Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of MankindKnickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
History
Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind
Knickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States
Finally, as we discussed before, Hitler as every conqueror, cannot stop
trying to conquer, and after he had finished with the Old World, his
momentum would force him to attack the New.
Q. _Haven’t we plenty to do at home, without getting into a foreign
war? Why don’t we try to make a real democracy in America before we go
out to try to improve the rest of the world?_
A. This argument that we should pay no attention to the fire in the
house next door because we are busy cleaning the windows of our house,
polishing the floor, and cleaning up the kitchen has the same amount
of logic and common sense as the doctrine that we ought not to fight
on our enemy’s territory but only on our own. President Hutchins of
the University of Chicago has put this argument of perfectionism in
scholarly form. He maintains that we are going to war to establish
throughout the world the Four Freedoms--of speech, of worship, from
want, and from fear--but he says we have no right to crusade for them
until we have established them at home. But we are not going to war to
crusade for the Four Freedoms; as we have pointed out before, we are
going to war to make the world safe for the United States, and at the
same time or thereafter do what we can to establish the Four Freedoms
elsewhere as well as in America. If we do not go to war, we risk losing
even what we have of the Four Freedoms, even the small quantities of
them measured by Dr. Hutchins.
Something of what he says about the failure of the Four Freedoms in
this country to reach perfection is true; not all of it. He says we
have freedom of speech to say only what everybody else is saying, but
Dr. Hutchins will admit we have more of this kind of freedom than any
other country at this moment. He will also admit that everyone else is
not saying the things Dr. Hutchins is saying and yet he may say them
without let or hindrance. He says we have “freedom of worship if we
don’t take our religion too seriously,” but one must ask oneself what
examples of religious intolerance have given rise to such a statement?
Where are the persecuted religionists and to what country would they
flee to escape from the alleged deficiency of freedom of worship in
America?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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