The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1916-10-06
WHY NOT MAKE RECREATION
AND SPORT A FELONY?
(Lewiston /Tribune.)

(LeWlSlOn L T1Dune.)
"A Pennsylvania young woman has
danced herself to death. Good thing
it wasn't in Idaho or the legislature
would have passed a law against
dancing" observes a contemporary,
which is rather severe comment on
the disposition of not only this par
ticular legislature, but of the legisla-
lures of other prosperous western
commonwealth, to constantly inter-
pose the police power in matters
which should be left wholly to edu-
cational forces and to individual re-
sponsibllity. AS we grow in years it
must be evident to all men that the
tendency is to make government a
god, and terrible god at that.
Scarcely anything that men now do,
even under democratic government
which is supposed to be based on the
equality, liberty and self-reliance of
the citizen, is relieved from legal
restraint and espionage.
1t has come to pass that there are
hundreds of thousands of American
citizens who consider that the gov
eminent should take the place of
teacher, preacher, Of guardian, of
parent.
When the people OF the old COM
monwealths worshipped their God
their conduct was more exemplary
and scrupulous than when they
threw him aside. Man, when he is at
the end of his reasoning powers, and
when he is confronted with difficult
ties which he is unable to grapple
with invariably appeals to higher
power for relief. AS long as he has
gods, so long will he appeal to them
but when the day of skepticism in
the power of such gods sets in then
man will look about for something
invisible and intangible, something
clothed by his imagination with more
than human powers, and will look to
this for relief.
If it is wrong to dance, why should
not this truth be taught at home and
from the pulpit, and people be thus
deferred from it by the moral sense of
society as well as by individual con-
science? If Sunday baseball or other
clean and manly sports is wrong, why
should not the youth be taught this
fact and made to respect what is
right by the mandate of public opin-
ion and by self-consciousness, rather
than through fear of governments
Introduction and punishment?
1t was said by one of the greatest
philosophers. and no one has ever
disputed it. that it is within neither
the province nor the power of gov
eminent to regulate the conscience or
to control it.
Such things as dancing, Sunday
baseball or other forms Of recreation
and legitimate pleasure, do not de-
stroy the property or encroach upon
the reasonable rights of others. 1t
is, therefore, a matter of conscience
whether it is wrong; and. being that
way each persons should be taught
to decide rightly for himself. The
denial of citizens of the right and the
power of decision, together with a
corresponding public failure to school
the growing generations in the habit
of deciding correctly and conscien-
tiously questions tending to promote
or to hamper their felicity, seems the
most serious impairment of individual
character and competency for which
present-day tendencies can be justly
indicted at the final bar, of all the
other numerous evils and sins pecul-
lar to the age.