The essayist thought that Mr.Arnold, with his trained eye and intelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very quality which he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence --was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it had it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most valuable of all its qualities."For its mission--overlooked by Mr.
Arnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and shams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the old world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing press like ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear from Christendom." Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade the Czar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said:
Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old world quality, reverence.Let us be candidly grateful that it is so.With its limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is fairly and properly matter of light importance to us.Our press does not reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy, which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it does not reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred, which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the land and the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it.In the sense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three carat royalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill of awe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem.
Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and steadfast protector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental.
Tracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came to this country.I was right.I was right to seek out a land where such healthy principles and theories are in men's hearty and minds.Think of the innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well he brought that out, and how true it is.There's manifestly prodigious force in reverence.If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he's your slave.Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have been diligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy and nobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverence them; and now, as a natural result, to reverence them is second nature.
In order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of the opposite kind into their dull minds.For ages, any expression of so-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime.The sham and swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he is himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to reverence and what is not.Come, I hadn't thought of that before, but it is true, absolutely true.What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me?
What their ideals are is nothing to me.So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs.I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to.It is my right and my privilege.No man has any right to deny it."Tracy was expecting to hear the essay debated, but this did not happen.
The chairman said, by way of explanation:
