The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1941-04-30
BY IoHN STAHLBERG

The gentleman from Orange, Texas
and his band of starving, bleeding
, heroes have done one thing for Ger
tain They have made "un-American'
the most tiresome word in the Amer
lean language fate which it richly
observes. Huddled barefoot and shiv
ering around the campfires of their
Valley Forge, with nothing in their
pockets but a hundred grand (more
or less according to year, and the
woods around them alive with $780,
100000 furriners and descendants of
furriners, they have seen so many
pairs of eyes which have seemed to
glare redly out of the underbrush
that it is small wonder they have
grown panicky and fired off their
flintlocks In the wrong directions and
without waiting to see the white of
all those eyes. Just the same, by ap-
plying the same epithet to everything,
good or bad, which they hadn't the
brains to understand, they have left
the word wholly without meaning or
intelligent interest.
Not that it ever had much. | have
personally examined this word with
all the profound and pious attention
of politician bent on plumber or a
|reactionary editorial Pecksniff trying
to sound as if his platitudes were
based on thought. | can't find any
thing in 1t that could possibly inn
press anyone who is less than two
thirds idiot and three-fourth poltroon.
1t has no obvious moral Significance;
the March of Dimes is American, but
so is lynching Absence of lynchings
could therefore conceivably be called
-American-as 1t actually has been
in parts of the South. 1t does not
necessarily imply cultural or spirit
ual standard or lack of standard; the
Library of Congress is American, but
so are witch hunts. A cessation of
witch hunting could therefore be
called un-American-as it assuredly
would be in some quarters. Even in
its purely political sense of opposi-
ton to the American method of choos-
ing by ballot among the gentlemen
who, filled to the larynx with sacri-
ficial devotion to the common good,
come forward every few years and
offer to run the country-even in that
it is a badly chosen word. Its wide
use in hysterical times like the pres
ent gives our country the air of sort |
of international Pooh-bah, born sneer-
ing" at everything but his own ex-
allied family. The absurdity Is height
ened by the circumstance that, I'M
like Pooh-Bah, who could trace his
ancestry back to a "protoplasmal
primordial atomic globule," we can go
back only three hundred years or so
before the proudest of us runs into
which, however virtuous,
were certainly not American.
This word, or any word Of its kind,
can convey meanings which men OF
sound sense need respect, only when
t is purged of emotional implications
If condemnation or commentator.
'Un-American," IL so awkward a ny
)rid must be used at all, should be in
nocent of moral criticism, meaning
simply mot American" 1t should
AIRY no more suggestion of praise or
than "un-Spanish" or
un- Eskimo" If the intolerance is it.
elf typically American which sees
not typically American as
then it is pretty obvious that
ur Americanism needs a bit of under ,
landing to leaven its ecstatic self I
t
In practice, however, the epithet \
is nearly always di- /