Political canvassing

“ Meanwhile this great question, which cannot brook delay, which for the sake of peace and to complete Reconstruction should be settled at once, is handed over to prolonged controversy in the States. I need not depict the evils which must ensue. A State will become for the time a political caldron, into which will be dropped all the poisoned ingredients of prejudice and hate, while a powerful political party, chanting, like the Witches in “Macbeth,” ”

“ Consider, for a moment, how much more violent the proceedings of majorities in the American Legislatures would be, how much more reckless the appeals to popular passion, how much more frequently the permanent interests of the nation and the rights of individuals and classes would be sacrificed to the object of raising political capital for present uses, if debates or discussions affected the tenure of office. ”

“ They have calmed disturbing political elements;—the press is purified, the politician disarmed, the civil service well regulated. Hurtful partisanship is passing away. Since the people as a whole will never willingly surrender their sovereignty, reactionary movement is possible only in case the nation should go backward. ”

“ Now, the rival organizations in order to catch the Independents, usually a conceited and gullible element, find it convenient to manufacture “political issues”; some trivial, empty controversy is started, often of a personal nature; the politician gives the cue to the newspapers, the papers pass on the tale to the reader, and there you have so-called public opinion. ”

“ They prove that in whatever direction the popular weight leans, the current of power will flow; whatever the popular attachments be, there will rest the political superiority. Sir, can it be supposed that the State Governments will become the oppressors of the people? ”

“ Various elements are at work in our political system to try the strength of the Constitution. Whenever, if ever, a political storm shall burst upon us, this canal will prove a noble anchor to windward.... Such agents are at work, as tend to foster sectional jealousies....Intolerance and fanaticism are the bane of free institutions — they may be destined some day to try the strength of the Union. ”

“ It will be represented to him that no party can live without public plunder, and that the abolition of the spoils system will lead to the downfall of the Republic. From flattery to threats, from private appeals to open demonstrations of hostility in Congress, every means will be employed to induce him to break his word. And that opposition will be directed by able leaders, experienced in all the resources of political warfare. ”

“ But any government which an insurgent people attains by elections must necessarily be a leaden weight on its feet, especially in so immense an economic, political, and moral reorganization as the social revolution. ”

“ You can lift party politics up to a higher plane by striking the decisive blow at the spoils system. You can extend and perpetuate the reform of the civil service. You can thus bring about a state of things in which public questions can once more be discussed on their own merits. ”

“ Every intelligent and unprejudiced citizen, when he candidly inquires into the developments which have brought about the present state of things, will understand that of the evils which have so alarmingly demoralized our political life, and so sadly lowered this Republic in the respect of the world, many, if not most, had their origin, and find their sustenance, in that practice which treats the public offices as the plunder of victorious parties ”

“ There comes a reactionary period after every political change, during which material interests prevail over national, and shameful appetites over noble passions; during such a period,—as Louis-Philippe's reign, for example—that government is in favour which fosters these selfish interests and surfeits ignoble passions. ”

“ Ten years of peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. ”

“ With all the world pressing on to the solution of great social and economic questions we are confronted with the lamentable spectacle of the dominant political parties of the United States beating a cowardly retreat, and we see their candidates rival one another in the timidity of their assaults on obvious and admitted wrongs. ”

“ Political opposition, inorganic, is but a blind, cumbrous, awkward, inefficient thing; but construct a platform, and immediately it becomes lithe, efficient, powerful. Even before they set foot on these rude shores, our forefathers made a compact, and a nation was born in that day. ”

“ Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office, the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, the parliamentary system, government by political parties—all these customs and habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure which presages disaster. ”

“ When we remember that all are thus affected more or less, in estimating political antagonists, their acts and their views, we are reminded what an immense obstacle political partisanship is in the way of Social Science. ”

“ In my judgment, the primary system tends to promote the nomination of self-advertisers, demagogues and wire-pullers by irresponsible minorities, groups, factions, cabals, or secret societies, generally [Pg 229] composed of persons acting in the dark and dominated or controlled by leaders who cannot be held to any accountability, however much they may abuse or prostitute the political power they exercise. ”

“ Meanwhile, it may be laid down as a political truth, that by irresponsible monarchy rather than by representative government can a multitude of insignificant political units be welded into a people, with common feelings of cohesion, power enough to protect itself against conquest or foreign aggression, and affairs sufficiently various and considerable of its own to occupy worthily and expand to fit proportions the social and political intelligence of the population. ”

