Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-04-20
Cornerstone of American Lite
DR.. Nicholas Murray Butler.

DR.. Nicholas Murray Butler.
| The cornerstone OF American government
and of American life is the civil liberty of the
individual citizen. The essentials of that civil
liberty are proclaimed in the Declaration of In
dependence and defined in the constitution oil
the United States. Ours is not \ government
of absolute or plenary power before whose ex-
ercise the individual must bow his head in hum
bic acquiescence. Our government is, on the
contrary one of clearly defined and specifically
designated powers, and the constitution itself
provides that powers not delegated to the United
| States by the constitution nor prohibited by il
| to the states are reserved to the states
respectively or to the people. This means that
those powers which the people themselves have
not seen fit definitely to grant either to the ma
tional or the state government are reserved to
the people to be exercised as they may indi-
vidually see fit. More than this. there are
many things which the government is specific.
! ally prevented from doing and the powers OF
the courts are sufficient to protect even the hum
blest individual against the invasion of his rights
| and liberties by any government, whether OF
>state or nation however powerful or however
popular. We do not derive our civil liberty or
| our right to do business from government; we
| right to do business have instituted Z govern
| ment to protect and to defend them.
1t is on this civil liberty OF the individual as
basis that all American life. all American civ
DScu
built. We have offered the individual an op-
| portunity to make the most Of himself, to seek
his fortune in what part of the country he would,
to enjoy the fruits Of his own honest labor and
OF his own just gains, and to hold whatever
social position his personality and his education
might enable him to command. Under this sys-
tenn we have not only prospered nightly, but
we have made a country that has drawn to itself
the ambitious, lifelong suffering and the down
trodden from every part of the globe, in the
hope and belief that here in America they would
find the opportunity which conditions elsewhere
denied them. In $50 years we have not solved
all the problems of mankind. and we have not
been able to make everyone prosperous and
happy; = but we have made immense progress to-
ward those ends and thereby have become the
envy and the admiration of watching world.
The millennium still remains ahead of US and all
lasting improvement dill takes time
Where there is individual opportunity there
will always be inequality. No two human be-
ings have precisely the same ability, the same
temperament, the same tastes or the same ply
steal power. Therefore, it is that when indi-
viduals exert themselves freely some progress
more rapidly than Others, some secure larger
rewards than others, and some gain greater
enjoyment than others The only way in which
this inequality can be prevented is to substitute
tyranny for liberty and to hold all men down
to that level of accomplishment which is within
dowed. This, however, is false democracy not
true democracy. Such policy would deprive
men and women of liberty in order to gain
false and artificial equality. Democracy has
begun to decay when it becomes combination
of the mediocre and the inferior to restrain and
to punish the more able and the more progress
sive. The equality which true democracy seeks
to protect and preserve is equality of opportun-
ty, equality of rights, equality before the law.
Any form OF privilege is just as undemocratic
for, rs 11N,4o Il
the body or soul of one individual by another is
just as undemocratic as the Prussian military
autocracy If men and women are to be free,
their bodies must be free as we'll as their souls
and their spirits This cannot be done if they
are mere tools or instrumentalities in the
hands of another, whether that other be an in
dividual monarch or despotie majority. How
to bring about the protection of the individual
from exploitation and how to prevent the
growth of privilege without at the same time
and the most persistent problems which human
society has to face. Yet it is the price of prog
ress to face them and to solve them The one
fact that is never to be forgotten is that pulling
some men down raises no man up.
But we are now told that these inequalities
due to liberty have become so very great and the
disparity between individuals so marked, that
civil liberty and individual opportunity must be
displaced by the organized power of the state.
We hear it said that the conduct of our daily
business, what we do and gain, must all be under
strict governmental supervision and control.
This is the first long and dangerous step on the
path back toward autocracy and militarism. Once
a state becomes al-powerfu it easily thinks of
itself as unable to~do wrong, and so becomes
the immoral state of which Prussia and the Ger
man empire have been the most perfect types.
The al-powerful and immoral state can see
nothing higher than itself; it admits no princi-
pie of right or Justice to which it must give
heed; such state is an end in itself and what it
chooses to do is necessarily right.
The most pressing question that now confronts
the American people, the question that underlies
and conditions all problems of reconstruction
and of advance as we pass from war con-
ditions to the normal times of peace is whether
we shall go forward by preserving those Ameri-
can principles and American traditions that have
already served us so we'll, Or whether we shall
abandon those principles and traditions and
substitute for them a state built not upon the
civil liberty of the individual but upon the
plenary power of organized government
n....