Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1912 — BACK TO DEMOCRACY [ARTICLE]

BACK TO DEMOCRACY

IN THIS CRISIS IT IS COUNTRY’S ONLY HOPE. To Be Free From Demagogues of the Roosevelt Stripe There Must Be a Return to Proper Principles. The;re is an excuse for Theodore Roosevelt which should be fully understood. The Amerioan people are not partial to third terms. They are not naturally inclined to embrace necessary men. They have many reasons for distrusting the person who now assumes to lead them into strange paths. They know that he is willful, impatient of restraint, loose in statement, fond of power and dictatorial. They know that he craves applause and enjoys attention. They know that almost any man who is cheeky* clever and unscrupulous can recruit a noisy following from the ranks of the unstable and the reckless. It is violence and violence alone that gives Theodore Roosevelt power. By thi3 means he enlists support which otherwise could not be had By this means he makes men forfeet the streaks and stripes in his career. By new sensations and new terrors he renews interest in himself daily. It is no new art that he practices. It is the old, old art of demogogy. But there is an excuse for Mr. Roosevelt the same as there is an excuse for a lynching party. Where law is enforced and justice prevails mobs do not assemble and dictatorships are net proposed. When mischief is afoot those whose social responsibilities are few do not inquire closely into the motives of its authors.

Attached as most Americans are to order and law, they nevertheless have shown from the beginning a willingness on occasion to make short cuts, to use force and to palliate despotic deeds. It is to this spirit that Mr. Roosevelt appeals. It Is a people discouraged and desperate, a people betrayed, a people disorganized and leaderless, a people almost persuaded to repudiate law, that the demagogue addresses. He will be heard until a better and truer man gains attention. The excuse for Roosevelt ig to be found in the perfidy of his own party and the uncertainty that has existed as to the policy and leadership of the Democratic party. The antidote here as elsewhere, now as always, for the poison of force and absolutism is a fierce and fighting Democracy, attached to the constitution, true to its pledges and inflexibly the champion of equal rights under the laws. If we cannot have true Americanism, true Democracy, true self-govern-ment, we shall presently have something worse than Roosevelt. Dangerous as he may be, he is only the apostle of a propensity that never fails to appear when great peoples have grievances which in orderly fashion they seem powerless to remedy —New York World.