Brennan collapsed in his chair just as Judge Carter came in with his
white mane flying and hot fire in his attitude. "What goes on here?" he
stormed at James.
"I stopped your campaign."
"Now see here, you young--"
Judge Carter stopped abruptly, took a deep breath and calmed himself with
a visible effort to control his rage. "James," he said in a quieter
voice, "Can you repair the damage quickly?"
"Yes--but I won't."
"And why not?"
"Because one of the things my father taught me was the danger of allowing
this machine to fall into the hands of ruthless men with political
ambition."
"And I am a ruthless man with political ambition?"
James nodded. "Under the guise of studying me and my machine," he said,
"you've been using it to train speakers, and to educate ward-heelers.
You've been building a political machine by buying delegates. Not with
money, of course, because that is illegal. With knowledge, and because
knowledge, education, and information are intangibles and no legality
has been established, and this is all very legal."
Judge Carter smiled distantly. "It is bad to elevate the mind of the
average ward-heeler? To provide the smalltime politician with a fine
grasp of the National Problem and how his little local problems fit into
the big picture? Is this making a better world, or isn't it?"
"It's making a political machine that can't be defeated."
"Think not? What makes you think it can't?"
"Pedagogue!" said James.
"Yeowwww!"
The judge whirled to look at Brennan. "What was--that?" asked the judge.
James explained what had happened, then: "I've mentioned hazards. This is
what would happen if a fuse blew in the middle of a course. Maybe he can
be trained out of it, and maybe not. You'll have to try, of course. But
think of what would happen if you and your political machine put these
things into schools and fixed them to make a voltage twitch or something
while the student was reading the word 'republican'. You'd end up with a
single-party system."
"And get myself assassinated by a group of righteously irate citizens,"
said Judge Carter. "Which I would very warmly deserve. On the other hand,
suppose we 'treated' people to feel anguish at thoughts of murder or
killing, theft, treason, and other forms of human deviltry?"
"Now that might be a fine idea."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account