The following 10 essays were from Benjamin DeCasseres syndicated newspaper column that would later be known as the “March of Events,” but went by different names or none at all. We have proofread the text, done basic formatting, and added the dates published. All examples below were transcribed from the Syracuse New York Journal. Eventually, they will be folded into the archives of the website in a more formal way.
Thanks to S.P. and #mybookcult Proofreaders.
Communists and Civil Rights
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(December 21, 1934)
THE case of Alexius Karllson, the alien Communist held at Ellis Island for deportation, is full of that ironic mirth which is said to make the gods laugh at all things mortal and which we on earth call the “horselaugh.”
Karllson, whose only use for America is to turn it into a Communistic slave-state, had his lawyer apply for a writ of habeas corpus. He wants to stay in this accursed capitalistic country. He demands the right to go on talking and plotting—neither of which he could do in his own ideological Utopia, Russia, without an early morning trip to the live-target yard.
Federal Judge Goddard denied the writ on the ground that membership in the Communist party was proof of conspiracy to overthrow the government.
Aside from the momentous nature of this decision, the question arises why these enemies of the American form of government are so loath to leave our shores. They exhaust every legal resource of this hateful “bourgeois-capitalistic-ruggedly individualistic” democracy to stay here.
They appeal—with perfectly straight faces—to their “rights” under the constitution—that constitution which they would tear into bits.
They abjectly petition judges and bureau chiefs at Washington to keep them here, where they are, so they claim, being “exploited” and “enslaved”—those very judges and bureau chiefs that they would not only abolish but lift into the air with a gentle bomb or two.
They use, in a word, all the privileges that a free democratic country accords them—free speech, free pen and a free soap-box—TO ADVOCATE THE ABOLITION OF ALL THESE SWEAT-AND-BLOOD-BOUGHT PRIVILEGES.
WE PERMIT these aliens to use our own culture and civilized practices for the purpose of destroying us!
No wonder they want to stay here! Think of the loot!
It is like inviting a man to sit in your office chair so that he can more comfortably shoot you.
The Communists, both of the foreign and home-spawned varieties, are strong for the preservation of American civil liberties when their own liberties are threatened.
But when they come into power, as in Russia, presto!— all civil liberties disappear and the Karllsons line up against a wall anyone who utters those words of hated democratic capitalistic origin, civil liberties.
A political dissenter in Russia when arrested ls hurried before a MILITARY TRIBUNAL. He has no counsel (that is a capitalistic custom). There is not even a trial. There is a “hearing” (the military tribunal HEAR themselves pronounce sentence), and the objector to Communism is hurried up against a wall.
The only writ of habeas corpus is written by the vultures if the fellow is not buried in quicklime.
Sixty-six of these cases in one day In the last communist “purge”!
And Karllson and his Communist plotters yawp about their “rights”!
As a matter of fact, Karllson and his alien cronies know that they are having the time of their lives in free America. They never breathed freely before they came here.
But it is time to check the breathing of these plotters, of all plotters of all patterns—Communists, Nazists and Fascists—and make them understand that this democratic- individualistic republic is still a going concern.
The Communists dish it out (in Russia), but they can’t take it (in the U. S. A.).
THERE SHOULD BE NO CIVIL RIGHTS FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN THEM.
The dictatorship of the proletariat means the end of everything that is fundamentally American! Liberty, self-reliance, private property, civil procedure, free speech, free press and even free movement.
It would be the return of ant-civilization. Instead of the free-flying eagle as our emblem a Communist regime would substitute A BUG.
What the Communists here need is a dish of their own cooking. Do unto them as they have done unto the minorities in Russia!
The time for action is NOW. Let democracy destroy Communism. Don’t wait until the Fascist man-on-horseback appears!
Mr. Tugwell
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(January 15, 1935)
BEFUDDLEMENT!
No word more precisely describes the mental flounderings of the Sanhedrin of professors who hatch the word-eggs of the “new order” in Washington.
There is nothing courageous, well-defined or creative in the books, pamphlets or the verbose proclamations of these professorial and professional rigmaroleans.
