The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-13
THE RANT AND CANT OF Pa
TERNALISM.

There is certain kind of rant and cant
of paternalism prevalent in the land. Its
latest expression is found in the fellows
who petition congress to tax the makers
of cigarettes into the earth in order to res
cue their particular small boy or boys
from death by tobacco. These reformers
belong to the same class of philosophers
who think the salvation of our American
experiment depends on the omission of
the Inauguration bali and the Punishment
of wine from state dinners at the White
House. 1t is kind of ridiculous reform
rant that loses these reformers the respect
of the people, because it takes no note of
time, place. circumstance-because it ut
terly ignores common sense and the factor
of human nature when it undertakes to
solve social problems.
There may be deal of frivolity asso-
ciated with public dances, and so there is
for that matter with nearly every large
public assembly attended by people of
both sexes, all ages and conditions of life.
Every man of observation knows that
there is a good deal of frivolity at every
great camp meeting, every local Sunday
school picnic; he knows that there is
flirting in every church from the choir al
most to the stairs that lead to the pulpit
Suppose in his own private life man
does not dance nor drink wine does it be-
come his duty to legally impose all the
rules which govern his private life upon
his fellow countrymen2
DrauiJapt uorr;eo,, a,I Id - -
dance, and yet this Presbyterian elder be-
lieved he could show himself at the inaug-
uration ball without parting with his
piety. The trouble with all this silly rant
and cant of paternalism which seeks to
obliterate state balls, to Danish wine from
state banquets, to make prohibition part of
the federal constitution, to have a federal
statute proclaiming a Puritan Sabbath, is
that it declares war not against what is
evil, but against things in themselves inno-
cent enough which like every other good
thing may degenerate into evil by abuse or
extravaganza.
The pulpit wonders why its influence is
decreasing. The reason is that the people
have outgrown the pulpit and the pulpit
merely acts in silly manner when it as
sumes to square the social life of America
by ecclesiastical private conscience. The
Puritans behaved like idiotic iconoclasts
when they rushed through England and
disfigured their victory for liberty by try
ing to extirpate art. They could easily
smash beautiful statues with their battle
axes; they could burn up the splendid
works of the great Italian masters, but
this disgraceful destruction was as power
less to extirpate art from England as the
burning of the Alexandrian library by the
saracen was to destroy literature,
The love of art, the sense of beauty, ante
dated the statue and the picture, just as
free thought antedated its first expression
In literature; so since the Puritan could
not destroy the soul of man, his image
breaking was as futile as the torch of
Omar, whose vandalism at Alexandria
gave him the infamous notoriety OF Eros
tratus, who fired the Ephesian dome to
make hoodlums' holiday. Whether it is
the highest personal wisdom TO dance in
public, or TO take wine at public dinner,
Ia something that every man decides for
himself, but cannot undertake to decide
legally for his fellow men any more than
he can decide legally for the country that
the Presbyterian church is the best church
because he is an elder in that denomina-
ton. The state can determine that there
shall be Sunday, but it cannot effectively
prescribe how that Sunday shall be OBJ
served.
The effort to secure national prohibition,
enact a Federal Sabbath. banish wine from
state dinners and forbid federal ball.
rests on the same kind of absurd philoso-
ply which has led one sect or another at
various times to impose its own peculiar
form of worship on all the rest of man
kind. The greatest thinkers and writer's
and the greatest statesmen have all pointed
out the fatal error OF prohibition, that it
does not respect the imperial right of every
free man TO decide for himself what he will
eat, drink, wear. and use rs well as wor-
ship. II il is proper for the state TO say
because it is not good for some men to
drink wine. therefore no man shall have q
legal opportunity to buy wine at all, then
Il is equally proper 10 say, alt is not good
for you TO stay at home SUNDAYS,
therefore you shall go to church
twice day; it is as proper 10 name the
church you shall attend. 1t is as proper
TO forbid the people 10 dance at all. on the
plea that there are low places in great
cities where indecent dancing is carried
on, as il Is TO forbid them to drink at all
because a great many people drink to ex-
cess; or to forbid rich man TO will his
money to his son because as rule rich
mems sons become spendthrifts.
This absurd moral philosophy lies at
the bottom of the kind OF brains tina.
shudder at the thought of a state ball. 8
state banquet with wine, or state Sunday
with newspaper attached. tits an inter
esting fact that the English Methodist
delegates to the great council Of the church
Of Washington last year utterly repudi-
ated the old Puritanic opposition TO amuse-
nent. Rev. Or. Ruddle, master Of the
Bible Christian college. among other
things said:
There is nothing in the spirit OF the New
Testament opposed 10 . moderate and rational