Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 202, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1919 — Paternalism Is Sure in Time to Kill Spontaneity of Human Intellect [ARTICLE]

Paternalism Is Sure in Time to Kill Spontaneity of Human Intellect

By DR. FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS,

Columbia University

The intellectual life can prosper only where liberty of conscience and of thinking are cherished. It has seemed to some among us that of late our American life has drifted too strongly toward paternalism. Possibly this drift has been caused in part by the inconvenience and dangers of social disorder and anarchistic propaganda. But let us not in our war upon these perils forget, that, while they may violently destroy, paternalism will inevitably stifle and in time will kill all spontaneity and outrcaching of the human intellect. Americanism then at last comes down to this: We want an Americanism that will produce men and women that are not only self-reliant in the practical sense, but who also are self-reliant, strong, outreaching, fearless, creative in the spiritual sense, and such men and women can live and do their part in the world if we have a particular kind of law and a particular kind of liberty, a liberty-making law and a law-abiding liberty. Like the Pilgrims and the Puritans who created our institutions, like the patriots’who made us an independent nation, like the men who saved and consolidated our Union, and like the men who now have given their lives to save the whole fabric of civilization, we must continue to make and to safeguard such law and such liberty.