Political ideology

“ The State, government with its functions and powers, is now the subject of vital interest to every thinking man. Political developments in all civilized countries have brought the questions home. Shall we have a strong government? Are democracy and parliamentary government to be preferred, or is Fascism of one kind or another, dictatorship - monarchical, bourgeois or proletarian - the solution of the ills and difficulties that beset society today? ”

“ But if something is to be ascribed to the manners of the times, much more may be traced to that science of politics, which sought for mastery in an undefinable struggle of ungovernable political power ”

“ The Government of the right-hand party restrained political life and action within a narrow circle, and rendered them more difficult; the generation which was then beginning to stir in the world, sought, not entirely independent of, but side by side with politics, the employment of its strength and the gratification of its desires: literature, [309] philosophy, history, policy, and criticism assumed a new and powerful flight. ”

“ The views of those who looked mainly to the highest development of political life in a single small society, have to be modified if the object sought for is the extension of political life to the largest number of people. ”

“ I think it can be said without exaggeration that there has never been in the history of this Republic a political movement in which the purely moral motive was so strong—indeed, so dominant and decisive. ”

“ Meanwhile, the wise and thinking part of the community, who could trace evils to their source, labored unceasingly to inculcate opinions favorable to the incorporation of some principles into the political system which might correct the obvious vices, without endangering the free spirit of the existing institutions. ”

“ To pretend that this ramification of political power into a complex gradation of functions cannot exist without there being a variety of interests and domestic institutions, would be to say that the people among whom there is no such variety cannot be free ”

“ If, in connection with these solid foundations for a natural religion, we add the important fact, that this is a republic, in which the wish of the majority, should become the law of the mass; we shall discover that politics become the natural channel, through which the wishes of the majority are expressed; that corrupt politics, result in bad government; that pure politics, insure good government; that a wise, just government, is the greatest political benefit which can be conferred on the people governed. ”

“ Thus it is possible for him, in the name of the true will of the people which he serves, to go against the subjective opinions and convictions of single individuals within the people if these are not in accord with the objective destiny of the people ... He shapes the collective will of the people within himself and he embodies the political unity and entirety of the people in opposition to individual interests ... ”

“ Every political party based upon real principles (rather than upon a desire for spoils) , is organized as the result of the radiation of those principles held in the self-reliant hearts of a few men. Every school of thought, in philosophy, theology, medicine, law, ethics, or political economy, is based upon the radiation of ideas from self-reliant men. ”

“ But every one will be politically active; and instead of the stronghold of politics in a desert of ignorance, there will be that interplay of political functions, distributed among the whole body of the people, which is the real meaning of democracy. ”

“ Add to these obstacles the fierce partisan feeling engendered by the circumstances of the time and country—fears of aristocratic influences on the one hand, and sectional intrigues on the other, and we can easily perceive that the first duty of the enlightened and patriotic was to clear away prejudices, explain principles, advocate cardinal political truths, and lift the whole subject out of the dense region of faction and into the calm and clear sphere of reason and truth. ”

“ And every new idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work among the intellectual and moral élite has gained a substantial following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has, in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. ”

“ They go to the form and substance of government, not to its policy, as in America, where every party cry, radical or conservative, is attuned to the music of a republican federation, and which is the sine qua non to all political conclusions. How can a nation progress until its people have chosen, or are competent to choose, a stable form of government, and are satisfied with certain organic political principles? ”

“ Shall we not rather take the place to which we are entitled, as the leaders, rather than the followers, in the customs of society, turn back the tide of aristocratic inroads, and carry through the whole, not only of civil and political, but of social and domestic, life, the true principles of democratic freedom and equality? ”

“ He must preach on politics, not as the representative of a party but of mankind, and report not the mean counsels of a political economy, which consults for one party or one nation, for one day alone, but declare the sublime oracles of political morality, which looks to the welfare of all parties, all nations, and throughout all time. He must know no race but the human, no class but men and women, no ultimate lawgiver but God, whose statute book is the world of matter and the world of men—justice the sole finality. ”

“ Such is the progress of society, that conversation, social manners, and the incitements of example, now combine in furtherance of personal culture.
Our Political Institutions present, likewise, eminent incentives to a higher self-training than has ever yet been witnessed. The republican principle not only gives scope for individual freedom of thought and action, but awakens associated effort. ”

“ Just how great must be the advance of society and just what must be the character of the advance, preliminary to its advantageously assuming the autonomous—republican—form of political organisation, must be admitted to be an open question. ”

“ But the need of the fictitious explanation arises from a wrong way of putting the question; the power which regulates our conduct in political society is conceived in too abstract a way on the one side, and on the other are set over against it, as the subjects which it controls, individuals invested with all the moral attributes and rights of humanity. ”

“ If we want good government, is it not time that we should take our share in the struggle to secure it?” And hence that fresh political activity, that freedom of criticism, that breaking of party lines, that movement of independence all over the field, which makes political ringmasters tremble and patriotic citizens rejoice in new hope. ”

