Only for this play-ground, only for a few hours of jolly running about,
they bargain. They ask only that the State should not, like a splenetic
papa, be too cross. It should permit some Processions of the Ass and
plays of fools, as the church allowed them in the Middle Ages. But the
times when it could grant this without danger are past. Children that
now once come _into the open_, and live through an hour without the rod
of discipline, are no longer willing to go into the _cell_. For the open
is now no longer a _supplement_ to the cell, no longer a refreshing
_recreation_, but its _opposite_, an _aut--aut_. In short, the State
must either no longer put up with anything, or put up with everything
and perish; it must be either sensitive through and through, or, like a
dead man, insensitive. Tolerance is done with. If the State but gives a
finger, they take the whole hand at once. There can be no more
"jesting," and all jest, such as fun, wit, humor, etc., becomes bitter
earnest.
The clamor of the Liberals for freedom of the press runs counter to
their own principle, their proper _will_. They will what they _do not
will_, _i. e._ they wish, they would like. Hence it is too that they
fall away so easily when once so-called freedom of the press appears;
then they would like censorship. Quite naturally. The State is sacred
even to them; likewise morals, etc. They behave toward it only as
ill-bred brats, as tricky children who seek to utilize the weaknesses of
their parents. Papa State is to permit them to say many things that do
not please him, but papa has the right, by a stern look, to blue-pencil
their impertinent gabble. If they recognize in him their papa, they must
in his presence put up with the censorship of speech, like every child.
* * * * *
If you let yourself be made out in the right by another, you must no
less let yourself be made out in the wrong by him; if justification and
reward come to you from him, expect also his arraignment and punishment.
Alongside right goes wrong, alongside legality _crime_. What are
_you_?--_You_ are a----_criminal_!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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