Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1941-03-31


+ In eighteenth century America,
the leadership of this country was
in the hands of preachers. scholars
and soldiers.
WHATEVER their limitations,
w they had a strict moral sense
of individual and social RESPONSE
bility. They did not worship the
goddess Success. They led austere
lives, set standards of culture and
behavior, and established the
morals of American life.
Nineteenth century America saw
the rise of plutocracy and the
tranfser of leadership to an Oil
garchy of wealth. The degeneration.
of moral standards began at once.
THE intellectual leaders of the
Il American eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries had con-
ception of sin. They read the
Bible, believed in the Ten Com
mandments, taught their progeny
that fire awaited those who should
lie. steal, break up families and
murder.
They were rather shaky on the
exploitation of their fellow men,
but such values as they had were
categorical imperatives.
The moral basis was the very
basis for the new world.
Human rights were an endow-
ment of the Creator; God was our
King and the Author of Liberty;
freedom of conscience was based
on the idea that man had a con-
science and that it was exceed
ingly precious; freedom of religion
was based on a real desire to wor-
ship Gt2fdl ; freedom af speech pre-
Sumed a general contempt for
liars and false witnesses.
I DON'T know just when the
Il moral code was substituted by
the idea that wrong-doing is not
profitable.
If you listen TO radio dramas
nowadays, you learn that crime
doesn't pay-that it is not COM
patible with the profit-motive.
The Omen always get the
gangster in the end. In the old
days it used to be God and re-
morse that were the retribution
Nowadays God is j. Edgar
Hoover and he's an inadequate
substitute. The facts of life are
that it, lying, thieving. cowardice.
cruelty, avarice and greed don't
make a human being thoroughly
disgusting to himself and his con-
temporarieS they often do pay
in terms of worldly success.
IN THE twentieth century moral
sanctions began TO give way TO
scientific explanations. Science
confirmed the laws of the sur
vival of the fittest. biological Sc
lection. historic reIativism, psyche
logical determiniSm.
Religion became superstition
and morals wholly relative
If we go on thinking that way
democracy is on the rocks. Be
cause if this is so, Hitler is more
right than Lincoln or Jesus.
THE laws of society, however,
Il are not laws of nature. Social
laws have TO be deduced from his
tory, not science. from what we
know of the survival values of
certain forms of societies as con-
+ trasted with others.
On the record, free and demo-
cratic societies free and, demo-
Fcratic according to the standards
of their -tir1es-ffa*e been short
lived
They tend 10 degenerate into
rule by an oligarehy of wealth and
finally TO break up through mass
! rebellion which are usually eX-
plotted by an outside enemy.
That was the history of Troy,
a democracy. That was the his
tory of Athens. There are more
modern examples that Will occur
to peoples minds.
IT IS further law Of societies
that the people at the bottom
accept the standards of the peo-
pie at the top
II the intelleetuais spread abroad
f The idea that there is no right
and wrong. their intellectual
rationalizations will be translated
into gangSterism by the people at
f the bottom.
If those at the top are only