Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. DebsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Labor -- United States; Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.); Working class -- United States
In our propaganda, in the discussion of our tactical and other
differences and in all our other activities, the larger faith that true
comradeship inspires should prevail between us. We need to be more
patient, more kindly, more tolerant, more sympathetic, helpful and
encouraging to one another, and less suspicious, less envious, and less
contentious, if we are to educate and impress the people by our example,
and by the effect of our teachings upon ourselves win them to our
movement, and realize our dream of universal freedom and social
righteousness.
ROOSEVELT AND HIS REGIME.
Appeal to Reason, April 20, 1907.
The only time in my life I ever saw Theodore Roosevelt was years before
he became president of the United States. I was aboard of a train in the
far west, where Roosevelt was then said to be following ranch life, and
as he and several companions in cowboy costume entered the car at a
station stop, he was pointed out to me. I did not like him. The years
since have not altered that feeling of aversion except to accentuate it.
I have since seen the nation mad with hero worship over this man
Roosevelt, but I have not been impressed by it. Very "great" men
sometimes shrivel into very small ones and finally vanish in oblivion in
the short space of a single generation.
The American people are more idolatrous than any "heathen" nation on
earth. They worship their popular "heroes," while they last, with
passionate frenzy, and with equal madness do they hunt down the sane
"fools" who vainly try to teach them sense. Theodore Roosevelt and
George Dewey as "heroes" and Wendell Phillips and John Brown as "fools"
are notable illustrations. American history is filled with them.
But my personal dislike of the cowboy in imitation who has since become
president, however justifiable, would scarcely warrant a public attack
upon his official character, and this review, being of such a nature, is
inspired, as will appear, by entirely different motives.
There are those, and they constitute a great majority of the American
people, who stand in awe of their president, supposedly their servant,
but in fact their master; they speak of him with a kind of reverential
adulation as a lordly personage, a superior being to be looked up to and
worshiped rather than a fellowman to be respected and loved. There are
others who betray equal ignorance in a more vulgar fashion by coarse
tirades for which there is often as little excuse as there is for the
extreme adulation.
Regarding the president of the United States, as I do, simply as a
citizen and fellowman, the same as any other, I shall speak of him and
his acts free alike from awe and malice, and if I place him in the
public pillory, where he has placed so many others, to be seen and
despised of men, it will be from a sense that his official acts, so
often in flat denial of his profession, merit the execration of honest
men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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