Now and then they flutter around the red flame of Communism. When they feel they are in danger of getting politically scorched, they blithely trip away to the frogpond of near-Socialism.
Here, comfortably squatted, they croak “rugged individualist,” “capitalist” and “Tory” at the self-reliant, aggressive, self-made Americans who pass by.
These horn-rimmed nunkey-donkeys of the New Deal are already immortalized by what they do not know.
Their thoughts hop around pathetically on their flypaper brains.
Their mucilaginous political views prevent their puny ideas from ever taking wing.
Hence they have no historical sense, no knowledge of men at first band, no psychological penetration and no sincere belief of any kind except in the financial rewards of publicity and that their jobs MAY some day be turned into a soft life-commissarship.
Befuddlement!
Of all the hopelessly befuddled minds of the “new order,” Rexford Guy Tugwell, deputy commissar in the department of agriculture, seems to be most muddle-headed.
He is the most perfect type of the yes-and-no man, of the right-wing-left-wing-no-wing man, of the high-diddle- diddle-jump-over-the-fiddle, the phoney-baloney young man.
One has but to read his latest bull on the New Deal, called “The Battle for Democracy,” to see plainly that the grand junta of Brain-Trusters is very like Br’er Rabbit: It come in by the same hole it went out at.
Someone said economics was the deadly dull science. This is sheer nonsense. Nothing is dull to a live, vital brain.
It isn’t economics that is dull. It is the brains of the political-professorial press agents of the New Deal that are atrophied.
Befuddlement!
Listen to Mr. Tugwell:
“What the old order describes as ‘rugged individualism’ meant the regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few.”
ONE OF THESE “FEW” IS REXFORD GUY TUGWELL.
The “old order” and “rugged individualism,” which he despises, built the dozen or so universities from which Mr. Tugwell drank at the bubbling founts of Marx, Engels and the other czars of collectivism.
It was the “old order” and “rugged individualism” that made Possible Mr. Tugwell’s job of deputy commissar of agriculture, with its emoluments and the revenues he derives from his royalty-laden proclamations.
If the “old order” meant, as Mr. Tugwell says, “The regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few,” THEN WHY HAVE THE WORKING CLASSES OF ALL THE WORLD BATTERED AT OUR DOORS FOR ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS? WAS IT TO BE REGIMENTED AND EXPLOITED?
The “old order” and the “rugged individualism” of the American character built the only country in the world WHERE THERE WAS NEITHER COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE NOR REGIMENTED HUMAN BEINGS; WHERE LABOR UNIONS ACHIEVED MORE IN FIFTY YEARS THAN ALL THE LABOR UNIONS OF EUROPE HAD ACHIEVED IN A CENTURY.
“Malefactors of great wealth” and “plutocrat” having become shopworn, the “new order” demagogues have invented the new bugaboo of “rugged individualism” to scare the old ladies of both sexes.
It is “rugged individualism.” physical, mental and political, that is the very core of the character of Mr. Tugwell’s humane chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Rugged individualism” is a mighty, an inspiring phrase that should be hung on every wall in every home and office in America.
The antonym to “rugged individualism” is milksop, weakling, chicken-heart.
Under which banner does Mr. Tugwell prefer to march?
More befuddlement!
“What is demanded of us in America today is the making over of the institutions controlled and operated for the benefit of the few so that, regardless of their control, they shall be operated for the benefit of the many.”
As they do in bled-to-the-bone Russia, where a small bureaucratic Camorra own 170,000,000 people body and soul? Here Mr. Tugwell flutters around the red flame.
I spoke of Mr. Tugwell’s lack of historical sense. I suggest that he throw his abstractions out of the window and read concrete American history.
From the foundation of America, THE MANY HAVE BENEFITTED BECAUSE THE FEW HAVE BENEFITTED.
The working classes of America are literally dragged upward when the few prosper by the inexorable law of supply and demand.
Besides, where have 99 percent of Mr. Tugwell’s “few” come from in America? They have risen because of their RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM and their SUPERIOR COMPETENCE right out of the ranks of the “many.”
And who is to “operate” these “institutions” for the benefit of the many?
