Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1908 — SELF-SATISFIED YANKEES [ARTICLE]

SELF-SATISFIED YANKEES

Briton Declares We Think We Have A Monopoly of Freedom. A carping Briton by tne name of Whibley seems to be quite stirred up over the quality of the American brand of liberty and of patriotism. “Liberty” says he in the course of a few somewhat heated and overcapitalized remarks, in Blackwoou s magazine, “is a thing which no one in America can escape. The old inhabitant smiles with satisfaction as he murmurs the familiar word. At every turn it is clubbed into the unsuspecting visitor. “If an aspirant to the citizenship of the republic declined to be free he would doubtless be thrown into a dungeon, fettered and manacled, until he consented to accept the precious boon. “You cannot pick up a newspaper without being reminded that liberty Is the exclusive possession of the United States. word, if not the quality, is the commonplace of American history. It looks out upon you —the word again, not the quality every hoarding. It is uttered in every discourse, but the truth is that American liberty is the mere creature of rhetoric. “America’s view of patriotism Is distinguished by the same ingenious exaggeration as her view of liberty. She has as little doubt of her grandeur as of her freedom. She is, in brief, God’s own country and in her esteem Columbus was no mere earthly explorer; he was the authentic discoverer of the promised land. “Neither argument nor experience will ever shake the American’s confidence in his noble destiny. On all other questions uncertainty Is possible. It Is not possible to discuss Anaerica’s supremacy. In arms as in arts the United States is unrivalled. It alone has been permitted to combine material with moral progress. It alone has solved the intricate problems of life and politics. “It has the biggest houses, the bear Government, and the purest law that the world has ever known. Perfect freedom is Its exclusive privilege, as skyscrapers and elevated railways are its exclusive possessions. Its un versifies surpass Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Leipzig in learning as its churches surpass the churches of the Old World in the proper understanding of theology. In brief, to use its own phrase America is ‘lt,’ the sole home of the good and great." A lot of men who have abounding faith in themselves never get energy enough to mueler up the work that ought to go'with it. The, man who watches the clock most Is usually the man who complains loudest about the size of* his pay envelope.