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The vote is a pistol. You may seldom or never draw it, but when your
life is in danger you will see that it is a valuable thing to have. But in this country we have one great privilege which they don't have
in other countries. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the
people can rise up and throw it off. That's the finest asset we've got
-- the ballot box. |
 AI image created by Barbara Schmidt |
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Vote: the only commodity that is peddleable without a
license. No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I
shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot.
If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American,
it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is
patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person
in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism. Our marvelous latter-day statesmanship has invented universal
suffrage. That is the finest feather in our cap. All that we require of
a voter is that he shall be forked, wear pantaloons instead of petticoats,
and bear a more or less humorous resemblance to the reported image of
God. He need not know anything whatever; he may be wholly useless and
a cumberer of the earth; he may even be known to be a consummate scoundrel.
No matter. While he can steer clear of the penitentiary his vote is as
weighty as the vote of a president, a bishop, a college professor, a merchant
prince. We brag of our universal, unrestricted suffrage; but we are shams
after all, for we restrict when we come to the women. As you describe me I can picture myself as I was, 22 years
ago. The portrait is correct. You think I have grown some; upon my word
there was room for it. You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient
ass, a mere human tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung
& imagining he is re-modeling the world & is entirely capable
of doing it right. Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque
perception, dense & pitiful chuckle-headedness -- & an almost
pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 - 20; &
that is what the average Southerner is at 60 to-day. Northerners, too,
of a certain grade. It is of children like this that voters are made.
And such is the primal source of our government! A man hardly knows whether
to swear or cry over it. |
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