Why, of course, Rexford Guy Tugwell and the rest of the vast army of mentally befuddled “new order” crusaders who only wait the signal to doff their masks of “democracy” and turn to the duped “many” the face of Lenin.
Matriarchy?
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(March 9, 1935)
A PUBLIC SOOTHSAYER some time ago said that somewhere in our country was now a young man who would be the first Fascist dictator of America.
This loud wish-thought brought to life a Communist soothsayer who predicted that somewhere on the high seas a stowaway was approaching America who would be the first commissar of the United States of Soviet Republics.
Both of there crystal gazers left out the obvious fact that there are just about one hundred and twenty-four millions of Americans left who, when it comes to a showdown, might object to both a native Fascist dictator or a foreign first commissar in the manner of the famous axe which smote the no less famous chicken in the neck.
But a prophecy that has more material ground than either is the statement of Miss Lillian D. Rock, vice president of the National Association of Women Lawyers, that she expected to see a woman as vice president of the United States before another decade, and, later on, a president.
The League for a Woman President and Vice President has already opened permanent headquarters in Brooklyn, and the drive for “recognition” will come next year at both conventions. All male delegates to both national conventions had better go with their wives and mothers.
The male has made such a bad mess of it in Washington in late years that it might pertinently be asked, why shouldn’t the hand that rocks the cradle ALSO help to rock the boat?
As Miss Rock, who is the organizer of this matriarchal movement, so wisely and pertinently says:
“The voice that sang the evening lullaby should play an important role in the legislative halls of the state and Nation.”
This logical connection between the evening excursion to Blanket Bay with the little darling and initiating legislation on taxation, drawing up a declaration of war and refunding the public debt will be instantly apparent even to the dullest masculine brain among the brain trusters at the national capital.
Another striking apothegm of Miss Rock’s is also worth recording:
“The brain that solved the economic problems of the home was certainly keen enough to play a part in politics.”
No mere male can gainsay this. As a matter of fact, the very first duty of a woman president, if she is true to her innate economic instincts, will be to create a secretary of charge accounts.
It must also be recorded, reluctantly and regretfully, that woman has already played “a part in politics”. The fate of a New York magistrate and a New York secretary of state, both evening lullaby singers, must grieve the judicious and even cause some quakings and forebodings among the masculine upholders of the honor of the Republic.
Man is, of course, naturally a scalawag. So we expect of woman better things. However, the several ladies who have sat in Congress have seemed, off the record, somewhat null and void, and certainly our grand old America would not dance with prideful and puffy joy at seeing a Ma Ferguson in the White House.
As a matter of truth, that estimable lady is too good for the job. Too much character is not desirable in high places in democracies. Ma is a dud at carrying water on both shoulders.
On the other hand, a woman president would give us many advantages, especially if she had with her a sound yes-and-yes, lollipop-sucking president consort at her heels.
Reason seems by way of rotting in Washington at the present time. A good dose of female intuition might snap us back into the good old days.
A cabinet of pure intuitionalists, especially a postmaster generaless who flipped out postmasterships on purely subconscious grounds, could decide the heavy problems of state just like THAT. Why waste the people’s time with reason, hindsight and foresight when we can get time-saving intuition F.O.B. and off the hoof?
Women have ruled great nations before. There are the instances of those profound stateswomen and humane lawgivers, Jezebel, Cleopatra, Catherine of Russia and Elizabeth.
Of course, there was Queen Victoria, but that good lady had the misfortune to have been doomed to reign in the Victorian era, so she was really not seen at her best.
With a woman in the White House, many states and legislative bodies would go feminine. This would eventually put man back just where he belongs: He could fight and die for his country, build the airways, finance big business, create the art and literature of a nation, and put up the ironwork on 80-story skyscrapers. Let the beast do the dirty work!
Meanwhile, Mrs. Roosevelt—who knows—says the country is not yet ready for a woman president.
With the highest respect for that sagacious lady’s opinion, I think the country is just about ready for anything short of total extinction.
New American Primer
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(March 20, 1935)
The following primer for all naughty Americans could be compiled from a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month reading of the red, pink and sour-green publications published in the land of the good-natured sucker, the U.S.A.:
To defend fundamental American institutions is now Fascism.
