Voices of Visitors

Record 6 Side A Audio Transcription - Patrick Malin

Transcribed by Microsoft Word

The rank and file of a trade union. Need the application of equality. Digital merit and Demerit ultimate control over the officers. Often they don't get it. Robert Vogler goes on trial tomorrow. In Budapest, Hungary. Wanting an American Council. We do our best. The State Department does its best. To equip him with that council. Even at the risk. Of being associated in the international minds. With a man already. Convicted of espionage. Margaret Sanger would like to preach birth control in Japan, where a number of people have for a long time suggested it might be a good thing. That's a risk for the Catholic Church. And MacArthur is told that. And Margaret Sanger is denied a visa. Risks are everywhere. In this business of free inquiry and free expression. And they were never greater. I have a sense in taking on this new job. Of plunging into a maelstrom of difficult hairline decisions as to where the weight of risk. Fall. There are two great reasons why it's so particularly today. Why freedom is a risky business. One reason is that we live in an era. Characterized by machinery and the emergence of the so-called common man. Machinery makes for tremendous production and tremendous complication. The common man is coming up by way of education. Communication. And by way of suffrage and other popular power, that makes our time a time of mass and speed of impatience. Of experiments in centralized organization, private or public. Which almost always costs freedom in some degree or. Other. There's a triple threat to freedom. In a time of machinery and the common man. First, there's the threat from the reformers. Who don't much care often. Whether the Conservatives have freedom of inquiry and expression or not. There's so much the crusading reformer. That they want free speech only for themselves. The second threat is from the Conservatives. Who liking on balance, what is? Dislike. And a challenge in inquiry or expression to what is they want free speech but. Not for those who would challenge what is. Then. Went out of this contention. Between stand pattern. And reformers and each of us has in himself part of each. Out of that contention? There comes sometimes more and more frequently, as William Batt said last night in the Bud Lectureship. Government control or intervention? And when you have that. However necessary you may regard it. You have a threat to freedom. I'm sure Tom McCabe that deep died bureaucrat. We'll take offense at this, but I shall say it anyhow. That when government takes control over anything. However necessary that control may be felt to be by us individually, on balance among all the values and troubles. It puts a premium on acquiescence. And the administrator and the elected official dislike free speech for critics. So there's a triple threat. To freedom in a time of machinery and mass and speed. Winston Churchill said in one of the installments of his memoirs, being published now. The one I quote from was published on February 2nd. Something that applies as a tech. To what I've just now been saying. In the somber wars of modern democracies. Chivalry finds no place. Dull butcheries on a gigantic scale. And Mass Effect. Overwhelm all detached send. We live in that kind of an era. When machinery and the pressure of popular impatience. Represents a triple threat. To the refinement of civilization called Civil Liberty. General Marshall said night before last to the Red Cross. A worldwide revolution is on us. And I do not mean communism. A movement of the little people. Ever. We are becoming increasingly discontented. At being deprived of the good things of life. If we are to preserve civil liberties. Consent of the governed. Inalienable rights and equality in the midst of the complication of machinery and mass judgments. We shall do so only with greater vigilance than ever before and greater individual. Courageous, responsible actions than ever before. Second great threat in the modern era. Is that we have wars and rumors of wars. Ever since 1914. Now the foreign. Is always the quintessence of different. And when the foreign. Is arrayed against us, as in the case of Russian Communism. Representing not just the foreign. But a very different internal ordering of life. A different economic and political and social system. Than anything that is different. Is felt by us emotionally, unconsciously, immediately. To be danger. All differences, including. The person of different skin. And different no. Loose and different origin, all differences become suspect. As foreign disloyal. Subversive. Traitors. Conspiratory. Now there is such a thing as disloyalty and treachery. I didn't sit for four years in an international organization without having to cope close at hand sometimes. With disloyalty and treachery against that organization and against the national governments included in it. When there is treachery, it must be frustrated. When there is a threat to security. It must be curbed and pulled. Without. Penalizing. Indiscriminately. The mere expression. Of difference. Of opinion.