Political ignorance

“ The reproaches of ignorance, ambition, and avarice, exclusively applied to the State functionaries, are therefore a direct attack upon the principles of self-government itself. What confidence can be placed in that principle, if the people cannot, or will not furnish individuals capable of executing a political system, deemed by them necessary for preserving the principle itself? And what more contemptible character can be given of the people, than that they are unable to discern the difference between concentrating and dividing the highest provocative of the lusts of ambition and avarice? ”

“ To any species of political tyranny that happened to be strong enough to bestow riches and power upon its priests, it has ever been ready to link itself; and to form the mainstay and support of that flagitious and shameful policy which promotes ignorance, as the surest medium through which to deceive mankind into submission to bad government. ”

“ I do not believe, therefore, that political ignorance in the people can be relied on for the preservation of absolute government in Europe. The lottery of political events produces fearful combinations of circumstances, and every year, as it passes, may bring forth some mind capable of starting up and taking advantage of them. ”

“ They are more ignorant of the blessings of freedom than the blind man is of the beauties of nature; and they see their children growing up around them without making one exertion to obtain for them those blessings, being ignorant even of their existence.
They have no political spirit; for there are only two ways in which political feeling can be kept alive in a people, — either by giving them some share in the government, or by cherishing in them a military spirit, and by teaching them to look upon themselves as the defenders of their country and the guardians of its glory. ”

“ Possessing no knowledge of the politics of their own country or of foreign nations, ignorant of the rights which belong to them as men, and taught by sad experience to pay a blind obedience to arbitrary power, it is natural that they should look on all measures, except those which have a direct and pressing influence on their persons and property, with total indifference. ”

“ Partly from ignorance, partly from the bias of education, partly from that patriotism which leads the men of each nation to pride themselves in their own institutions, we have an unhesitating belief in the entire superiority of our form of political organization. Yet unfriendly critics can point out vices that are manifestly inherent. And if we may believe the defenders of despotism, these vices are fatal to its efficiency. ”

“ If we did consider duly the bearings of this peculiarity—that one portion of our nation has no knowledge whatever, but vast prejudices instead, on the national history of the last three centuries—we should feel it a grave political duty to spare that wrong-headedness to the utmost, waiting with all willingness till, by the course of events, the ignorance dies out, and fair play is afforded for sense to act, and reason to be trained. ”

“ They have slept for ages, ignorant of the vast force which resides in them. They know not, and as long as they are politically ignorant they never can know, that a remedy for all their sufferings is within the reach of their outstretched arm ”

“ It requires more subtlety than the ignorant possess to separate the idea of their country from the government which exists in it, and to be able to venerate the one, though they may hate and despise the other: when they perceive that self-aggrandizement is the object of their rulers, that the welfare of the people enters but rarely into their thoughts, and then only in connection with their own interests, it is not strange that they should shrink within themselves and leave their country to its fate. ”

“ Sympathy with the sufferings of others, strong hatred of injustice, — in short, some of the noblest feelings of our nature, — must be excited before public opinion can become truly formidable, before it can assume that resistless power which God, when he formed man for society, intended that it should have. It can never have a decided effect where the great majority do not understand the subject on which they are to decide. ”

“ Let us show that we want to have some time and strength left to us, that we may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but for the rational exercise of the faculties which make us men. Without this no political measures can benefit us. No political institution will alter the nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from producing vice and misery. Let Ignorance start how it will, it must run the same round of low appetites, poverty, slavery, and superstition. ”

“ I look upon it as only relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge. The national institutions should place all things that they are concerned with before the mind of the citizen in the light in which it is for his good that he should regard them ”

“ I would not be thought to entertain degraded views of human society. I know that men of education are but too apt to undervalue the attainments of those who are below them in point of cultivation. But I believe that general ignorance does produce the effects I have described, and it scarcely needs to be proved that these effects are fatal to liberty. ”

“ The entire influence of this body of men tends to substitute a government which shall secure to them their private and political rights for one which does not even acknowledge those rights, much less secure them. ”

“ It discourages the efforts of all political virtue; it is a constant and practical apology for oppression, tyranny, despotism, in every shape, in every corner of society, as well as from the throne, the pulpit, the tribunal and the camp. It inculcates the belief that ignorance is better than knowledge; that war and violence are more natural than industry and peace; that deserts and tombs are more glorious than joyful cities and cultivated fields. ”

“ You have thus sought the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular ignorance. To rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary bias, the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes from the fear which appertains to property. ”

“ In addition to the combination of ignorance and class-interest which this reform, like all others, has to combat, the opposition is so susceptible of political manipulation that it is almost impregnably intrenched. ”

“ I do not deny that public opinion is formidable, even when erroneous; but its influence must necessarily be shortlived, for the truth will come at last to put an end to its power, or to give it another direction. A people cannot judge of the fitness of means to produce ends, pr of the consequences which are to follow from causes with which they are wholly unacquainted. ”

