Trampling Upon Patriotic Ideals

Louis F. Post

[Reprinted from The Public, 28 January, 1899]

Louis F. Post was a vice president of the Chicago Liberty Meeting (1899) that led to the formation of the Central Anti-Imperialist League and was a vice president of the national Anti-imperialist League. He edited the Georgist weekly, The Public, and was among the most influential leaders of the progressive movement. His reputation for principled protest was so well received that he was made Secretary of Labor under Wilson. In that capacity, he personally overruled more than 1500 INS wartime deportation orders against suspected radicals.

There come times in the history of nations when events compel them to bring their actions to the test of first principles. At such times the truly patriotic citizen is forced into a searching and momentous comparison of national ideals with immediate national purposes and policies. Upon the decisions al these crises measurably depends the fate of the nation -- whether it shall rise farther toward its ideals, or sink away from them...

When events bring its purposes into open collision with its moral ideals, and the necessity is admitted of altering the one or modifying the other, the decision of that nation determines the direction in which it is going. If it decides for its ideals, it is advancing; rf it decides against them, 'it is receding.

Whether the nation has always been true to its moral ideals, is at such a time of minor importance. ...The vital question that confronts it is, whether the new policy it is urged to adopt the new customs it is asked to establish, the new national habits it is advised to form, are in harmony with its ideals, if they are not, then their adoption would be not merely inconsistent; it would be equivalent to a deliberate repudiation...

To make conquests and establish over the people we conquer a government which they do not voluntarily accept, and in the management of which they are to have no voice, a government that is under no constitutional obligations to protect their lives and liberties, but which according to those who advocate it could dispose of all their rights in its discretion, would be to deny the fundamental right of self-government in a new relationship. Thus we should not merely remain inconsistent with our deals; we should be turning our backs upon them. This is perfectly well understood by the advocates of 'imperial colonialism, and they brazenly urge us to turn our backs upon those ideals, arguing that the 'ideals are illusory.

...We cannot impose our government upon alien peoples against their will, without lining up our government alongside of the autocratic powers of the earth. It is only by assuming some fanciful divine right in derogation of their obvious natural rights that we can make them our "subjects"...

Nor is it any answer to say that the alien peoples are incapable of self-government No one is capable of self-government, in the eyes of those who wish to govern him. What is our warrant for declaring a people incapable of self-government? Any people are far better able to govern themselves than are any other people to govern them. Super-imposed government may exterminate a people; it cannot elevate them...

Neither is it an answer to the objection to American imperial colonialism to cite American precedents in its favor. As already suggested, they prove nothing at the worst but that we have been at times indifferent to our ideals. The best use of bad precedents is to show, fay those we have set aside, how far we have advanced toward our ideals. ...We are proceeding with knowledge, with deliberation, with intention, to set up a new policy which is confessedly hostile; and in doing so we seek justification not in an attempt to elevate the policy to the level of the ideals, but in an attempt to pull down the ideals to the level of the policy...

We cannot make that decision under existing circumstances without trampling upon our national ideals; and with a nation, as with an individual, it were better that it have no ideals than that having them it should deliberately cast them aside. Let us in this crisis but choose to substitute the Russian ideal of government for the American, and we shall not be long in descending to the Russian mode. It is not only the liberties of our "subjects" that are at stake; the liberties of our citizens also hang in the balance.

But if we decide for our ideals instead of against them, if at this long-drawn-out crisis we determine to be true to the principle of self-government we may then be grateful for the temptation which will have made it possible for us to become stronger in our love of liberty and to draw closer to our national ideals. For we may be sure that just as truly as by disregarding the liberties of others we imperil our own, we shall by recognizing theirs make ours more secure and perfect.