John D. Hunt
Published: 2015-07-06
Total Pages: 444
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Excerpt from The Dawn of a New Patriotism: A Training Course in Citizenship Democracy requires that the people exercise supreme control over the government, Cabinet Ministers and Members of Parliament being simply agents of the people and at all times accountable to them. Universal suffrage requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed, intelligent ruler of his country. The success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines, (1) political knowledge and (2) what is of far more importance, political morality, Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. The ultimate security for democracy lies in a community conscience, which recognizes that there is a law of right and wrong which is not man made, which is as independent of human wills as is the law of gravitation. When, through lack of political knowledge or political morality, citizens fail to realize their responsibilities, when they lose the inspiration that comes from faith in a "higher law," which neither legislatures nor courts can either justly or safely set aside, then the very foundation of political liberty is swept away and democracy becomes a mockery, while a plutocratic oligarchy grasps the reigns of power and the servants of the people become their masters. It is not the form of government that makes people free. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.