To be wealthy is to have your heel on the neck of the poor.
To war against the enemies of democratic doctrines is to be sold to the “interests.”
To believe in the competitive system stamps you as a Wall Street wolf.
To announce yourself as a rugged individualist means you are getting ready to shoot down pajama-stitchers.
To believe that Jefferson was a greater man than Lenin brands you as a “bourgeois” and a “tory.”
To denounce the crimes of the Cheka and the GPU is treason to the ideal of the brotherhood of man.
To wear an American flag in your lapel means that you advocate calling out the state militia to suppress labor unions.
To believe that the Constitution of the United States is a superior document to “Das Kapital” is proof-positive that you are working your help to the bone.
To merely whisper that Communism should not be taught in state-supported institutions brands you as an enemy of Stalin’s Nutopia.
To believe that alien enemies should be deported to the lands of their birth makes you a paid agent of Adolf Hitler.
To denounce a Russian blood purge means you are not “social-minded.”
To adhere to the capitalistic system of economic development as the best for ALL the people in the long run is prima facie evidence that you are for child-labor, sweatshops and the 24-hour day.
To believe that the state is the servant of the individual links you with the White Guards.
To even suspect that our freedom is not wholly in the keeping of the carmine Civil Liberties Union nails you as a brutal coal-and-iron baron.
To announce that state-aid, as a principal, is an anti-American doctrine, is to put yourself in the class of beetle-browed predatory Cro-Magnons.
To even insinuate that the American boudoir branch of Leninism and the spats-and-monocle phalanx of the New Vision is merely a publicity racket in some vacuous skulls is to be branded as a poor slob of a Victorian who still reads Dumas and Walter Scott.
To believe that America has its own political philosophy and social ideals that have no relation to Marxist fiddle-faddle, diddle-daddle and walla-walla is to line you up with the savage capitalistic seamstress-starvers.
To assert that Communism is worming its way into the army and navy means that you are for making war immediately on Russia, Japan and Irak.
To even mildly observe that a Moscowegian who plots the violent overthrow of the American government should be brought to heel is certain proof that you have secretly torn up the Declaration of Independence.
To sit in your seat while the “Internationale” is being played in Madison Square Garden is treason to the world proletarian state. Horrendus horrors!—They may even find a copy of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in your pocket!
To asseverate that it is more important that a man should be free mentally, physically and verbally than that he should be “secured” in his livelihood stamps you as a gold bloc buzzard.
In a word, the American system is doomed. The Politburo has spoken, you poor American fish!
American Parade
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(March 28, 1935)
Grand Marshal:
The Mad-Hatter
On Horseback:
Politicians, Racketeers, Dope Kings
In Automobiles:
Brain-Trusters, Bureaucrats, Economists
Grand Float:
The United States Treasury Pumping Out Billions of
Dollars All Over the World
TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS
Dragging Ball and Chain
CLOWNS SENATORS SENATORS CLOWNS
Grand Float:
Guillotine Chopping Off the Heads of Capitalists
On Foot:
Upton Sinclair Leading Ten Thousand Communists
TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS
Dragging Ball and Chain
Grand Float:
Marriner S. Eccles Dividing Our Incomes Among
the Spectators
GANGSTERS GANGSTERS GANGSTERS
Colossal Tumbril in Which Sits Big Business Manacled
INFLATIONISTS DEFLATIONISTS DILUTIONISTS
STABILIZERS
On Foot:
Henry A. Wallace Gertrude Stein Rexford G. Tugwell
TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS
Dragging Ball and Chain
Revolving Platform:
Dr. Townsend Hurling Another Fellow’s
$8,000,000,000 to the Multitude
Grand Float:
Radical Professors Carrying the Moscow State
University to New York
DEVALUATIONISTS DEPRECIATIONISTS
REVALUATIONISTS EXPANSIONISTS
Tableau Vivant:
Huey Long, Theodore G. Bilbo, Jim Farley and
General Johnson in a Battle Royal
On a Mule:
Nicholas Murray Butler Costumed as Jupiter
TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS
Dragging Ball and Chain
Grand Float:
Symbolical Figure of the NRA Making No Thing Grow
Where Two Things Grew Before
COMMUNISTS FASCISTS NAZISTS SOCIALISTS
An Old Fire-Horse Labeled CREDIT
Grand Float (for the Kiddies):
A Gigantic Rubber Figure Labeled
THE NATIONAL DEBT Dilating to Bursting Dimensions
TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS TAXPAYERS
Dragging Bail and Chain
Ambulances Ambulances Ambulances Ambulances
MIKE ROMANOFF
America Last!
