National self-determination

“ Ours is still a relatively young Nation, but even in our brief history, we have seen many other forms of government come and go. We have witnessed the collapse of dictatorial regimes, while our brand of democracy has continued to evolve and flourish. Rather than establishing government control through the deprivation of basic human rights, our founders realized that individual freedom and the right to self-determination are the most powerful sources of national strength. ”

“ Third comes nationalism. The government should help and guide the weak and small racial groups within its national boundaries toward self-determination and self-government. It should offer resistance to foreign aggression, and simultaneously it should revise foreign treaties in order to restore our equality and independence among the nations. 5. The program of national reconstruction shall be divided into three periods:- First the military period ”

“ We should all remember this country’s founding was a rejection of monarchy, a rejection of the notion that any one person could be all-powerful. Our commitment to self-determination is what gave rise to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. ”

“ It has been shown that a nation desiring to live can not be obliterated. We demand, and demand emphatically, the right of self-determination for our people, so that they may erect their own independent institutions on their own territory. ”

“ Reaffirms the interpretation of self-determination laid down in General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) as follows:
"All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development" ”

“ The principle of self-determination pre-supposes not only the freedom, but also the union of peoples. Here the instructions are opposed to the interests, a whole number of peoples; the Poles, the Czecho-Slovaks, the Roumanians, the Jugoslavs, the Italians. Thus the instructions recognise in words the principle of self-determination of peoples, but in reality only propose its realisation through existing States. ”

“ The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic policy of the state. ”

“ Resolved, That as complete individual development depends on the harmonious exercise of our three-fold nature, and undue power given to either deranges and undermines the whole being, so in the nation, a complete experiment of self-government can be made only by the equal recognition of the rights of all citizens, and in their homogeneous education into the laws of national life. ”

“ Is it nothing for the universal good of mankind to have carried into successful operation a system of self-government, uniting personal liberty, freedom of opinion, and equality of rights, with national power and dignity ”

“ The one right above all others which is not local is the right of self-government. That right being the corner stone on which the nation was founded, is a strictly national right. It is not local, it is not State.... ”

“ But, rejecting this mode of reasoning, and allowing to nations a right of self government or a national sovereignty, anterior to suffrage; the primitive of suffrage itself and the antecedent of law; it realizes a national free right of discussion, as radical as the right of self government itself, because the one cannot exist without the other. ”

“ But if an American citizen denies that the principle of "self-determination" can be rightfully applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true conception of political liberty and therefore universally applicable, just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view? ”

“ In such a program our ideals, the ideals of justice and humanity and liberty, the principle of the free self-determination of nations, upon which all the modern world insists, can play no part. They are rejected for the ideals of power, for the principle that the strong must rule the weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforce it. ”

“ We will transmit to them an untarnished national honor; we will transmit to them a power under whose shield the oppressed of the world will feel secure, and whose flag no king or combination of kings will dare to touch. These blessings we will transmit to them in the frame of a Federal Constitution, the rational form of self-government, elastic enough for ever so many hundred millions of citizens, leaving every individual and every community free to work out their own progressive development in their acknowledged spheres, while binding all together in a bond of strength. ”

“ Of course, those who subscribe to "self-determination" and advocate it as a great truth fundamental to every political society organized to protect and promote civil liberty, do not claim it for races, peoples, or communities whose state of barbarism or ignorance deprive them of the capacity to choose intelligently their political affiliations. ”

“ Against that exacting centralization, absorbing everything, of which Paris is the example, I oppose the American system of self-government, which leaves the people to themselves, subject only to the paramount conditions of national life. But these conditions cannot [Pg 60] be sacrificed. No local claim of self-government can for a moment interfere with the supremacy of the Nation, in the maintenance of Human Rights. ”

“ When all minds are so unanimous, the wills so ready, the arms so strong and well prepared to strike together, it must be admitted that in the whole exists a common feeling, a national will. Self-government may be wanting; it may have been suppressed by sheer force and kept under by the most unfavorable state of affairs, but the nation subsists and cannot fail ultimately to rise. ”

“ Self-determination, as a modern principle of enlightened reason, was established and expounded by no less an authority than the scientifically educated intellect of our distinguished ex-president—in its application to the smaller and weaker peoples of the earth, as well as to the large and strong. If self-determination is the proper thing for each nation, should it not be an equally proper thing for each individual? And, as it is hoped and assumed that in this advanced age each nation will be guided by the rule of reason, why may the same assumption not be applied to the individual? ”

“ Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope. ”

“ It was no small thing that a State should have come into being whose founders proclaimed in their Declaration of Independence that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." ”

“ But the problems this generation has to solve render the development of honest self-criticism and individual independence inside of parties peculiarly indispensable. We have just issued from a social and political revolution which has essentially changed the relations of the elementary forces of society and the distribution of political powers. The political rights of the individual, formerly at the mercy of the States, have been in a great measure placed under the safeguard of the National authority. ”

“ We and our allies have declared that it is our purpose to respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live and to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them. But with internal dissension, with many citizens of liberated countries still prisoners of war or forced to labor in Germany, it is difficult to guess the kind of self-government the people really want. ”

“ While it is the duty of every nation and every individual person to press forward the work of reform upon general principles, each nation and person must always keep in view the law of self-preservation, otherwise individuality will be lost in the struggle for supremacy, which has hitherto characterized the legislation of nations and the conduct of individual persons. ”

“ Who is entitled to self-determination and who is not? In each particular case, for self-determination to take place there should be a community of people considering themselves a distinct nation/people in the first place, then they must claim their right to self-determination and the opportunity to choose a self-determination option of their preference, and last but not least, that claim needs to be recognized by the respective central government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the hereditary character of the Southern people moving in one direction, and the awakened conscience of the North stirring in the other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable, and equally inevitable its appearance in the field of national politics. For what is meant by self-government is, that a man shall make his convictions of what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his fractional share of the government extends. ”

“ We cannot too highly revere the Constitution, as it is that which gives permanence, security, and prosperity to our national life; yet there is a power greater than the Constitution—a power that by authority expressed or understood reserves the right to amend, alter, or abolish its provisions. That power is the sovereignty that resides in the people. Self preservation is a95 national, as much as an individual instinct, and self preservation is the first law of nature. ”

“ I once more deny, as I have found it repeatedly necessary to do in other cases, that this Nation's ability to preserve itself depends upon suppression of the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. [15] But I do believe that the noble-sounding slogan of 'self-preservation' [16] rests upon a premise that can itself destroy any democratic nation by a slow process of eating away at the liberties that are indispensable to its healthy growth. ”

“ We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian States who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. ”

“ Nationality might have become political power merely as a historical fact, but the Allies recognise the right to self-determination of nations. President Wilson declared that no nation shall be forced to have a government which is not its own nor for its own interests. ”

“ In other words, you, my Democratic friends, in the name of liberty asserted the right of one man, under State law, to deprive another man of his freedom; in the name of democracy you asserted the right of one class of people under State law to rule despotically over another class; in the name of self-government you asserted the right of the States to exclude a large portion, sometimes even amounting to a majority of their population, from all participation in self-government. ”

“ The preservation of personal rights, the equality of all citizens before the law, the reserved rights of the States, and the supremacy of the Federal Government within the limits of the Constitution, will ever form the true basis of our liberties, and can never be surrendered without destroying that balance of rights and powers which enables a continent to be developed in peace, and social order to be maintained by means of local self-government. ”

“ Our true mission is not to propagate our opinions or impose upon other countries our form of government by artifice or force, but to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice the blessings of self-government and the advantages of free institutions. Let every people choose for itself and make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience. But while we avow and maintain this neutral policy ourselves, we are anxious to see the same forbearance on the part of other nations whose forms of government are different from our own. ”

“ Article 7 In accordance with the exercise of their right to self-determination, peoples should, if they so desire, exercise self-government and create appropriate organs for self-government within their territory. ”

“ We maintain, that in a government like ours, a republican government, or government of the people, the elective franchise, as it is called, is not a mere privilege, but an actual and absolute right,—a right belonging, of right, to every free man who has not forfeited that right by crime. We in this country enjoy what is properly called self-government, and self-government necessarily implies the right to vote,—the right to help to govern, and to make the laws ”

“ In a word, they must reject, not affirm, the Declaration’s understanding of self-government according to the consent of the governed. If members of oppressed groups want to become free, they must rely upon a regime of rewards and privileges assigned according to group identity. ”

“ I will confess that as a general plan of reconstruction, as a foundation for the future development of this great Republic, this constitutional amendment never appeared to me broad enough. I believe not only in the ability, but also in the right of man to govern himself. I believe that the only safe basis for democratic institutions to rest upon, consists in the integrity of self-government, and that the integrity of self-government consists in no man's being excluded from participation in it by disabilities which he cannot overcome. ”