The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-07-04
not for his undoing.

Society has travelled far past the stage when natural rights doctrines were held to be fundamentally true Today man has created such great and enormous things that man himself thinks that the created things are greater than himself, than humanity of which they are the handiwork. Hence it is that for the State more and more powers arc not infrequently demanded, quite regardless of the liberty Of hence it is that officials who re- ceive their powers in trust from the people and for the purpose of serv- ing the people, regard themselves as greater than the people, as re- presentatives of institutions and things greater than the supreme majesty of the people itself. Hence it is that institutions and men who are supposed to execute the will of the people, rule the people instead
 of being ruled by them, and insist upon the consent of the people to ! government regulations in which
 directly they have had no word
 whatever.
 These are days when the wars
 alarums spread throughout the
 land The war clouds lower over
 the nations house. And men are
 excited to question the loyalty and
 the patriotism of the people, to the 1 flag, to the institutions, to the au-
 thorities We seldom hear anyone
 questioning the loyalty of the peo- pie to the people, and yet without
 alty, only one patriotism and only
 one devotion worth while, and that
 is the loyalty and patriotism and de-
 votion which rids itself of image
 worship and symbolism and cant,
 and directs it's energy from the
 abundance of the heart towards the | peOple or the lana.
 It is the people of this country
 whose condition should be the first
 subject of anyone's thoughts: loy-
 alty to their interests. their we'll be- i ing, their fundamental right to con- sent to be governed. Their supreme
 will in the final disposal of things.
 their greater majesty over courts ] and congresses, legislatures and governments is the stimulating sen | timent of real patriotism. The feel ing that starts with dismay at the social horrors around us; that blanches at the sight of popular de- privation, that is excited to resist wrong in any form and cloaked with the highest authority though it be, that is the very essence of the Declaration of Independence.
 Law because the law is not neces- sarily divine; authority because au- thority is not necessarily sacred; in- stitutions because they are national by no means inevitably are blessed things. Mans progress is strewn with torn laws, dead authorities, 1 and demolished institutions. The | very laws and authorities and insti- tutions of Great Britain, the resist ing revolutionary fathers trampled | in the dust. Neither the blood kin ship, nor their natural veneration | for the things that are, nor their hereditary devotion to Royalty, de- tered them one iota more than did their possible fate did failure wait upon their effort. They saw what they beheld to be wrong, and regardless of the Tories and the the menace Of the British army and the British navy, the grim violence of exercised Royal force-they determined to destroy and. as far as they could they did destroy those wrongs.
 Their legacy to America and Am ericans unquestionably is the su- preme right of the people over all other rights, and their supreme le- gacy of virtue is the virtue of re- sisting wrongs, regardless of the dangers, the sufferings, the threats, the vindictive punishment of the greatest and most powerful who are party to those wrongs
 The oldest phase of religionism Is probably some form of ancestor Men repeat the things md deeds of which they have heard 1