Popular misgovernment in the United StatesCruikshank, Alfred Byron
History
Popular misgovernment in the United States
Cruikshank, Alfred Byron
Suffrage -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
civilization that under it our whole political life may be purified and
made efficient; one which may be relied upon not merely to crush
Bolshevism in the United States but to extirpate it from this country
forever.
The proposal to establish a property qualification for voters throughout
the United States may seem novel and even startling to many Americans,
but there is no other way out of the political mess in which we find
ourselves. As will be shown in detail in subsequent pages the corrupt
rule of the low professional politicians of this country is made secure
by the vote of the thriftless and controllable class; until that vote is
expurgated there can be no purification of the body politic; without
purification there can be no efficiency; and unless the administration
of our public affairs is purified and made efficient we cannot either
answer the charges of the enemies of our institutions or repel their
attacks. We cannot depend upon the electorate as at present made up; it
has already shown its capacity to breed and encourage bad government;
the thriftless classes are all ready to accept Bolshevism or any other
economical and political absurdity; they are no more able to understand
the scheme of civilization and the value and importance of accumulations
of earnings and creation of property in furtherance of that scheme than
they are able to understand a musical symphony or a problem in the
higher mathematics. And after all there is nothing sacred about the
doctrine of unlimited suffrage; it is only a political experiment like
another; and the well known record of its complete and dismal failure is
summarized in these pages where it is shown that it has not been an
instrument of progress nor a means of freedom, but that its tendency has
been and is towards reaction and despotism; that it is anti-social and
hostile to civilization. The proposal to make property accumulations the
basis of government, though it is sanctioned by ancient practise, is
not reactionary; it is progressive, as every return to old and sound
principles is progressive. Nor will it create or tend to create a narrow
or exclusive electorate; it will on the contrary have a broadening
effect and will tend to furnish a truly popular government, one resting
directly on the consent and the votes of most of the population, and
utilizing qualities of virtue and manhood now denied their proper effect
in politics. It will represent directly or indirectly every element of
value in the nation; everything on which a democratic government depends
for its best support; namely, the industry, thrift, wealth,
intelligence, character and honest independence of its people. The
change will appear in the overthrow of the rule of brute force and the
curbing of the present despotism of numbers. Do what we will, the
passions and prejudices of the unthinking and uninstructed will always
affect political action; but if our democracy is to survive their power
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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