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(April 1, 1935)
THE YALE NEWS, student organ of the great university in New Haven, prints a long editorial urging our colleges to institute courses in Communism and Fascism.
This ought to be electrifying news to the shoals of Stracheys and Mosleys in Europe who are hoping to run the blockade of our loose and good-natured immigration laws to pick up an honest capitalistic-tainted penny.
These Communist and Fascist highbrows lie in the offing like the ships of old Rum Row in order to bootleg their reactionary and mediaeval Old World doctrines in our colleges and schools.
They will also, no doubt, demonstrate to the plastic generation how poisonous, out-moded and oppressive is our own home-grown brand of government labeled INDIVIDUALISTIC DEMOCRACY.
The Yale News suavely asserts with the flamboyant omniscience of ignorance that “one of these two extremes will prevail in this country.”
This is what is known as a wish-thought. Back of it, in the shadow, stands another wish-thought—democracy is dead.
The editorial then blandly says, “Education should open its eyes.”
What it means to say is:
“LET’S THROW SAND IN THE EYES OF AMERICA—MAYBE WE CAN MIX IN A DROP OR TWO OF VITRIOL.”
“Fascism and Communism are realities,” slickly pursues the NEWS.
Then why not institute traveling scholarships for the study at first hand of these systems in the countries with which they are blessed? Bath diseases and Utopias should be studied on the home grounds.
“it is essential that courses be instituted at Yale to deal specifically with these problems,” pursues, with its innocent, china-blue eyes, the editorial.
We already know how “specifically” these problems are dealt with at Teachers’ College, Columbia University. That is, ALL AMERICANS WHO ARE NOT RED ARE STAMPED YELLOW.
But, the YALE NEWS condescendingly admits, as a kind of after-thought, a little sop to conscience or what you will:
“Needless to say, the study of our own government …. must be in no way sacrificed.”
This ought to hearten the rapidly disappearing American cells and cadres in some of our colleges.
This concession ought, further, to stiffen the spines of the declining American colonies in Columbia and Yale.
The Wheeler-Rayburn bill, pending in Congress, is one of the most disturbing pieces of legislation ever suggested in this country.
By destroying holding companies it would wreck a twelve-thousand-million-dollar industry.
In so doing, it would destroy the value of investments held by tens of millions of people, including the life-savings of families, by as ruthless a method of confiscation as could be devised.
Abuses and bad practices in the holding company field must and shall be corrected and prevented from recurring.
But why kill a patient in order to cure his malady?
There is just one thing for Congress to do with the Wheeler-Rayburn bill—REJECT IT!
Billion Paranoia
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(April 2, 1935)
ONE of the symptoms of chronic paranoia is the delusion of a person totally broke that he has vast sums of money and that he can go on indefinitely borrowing and spending without paying back.
A cold-blooded, disinterested ailienist—say from Mars—who should make a cursory examination of the centralized national brain in Washington, or if he merely skimmed the daily papers, would most certainly pronounce us a nation far advanced along the road to paranoia.
The United States has a huge debt, running far into the billions. It has a deficit of billions of dollars. And yet it goes on spending billions of dollars—always BILLIONS, MORE BILLIONS AND MORE BILLIONS.
These billions are raised in taxes, always MORE TAXES, ALWAYS MORE BILLIONS.
Millions of persons not yet born are already being taxed into prenatal poverty to pay for the dementia of our billion-bitten rulers and their congressional servants.
Croesus, king of Lydia, was so rich and powerful that he drew all the wise men of Greece to his court.
