WE THE PEOPLE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 70, Issue 6057, 2 March 1945, Page 6

WE THE PEOPLE

AMERICAN THOUGHTS

CAN BE APPLIED HERE

The following article by Frank L. Perrin and taken from the “Christian Science Monitor’" could well be applied to our own Dominion.

As he says in his closing paragraph “A stern duty calls us to-day. No way is open but the way ahead, and the way ahead is always forward, never backward.” In his next sentence we might well substitute for America the word “New Zealand.” “We have faith in New Zealand, and the New Zealand way. Let us all prove this anew by our constancy and loyalty to the tenents of our faith.”

“We, Thtf People.”

There is the story, dating from the horse-and-buggy days, of the tired business man returning by train to his.suburban home, glad to be met by his faithful man-of-all-work. Assured, in answer to his first query, that all the folks were well, he was unprepared for the shock which came with the announcement that Junior, setting fire to a bunch of dry leaves in the yard, had burned the house. “But the folks are all right,” said the stoic driver. •

Well, there are a lot of people throughout the length and breadth of this broad land of ours who comfort themselves with the same assurance in what to many is a season of disappointment, but not discouragement. They, like the returning and shocked suburbanite, as foresighted and as sufficient as he no doubt was, rest firmly in the assurance that while they are not indemnified against unpreventable disaster and disappointment, they are insured against irreparable loss.

The protective and defensive weapons shaped and provided in that declaration of human liberties and human rights beginning with the words, “We, the people,” remain in the hands and in the custody of the sons and daughters of those whose wisdom and foresight blazed the way along which we have come, sometimes haltingly, but always conscious in the possession of a priceless freedom. Nothing has changed, fundamentally, during all the long years of our search for new ways to implement and utilise our priceless heritage. Confusions and alarms have spread, and fears of usurpation and abuses have at times disturbed us. But even in times of greatest stress and disagreement we have not been greatly alarmed, even if we have been alarmed at all.

What is this reassuring and altogether persuasive quality of American thought and conviction ? It is that majorities, though powerful and compelling, are always, because of the freedom of decision and choice, answerable and actually responsive to an almost equally powerful minority. No pattern not modelled upon the basic and enduring chart provided by the Constitution and its attached Bill of Rights would dare be proposed by even the most vicious and designing of enemies within through channels provided freely, but safeguarded by men and women of all political faiths, the proud sons and daughters of the Minute Men of ’76. By common consent, as it were, the boundaries, the metes and bounds prescribing limits beyond which political experimentation and the disregard of prescribed Constitutional limitations might be attempted, have been established and indelibly fixed. Within quite recent years, we have seen unapologetic rebuke heaped upon unwise and ambitious attempts to disregard the stop-sign which again proved that it means, wherever seen, thus far and no farther. Privileges, under the fundamental law of the land, are as definitely prescribed and limited as are powers and authority. These limitations, no matter which political party is in authority, it is the duty and responsibility of the minority party to safeguard and protect. No matter what seems to have happened to any of us, either those of the victorious party or the party in defeat, our plight is not as bad as that of the poor suburbanite. Our house has not burned. Nothing has been destroyed, and we, with him, can rejoice that all is well with the folks.

A stern duty calls all of us to-day. No way is open but the way ahead, and the way ahead is always forward, never backward. We have faith in America and the American way. It has not changed. Let us all prove this anew by our constancy and loyalty to the tenets of our faith.