A Gallant Libertarian
FITCH, ROBERT E.
A Gallant Libertarian The Blessings of Liberty. By Zechariah Chafee Jr. Lippincott. 350 pp. $5.00. RevieWed by Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion To many...
...We are told that reason "still remains the best guide we have, better than our emotions, better than tradition, better than any few men in places of authority...
...Some of the chapters give us an admirable statement of the essentials of an issue...
...There is no question about his convictions, no question about his courage...
...It is evident that Mr...
...But it is one thing to be a conscientious objector against slavery...
...After learning about the tremendous difficulties confronted by our third President, we read: "If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it...
...Lilburn understood his rights in court and insisted upon them...
...The final ordeal was a terrible one of blood and sweat and tears...
...He was shrewd enough not to be taken in by legal tricks...
...The most astounding chapter in the book is entitled "The Right Not to Speak...
...Here on Mr...
...But if there are those today who take pride in a more hard-bitten realism in their understanding of what goes on in the strife, let them see to it that they bring to the unending contest the same sharp intelligence, the same unremitting activity, and the same consistent devotion that are exemplified in the career of Zechariah Chafee Jr...
...We learn that Lilburn was accused because he "audaciously and wickedly did not only utter sundry scandalous speeches, but likewise scattered divers copies of seditious books among the people"--and this while he was locked in the stocks...
...Of the increasing use of the professional informer: "No more government by gossip...
...We should say that he had fully earned the award for distinguished service in that field recently given him by the American Jewish Congress...
...Indeed, he bawled out his gospel so persistently and so unceremoniously that, in this instance, he was stopped only by a gag in his mouth...
...Perhaps this accounts for the crisp crack that livens up the text from time to time...
...For instance, among the twelve current threats to our liberties there is no mention of the stab in the back that comes from the cowardice of some liberals, or from the treachery to their own cause of alleged liberals who have not yet really learned the difference between freedom and slavery...
...A second basis of his serenity is the classical rationalism which defines his liberal faith...
...Of our relations with Russia: "The cold war becomes the scold war...
...Certainly Mr...
...But is it either possible or desirable to separate reason from emotion, authority, tradition...
...it is another thing to be a conscientious objector for slavery...
...Nevertheless, if Mr...
...There is nothing in common between Lilburn and the timorous rebel who lacks courage because he really lacks convictions, and who, unlike Socrates, proposes seriously and not in irony that, far from being given the cup of hemlock, he should be maintained at public expense for his pains...
...signifies the grand old man of American civil liberties...
...But when we get to the ethical issue, we pass into a crashing dissonance of contradiction...
...RevieWed by Robert E. Fitch Professor of Christian Ethics, Pacific School of Religion To many of us, the name of Zechariah Chafee Jr...
...It is suggested that our experience today is similar to that of the days of the Fugitive Slave Law...
...And this, forsooth, is the prototypical martyr of those who will not speak...
...When a man has achieved this sort of distinction, he is apt to be called on for public addresses...
...He is perhaps one of the last representatives of a gallant tradition of liberalism which we must always admire while we can no longer imitate it in detail...
...Chafee's hero in this chapter on the right not to speak is, of all fellows, John Lilburn...
...The opening presentation deals with the twelve current threats to our liberties...
...Chafee's line of battle we stand together, all of us, good men and true, and the only violence we have to fear is from the foe before us...
...Chafee cites the words of Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural in 1801...
...If there is any quality in this book which makes it unique in our time, it is the mood of serenity that prevails throughout...
...Of certain discrepancies between the principles of our chief executive and the performance of his lieutenants: "It is good to have a President who does not preach what his subordinates practice...
...To whom I replied and said, Sir, I will not hold my peace, but speak my mind freely, though I be hanged at Tyburn for my pains...
...Then, in Lilburn's words, as we have them here: "There came a fat lawyer...
...Is it not important that emotion should be attached to such a tradition, and important again that a few men in places of authority--as at the founding of our republic--should share in that great faith...
...But at no time was there any question about what he stood for...
...But Mr...
...Is not the faith in reason itself one of the great traditions of our culture, to be distinguished sharply from anti-rationalistic traditions...
...and commanded me to hold my peace, and leave my preaching...
...Chafee is fighting the good fight, but he does so untroubled by doubts that beset some of the rest of us...
...Chafee knows very well, as Thomas Jefferson could not, that those who wished to dissolve this union were not subjugated by reason...
...The treatment of the legal aspects of the appeal to the Fifth Amendment appears to me to be excellent...
...To say that he satisfied the criterion of candor is to make a grotesque understatement...
...We are assured that in the long run our problems will not be solved by bombs or money, but "ideas will be the weapons...
...Chafee has not quite understood the coward and the traitor within his own ranks, I myself am convinced it is because he has nothing in common with them...
...The autobiographical chapter in this book, "Forty Years with Freedom of Speech and of the Press," is therefore of special interest to liberals...
...Chafee brings to this discussion a rich lore in law and in history as well as the sense of reality that comes from personal participation...
...There are excellent analyses of the McCarran Act, of the proposed oath for lawyers, of the attacks on university professors, of the role of religious liberty, and of the operations of the United Nations in this whole field...
...Some sections of this book have to be appreciated as the spoken word rather than as the written word...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 28