Uncle Sam, in the hallucinated visions of our billion mad representatives, is now Uncle Croesus.
And he, too, has drawn around him all the wise men of the Republic. ——-
They have trooped from the East, South and West all a-shimmer with degrees and decorations.
Many of them have graduated from four colleges, while others, like Topsy, just growed up into wisdom.
The word BILLIONS, like a star of promise and good news, drew them to the miraculous pork barrel which is in Washington.
Once being in the atmosphere where BILLIONS are spent that do not exist, where BILLIONS are paid out of empty tills and where BILLIONS of taxes are levied on people who are not yet born, they soon came to believe that the one hundred and twenty-five million inhabitants of the United States are nothing but safe deposit vaults to be rifled at will.
And so, like those happy and fantastic persona who live in asylums, they toss away billions of dollars over the breakfast coffee.
This billion-mania is no doubt part of “the more abundant life”—at least for the wise men in and out of Congress who manipulate our destinies.
There is an almighty lift, an airy buoyancy, an expansive feeling of well-being that comes to the great official who can fling billions around from toast to coast which is far greater than the effect of a morning swim or a predinner cocktail.
Our billion complex began during the war. It was our first national taste of colossal spending, colossal taxing and colossal lending.
We flipped billions out of our pocket with the merry ha-ha of a drunken sailor entering a penny arcade with a dime to spend.
We dished up billions for the European countries— those that we fought with, those that we fought against and those that didn’t fight at all—with the superb carelessness of a maharajah who has nothing else to do but to tax the living and unborn to their last rag.
During the boom years following the war we continued on our billion binge with the assurance born of our swelling head.
Those years were the megalomania period of Uncle Croesus’ new life. To talk in millions was bourgeois. To think in thousands was infantile.
We kept lending. We kept spending.
We were open sesame to Europe and to our own people.
In those days a ribbon clerk would throw out his chest when he arrived at the store in the morning and say to the cash girl:
“I see WE appropriated several billions yesterday, and Europe now owes us rah-rah billions.”
The humblest citizen lived on the manna of hallucinating BILLIONS.
Came the dawn—1929.
Did that cure us of the billion frenzy?
No. What was merely megalomania passed into paranoia.
Instead of retrenching, we began to talk bigger billions than ever.
The more definitely Europe repudiates the billions we “loaned” her, the more Uncle Croesus spends.
The deeper we get into a hole, the higher climb the billions.
THE LESS WE HAVE THE MORE WE SPEND.
It’s the greatest paradox of the ages—DEMENTIA PARADOX!
“Reactionaries”
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(April 29, 1935)
One of the oldest tricks of political revolutionists (especially of the collectivist breed) is to fasten epithets on their adversaries.
A conservative becomes a Tory, a Tory becomes a reactionary, and a reactionary becomes an advocate of shooting down strikers.
Today in America all who do not believe in Communism, Socialism, Tugwellism, Wallaceism or any of the other varieties of collectivism are “reactionaries.”
The reverse of this is the cold truth.
It is individualism (the ruggeder, the better) that is RADICAL, PROGRESSIVE and in the STREAM OF EVOLUTION.
It is Communism that is REACTIONARY and RETROGRESSIVE.
Communism is NOT advancement. It is a RECESSION, a degenerative movement to OLD, DISCARDED FORMS.
It can only be put over where THE INTELLIGENCE IS LOW, WHERE PERSONAL INITIATIVE HAS BEEN PARALYZED, WHERE FEAR IS THE DOMINANT EMOTION.
That is the reason it was so easy to apply the doctrine to Russia. The Russians have regimented minds and fear has been their constant companion for centuries.
Communism may be observed in all its mechanical degeneracy in the ant, the bee and the beaver, where millions of years of automatism has killed all change. Here is complete Stalinization.
There is nothing new in Communism. It is as old as herd-tyranny.
Dr. Frederick B. Robinson, president of the College of the City of New York, recently said something about Communism that demolishes tons of verbal humbug:
“Communism is nothing new. It was one of the primitive forms of tribal government thousands of years ago. Its obvious shortcomings and fallacies caused it to be discarded as civilization progressed.
