DEMOCRACY’S MEANING

Evening Star, Issue 23699, 5 October 1940, Page 3

DEMOCRACY’S MEANING

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM U.S.A. JUDGE'S ADDRESS “ I wonder sometimes if we do‘ not too often use the word .‘ democracy * without thinking what it means. I wonder if we have not become a little numb to the significance of the idea of individual liberty that is the secret of democracy,” said Justice Frank Murphy, of the Supreme Court of America, iu a recent speech. “ How often do we profess our faith' in democracy and forget to associate x it with the things in our own lives that are democracy? “ What, exactly is this idea of individual liberty? What do we mean when we talk about the beauty and the dignity of the human personality ?, “ Why, we mean that unknown fellow, mounted on his soap box in the city street, speaking his piece about the way he thinks the country and the government ought to be run. We mean that editor or author, writing as he pleases, condemning or commending the Administration as hia opinions dictate. “ We mean the ordinary citizen ..expressing his frank opinions to hia mayor or congressman .or president, and getting consideration of ; them. We mean the businessman setting up shop for the kind of business and ia the kind of community that he t prefers, with nothing but the public welfare to say him nay. We mean the working man at liberty to choose his own occupation and to move when he pleases into another. We mean the scientist free to search for truth, and the educator frea to teach it, unhampered by fear of some ‘ superman ’ who makes his own truth and allows no. competition. “ These are ordinary things to a people that has done them pretty much without interruption for a century and a half. They seem elementary and commonplace—so simple that it seems unnecessary to speak of them. . But actually they are not ordinary things. They are the hallmarks of civilisation. They stand for the gracious way of living that humanity has always been groping for, through even the blackest nights of tyranny and barbarism that history has recorded. “ What exactly does it mean wheji a people gives up the idea that the individual’s freedom to live his own. life is, after all, the. most priceless possession of any society ? It means , the suppression of every one of the • simple, ordinary ’ things that we are; so prone to take for granted. US means for any man who presumes to speak unkindly of the powers that rule, a concentration camp, and hard labour, or perhaps something worse. It means a cringing, servile Press that writes not as it pleases, but as some great man at headquarters directs. “It means the suppression of religion or the steady, demoralising persecution of those who -refuse to embrace some barbaric creed that makes a god' of an all-powerful State. “ It means the ruthless conscription of industry and labour and business alike, all dancing like marionettes at the direction of the State, for the greater glory of a political doctrine that sees human beings only as nameless cogs iu a great machine. "It means the debasement of science and education and the arts to the level of tools of an arrogant majority that happens to hold the. key- to the gun room. Worst of all, it means the enslavement of the human mind and spirit—a slavery that undermines self-respect and slowly destroys moral integrity.”