“ The Liberal who no longer feels at the bottom of his heart a sympathy with the rebel who chafes against the institutions of society, whether religious, political, social or economic, is well on the road to the other camp. But the dynamic force of Liberty, that great motive power of progress, though a good servant, may be a bad master; and the perennial problem of society is to harmonise its aims with those of the common good. ”

“ In its less perfect and more usual state the Democratic theory is advanced either as an ethical theory which postulates an absence of formal acquiescence on the part of the governed as injustice, or else as a convenient political compromise ”

“ All that constitutes the proper organization of societies, whether you consider them as territory, commune, state, as country, every political, financial, social matter, depends on universal suffrage and obeys it; the smallest atom of the smallest moral question defies it. ”

“ And, seeing this, we shall infer that the emotion excited in men by embodied political power must now, and for a long-time to come, be a great obstacle to the formation of rational sociological conceptions—tending, as it must ever do, to exaggerate the importance of the political factor in comparison with other factors. ”

“ The “politicians” of vigor and imagination cherish a practical hope of organizing the idealism of men, restoring human belief and values to party organization. In the peculiar opportunity now presented to the country to take stock of its citizenship, to reënforce its unity, to justify itself as a democracy, to make the most of its powers, to use the intelligence and the ardor of its citizens of many races, and to bring the newest of these into accord with its ideals and its practices, lies a great opportunity for the political parties of this country. ”

“ Those who have lived under a democracy, or a full civil, mental, and religious freedom like our own, well know the crudity, the perversity, the persistency, the conceits and idiosyncrasies into which individualism will run on civil, social, and political matters of private and public interest. ”

“ Republic.—Though I admire republican principles in theory, yet I am afraid the practice may be too perfect for human nature. We tried a republic last century and it failed. Let our enemies try next. I hate political experiments.—Walpole. ”

“ It includes those whose suffrages decide the principles of our government; on whose conduct rests the reputation of our country; and whose mere breath is the tenure by which we hold all our dearest political, religious, and social rights. How ineffably important it is, then, that the intelligence of these "lower classes" should be cultivated; that their moral sense should be quickened ”

“ The spirit of analysis is scientific, but never political. In politics, whether dealing with rights or powers, the object is to create real vital forces, capable either of enforcing obedience or resisting oppression. ”

“ Supposing then the individual to have decided that some command of a 'political superior' is not for the common good, how ought he to act in regard to it? In a country like ours, with a popular government and settled methods of enacting and repealing laws, the answer of common sense is simple and sufficient. ”

“ Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. ”

“ The gradual transfer of political power from groups and limited classes to the community, and the constant seething of the public mind, in fermentation upon a vast mass of moral and social, as well as merely political, interests, offer conditions of action, in which it is evident that the statesman, in order to preserve the same amount of consistency as his antecessors in other times, must be gifted with a far larger range of foresight. ”

“ In their very differences they are the definite, the "public" expression of a conflict, or division, that inwardly affects every individual member, whatever his class or profession, which the society contains. In the day and generation of Democritus and Plato were there not well-defined parties, manifest in all the different and separately organized phases of life—moral, industrial, political or religious, namely, the parties of the conservatives and the radicals? ”

“ They demonstrate that there is no dominating moral principle in the creed of any of the great political parties, and that the voters who believe in principles rather than offices or men, hold the balance of power in our civilization. ”

“ The idea of a greater subordination of individual interests and established institutions to the collective future, is traceable more and more clearly in the literature of those times, and movement after movement fretted itself away in criticism of and opposition to first this aspect and then that of the legal, social, and political order. ”

“ These not only reject the traditions and teachings of the past, but repudiate and ignore the whole scheme of social and political opinion of the men who have gone before them, disdaining to adopt their maxims of government, their policy, their forbearance, their toleration, or their affections. They inaugurate a new era of new principles, new purposes, new powers, new morals, and, alas! ”

“ Now, if our political system were guided by organized intelligence, it would not seek to repress the free play of human interests and emotions, of human hopes and fears, but would make provision for their development and exercise, in accordance with the higher law of liberty and morality. ”

“ Free institutions were to them mere abstract conceptions, about which the educated and the seriously thinking men indulged in politico-philosophical speculations, while to the uneducated and the superficial they only furnished political catchwords, in the use of which the general discontent with existing conditions found vent. ”

“ The Growth of Radicalism.—Two working principles have hitherto furnished the basis for political and economic organizations in such countries as the United States, Great Britain, and France. |Democracy and individualism.| Democracy, by which we mean the control of government by the whole people, acting chiefly through their representatives, has been the accepted basis of political institutions. ”

“ In these political nostrums has been revived the crude notion that the masses, inexperienced as they are in the [Pg 40] difficult and complex problems of government, are instinctively better qualified to guide than the educated few who are trained, instructed and competent, and who, acting as the representatives of all, are bound in good conscience and sound policy to consider and protect the rights of the minority, of the individual, of the humble and weak, against the arbitrary will or selfish interest or prejudice of the majority. ”

“ But transfer this philosophy to any political community, and consider in what position it placed the individual with regard to the civil government. Human society is considered as supreme: but his own state represents to him that society, and as all things end with this life, no part of man remains withdrawn from that despotism [pg 476] which requires the sacrifice of the part for the good of the whole. ”