“ This series is intended to meet the demand for accessible information of the ordinary conditions, and the current terms, of our political life. Ignorance of these not only takes from the study of history the interest which comes from a contact with practical politics, but, still worse, it unfits men for their place as intelligent citizens. ”

“ Into such politicians, orders and privileges transform patriots. They assail truth and knowledge, because truth and knowledge assail them. They stigmatize discussion, because it leads to discovery. They foster ignorance, because it is blind. ”

“ Why is it that the very bases of society have been sapped, and the conditions of good government despised, or denounced under the name of despotism? Why is it that social and political life is poisoned in its source, and the blood of the nation corrupted? ”

“ But in the last place, there is a deplorable circumstance, attending this sudden rising of the popular spirit into power, and which throws a strong light on the criminal infatuation of a State that suffers the commonalty of its citizens to remain grossly uncultivated and uncivilized—perhaps even fancies it sees in that ignorance a main security for its own stability. The fact is, that the people have acquired their power and privileges, before they are (speaking as to many of them) qualified for a wise and useful exercise of them. ”

“ In this paradox, we suggest, lies at once the justification and the strength of democracy. It is not, as is commonly asserted by the superficial, that Ignorance rules over Knowledge, and Mediocrity over Capacity. ”

“ All the organs of public opinion are muzzled, controlled or terrified into silence by the politicians; and but few in public life whether newspaper men, clergymen, judges, politicians, teachers or public servants or officials; but few of those merely dependent upon or connected with politics or government, whether bankers, lawyers, physicians in hospitals, officers of public utilities or the like, have heretofore dared more than whisper to their closest friends their real hatred of the political despotism under which we are living today in the United States. ”

“ But it can be no such constitution when the most palpable relations between the two main divisions of society consist of such direct opposites as refinement and barbarism, dignity and gross debasement, intelligence and ignorance ”

“ How long must this state of things continue? So long as the people choose to remain in wilful ignorance with regard to us; so long as they choose to misinterpret our views, misrepresent our feelings, and misunderstand our policy. ”

“ The patriotic citizen rises above the partisan. We begin to breathe again as freemen. We dare again call things by their right names. We have once more the courage to break through the deceptions with which the popular mind has been befogged; we feel once more that our convictions of right and wrong are our own, and that our votes belong to the country, and thus we defiantly set our sense of duty against the arrogance of power, like the bugle blast of doomsday. ”

“ It is now for them to consider whether, by maintaining a temper and attitude of sullen, vindictive, pugnacious alienation from the people, they shall wilfully aggravate whatever injurious consequences may be threatened by so sudden a revolution; or endeavor to intercept them by giving their best assistance to every plan and expedient for rescuing the lower orders from the curse and calamity of ignorance and debasement. ”

“ Let your base and calculating political leaders deceive you no more! Be no longer tools for their use and to be only used for their aggrandizement! Come back to the country that loved you and has so long given you its protection! ”

“ When that is done humanity, justice and a pure government of all the people, by all the people and for all the people, will form the armor of our civilization.
But as long as blind partyism prevails men will get into heated political discussions that only widen the gulf of misunderstanding. ”

“ We are called upon to do battle against the unfaithful guardians of our Constitution and liberties and the hordes of ignorance which are pushing forward only to the ruin of our social and governmental fabric.
Too long has the country endured the offenses of the leaders of a party which once knew greatness. Too long have we been blind to the bacchanal of corruption. ”

“ They will have, at first, to disguise their views, to conceal their favourite doctrines, and even to cherish those national prejudices, which, were their real views known, would crush them to atoms. The mass of the people may acquiesce for a time in the new order of things, partly from a vague desire of change and improvement, partly from the passive political habits which a dull and deadening despotism has bred and rooted in the course of ages. ”

“ The antipathy of party spirit to publick spirit, sophisticated terms, for the purpose of deceiving nations, so that old as the world is, we still want a political word, to express the idea of national self government, unadulterated by orders or parties of interest. ”

“ Consider the slavish acceptance of religious and moral and financial dictation from self-interested and equally ignorant people, the running here and there to find what is temporarily expedient—what will satisfy or quiet the public for an hour; what will keep them from losing their petty jobs—by the politicians and legislators and so-called statesmen and judges; the complete ignorance of every congressman and senator and state legislator and judge and lawyer as to the commonest facts of biology, psychology, sociology, economics, and history! ”

“ 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. ”

“ When a long series of civil dissensions, of frauds upon the public, of treasons against the parties, of perjuries to principles, have mixed up men and things, blotted out the 'line between political groups, and confused all ideas, politics must become a genuine chaos. ”

“ It becomes a grave question how far we may safely give political power to those who entertain views so erroneous respecting fundamental social relations; and who so pertinaciously struggle to enforce these erroneous views. ”

“ 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. ”