“ The word political raises ideas of party-contests, ministerial changes, prospective elections, or else of the Home-Rule question, the {226} Land-Purchase scheme, Local Option, or the Eight-Hours movement. Rarely does the word suggest law-reform, or a better judicial organization, or a purified police. And if ethics comes into consideration, it is in connexion with the morals of parliamentary strife or of candidates’ professions, or of electoral corruptions. ”

“ The cumulative effect of well-conducted and successful political defiance campaigns is to strengthen the resistance and to establish and expand areas of the society where the dictatorship faces limits on its effective control. ”

“ The plea of bringing the government back to the people was catching and plausible, and it found eager response in the deeply rooted dislike of party machinery, party discipline and party constancy on the part of those who habitually neglect all attention to politics and the political duties of citizenship except during periods of popular excitement and upheaval. ”

“ Democratizing effects of political defiance In contrast to the centralizing effects of violent sanctions, use of the technique of nonviolent struggle contributes to democratizing the political society in several ways. ”

“ Meantime, new thoughts came to the nation: the inevitable period of moral retrogression and political trickery that ever follows in the wake of war overtook us. So flagrant became the political scandals that reputable men began to leave politics alone, and politics consequently became disreputable. ”

“ If, on the contrary, as seems more likely, a calm and temperate state of the public mind should quickly be the result of these concessions, and time should demonstrate the charms which appeared so fascinating on the first view of the Republican form, to be no more than an unsubstantial glare—the component parts of the political body remaining unaltered, such of them as should appear to have been injuriously weakened, might again be repaired and strengthened ”

“ The greatest danger threatening democratic institutions comes from those influences, whether consisting in an excessive party spirit, or whatever else, which tend to stifle or demoralize discussion, and to impair the opportunities of the people for considering and deciding public questions on their own merits. If those influences are effectively curbed, our democratic government will not fail to hold up the true ideals of the great American Republic and to move forward in their direction. ”

“ The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies, and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the permanent laws controlling the action of political parties. ”

“ Men are influenced to political action by the arguments and stories of stump-speakers, and not by reading newspapers. They vote as they are told, or as they are influenced by the stories they hear. So, when the leading conspirators were ready to bring about the rebellion, being in possession of the State governments, holding official positions, by misrepresentation, cunning, and wickedness, they were able to delude the ignorant poor men, and induce them to vote to secede from the Union. ”

“ All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men's desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these. ”

“ Give every man a vote, and abolish all interference with each man's private tastes, and the danger may still be as great as ever. The tendency to 'differentiation'—as we call it in modern phraseology—the social pulverisation, the lowering and narrowing of the individual's sphere of action and feeling to the pettiest details, depends upon processes underlying all political changes. It cannot, there298fore, be cured by any nostrum of constitution-mongers, or by the negative remedy of removing old barriers. ”

“ It will influence and control the rise and fall of political parties, each doing the work all unconsciously of forces which it does not understand. It will lead in various ways, and through all oppositions and reactions, towards an organised society profoundly differing from our own. ”

“ A demoralization of public sentiment more than ever fatal to public justice and eventually to public order and peace; unscrupulous struggles for the possession of power to be used in the exploitation of opportunities without regard to the rights of the defeated—that is, alternating despotisms. ”

“ Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. ”

“ Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies; and in all governments, where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the United States, have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions; ”

“ There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. ”

“ All sacrifices of common sense, and all recourse to plausible political combinations, whether of individuals or of men, are uniformly made at the expense of the majority. ”

“ Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives? ”

“ The fault of this country is the want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction—that, senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future.” ”

“ There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual impartiality should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered because not partisan. ”

“ My mind is appalled at the thought of a political party having control of all the details that go to make up the sum total of our lives. Think of it for an instant, that the party in power shall have all authority to dictate the kind of books that shall be used in our schools and universities, government officials editing, printing, and circulating our literature, histories, magazines and press, to say nothing of the thousand and one activities of life that a people engage in, in a civilized society. ”

“ It is of the utmost importance that all reflecting persons should take into early consideration what these popular political creeds are likely to be, and that every single article of them should be brought under the fullest light of investigation and discussion, so that, if possible, when the time shall be ripe, whatever is right in them may be adopted, and what is wrong [13] rejected by general consent, and that instead of a hostile conflict, physical or only moral, between the old and the new, the best parts of both may be combined in a renovated social fabric. ”