The fiction of granted freedom: Autonomy versus the claim to absolute independence

“ Physical compulsion is the sole argument to which their minds are open. At the very moment when the sixty representatives agreed to accept the British terms, and thereby to acknowledge the sovereignty of the British Crown, they passed a resolution affirming their "well-founded" claim to "independence." History (p. 579) may well ask, On what was this claim based? Judged by the ethical standard, [346] the Boers had shown themselves utterly unworthy of the administrative autonomy conferred upon them by Great Britain. ”

“ Countrymen! the men who now invite you to surrender your rights into their hands, are the men who have let loose the merciless savages to riot in the blood of their brethren—who have dared to establish popery triumphant in our land—who have taught treachery to your slaves, and courted them to assassinate your wives and children.
These are the men to whom we are exhorted to sacrifice the blessings which Providence holds out to us—the happiness, the dignity of uncontrolled freedom and independence. ”

“ May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
To unite the supremacy of Great Britain and the liberty of America, is utterly impossible. So vast a continent and of such a distance from the seat of empire will every day grow more unmanageable. The motion of so unwieldy a body cannot be directed with any despatch and uniformity, without committing to the Parliament of Great Britain powers inconsistent with our freedom. ”

“ All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.
Some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776. ”

“ As a rational being, and consequently belonging to the intelligible world, man can never conceive the causality of his own will otherwise than on condition of the idea of freedom. for independence on the determining causes of the sensible world (an independence which Reason must always ascribe to itself) is freedom. Now the idea of freedom is inseparably connected with the conception of autonomy, and this again with the universal principle of morality which is ideally the foundation of all actions of rational beings, just as the law of nature is of all phenomena. ”

“ Physical necessity is a heteronomy of the efficient causes, for every effect is possible only according to this law, that something else determines the efficient cause to exert its causality. What else then can freedom of the will be but autonomy, that is the property of the will to be a law to itself? But the proposition: The will is in every action a law to itself, only expresses the principle, to act on no other maxim than that which can also have as an object itself as a universal law. ”

“ Life and property are unsafe, the natural resources of the country are undeveloped, and trade, though increasing, is hampered by the political situation. In these respects the contrast between Morocco and Egypt is marked. In spite of well-meant efforts to assist the Sultan, but little progress has been effected, and at this moment the prospect is probably as little hopeful as it ever has been. Without the intervention of a strong and civilized Power there appears to be no probability of a real improvement in the condition of the country. ”

“ Signor Ferrero confessed recently that the present generation [27] of Italians had all but forgotten Italia Irredenta, and the Revanche has been a decadent French dream until the Entente and the Dual Alliance began to clash in Morocco, in Turkey, in China. Alsace-Lorraine has no doubt kept alive suspicion of Germany, and predisposed French opinion to inflicting diplomatic defeats in Morocco. But the arena where the European Powers really measure their strength against each other is in the Balkans, in Africa, and in Asia....
War is for sake of prestige in undeveloped countries. ”

“ It must be realized that the German demand for economic expansion is deeply rooted, and in the modern world inevitable. For Manchuria, Morocco, Egypt and Tripoli, the Entente Powers made, or were ready to make war. The German craving for “a place in the sun” may be condemned by those of us who have opposed Imperialism at home, but the ruling classes cannot consistently censure it. For twenty years past, the unsolved problem for European statecraft was to find an outlet for these tremendous German energies, to cut a canal in which the broad river could flow without floods. ”

“ In these circumstances, France, although in no wise desiring to annex the Sultan’s dominions or to subvert his authority, seeks to extend her influence in Morocco, and is ready to submit to sacrifices and to incur responsibilities with the object of putting an end to the condition of anarchy which prevails upon the borders of Algeria. His Majesty’s Government are not prepared to assume such responsibilities, or to make such sacrifices, and they have therefore readily admitted that if any European Power is to have a predominant influence in Morocco, that Power is France. ”

“ God—or profit—gave them energy. But Madrid is of no such beginning: Madrid is of the end. It is a consummation. It stands for the Spain that has annulled its motions.
Its greatness is but the stubborn Castilian will to remain and to hold all Spain in perfect equilibrium of forces. Madrid is the town of politicians, of social servants, of soldiers. It is a conservative town. It wants things as they are. From here goes forth the will to repress Barcelona, to exploit the Basques, to muzzle Unamuno, to tax Andalusia, to play at empire in Morocco. ”

“ Agriculture has revived; and German trade itself has run up two million francs. Even so the ‘economic interests’ of Germany in Morocco are scant indeed compared with those of France and England; they are perhaps less than those of Spain—and yet they have long threatened the peace of Europe. ... Meanwhile the interior of Morocco has been chiefly occupied in the unmaking and making of Sultans. Toward the German Emperor these fighting Moors have now a feeling much like that of the Transvaal Boers when the Kruger telegram failed to lead to eventualities. ”

