A DOROTHY THOMPSON SAMPLER

“The subjection of means to ends is the final eclipse of public and private morality. The lie becomes the instrument for achieving what is conceived to be the public good.”

"Political freedom is the condition of all freedom, as the people of Russia have learned, as the people of Italy have learned, and as the people of Germany have learned. They gave up political freedom to get something else which they thought at the moment was very much more important, and then they found out that there is not anything more important. And the first condition of political freedom is that we should stick to a regime of law, and not move off the path toward a regime of men.”

"What we are concerned with is neither the dictatorial talents nor the dictatorial predilections of the President. We aren't concerned with whether he wants too much power, but with whether he can get too much power. The modern coup d'état, by which so many democratic systems have fallen, does not destroy the legal apparatus of the State."

"The [fascist] concept is that the leader acts exclusively in the interest of the general welfare, as contrasted with the selfish motives of special groups ... The leader is the symbol and incorporation of the collective, and between him and it there exists a mystical compact by which he is their perfect expression ... The idea of this compact between the masses and a man is the very soul of fascism, and it is from this that it derives whatever psychological power it has.”

“And what gives the whole program an atmosphere of awful frivolity is that we are, apparently, to make a revolution without even knowing it! We are going to lope along like silly sheep, following the good shepherd to an unknown fold. Or are we? Or are we?"

"I don't want to emphasize American unity if America is unified around a bad idea."

“The forces of decency always hope for the best and almost always wait until it is too late."

"We are being subjected day after day to flat lies. The end result will be either a public doped into indifference [or] provoked into war.”

“To sit by and not to protest with all the breath in one's body reads one out of the ranks of civilized and Christian society. What is happening is Homeric. This is fascist … I mean fascist.”

“The idols of the marketplace rule everything. They rule so firmly that it is quite unnecessary for government to impose any censorship; the free press shackles itself far more effectively and without even knowing it."

"Big businessmen are among the easiest people to lead around by the nose."

"The climate of fear is largely the climate of cowardice. There are a lot of people who have hellishly bad consciences, and there are others, and they are probably in the majority, who are just plain craven.”

“All government, all civilization, and all democracies must be formal ... must insist on scrupulous observance of constitutional principles, and must observe the disciplines of law. Without a high degree of popular sensibility to principle, procedure, and law, and a jealousy of liberty, the people live in constant threats from a coup d'état. And, of course, in democracies that coup d'état will always seek to legitimize itself by the support of the masses."

“There is a definite technique in the propaganda of establishing fascism; that is, in the propaganda of destroying republican, representative government. The technique is to destroy the unity in society by setting one group against another group, one man against his neighbor. The way to do that is to cast suspicion upon his patriotism. And to go on doing so until patriotism becomes the monopoly of a single group, who then entrench themselves in power to save the people from themselves."

"And let us not be confused by the words `liberal' and `conservative,' or misled into thinking that the expressed will of the majority is the essence of democracy. … The essence of democracy is the protection of minorities. Nor has a majority of this generation the right to mortgage the majority of the next."

“The repeated assertion of the Administration and its apologists that it `has a mandate' is typical ... By hook or by crook, through the democratic instrument or by coercion, one gets majority. One then uses the power that that majority gives to destroy the minority and make it impossible for the minority ever again to become the majority. ... This is, of course, not democracy. It is the modern technique of usurpation."

"Once upon a time we had parliamentary government, the essence of which is reflection, consultation, deliberation. Now we have bills which are, in effect, decrees, issued from the White House, and addressed, not to the elected legislators, but to the population at large, which is then whipped up into action through ... government propaganda and the personal influence of the President. … That, my friends, is government by fiat. That is the kind of government that you have in Nazi Germany.”

"The picture is of a tremendously centralized government, with a power and authority vested in the President.... We shall be ruled in the final instance by an invisible government of an anonymous secretariat. I am not exaggerating.”

"Have we forgotten what democratic government is? It is government by debate, by deliberation, by representatives elected to find measures to promote the public good by listening and consulting not only with the groups affected, but with those whose experience suggests that they may have valid judgment. Failing this, the task of framing legislation is delegated … to one or another corporate body or pressure group: `You write the ticket.' As in the Fascist states."

"Christian gentlemen, in this era, have sat down at dinner with murderers ... Shall I name names? … As civilized men and women we have failed to resist the cynical breaking of every kind of international treaty and agreement. We have failed to resist the impertinent and reckless intervention of conspiratorial organizations. … We have failed to resist, inside our own country, the flagrant violation of the fundamental law of the Constitution [and] government raids into people's personal affairs. The sum-total of all these non-resistances adds up eventually to the necessity of a titanic resistance … the necessity of either taking a last stand, against heavy odds, or going under for generations."

"I love my country, insofar as its myth and the expression of that myth are a unique part of the universal civilization which is `Western.' But if America should disavow Lincoln and Jefferson and Whitman, for instance, or pervert them into nonsense, then `America,' for me, would be either a nostalgia or a battleground. Since the conception of America is not separate in my mind from the conception of freedom, a free Englishman, Frenchman, German or Hottentot would be more akin to me than an enslaved resident of the United States, and I'd either join them, or stay home and fight the usurpers. The territory -- the domain -- would get no allegiance from me whatsoever."

“Who is to blame? You and I are to blame. All of us who listen tolerantly to intolerant expressions of racial and religious prejudice, without registering our own indignation ... All of us who accept lies which we are able to contradict. All of us who sit smugly by and think that It Can't Happen Here.”

“We have got to face the reality that liberal democracy is the most demanding of all political faiths … That is its price. That is also its glory. For, believe it or not, there are such things in the world as morality, as law, as conscience, as a noble concept of humanity, which, once awake, are stronger than all ideologies.”

AMERICAN CASSANDRA: THE LIFE OF DOROTHY THOMPSON

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