“Are such shams of rights, as caucus-and-ballot-boxism can give us, worth
spending any more time and money and agitation upon? I ask, and I appeal
to what has been most lyingly named free government in Greece, Rome,
England, Venice, France, the United States, and wherever else it has been
attempted to _make permanent the crisis stage_ of progress which marks the
departure from monarchy. No, my friends, art-liberty _alone_ can be of any
avail.... By art-liberty, my friends, I mean the _practical application_
of _all_ science and art _systemized_ as fast as unfolded. The only law
which can govern a free state must be _discovered_; it must be drawn from
the _whole of science and art_—not ‘enacted.’ Human law can no more be
‘enacted’ than can physical law.” ... “Man’s leaders must find out how to
satisfy man’s highest aspirations, instead of catering for his prejudices;
instead of confirming him, by flattery and cajolery, in his false,
supernaturalistic notions; instead of studying the trickery of
representing and plundering him. And they will rapidly find this out, as
soon as a knowledge (already attained) of the _unity of science_ spreads
among them, and along with it its correllate, that all mankind are one
organism, no individual of which can be indifferent to _each_ and _all_ of
the others. Enlightened, far-seeing, _all-benefiting selfishness_ will
then take the place of short-sighted, suicidal, penny-wise pound-foolish
cunning; and that barricade of hypocrisy, duty, that most fallible of all
guides, conscience, and ‘virtue’ and ‘vice,’ those most unscientific and
mischievous expressions that have ever crept into the vocabulary of human
folly, will be obsolete.”
Here is the outcome of the liberty that infidels talk so much about.
“Art-liberty” is to ANNIHILATE CONSCIENCE and the distinction between
virtue and vice so completely that there will be no more use for the
words, “they will be obsolete.” “All benefiting selfishness will then
govern humanity.” Reader, are you prepared for such a state of society?
“If all _contracts_ in accordance with present ‘law’ were fulfilled to the
letter, and if all the ‘_duties_’ enjoined by present moralism were
unflinchingly performed, and if all which ‘virtue’ styles ‘vice’ was
entirely abstained from, and if what is now ‘free trade’ according to
‘law,’ had a ‘fair field,’ how long would it take a millionth of the
earth’s inhabitants to accumulate _all_ its wealth? In my opinion, it
would not take ten generations to produce that reign of ‘law,’
‘principle,’ ‘morality,’ ‘virtue’ and ‘free trade,’ or
mind-your-own-business, and every-one-for-himself-ism, on the earth.” Are
infidels down on law, down on virtue, down on principle, down on morality,
etc.? _It seems so._ “But there must be no stealing, swindling or robbery,
as _legally defined, on any_ account; and there must be no sexual
intercourse out of the bonds of monogamy, _even for bread_, and, above
all, there must be no acts, or even words of _treason_. The laboring man
and the laboring woman must patiently and slowly (nay, not very slowly,
I’m thinking,) die on such wages as they who, _in perfect security_, hold
all the wealth, choose to give; and those out of work must brave martyrdom
to ‘principle,’ by starving straightway, unless they can obtain a ‘permit’
to drag out a few months, possibly years, in sack-cloth and on water-gruel
in an almshouse.... Was Thomas Paine here to-day his old remedies,
religious and political _popular_ free discussion and reasoning, would be
thrown aside or only used to assist science and art to displace them in
religious and state affairs.” Truth will come to the surface! Here it is
speaking for itself. The office of “art-liberty,” the liberty for which
infidels plead, is to destroy _popular free discussion_ and _reasoning_,
allowing them _only_ in order to destroy themselves, that is, allowing the
infidels to use them to displace them in RELIGIOUS and STATE _affairs_.
This is called “art-liberty;” liberty in art and science, and despotism in
religion and politics OR STATE. Such a society, plus the absence of
conscience, virtue and vice, is the infidel’s ideal of free government.
All this means is simply “intolerance” by law; intolerance in “religious
and state affairs.”
When such a state of society is brought about in this country the infidels
will have more _hell_ than they will relish. Listen once more, “Man’s
right to be self-governed is, equally with his desire to be so,
_self-evident_.” How are these infidels going to have self-government and
intolerance by law in matters of religion and state? This Godless infidel
says, “But what is most insultingly _termed_ ‘elective franchise’ is the
farthest thing possible from self-government.... The _popular_ free
discussion of affairs of the last degree of complication, religious and
state affairs, except during the _crisis_ period of revolution, only
renders that worst of despotisms, anarchy, chronic; it seats in the social
organism that political gangrene, demagogism, which has always hitherto
sooner or later required the cauterization of military despotism in order
to save even civilization. Despotism is the most inveterate of all the
diseases of the social organism which ignorance has inflicted; nay, it is
a complication of all its diseases. What, my fellow-man, would any of you
think of the physician who should consult with an individual organism with
a view to taking that organism’s opinion as to what course he (the
physician) had best pursue in order to cure him (the organism) of
scrofula, complicated with every other bodily disease to which flesh is
heir?... Evidently, church and state management require art and skill
infinitely superior to what ‘supernaturalism’ and its legitimate child
monarchism, or its bastard issue, caucus-and-ballot-boxism, are capable
of. From the dissecting-room, the chemical laboratory, the astronomical
observatory, the physician’s and physiologist’s study—in fine, from all
the schools of science and arts should human law be _declared_, instead of
being ‘enacted’ in legislative halls by those who in every respect besides
political trickery, fraud and ‘smartness,’ are perfect ignoramuses.” How
is all this to be reconciled with the ideas of self-government set forth
by this author and copied in this article? Who are to be the doctors, and
who are to be the patients? When _popular_ discussion is confined to art
and science, only as it may be used in order to keep it out of religious
and state affairs, who are to be the _popular_ free disputants? When
legislative halls are done away, along with their _progenitors_, elective
franchise and representation, and law emanates from all the schools of
science and art by “declaration,” will men be more ready to obey?
Give the sore-headed, politically gangrened, conscienceless, virtueless,
Godless applauders of Tom Paine what they ask, and it will simply amount
to abandoning our posterity to the lowest, vilest sensualism known in
Pagan geography along the line or borderland of a foul lust-gratifying,
brutalizing _hell_. May all Christian people, and every lover of our
humanity, wake up to the importance of giving these wide-mouthed, blatant
infidels, who are traveling over our country howling about “liberty of
man, woman and child,” a wide berth. They would like to be the “doctors,”
and treat the “orthodox” people so as to purge “_popular_ free discussion”
out of them, and at the same time have their own stomachs crammed full of
that grace, and so “steal heaven’s livery to serve the devil.” The above
_infidelism_ is copied _verbatim_ from the “concluding application” of the
life of Thomas Paine by Calvin Blanchard, published in 1879, and being now
peddled over our country. What do our infidel friends mean by so much ado
about liberty as opposed to the present state of society in our country?
Free thought belongs to all. You can’t chain the mind. What is it that
they want? Will they be so kind as to inform us? Is Calvin Blanchard a
representative of the liberty sought for? Then may we long live to keep
our heels upon it.