“To revert to it would be to destroy the development and advancement of mankind for many centuries. It would be a reversion to patriarchal government…. It would destroy the freedom of the individual. This is the freedom for which America, and the American Government especially, stands—freedom of self-expression, freedom to make personal contracts and free use of personal property.”
Communism has been tried here in America. There were Brook Farm, the Oneida Community, the George Rapp experiment in Pennsylvania, Robert Owen’s “New Harmony” and Topolobampo in California.
They all went to pieces — these “Edens” — because of that old serpent the INDIVIDUAL, who is always a healthy, energetic, promoting, progressive, goad-and-evil animal.
Communism’s divinization of the laborer and the peasant is an insane attempt to reverse a supreme biological law — THE RACE IS TO THE SWIFTEST AND THE STRONGEST AND THE MOST INTELLIGENT, even among laborers and peasants.
History also gives Communism the lie. All collectivist nations are culturally dead nations.
Civilization advances with STRUGGLE, COMPETITION, THE RIVALRY OF BRAINS.
The whole economic plan of the brain-trusters at Washington is REACTIONARY-COMMUNISTIC, or maybe Commufascist.
The depression began with a panic in 1929.
IT HAS BEEN PERPETUATED BY SEMI-COMMUNISTIC EXPERIMENTS AT WASHINGTON.
The REACTIONARIES are in the saddle and the fabric of our institutions crumples.
The genius and destiny of America is FORWARD—which means MORE RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM.
‘Down With EVERYTHING!’
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(May 29, 1935)
AFTER one hundred and fifty years of upbuilding an epidemic of destruction evidently has taken possession of the American people—or at least of that part of them that now pretends to represent them.
“DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!”
Among professional Communists, direct-action anarchists and that vast horde of “social innovators” who are born with ants in their bones and bats in their belfrey, this is quite understandable.
But, both officially and among a crowd of demagogues and their followers, a demoniacal spirit, totally foreign to the conservative instincts of the American, has suddenly seized the country.
Is this mania to revolutionize all our traditions, to tear up all our safeguards to liberty and to trample on all that we once boasted of—our ingenuity, our individualism, our competitive joy—NARROWLY LINKED TO THE RISE AND DOMINANCE IN OUR LIFE OF RACKETEERING AND GANGSTERISM?
There is a close connection, psychologically and actually, between the professional politician and the gangster.
Their methods differ, but their object is the same—SPOLIATION.
One uses a gun. The other uses the weapons of taxes, bureaucratic tyranny and sappings and mining the edifice of free institutions under the guise of “going forward to better things.”
DOWN WITH EVERYTHING ! Down with profits! Down with the rich! Down with savings! Down with free competition! Down with incomes! Down with independdence! [** ]misspelled in original text[] Down with the Constitution! Down with private business! Down with criticism! Down with capital! Down with over-production! Down with under-production! Down with the law of supply and demand —etc., etc., etc.
DOWN WITH EVERYTHING—EXCEPT the jobs of politicians, the right to confiscate personal wealth, the right to build up a tyrannous bureaucracy, the right to play fast-and-lose with every crackbrained theory that has made Europe a shambles and a stench.
THESE things are made safe for the mob-masters and the Utopian racketeers.
Look back from 1935 to 1932. Here is a three-year perspective for solid thought.
1T LOOKS NOW AS IF THERE HAD BEEN A PLOT HATCHED BEFORE THE LAST ELECTION WHICH IS ONLY NOW COMING TO LIGHT.
If the national program that is now undermining the traditional American Republic had ever been hinted at in the Democratic platform adopted in the summer of 1932, HERBERT HOOVER WOULD NOW BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Socialists who now rule at Washington are bent on a program of DOWN WITH EVERYTHING!
They are doing precisely as the dictator-tyrants of Europe are doing—everything to dig themselves in indefinitely.
The “forgotten man” is today more completely forgotten than ever—HE IS NOW JUST A NUMBER ON A DOLE CARD.
The “remembered man”—that is, the man of wealth, the business man, the capitalist—is the big target of the “down with everything!” program.
