The Klanishness of The Klan
It is perhaps not only proper but also necessary, in view of the
vigorous and persistent attacks made on the Klan, to discuss more
fully the apparent exclusiveness of the organization. I desire to
reiterate with emphasis that the Klan is a purely American organization
assembled around the Constitution of the United States, to safeguard
its provisions, advance its purposes, and perpetuate its democracy.
This definition of the Klan in its organization necessarily carries
the idea of exclusiveness. All men without respect to race, color
and religion may not be organized into a democracy. Democracy can
not be established by outside pressure. It is something which must
be developed in the individual consciousness, and is of very slow
growth. We speak loosely when we talk of the Anglo-Saxon having grown
into a democracy through a thousand years of struggle. Five thousand
years would be a more accurate statement of the fact. During all the
slow processes of the development of the white man's civilization,
there was something inherent in his life that slowly pushed its way
up into the consciousness of the individual until it found expression
in constitutional government, in freedom of thought and speech, and
in all the elements of political and religious liberty. One of the
most developed expressions of this growth into democracy is our
American Government with all its complexities and intricacies. It
should go without saying that all men, without reference to origin or
history, can not be thrust into this country, and, under restraint
and repression, be forced into our ways of thinking and living and so
attain the true value of American citizenship. To begin with, a great
many people, living under one form of autocracy or another, have never
been awakened to a sense of and desire for democracy. In others the
sense has begun to stir, but has not had the opportunity or the time
for that sure growth that would transform them into a citizenship
capable of pure self-government.
This fact has been demonstrated by the futility of the attempts in
Russia, first under the administration of Kerensky and now under Lenine
and Trotsky. The bolshevist camarilla attempted to take that nation,
which has been subjected for ages to one of the simplest and meanest
despotisms on earth, and organize it into a sort of democracy. This
proposition is still further illuminated by the experience of Germany
in her attempt to build a democracy on the ruins of her old autocracy.
The best thinkers in the German nation, notwithstanding the superior
intellectual, economical and industrial qualifications of the people,
predict that a real democracy can not be established in Germany in less
than fifty years. If these two nations, both white, the one having
the most robust physical manhood in the world, and the other the most
vigorous mentality, can not rise from autocracy into democracy, how
absurd it appears that we should take great masses of the untaught,
underfed, inferior people of all the lands and undertake to precipitate
them, in masses, into our very peculiar and intricate national
democracy.
[Illustration: The "Starry" Flag and the "Fiery" Cross Shall Not Fail]
The Klan, organized to protect and advance the cause of our native
institutions, is therefore exclusive in the restriction of its
membership to white native-born Americans. We believe that only one
born on American soil, surrounded by American institutions, taught in
the American schools, harmonized from infancy with American ideals,
can become fully conscious of what our peculiar democracy means and be
adequately qualified for all the duties of citizenship in this republic.
In order to become a member of the Klan one must subscribe without
reservation of any sort to the Constitution of the United States.
Loyalty to the Constitution must be so thorough that no ultimate
allegiance to any foreign institution, power or country can be
retained. Committal to Americanism is so absolute that nothing is left
uncommitted. The Ku Klux Klan is patriotic to the last and highest
degree. We believe that the principles upon which this republic was
founded, and around which the great War Between the States was waged,
should be constantly reaffirmed and emphasized.
The American nation has acted as a great magnet. The American city in
particular has been an irresistible lure to the unhappy and oppressed
peoples of the world. From all shores great tides of immigration have
flowed in upon us. The alien peoples have not been distributed over
the vast area of our common country, but have, for the most part,
been congested in our great centers. Many of them can not read and
write their own language. On the average they are three times as prone
to pauperism and nine times as prone to crime as our native-born
Americans. Because of their numbers, as well as their nationalistic
tendencies, they organize themselves into separate communities and
often breed hostility to American institutions. How natural that such
foreign communities should spawn all forms of social and political
vices.
Of course this plethora of population violates the fundamental law
of our social life. This nation grew strong and took on its peculiar
virtues out in the open fields and under the gleaming stars. Granting
that the possibilities of democracy are inherent in many of these
aliens that have been admitted into our country, the possibilities can
not now be realized in the great cities of the nation. We believe that
one can never be wholly patriotic or thoroughly democratized until
he obeys God's great first commandment and settles upon some spot of
ground and subdues it and makes it yield its secrets and its wealth.
Permit these people that have come to us to segregate in cities by race
and tongue, and continue to live in squalor and dirt, often accursed
by disease and ignorance, foreign in habit and thought and pursuit,
understanding our country only as an unrestricted opportunity for
license, and it presents the gravest problems that our nation was ever
called upon to solve. This is especially true since these aliens have
been permitted to qualify for citizenship and given suffrage within
a space of time so short that they can not even become acquainted
with the outward manners and customs of the American people, not to
mention the basic intellectual and spiritual factors of our national
consciousness.
More than fifty per cent. of the votes cast in the last presidential
election were cast by cities. For the first time in the history of
this country the urban population exceeds the rural. This vast alien
population now holds and exercises the balance of political power. HERE
IS A CHALLENGE WITH TRUMPET VOICE TO EVERY NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN TO FACE
THE CRISIS AND PRESERVE OUR DEMOCRACY FOR THE GENERATIONS TO COME.
One other condition is imposed on all men who would be associated with
the Klan, and that is subscription to the tenets of Christianity.
We are in no sense a religious organization. There is no purpose
of founding what has been suggested by our critics, a new American
church. The Klan does not interfere, through membership, with any man's
interpretation of religious truth or his connection with any branch or
denomination of the Christian church. In fact, the Klan has nothing to
do with dogma, creed, or ritual. Yet the Klan does insist that every
man becoming a member shall strive to carry himself by the code of
conduct promulgated by Jesus Christ. It is a high standard of living
that the Klan undertakes to maintain, and at the very threshold of the
organization one must accept this highest standard of ethics and morals
that the world has ever known.
There are many who can not accept these stern conditions. But certainly
it is not an arbitrary discrimination against any class, or sect,
or race. We believe that, interwoven into the entire fabric of real
Americanism, are the principles of Christianity. Reverent recognition
of this fact has been made in the Bills of Right and in nearly every
state constitution of the Union. In 1895 the Supreme Court of the
United States, in a decision on the Alien Labor Contract Law, declared
this to be a Christian nation, and the Court was very careful to
establish its decision by referring explicitly to the principles and
declarations of Christianity which run through all the organic laws of
the country. So, believing as we do, that our patriotic principles and
Christianity are inseparable and indivisible, we hold steadfastly to
the Constitution and the Sermon on the Mount. It goes without saying
that men who repudiate either can not look for fellowship in the Klan.