Political struggle

“ The thoughts in this examination of political defiance or nonviolent struggle are intended to be helpful to all persons and groups who seek to lift dictatorial oppression from their people and to establish a durable democratic system that respects human freedoms and popular action to improve the society. ”

“ They form the source from which spring the present class antagonisms. These antagonisms in countries where great industry has carried them to their complete development, particularly in England, are the bases on which parties are founded, are the sources of political struggles, are the reasons for all political history. ”

“ you had all that combination and all that opposition of interests, you had that action and counteraction, which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe. ”

“ It has stirred up all the bitter contests of the last thirty years, and plunged the country into the bloodiest civil wars, and it will do so again unless we at last cut out and eject this prolific abomination from our political system. ”

“ This principle being acknowledged, and party opinion being buried, in theory at least, at the foot of the altar of the Government de facto, whence is it that at this time creeps into our council chambers, our political cliques, our social haunts, our market places, ay, our most sacred tabernacles—a spirit adverse to the principles for which we are fighting, laboring for, and dying for? Let us—a people anxious for peace on honorable grounds, anxious for a Union which no rash hand shall ever again attempt to destroy—look, with a moment's calm reflection, at this alarming evil. ”

“ Here, then, were a handful of men repudiated by their king, cast off by their commercial partners, a prey to the consequences of civil war at home, and living by sufferance in the midst of a fierce and warlike people, compelled at last to work out their own political destiny. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the country was then poor, the parties equally divided, and the political issues matters of temper and theory, on which men delight to differ and to argue, rather than those stern realities in which, at the present time, the very being of the State is wrapt up. ”

“ 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? ”

“ She must undertake it for another reason,—because she alone can perform the work peaceably. If this fearful problem is left to take its course as a tfiere political question, to be ground out between the upper and nether millstones of political parties, then what will avert agitation, angry collisions, and the desperate rending the Union? ”

“ No sooner, however, had the controversy with the mother country reached the acute revolutionary stage, than the forces which had been silently and unconsciously working toward democracy, found an opportunity for political expression. ”

“ But I plead for the cause of our country—for its peace, its prosperity, its happiness and its good name; and I cannot permit myself to forget that the people will not be secure in the enjoyment of those blessings as long as there is a large and influential party insidiously striving to undermine the foundation upon which alone they can grow, and to plunge the country again into the confusion of endless and bitter struggles. ”

“ Blind obedience to party fiat; the division of the people of one great political family into hostile camps; subjection of the public interest to partisan advantage; placing the badge of party servitude above the crown of American sovereignty—the ridiculous oriflamme of foolish division above Old Glory's star-gemmed promise of everlasting unity—have brought the first nation of all world to the very brink of destruction. ”

“ Moreover, the policy with which an administration charged with the duty of maintaining itself and preserving the Union shall conduct a civil war, must be confined always to the existing condition of political forces, and to the public sentiment of the whole country. ”

“ What worse Treatment can we expect from an Enemy? It is therefore past Dispute, and indeed a fundamental Maxim of Political Law, that People gave themselves Chiefs to defend their Liberty and not to be enslaved by them. ”

“ Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country round which all classes and parties could rally, representing the majesty of the law, the administration of justice, and involving, at the same time, the security for every man's rights and the fountain of honour. Now, gentlemen, it is well clearly to comprehend what is meant by a country not having a revolution for two centuries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All political dissensions, all the revolutions that have taken place in this state since its origin, vanish before so interesting a revolution as the present. They were only disputes between party and party; struggles for power, between unprincipled men, in which the people were constantly duped. ”

“ These points being settled, the public mind may henceforth rest in the assurance that the period of the rebellion is indeed a thing of the past; that the existence of the Government and the legitimate results of the war are no longer in jeopardy, whatever political party may carry the elections, and that the American people can, without fear of any darkly lurking danger, give themselves to the discussion of questions of political ethics, or of administration, or of political economy, treating them upon their own proper merits. ”

“ Then it may easily happen that the smoke of the battle-field of political and social controversy will obscure their pure air, that efforts will be made to stamp out the exceptional doctrine and the exceptional man. ”

“ However, the downfall of these dictatorships has minimally lifted much of the suffering of the victims of oppression, and has opened the way for the rebuilding of these societies with greater political democracy, personal liberties, and social justice. ”

“ We should, therefore, recognise what is here suggested, and should counter-balance an undue regard for political movements and political power by the remembrance that the hardest tasks of all are accomplished by quite another power, and by a power which the politician often overlooks. ”

“ Changing social systems, new political ideas, the labor cause, all movements for religious, social or political change have their zealots; they are met by the force of convention and conservatism ready to defend itself, and the clash is inevitable. ”