Economic atheism is another reason for this destructive business.
We no longer believe in natural law. We no longer believe that business and normal human beings, who are left alone, more certainly attain their ends than when they are harried and hamstrung.
When we have as rulers men of the “down with everything!” school we have turned to strange gods.
Especially are these new, strange gods a menace when they and their actual character and opinion never were elected by the people, but swooped down on us in the Trojan horse of a perfectly conventional and traditionally American political platform.
Who Is President?
BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
(June 22, 1935)
IN 1932 THE American electorate was under the impression that it had elected Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United States, running on the Democratic platform.
THE MAN WHOM IT REALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT WAS NORMAN THOMAS, RUNNING ON THE SOCIALIST PLATFORM.
No sooner had Mr. Roosevelt been inaugurated than the Democratic platform, which the people had indorsed by a plurality of 7,000,000 votes, was thrown overboard and the platform of the Socialist party, which polled only 884,781 votes out of a total of 39,000,000 votes, WAS ADOPTED ALMOST IN TOTO.
Therefore, we are ruled today by a party that was OVERWHELMINGLY DEFEATED AT THE POLLS BY BOTH MAJOR PARTIES.
We elected a Democratic ticket, but we live under a SOCIALISTIC form of government.
Let us looks at the facts:
The only two important planks in the Democratic platform, adopted at Chicago in June, 1932, that have been lived up to are the prohibition and national defense planks.
The platform began with this “solemn covenant” with the people:
“The Democratic party solemnly promises by appropriate action to put into effect the principles, policies and reforms herein indicated.”
They were: A drastic reduction of governmental expenditures; the abolition of useless commissions and offices; consolidation of departments and bureaus; eliminating extravagance; a federal budget annually balanced; unemployment and old-age insurance under STATE LAWS.
All these “solemn promises” have been broken by increased governmental expenses, the creation of new commissions and bureaus; increased extravagance; a further division, instead of “consolidation,” of departments and bureaus; an unbalanced federal budget; a mounting debt, and federal unemployment and old-age insurance instead of insurance under state laws EXCLUSIVELY.
The rest of the platform consists of vague generalities piled on the still vaguer basic generality of “to recover economic liberty.”
Now turn to the platform of the national Socialist party, adopted in May, 1932, at Milwaukee.
Here are the leading planks in that platform which the Roosevelt administration has tried by every means in its power, TO FOIST ON A COUNTRY THAT VOTED FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM:
The entrance of the United States into the world court (failed).
Recognition of the Soviet government (succeeded).
Six-hour day and a five-day week (succeeded, partly).
Increased inheritance tax (about to be launched).
Moratorium on farm foreclosures (succeeded until knocked out by the ALL-AMERICAN supreme court).
Socialization of the power, banking and other industries (already begun on a large scale under the NRA—until smashed by the same ALL-AMERICAN supreme court, Socialistic power and banking planks now under consideration).
Cancellation of war debts (tacitly successful, as nothing is being done in the matter).
That is the platform adopted by a party, whose avowed aim is the DESTRUCTION of individualistic – Democratic – capitalistic America and the SUBSTITUTION of a tyranny of economic and political mob-masters originating in the brains of reactionary minded European peoples.
And that is the platform—with still more revolutionary and crackpot details—that the Roosevelt administration has adopted, instead of the one it was ORDERED TO PUT INTO EFFECT BY THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES!
If Norman Thomas was elected president in 1932, why isn’t he serving?
WHY HAS HE A PROXY?
GULLIBUS:—But if your theories prevailed what would become of the race?
GUY DE MAUPASSANT was a strange ethereal beast, a satyr at sprawl amid the lilies, a star-ranging butterfly meshed in compost. His written works are the de profundis of a great spirit, a miserere chanted in a crypt. There is everywhere in his works the record of a great agony, a ceaseless conflict with devils, a sincerity pitiless and pitiful. His poetical fancy, as elusive as the sheen on the waterfall, bruised its gossamer envelope at every turn against some nameless Shape. This dread shadow blocked his path like a sewer-rat crouched on the path of a running child.