I hear men and women saying all the time, “America is no place to live now. The streets of our large cities at night look like villages in some remote district. Dull, dull, and drab, drab. One more tyrannical law, one shadow of that deep blue which imperils us, and we will go and live abroad—anywhere but here.”
Is that pleasant talk to listen to? Does it make one proud to be an American? It is not well to have such feelings fomenting in the hearts of those who honestly and sincerely love their native land—love it so much that during a terrible war they were proud to offer to die for it, or allow their sons to die for it.
But this is not the time to desert the old Ship of State. Now, as never before, the United States needs its best blood, its best workers, its best citizens, to put the country back where it belongs.
It is because I love America so, that I do not wish to see her make a complete fool of herself—as she is doing every day now. And I say it as loudly as I can, that these pernicious laws, this spirit of verboten, is only making the world safe for De-mockery-cy.
It was Montaigne who said that he was “of the opinion that it would be better for us to have no laws at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.” And that was how long ago? What would he write and think of America if he could live among us today?
And further he said, knowing human nature as few of us know it: “There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”
Yet the silly law-makers go on with their silly codes, piling Pelion on the top of Ossa, till all sight of man’s frailty is lost. “A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.”
Yet the letter of the law must be upheld, and the very men who make our statutes continue to break them.
The joke may go too far. The American people may remember that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” and be willing to watch and wait, lest that most precious of all things be taken away from them.
There can be no disputing the fact that a law that is not enforced is worse than no law at all. Law and order—that is the phrase. But America is a country of law and disorder; and the worst of it all is that the reformers refuse to stop where they have. They are preparing to plunge us into even deeper gloom. Why should they rest, having been so eminently successful already?