“ We have seen that the organisation of wide political agitation, and consequently, of all-sided political exposures are an absolutely necessary and paramount task of activity, that is, if that activity is to be truly Social-Democratic. ”

“ Political Parties—It has been told me from my youth up {559} that opposition is the life of business, especially in the political arena. It is opposition that has ruined our nation, and has been, is and will be the ruin of all nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To menace the Legislature with hordes of the lowest of our people—to stop traffic and commerce—desecrate the Sabbath, and double the work of the Police Courts on the following day is called 'Peaceful agitation,' To copy the faults without the experience of foreign nations is deemed—'Political wisdom'—To assault principle after principle of our noble constitution, the accumulated wisdom of our forefathers, is regarded as the true characteristic of a 'Friend of the People. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total absence of all public spirit, and of the pursuit of objects which patriotic minds would wish to accomplish, the hatred of races, the animosities of rival religions, and, above all, the absence of any controlling power that could keep these large districts in anything like order—such were the sad truths, which no one who has investigated the subject could resist for a moment. ”

“ No longer devotion to our whole country, no longer an enlarged view of the liberties and progress of mankind, shapes the policies of parties and prevails in the councils of the government, but the strife of jarring sections and an insane grasp after ascendency has precipitated upon the country a cruel, internecine war. ”

“ When I see this country in danger of being plunged into all the countless miseries of civil war—a war, in which, whatever be the blue, the blood of its best inhabitants mull probably flow, I cannot help pausing a while, and seriously asking this important question—Who are the parties in this ruinous contest, and what is the source of their quarrel? ”

“ To conduct this offensive and defensive war against the proletariat a public force was indispensable: the executive power grew out of the necessities of civil legislation, administration, and justice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may fear defeat from two causes: the disaffection of the regular party machinists, or the disaffection of the intelligibly independent and the conservative elements which stand between the two parties but are necessary to the victory of either. ”

“ Standing as we do on the threshold of great decisions, I cannot suffer my mind to be encaged in the walls of this house, or in the narrow lines of party interest and party policy, not even in the boundaries of this country. There is the wide world around us with its manifold races and nations of men, all of them for thousands of years engaged in an arduous struggle for happiness and freedom ”

“ This malady of progress, civil war, we have met as we passed along, and it is one of the social phases, at once an act and an interlude of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is "Progress." ”

“ One scheme of government after another is lifted up to be cast down—tyranny, oligarchy, slavery, commercialism, communism, parliaments, theocracies. The great warriors and the great statesmen are alike entombed in the ruins of their empires. ”

“ There remain to be mentioned two political forces equally conservative. The first is that species of lethargy and contempt which has forbidden us, as it has forbidden every other aristocratic community, to destroy the vestiges of its past. ”

“ That party perseveres, as indeed it must, by reason of its very constitution, in that service, and thus comes into closer conflict with elements of true democracy, and for that reason is destined to lose, and is fast losing, the power which it has held so firmly and long. ”

“ But I have noted these great movements that destroy the equilibrium and threaten the prosperity of my country, and standing above passion and prejudice or demagoguery I invoke every true citizen, fighting from his hearthstone outward, with the prattle of his children on his ear, and the hand of his wife and mother closely clasped, to determine here to make his home sustaining and independent, and to pledge eternal hostility to the forces that threaten our liberties, and the party that stands behind it. ”

“ But as party violence increases, and party efforts sink down into a mere struggle to obtain the honors and emoluments of government, the tendency to appeal to local feelings, local interests, and local prejudices will become stronger and stronger — until, ultimately, parties must assume a decidedly sectional character. ”

“ Then politics was a high-class business, and politicians devoted themselves to getting out the full party vote and to buying or cajoling to one side or the other the doubtful ten per cent that held the balance of power. ”

“ Let the Party be which it will, tis Destruction even to themselves, to run up all their Niceties and all their Scruples to the Extremes. Every Dispute becomes a Feud, every Spark a Flame, every word a Blow, every Blow, a Civil-War, and by this Intestine Confusion of Principles, Backt with the Passion and Fury of Men, this unhappy Nation is Subdivided into an Infinite Number of Parties, Factions, Intrests and seperate Opinions. ”

“ The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of the man. ”

“ The material prosperity of the people is in advance of any other period in the history of our government. The violence of party spirit has materially subsided, and in great measure because many of the reasons for its existence are gone. ”

“ When, indeed, we consider the undeniable fact that great social changes are generally effected through the agency of excited multitudes and highly stimulated parties, we shall not be surprised at the result so often exhibited in history. That result shows bloody civil wars instead of peaceful arrangement; faction instead of patriotism; and an oscillation between feverish extremes, instead of a well-calculated balance of social forces. ”