No legislator, no reformer, no zealous moralist, will admit that he is intolerant. Yet there is intolerance in this country; intolerance practiced by good and earnest men and women who sincerely believe that what they think is wrong is wrong because they think so, and who, therefore, feel called upon to make the rest of the country believe as they do.
An earnest group in Massachusetts is trying to pass a law making any Sunday activity illegal, whether it be bread selling or checker playing. Utah is jailing men who smoke cigarettes in public. Kansas has long had an anti-cigarette selling law, and now is discussing whether it isn’t a crime even to own a cigarette. The New York Assembly is considering a bill to supervise dancing in hotels, and has a civic league which wants legal sanctions for certain holds in dancing, with all others made offenses against the law. Kentucky tried to abolish evolution, but was saved by some commonsense legislators, and Texas is working out the mighty problem of whether one scientific doctrine may be taught in the public school and another excluded. A bill has passed the South Carolina House of Representatives prohibiting the playing of pool or billiards at any place at any time. The question of moving picture censorship we have always had with us.
Doubtless all this harmless enough; the “blue law” makes little headway against the hard commonsense of the United States as a whole. Yet the same spirit of intolerance which declares, because on man finds rolling ivory balls over a green cloth a crime, therefore other men should be made to hold the same views, could easily consider that striking a white ball over a net is a crime, or batting a baseball over a grass lot is a crime. The spirit of intolerance, like a fire, can spread rapidly from small beginnings, and also like fire, its effects are wholly destructive when unconfined.
It may be wise to remember that this country was founded because the inhabitants could not stand intolerance of those who, abroad, legislated for the colonies, that certain Pilgrims carved New England from the wilderness because they could not stand the intolerance of religious persecution.
From the editorial page of The Sandhill Citizen, Southern Pines, N.C., Friday, March 16, 1923
No comments:
Post a Comment