The Petal paper. [volume] (Petal, Miss.) 1953-19??, 1959-03-26

OF coping with secession. We
started out to show in 1882 that
our institutions were sufficiently
flexible to care for the welfare of
all the people. The demonstration
was never made. We have got in
stead the pressure group state,
which cares for the welfare of
those who are well enough or
gained to put on the pressure.
The genealogy of this develop
ment is strange. When I was a
boy, we knew what stood be-
tween us and freedom, justice
and equality; it was special priv
ilege. Get rid of special privilege,
we said, and the common good
will be achieved. In our time
pacification has been attained not
by getting rid of special priv
ilege but by extending it, by ex-
tending it to those we'll enough
organized to threaten the special
privileges under attack.
Is the tariff hurting the farm
ers? Retain the tariff and subsi-
die the farmers. Are administer
ed prices hurting labor? Let's
have administered wages, too. Is
industry demoralized by expense
accounts and tax lodges? Let's
have featherbedding in labor,
too. Is something done by some
group anti-social? Let's all of us
all of us who can put on the
preSSure-be anti-social, too. And
If federal agency is established
to regulate us, never fear: we
have the pressure that will short
ly make the agency the servant
and mouthpiece of the interests
it was intended to control. And
as we laughingly count our gains
at the expense of the public, we
can reverently repeat the solemn
incarnation that helped to make
them possible: that government
is best which governs least.
The Constitution must protect
the citizen against the govern
ment. The government must pro-
tect him against society and the
rapacity of organizations in it by
seeing to it that these organiza-
tons pursue purposes and pro-
grams consonant with the COM
mon good.
The stresses and strains in our
society are obscured for us partly
by our preoccupation with Rus
STA, which plays a curious double
role as the devil in our world and
as the standard by which we
measure our progress. If we
weren't getting ahead of Russia,
or falling behind her, how could
we tell where we were?
Our real problems are also con-
cealed from us by our current
remarkable prosperity, which re-
suits in part from the production
Of arms that we do not expect to
use, and in part from our new
way of getting rich, which is to
buy things from one another that
we do not want at prices we can
not pay on terms we cannot meet
because of advertising we do not
believe.
But beneath these superficial
manifestations, beneath our fan
tastes of fear on the one hand
and wealth on the other, are NOV
ing those great fundamental, his
toric forces which will put our
institutions and our democratic
faith to the test. This is the basic
fact of our life as a people.
| have never subscribed to the
proposition once debated in the
Oxford Union, that in the opinion
of this House Columbus went too
far. Nor can l bring myself to re-
fer to man as he is now referred
to in military technology, as a
"biomechanical link" If Column
bus had not gone so far, man
might never have had the chance
to become anything more that a
biomechanical link. America is
c+ill the hone Of mankind IT is