The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1922-03-07
THE STATE MUST LIVE
XVIII

Of an opportunity to influence IN ad-
vance the enactment of any of those
policies which are now reflected in the
laws under which we live.
This is oligarchy, and it smells no
sweeter under the unctious name of
primary. Liberty, what crimes are
committed in thy name!"
If this is the necessary result of
our primary system its illusions have
now vanished in the noon day of ex-
perience, as do the mirages of the
desert when the sun is in his glory.
We can grope and we can group in
abortive protests in a local way. So
those have done who weltered under
the oppression of every despot of
which history tells.
The tyrants of the past have ever
stood in fear of the assembling of
their people to give expression and
direction to mass political action; we'll
knowing that without this local pro-
tests avail little.
When | was young, from fifty to one
hundred and fifty men, each selected
by his neighbors who knew him best,
assembled every two years in every
county site in the nation and there
drafted a political chart to express
the wishes of those who called them
selves democrats. Thus, since the
days of Andrew Jackson, whatever of
good, or of bad, was done under the
name of democracy was sanctioned by
the people themselves, for each county
convention promulgated its platform
and sent it to a state convention.
These state conventions were COM
posed of from two hundred to two
thousand men, representing the best
political intelligence each state pos
sessed, and it summed up the views of
majority on state and national is
sues.
In those by-gone days vent was
given to free-for-all expressions of
political unrest, in soap-box oratory
of men for politics and debate was
developed to a truly amazing degree.
Their corners were freely knocked off
by their fellows; but if any man in
the remotest part of any state was
possessed of an idea which rang with
truth, Or which portended good for his
people, he could give it untrammeled
expression and had an opportunity to
transmit it into action in a state, or
national, way without marring his
freedom of speech by becoming a can
didate for office.
These state conventions, so COM
posed, declared the views of a ma
jority of their people on national
questions and sent delegates to a ma
tional convention where a platform
was prepared from the composite
views of all democrats who lived be-
tween the day of Jackson and the
year 1900.
But during about twenty years past
the citizens of Florida have left their
governors and lawmakers wholly to
drift in the currents of private infiu-
ence and private views; while each
voter goes, blindfolded as it were, to
cast his mute and purposeless ballot
for twelve unknown names of those
whose ideas are wholly unknown to
him; those twelve men sit in nation
al convention every four years to
speak their private opinions, as being
the views of near a million people, for
whom, thus stified and gagged, ma
tional policies are fixed, and the vast
machinery of democracy is set in mo-
ton to grind under its wheels all who
may oppose.
Thus disinterested patriotic polit-
ical action is put at a discount, and
many gems of political thought may
melt away like pearls in the cup of an
Egyptian queen.
This is the heydey for the trimmer
and the Halifax, the quack and the
mountebank and for him who is all
things to all men.
In practical results this is oligar-
chy; only tempered, in the main, by
rulers whom we may choose as being
jolly good fellows, or whose intellect,
being inadequate to cope with oppos-
ing ideas, find political strength by
having no ideas of their own; thus the
negative virtues exempt them from
the deadly shafts of small cults and
factions, which will carry any politi-
cal Goliath to his doom, unless he be
supported by binding party action ex-
pressed in a platform.
If you think | misuse the word, oil