Non-governmental organization

“ Moreover, we must adapt our rules and customs of government to the peculiar wants of our social organization. In order to be safe, we must intrust the Government, in its general administration, as well as in its details, to those who, by their own interests, are bound to be the natural guardians of the system. ”

“ There is one way by which organization and liberty can be combined, and that is, by securing power for voluntary organizations, consisting of men who have chosen to belong to them because they embody some purpose which all their members consider important, not a purpose imposed by accident or outside force. The State, being geographical, cannot be a wholly voluntary association, but for that very reason there is need of a strong public opinion to restrain it from a tyrannical use of its powers. ”

“ I inquired.
“The organization is the Congress Party,” he answered. “But if it fails me, I have my own organization, myself. I am a man possessed by an idea. If such a man cannot get an organization, he becomes an organization.”
“Have you sufficient confidence in the present mood of the country? Will it follow you? This civil disobedience movement may involve heavy sacrifices for the people. ”

“ The pressing need is for a general plan under which citizens, States and Nation may unite in an effort to achieve this great end. The lack of cooperation between the States and the Nation, and between the agencies of the National Government, is a potent cause of the neglect of conservation among the people. An organization through which all agencies, state, national, municipal, associate, and individual, may unite in a common effort to conserve the foundations of our prosperity is indispensable to the welfare and progress of the nation. ”

“ I frequently meet progressive spirits—the advance-guards, as it were, of a higher development—who will lose nothing when the progress of civilization overtakes them. To meet the requirements of the hour, and with the hope of bettering the condition of mankind, I conceived the idea of organizing a secret society, where these advance-guards might meet and deliberate upon all live, progressive topics of the day, and especially upon the problems most vitally affecting the welfare of humanity—an organization free from political influences. ”

“ The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. ”

“ A democracy of individual rights, that is, must either suffer reconstruction by the logic of a process of efficient national organization, or else it may pervert that organization to the service of its own ambiguous, contradictory, and in the end subversive political purposes. ”

“ No popular government ever determined the policy and administered the affairs of such large bodies of people successfully, ever transacted such a vast volume of business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and beneficent ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each individual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organization there was an organic separation of executive, legislative, and judicial functions and powers. ”

“ No coherent, solid, and well-tried organization gives consistency to any considerable interests, whether local or special. The local or special groups of yesterday’s growth are mere meeting places used by individuals for certain transactions of public life: they are lifeless figures, and not persons gifted with a consciousness and will of their own. The superior paramount interest of the nation stands face to face with the paltry selfishness of each individual citizen. ”

“ But if all associations aim at some good, the state, or political association, which is the highest of all and which embraces all the rest, aims, and in a greater degree than any other, at the highest good.’ In other words, in cases of conflict of allegiance between the state or political association and some other form of grouping, whether Church or Trade Union or professional or humanitarian organization, the claim of the state must take precedence. ”

“ The organization of our political institutions is such that the great mass of the powers of government, the proper exercise of which so deeply concerns the welfare of the people, is left to the States. In that depository the will of the people is most certainly ascertained, and the exercise of power is more directly under their guidance. Our free institutions have had their great development and owe their stability more to causes connected with the direct exercise of the power of the people in local self-government than to all other causes combined. ”

“ I understand, moreover, the urgent necessity of establishing in each town a solid and robust organization, the strongest bulwark of public security and the sole means of securing that union and discipline which are indispensable for the establishment of the Republic, that is, government of the people for the people, and warding off the international conflicts which may arise. ”

“ The constitution of such countries is an organization of the experience and practical ability of the nation, into a disciplined body for the purpose of governing the rest; and the more perfect that organization is in itself, the more successful in drawing to itself and educating for itself the persons of greatest capacity from all ranks of the community, the more complete is the bondage of all, the members of the bureaucracy included. ”

“ Our reform associations, while they have fought party, have often endeavored to substitute their own organization for the party organization. This has often been the alternative offered to us—do we want good government or poor government? We have not been asked if we would like to govern ourselves. ”

“ If we look in the wrong place for the public we shall never locate the state. If we do not ask what are the conditions which promote and obstruct the organization of the public into a social group with definite functions, we shall never grasp the problem involved in the development and transformation of states. If we do not perceive that this organization is equivalent to the equipment of the public with official representatives to care for the interests of the public, we shall miss the clew to the nature of government. ”

“ If we consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents only one form of such ramification. ”

“ It is needless to catalogue the other types of membership, but it should be noted that in all departments of effort which the Federation has undertaken, the active partnership of the commercial element with politics, law, philanthropy, education and morals, has insured the plans adopted against the admixture of Utopianism which has so often proved fatal in similar enterprises. The organization is not only professionally, but geographically and socially municipal in the widest sense ”

