middle ages, of England in the seventeenth century, of France before the Revolution, of Germany in the eighteenth century. Then read of the early struggles in America. It was nature and the Indians that man was fighting then. For personal safety he fought to make war and raiding unprofitable; he had to meet brute force with brute force, to prove his mastery over nature and savagery, and to gain peace and safety for himself and his home.
It is the untold sacrifices of countless men and women that have made liberty possible. That it shall be maintained, and that the world shall not be allowed to slip back, is a debt that every man and woman owes to the past.
Those who inherit the fruits of this age-long struggle must be ready to pay their part, for themselves and for the sake of those they love, for the sake of those who won it for them, and for those who shall come after them. The duty which rests on them is as great as the duty that was on the men of the Revolution, and on those who won the Magna Charta. If they do not,they are weakening the forces of civilization.
For liberty is not yet complete. There may be as great a struggle ahead of the world as lies in the past. Before the tremendous upheaval of the war, we took it for granted that the liberties we possess were common, more or less, in most of the civilized world. Since then the horrors, the unbelievable human suffering, the suspension of all human rights, in the region of the great struggle, we have laid to the war, and have not realized that in many parts of civilized Europe, before the war, human freedom as we know it did not exist, and that the denial of certain rights which we claim as fundamental, was common.
At the foundation of our national existence has been that belief in the principles of liberty, justice, and opportunity which the Constitution expresses. The rights given us by the founders of our nation have been the ideals which other democratic governments have sought to follow. They have been sufficiently elastic to meet the growth of the world’s belief in democracy, and to provide for all new developments in the ideals of human liberty. If these ideals have been denied to any of our people, it has been thefault of us as citizens. The degree in which they are maintained depends on us. Instead of denying the liberties that we actually enjoy, would we not do better to advance them and add to them? In place of tearing down the great structure already erected, is it not wiser to help to correct its imperfections and to continue to build on it?
There is an intelligent part of the public that desires good government and will help to maintain our ideals of justice, but they are in the minority. There is also a part that sees in government only their own selfish profit, but they are also a minority. The great mass of people are indifferent until something arouses them. They would rather be left alone by bad government than be bothered by good government. That is the great problem of democracy—to arouse all the people to a realization of the necessity of their active interest in and support of that democracy, to increase their sense of individual responsibility; and that is the reason for universal suffrage—to put yeast into a people and to ferment their dormant interest. Democracy is not static. It exists only as it is upheld.
We hear about the denials of justice and the failures of democracy more than we doabout its blessings. Our sense of perspective is often wrong. We talk about an act of lawlessness in the United States, even if it is being prosecuted with energy by the government, and class it with a deliberate attempt by a government to crush a people. We make no distinction between a State with deficient labor laws and a country where the laboring classes have no right to make themselves heard. We see no difference between a suppression of disloyal utterances in time of war and a people that is never allowed to speak freely, or a censoring of papers in war-time and a press that never prints anything but what it is told to print.
We are apt to magnify the evils of democracy at home, and to forget the magnificent heritage of liberty that belongs to us.
What are the special privileges which we enjoy?
First.—Personal Security, the right to live our daily lives without fear of personal danger, the right of being secure from unwarrantable seizure of person. This right has been ours so long that we do not know how precious a right it is. It is difficult even to conjure up in imagination an idea of what it would mean to be in daily fear of one’s safety.
Second.—Personal Liberty: Freedom ofThought and Speech.Life would be unthinkable to us without this liberty. To stifle one’s thought, to be afraid to let a suspicion of it leak out would mean to make life unbearable.Freedom of the Pressis a right that we enjoy more than any other nation.Freedom of Worshiphas so long been unquestioned that we forget that it has been little more than a short century since it was established.Freedom of Assemblyis a right which we accept without question.
The Right of Petitionwas won by a bitter struggle. We can scarcely imagine that there was ever a time when it was denied.
Third.—Equality before the Lawis a right that is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, the right to a fair trial by jury, of habeas corpus, and due process of the law.
Fourth.—Security of Propertyis guaranteed by our Constitution. Private property may not be taken even by the government without a fair price being paid for it.
Fifth.—Political Rightsare guaranteed to our people, universal suffrage, complete political liberty. This is the most valuable of all rights, because it is the right that secures all other rights.[11]
These rights are not absolute; they are dependent on public opinion as well as on the law. They are imperfectly administered. To the extent that they are denied, we must each one of us accept part of the blame, because liberty of action is ours. In time of war public safety may demand their suspension, and the people may give permission that this may be done temporarily.
The privilege of citizenship brings with it the obligation to defend the government of which that citizenship is a part. The right to vote is a right which might well be dependent on the loyalty of the citizen, and on his willingness to defend and maintain his country.
Men say even to-day that the vote has no value, that they do not care about it. Let them live for a time in a country where they would not be allowed to vote, where the people are governed by an autocratic power, and how long before they would be willing to sacrifice anything, even life itself, for political liberty?
The citizen of a democracy has not only the duty to defend his country, but is bound to transmit to future generations somethingbetter than he inherited from the past. As it is his part in time of war to defend the liberties that he enjoys, so it is his duty in time of peace to do his best to develop and strengthen liberty and justice.
That is a task even more difficult than to fight in time of war. The discouragements, the disappointments, are many.
Women are bound to meet these disappointments. The vote for which they have worked so hard and so long will not accomplish what they wish. Often it will seem to accomplish very little. The machinery of democracy is cumbersome and very imperfect. It is often heartbreaking to try to move it. It does not easily register the popular will. But in spite of the imperfections, and the discouragements, and the downright corruption, the foundation on which it is built is the best that the world has yet found. There are many labor-saving devices still to be invented for the bettering of the machinery of government—protective measures to be found against political corruption and to safeguard the interests of the people.
Side by side with the improvement in the mechanism of government must come a quickening of the public conscience. The yeast of universal suffrage is already workingtoward that end. The golden rule as the standard of action in government will make few mistakes. The prospect for an improved democracy in New York State is bright. The war has swept away many prejudices and has clarified many problems. Men and women are working together as never before, whole-heartedly, for the benefit of the State. To adapt the words of President Wilson, “the climax of the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and we must be ready to put our own strength, our own highest purpose, our own integrity and devotion to the test,” and we must do this not only now in time of war, but also after peace has come, in the dedication of ourselves to the service of justice, freedom, and opportunity for all in our nation.
FOOTNOTES:[11]Universal suffrage has meant in the past only manhood suffrage. With the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the National Constitution, universal suffrage will become for the first time a fact.
[11]Universal suffrage has meant in the past only manhood suffrage. With the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the National Constitution, universal suffrage will become for the first time a fact.
[11]Universal suffrage has meant in the past only manhood suffrage. With the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the National Constitution, universal suffrage will become for the first time a fact.