The people's voice., 1941-03-26
In OTHER
WORDS
By JOHN STAHLBERG

the amazing tag ends or pn1lOSOpn.
that some editors permit to appear IL
the editorial columns of their publica
tions, the columns which, as expires
sions of themselves, one would expec
them to guard against sentimentality
and arrant nonsense. l am thinking
at the moment of two eminent jour
nails which have recently appealed tt
the public not to question anyone
motives any more, on the ground thai
| it is an evil practice at best and II
now un-American, un-Christian, un
safe, and generally un Please, says
each of these gentlemen, with tears
in his eyes and catch in his voice
let's starve people who differ with us
and drop bombs on people we don't
like, but let's not ever descend to the
vulgar incivility of doubling the pur
ity of the motives of editorial writer's
munitions makers, or even statesmen,
That isn't nice.
Just one thing can be said with
certainty about this old-maidish eye
wash: 1t is obviously meant to lay a
protective taboo around motives
which cannot we'll bear inspection.
The reasoning behind it runs substan-
TALLY like this: If we can convince
everyone that it is unpatriotic and in
decent to ask why we do thus and so,
then we can continue without fear OF
discovery to do things which are in
decent and unpatriotic-but profit
able.
The idea and the technique are as
old as the human brain and as wide
spread as the simplest instinct. The
caveman who wanted to visit the cave
lady farther down the mountain while
her husband was out hunting oreo-
dontidae surely did not omit to de-
nounce the husbands suspicious as
vulgar and uncavemanlike. To take
a more recent example, we know how
Mortified the Russians and Germans
were when the degraded Firms and
Norwegians had the bad taste to doubt
that their respective countries were
being invaded for altruistic reasons
L III Ou5uOul ulSlOl anu iOio cNAOA y
there was any history, people who
have taken that high and holy line
have been pretty sure to be actuated,
at least in part, by motives which one
might hesitate to impute to hyena
The people who do so now are no bet
ter than their predecessors, and GER
tainly there never was time when
they needed closer or more clear-eyed
watching.
Admittedly it is not invariably
pleasant to have ones motives scrut-
probably Galahad himself was
just as happy when his contemporar-
les accepted without any fuss the dec
laration that his heart was pure. Be-
sides, Galahads are rare in any age,
and surely not less rare now than nor
mally. If only our own purity OF
heart kept us from being smitten by
divine wrath, few of us would be more
at any moment than puff OF gray
ash in the breath of the Lord. But
ton even if it was delivered on the
point of a lance Shaky as we are on
our moral pins, not many of us think
we have to hide bemind taboo
either.
| find personally that it gives me
tremendous advantage to begin an ar
gument with the assumption that | am
an unprintable so-and-so whose morals
are but little better than those of a
aorsethief or even a politician. Since
this is the lowest thing that can be
said of any man, it strikes my oppon-
snt dumb and blind and permits me
10 tear him limb from limb at my
leisure Frank acknowledgment of
by own faults has the miraculous ef
'ect of making me almost impregnable
70 insult, despite the fact that am
naturally so thin-skinned as to be
raw. People who go about
3eing insulted amuse me no end.
There is lack in their moral compos-
tion of which they are uneasily aware
out instead of facing it realistically
themselves, they demand that others
also shut their eyes to it. They in
,ist on reverence for their own
aults which they would deny to other
peoples virtues. Nothing arouses
hem to greater or swifter anger than
he breakdown of their concealments.
The galloping hell of tits that no
nan of Independent mind feels bound |
o revere anything until examination
h ho
everence. Many people who preen
themselves on their 100 percent Amer !
canism have to have this elementary |
,rinciple of American ideology ex-
'lained to them. A citizen who still
Judges things on their merits and re-
uses to admire corruption and treach-
ry even when they drape themselves
n the Flag, has, to their Mortified |
yes, the vivid dreadfulness of very |
i've and snortsome bull in shop of
acred china cows They are unable
0 see that the refusal to revere by |
ommand rather than by conviction is
ne of the traits which made American
lfe and customs and arts possible in
heir present forms. A genuine Amer
can, one who has America in his
lood and marrow and not exclusively
n his jawbone, may feel bound by
very consideration of national creed,
ersonal honor, and plain human intel
gence, to try to understad and eval-
ate what he sees even in the garbage
ollector. But so long as he remains
lmerican he does not have to revere
that he sees in anyone-even a per-
etually picked governor, even a sill
er-tongued president, even the editor