“ At home, its actual relations to the administration are better understood, and it is looked upon in its proper capacity—that of an organization closely affiliated to the government and tenderly cherished by its officers, yet, in virtue of its independent foundation, independent of political favor, and ready to encourage, advise and coöperate with any public or private enterprise without the necessity of annual appeals to the congressional committees on appropriations. ”

“ The state becomes a larger institution, by deepening its hold on a subordinate institution which had grown up as private property under the law of survival and centralization, until it reached the point where organization tended to suppress the free movement of the persuasive principle animating its members. ”

“ It is evident that an organization so constituted must, whenever intrusted with public power, use that power for the benefit of its members and dependents, rather than for the benefit of the community ”

“ Especially where Congress, in seeking to reconcile competing and urgently demanding values within our social institutions, legislates not to prohibit individuals from organizing for the effectuation of ends found to be menacing to the very existence of those institutions, but only to prescribe the conditions under which such organization is permitted, the legislative determination must be respected. ”

“ Under § 3 (3) of the Act, a organization may not be found to be a Communist-action organization unless it is shown to be, first, 'substantially directed, dominated, or controlled by the foreign government or foreign organization controlling the world Communist movement referred to in section 2 * * *.' The only operative function of § 2 in this respect is to designate what Congress meant by 'world Communist movement,' 'the foreign government,' etc. ”

“ Our traditional states are essentially based on military and police authority which cover the same area as the health authority, the administration of taxes and customs, and the administration of justice. (Also some people abroad depend upon these authorities.) It can hardly be expected that these powerful beasts will be 'domesticated'. Why could new types of organizations not arise? ”

“ We fill our night schools by adjusting them to the industrial organization and securing its coöperation. We fill our civilian training camps by the coöperation of employers in granting absences and paying wages. We obtain a common standard of living by enforcement of laws that set the standard. Civic and philanthropic agencies may be the pioneers, the educators, the balance restorers; they can care for the waste and discover causes. But America has too long regarded them as the unifiers of its many peoples, as the makers of citizens. ”

“ Can it be pretended that an individual in any State, by his single act, though voluntarily or designedly performed, yet without the co-operation or warrant of the Government, perhaps in opposition to its policy or its guaranties, can create a citizen of that State? ”

“ They are public institutions,-political organizations performing functions ancillary to, and in lieu of, the government of the state. Hence, being created without regard to private emolument, whatever functions they are permitted to exercise are necessarily subject to the control of the sovereign power. ”

“ The theory of State intervention in such matters is fallacious; private enterprise, if left to itself, would compass the desired end much better than any governmental machinery. The indorsement which the State gives to a new institution, by granting a charter and nominally assuming a supervisory control, endows it with an air of respectability and solidity which it could not otherwise command, and which is for the most part illusive. ”

“ The system lies, in fact, wholly open to the control of political organisations, calls out, indeed, for the control of political organisations, and has in every country produced what is so evidently demanded. The political organisations to-day rule us unchallenged. ”

“ The interest which lay behind Federalism was that of well-to-do citizens in a stable political and social order, and this interest aroused them to favor and to seek some form of political organization which was capable of protecting their property and promoting its interest. ”

“ If there are still disturbances of the peace and order of society occurring, calculated to produce the impression that the security and the rights of citizens can be sufficiently protected only by the interference of the General Government, in your local concerns, you can dispel that impression by devoting your energies to the enforcement of the laws, thus proving the capacity of local self-government to accomplish its legitimate end here as well as elsewhere. ”

“ The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind it together and set it to work under the direction of the general will, to serve as a means of communication between the State and the Sovereign, and to do for the collective person more or less what the union of soul and body does for man. ”

“ THE furthest limit to which the national organizations will go in the way of outside regulation is to allow a representation of non-fraternity members of the faculty on their boards—a minority, I judge. On the other hand, they freely admit the more obvious faults of their system, and declare their earnest purpose of self-regulation. They even admit that these measures are defensive; they feel that their system is threatened. ”

“ Is it that there is no danger that a new authority, marching, independently, along side of the government, in the same line and to the same object, may not produce collision, may not thwart and obstruct the operations of the government, or wrest the object entirely from their hands? Might we not as well appoint a committee for each department of the government, to counsel and direct its head separately, as volunteer ourselves to counsel and direct the whole, in mass? And might we not do it as well for their foreign, their fiscal, and their military, as for their Indian affairs? ”

“ It will be entirely free to set up an organisation, if it judges this necessary, and the Council's right to make use of this body for the enquiries and investigations contemplated will, a fortiori, remain intact. ”