The Coconino sun., 1920-11-26
SELFISHNESS AND GOVERNMENT

The big scheme of government by the people is that they make the laws and govern them- selves thereby. While the scheme may have it's faults-who has better right to govern than the people themselves? The constitution, laws and regulations We live under may be amended, abolished or changed to suit the changing times and conditions. This being true, what is there to gain by attempting to overturn what the peo- pie have been building for the past century? :? There are many laws that many of us do not agree with, but because of lack of interest, or mayhap, because the majority do believe in them, we abide by these laws.
 No one can honestly say that the rich and high classes rule, because that is not fact ]; they may at times, but because the great ma jority of people will not interest themselves in political matters which affect them.
 The rich and the big bugs are in small ma jority. Whatever happens in this country hap pens with the sanction of the great middle class who make their living by the sweat of their brows; or, it happens because they are not suf- ficiently interested to declare themselves.
 The United States can never have "revou- tion in the European sense. We may have evolution" bringing us forward from stage to stage but real revolution merely means that the people must have gone mad and are too brainless to know their own rights.
 Some have a great fad for fighting for their rights" AS rule this class do not know what their rights are and are more apt to be concerned in taking the "poor old average citizens rights away from him than they are in fighting any fancied wrongs they may have
 The best men of our country forget their per- sonal grievances and believing in the best there is in their countrymen, go on helping their kind toward better understanding and better knowledge of what America and Americans should do and stand for.
 Several decades ago, Robert G. Ingersoll said, something along the same lines that wehavebeen thinking It would not have been in keeping with popular taste to have quoted that famous man some years ago. It would have brought about severe censure, but in the light of receding years, and that feeling that our hopes and aims are all much alike, though sometimes one steps too far out in advance of his fellows, it will not offend popular taste to quote him now.
 While this may not appeal to some as "poli- tics" because of their belief in 'gang politics, " putting something over" or thoughts along that line, it is the cleanest cut idea of "man's human ity to man," and most worth while to those who can and will think:
 "We can not rely upon legislative enactments to make people wise and good neither can we expect to make human beings manly and woman ly by keeping them out of temptation. Tempta- tions are as thick as the leaves of the forest and no one can be out of the reach of temptation un- less he is dead. The great thing is to make peo- pie intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it. All the forces of civilization are in favor of morality and temperance Little can be accomplished by law, because law, for the most part, about such things, is destruction of personal liberty. Lib erty cannot be sacrificed for the sake for temper ance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything else Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life The world had better go back to barbarism, to the dens, the caves and airs of sav agery; better lose all art, all inventions, than to lose liberty. Liberty is the breath of progress it is the seed and soil, the heat and rain of love and joy"