WHY is the AMERICAN SENTINEL, and why are certain people in Congress and elsewhere, making so much … in defense of the old ideals of American government?
For answer we quote from the language used by two leading journals of this city, in support of the policy of “expansion.” Let the readers note, and remember that this represents the general sentiment of the American press.
The New York Sun says this:—
“The Declaration of Independence was made to … a particular existing condition of things…. The proposition [that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed] was general, but the application was to a particular situation. Obviously Thomas Jefferson, the framer of the Declaration, did not intend to apply it to all people, for the social and political conditions would have made such an application absurd. The consent of the Indians as to their government had not been asked then, nor has it been asked at any time since then. The consent of the negro slaves was not asked. The consent of the people shut out from the franchise by a property qualification long existing subsequently was not asked.
“The Declaration meant simply that the colonies had become tired of the British domination, deeming it oppressive, and intended to set up a government of their own by the right of revolution. They were not laying down a principle for anybody except themselves, and they had no conception of the ‘consent of the governed’ as it is proclaimed by Mr. Bryan and the generally hypocritical gang who are sympathizing with him in the hope of cheating us out of our rightful conquests.”
This is a flat assertion of class or race superiority between man and man in respect of their rights. Let this become established American doctrine, and “rights” will mean for Americans simply such privileges as one has the power to get and maintain. And with this the nation with one gigantic stride will go back to the institutions of despotism.
The same day that the above was said by the Sun, the New York Journal said:—
“What our anti-expansionists mean when they speak of liberty is something quite different [from liberty under the American flag]. They mean power. They mean that unless the Filipinos have unchecked authority to run their government as they please, even if they run it to smash they are not free.”
Liberty without power! What kind of liberty is that? Who wants that kind of liberty? And is this the ideal of liberty which is to prevail in the United States?
The veriest despotism that ever was would have been willing to allow the people under it all the liberty that [51] could be had apart from power. Let it retain the power, and the people might have what else they would. And when the struggle for liberty came, it was a struggle for the possession of power. Now did any people ever count themselves free, until they possessed the power to exercise that freedom according to their own ideas of liberty.
Power is the very essence of liberty. When God gives a man liberty he gives him power; the very essence of his liberty is in the fact that he is “endued with power from on high.” And people who have a form of godliness but “deny the power thereof,” are set forth in Scripture (2 Timothy 3:5) as having no real godliness at all.
Liberty without power,—that is an ideal of liberty which will suit every despot well, not only in the islands of seas and for the Filipinos, but in the United States and for American citizens.
Every free people possess the power to run their government “to smash;” they must possess it to run their government at all. The American people possess it; and the plain evidence that they do is visible in the fact that they are running it—or letting it be run—to smash with almost lightning speed.