“ For, to the vast majority of these 250,000,000 people, more or less, it does not matter two straws whether Morocco or some vague, African swamp near the Equator is administered by German, French, Italian, or Turkish officials, so long as it is well administered. Or rather one should go further: if French, German, or Italian colonization of the past is any guide, the nation which wins in the conquest for territory of this sort has added a wealth-draining incubus. ”

“ The advocates for a despotic government, and non-resistance to the magistrate, employ reasons in favor of their systems drawn from a consideration of their tendency to promote public happiness.
The Author of Nature directs all his operations to the production of the greatest good, and has made human virtue to consist in a disposition and conduct which tend to the common felicity of his creatures. An abridgement of the natural freedom of man, by the institution of political societies, is vindicable only on this foot. ”

“ Such a wish is impossible in the United States. Institutions react upon the character of nations. He who sows wind will reap storm. History is the revelation of Providence. The Almighty rules by eternal laws not only the material but also the moral world; and as every law is a principle, so every principle is a law. Men as well as nations are endowed with free-will to choose a principle, but, that once chosen, the consequences must be accepted.
With self-government is freedom, and with freedom is justice and patriotism. With centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells despotism. ”

“ That no territory should be transferred without the consent of the men and women in it, and that the right of conquest should not be recognized.
That autonomy and a democratic parliament should not be refused to any people.
That the governments of all nations should come to an agreement to refer future international disputes to arbitration or conciliation, and to bring social, moral and economic pressure to bear upon any country which resorts to arms.
That foreign politics should be subject to democratic control.
That women should be granted equal political rights with men. ”

“ The restoration of Hungary to its national independence is my aim, to which I the more cheerfully devote my life, because I know that my nation, once master of its own destiny, can make no other choice, in the regulation of its institutions and of its government, than that of a Republic founded upon democracy and the great principle of municipal self-government, without which, as opposed to centralization, there is no practical freedom possible. ”

“ We cannot talk of self-determination and fight four years for it without the backward races believing that we are in earnest. The passing of the resolution will be a message of hope and encouragement to our comrades who do not regard the Union Jack as the last word in economic equality or political freedom. These people have a right to govern their own countries according to their own traditions and conceptions, and before the British working man can be emancipated he will have to help others to throw off the shackles of British Imperialism. ”

“ The Analytic.—Freedom, as the one constituent element which shows itself in the activity of our will, is the simple form of our actions. The universal law binding the will, is that it should determine itself purely from itself, independently of every external incitement. This capacity of self-lawgiving, or self-determining, Kant calls the autonomy of the will. The free autonomic will says to man: thou oughtest! and since this moral ought commands to an unconditioned obedience, the moral imperative is a categorical imperative. ”

“ Now we have a clearer idea of modern freedom. It is known as autonomism. The individual wants to be a law to himself, his own court of last appeal; he wants to develop his personality, feeling, desires, and thought, independently of all authority. Too long, it is said, have man's aspirations been directed upward, away from things, of this world, to a supernatural world. [pg 025] Religion and Church seek to determine his thought and desire, to subject him to dogma. Too long has he clung like a child to the apron-strings of authority. ”

“ For the modern man, freedom, especially freedom of intellectual life, means independence from external ties, from all authority, or, to express it positively, absolute right of self-determination, autonomy. He does not recognize any law or rule which he has not imposed upon himself. In civil life, of course, it is a principle that man must submit to external, legal restraint in many things that do not directly concern his own person, but only so far as is necessary in order that others, too, may enjoy the same freedom ”

“ And, if the evils which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining freedom, it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal with political as they now deal with scientific questions; ”

“ She is free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.
Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.
Now, the adjustments necessary between individuals, between individuals and the complex institutions amidst which they live, and between those institutions and the government, are infinitely more intricate to-day than ever before. ”

“ Man is, nevertheless, free. But his freedom does not mean complete independence; nor freedom from all restraint, but only from those external restraints which are opposed to his nature and position, which hinder his legitimate development and activity. He possesses freedom, but only such a freedom as is his due, by which he can unfold and develop his physical and mental powers. To keep his place of subordination to, and dependence on, these higher authorities and powers of truth and order, tends not to injure but to improve his being, not to dwarf but to develop his personality ”

“ Our experience has now so far widened that we can see that despotism is not the strongest but wellnigh the weakest form of government; that centralized administrations, like that of the Roman empire, have fallen to pieces, not because of too much but because of too little freedom; and that the only perdurable government must be that which succeeds in achieving national unity on a grand scale, without weakening the sense of personal and local independence. For in the body politic this spirit of freedom is as the red corpuscles in the blood; it carries the life with it. ”