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HH Liber Hereticus.pdf ~REPACK~
HISTORY relates that on March thirteenth, in the year 44 B. C., Julius Caesar fell a victim to the daggers of the conspirators who defended the old Roman liberties against the rising tide of imperialism. But, evidently, imperialism had not received on that occasion its death blow. After two thousand years it is still alive, and is-if certain prophets are rightabout to plant its banner upon the towers of this Republic. The struggle between Caesar and Brutus has not yet ceased.
HH Liber Hereticus.pdf
The Days of March bear witness that ignorance and patience have their limits. They show us that right and liberty are no mere fancies in the misty distance, but that they can be translated into life, realized in the present through acts and deeds.
His friends had told Most, upon his arrival: "Here, at least, you are secure against imprisonment." Most had waived the remark aside, as altogether too optimistic, saying that it was only a question of time when he would come in conflict with the sham liberties of the Republic. He was only too justified in this view. When, in the eighties, the waves of the labor movement rose to exceptional height, and the proletariat began preparations for a general strike to secure the eight-hour day, the plutocrats and financiers grew alarmed. "Order"that is, profits-seemed in danger. The lackeys of the press were mobilized to denounce to the police and the courts every expression of rebellious independence on the part of the working people.
ANARCHISM-The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
ANARCHIST-A believer in Anarchism; one opposed to all forms of coercive government and invasive authority; an advocate of Anarchy, or absence of government, as the ideal of political liberty and social harmony.
DETROIT proved too weak for the large dose we had prepared for it. Six English meetings were more than the city could stand, its energies being sapped up by the Lady of Rome. Detroit is strongly Catholic; how can one expect to penetrate her tightly sealed mental channels . Yet there were a few faithful, eager for life, who attended every meeting and procured a liberal supply of intellectual ammunition. We realized only too late that four of the six evenings might have been employed to better advantage in nearby towns. We mean to make good on some other occasion.
The Mexican revolution, represented by the Mexican Liberal Party, is literally a Titanic struggle, for it is against the money power of the world. It is inexpressibly vital to every member of the great army of discontent, for it is spending blood and treasure to embody in the lives of fifteen million people those vital economic truths for which the entire labor movement of the world is supposed to be striving. It raises in the most uncompromising form the issue of the man versus the dollar; for it proposes, first and above all, to restore to the people an enormous and immensely rich domain, of which they have been robbed by governmental treason. By so doing it proposes to abolish chattel and wage slavery of a type probably more atrocious than any now existent. Moreover, it proposes to abolish them by methods acknowledged generally as those which alone can give permanent relief; that is to say, by restoring the land to the people and establishing individual liberty.
I should, of course, be very sorry to hurt those who are still alive and in the hands of the Japanese authorities; but I am quite confident that they would not want me to keep silent simply because I could buy their release by denying them. I am quite sure that were I in their place I should utterly repudiate the sympathy and assistance of any set of so-called "liberals," if they gave it to me on the condition that they would deny my Anarchism.
You may lend your name to the protest if you wish, or not-that, of course, is for you to decide. But I cannot believe that you will be like many others who claim to be liberals or radicals; namely, that you would withdraw your name because the people there are Anarchists, or because the Anarchists here have joined their brothers in a protest. If liberalism means anything at all, it means faith in the ideal of liberty, especially in the right of the individual to entertain an ideal of liberty, no matter how little understood by the public at large. At any rate it seems to me that whatever we have accomplished in the past in the way of liberty has been thanks to the staunch and faithful adherence of the pioneers of an idea to their principles.
We are glad to bring the appeal of the Mexican Liberal Junta, urging our friends to a generous response. The Mexican revolution is of international importance, and no one with a true spirit of liberty would refuse to aid a brave and heroic people fighting for economic emancipation.
Six of our most capable writers and speakers are now if! Jail in Los Angeles, and five are imprisoned in San Diego. They are charged with violating the neutrality laws; for apparently it is a crime not to remain neutral when 14,000,000 of the down-trodden are striking for liberty. Their imprisonment cripples us badly, for the moment.
wise. Yet Harvey O'Higgins makes himself a party to the cruel, vicious, and deliberate method of manufacturing prejudice against the imprisoned labor leaders in Los Angeles. We are given to understand that Judas Burns is one of the greatest American geniuses.
Six of our most capable writers and speakers are now in jail in Los Angeles, and five are imprisoned n San Diego. They are charged with violating the neutrality laws; for apparently it is a crime not to remain neutral when 14,000,000 of the downtrodden are striking for liberty. Their imprisonment cripples us badly, for the moment.
The McNamara case furnishes a striking example to what length our journalistic banditti can go. It was a certain Palmer, of Hampton's Magazine, who first helped to prepare the conspiracy against labor and the McNamara brothers. How it is a worthy colleague of his, a certain Harvey O'Higgins, who gives the finishing touch. In the August issue of McClure's this man constitutes himself the mouthpiece and eulogist of William J. Burns. The very title of his article shows the "impartiality" of this Burns' champion: "The Dynamiters, a great case of Detective Burns." Even the law considers the McNamaras innocent, till proven otherwise. Yet Harvey O'Higgins makes himself a party to the cruel, vicious, and deliberate method of manufacturing prejudice against the imprisoned labor leaders in Los Angeles. We are given to understand that Judas Burns is one of the greatest American geniuses.
Always, the followers of Henry George have been champions of free speech, even going to prison for it. Yet when a member of the single-tax colony attempts to exercise the right of free speech, and if the offender happens to be an anarchist at that, the law is invoked and the man sent to the workhouse. How inconsistent and foolish of liberty-loving people, but still more foolish that the anarchist, our otherwise staunch comrade, George Brown, should have followed such an inconsistent course.
The bare list of published books and pamphlets tells, in fact, very little of the tremendous output of his ever-active mind. By far the larger portion of his writings may be found in the form of articles and letters, in the files of the more radical periodicals of the past thirty years. Propaganda along general lines could not suffice for his versatile genius. His instinct was to probe every phase of the subject; and nothing escaped his notice. Having a born impulse toward debate, he never refused or overlooked a challenge, direct or implied. No opponent was too insignificant to receive recognition; nor did he fear to confront the most imposing antagonist, even in the field of his foe's strongest specialty. To him, all things, great and small, were closely interrelated; and loose thinking or inaccurate apprehension of fact, even in distinctly minor matters, were held by him to demand emphatic reprobation, as leading to greater and more far-reaching errors. Few will be found to accept all his conclusions; but still fewer will refuse their admiration to his powerful and many-sided mind. Even where his views may have proved in a measure unsound, he contributed immeasurably to the clarification and development of radical thought and of sound methods of thinking among radicals. His insistence on the intellectual side of Anarchism was borne good fruit. In opinions, he was, as practically every reader of Mother Earth is already aware, an uncompromising Anarchist. He never minced words or phrases; nor did he ever seek to disguise his most extreme convictions for respectability's sweet sake. The only department in which his views approximated those current in conservative circles was that of medical science. He held all forms of what he termed "quackery" in utter contempt, and had as a consequence many a sharp tilt with other radical writers, from which even those who differ from him will not claim that he always came out second best. A strict disciple of science, he was sternly impatient of the encroachment of emotionalism or sentiment of the domain of thought and experience. As against a large proportion of radicals, he strenuously defended both vaccination and vivisection, and upheld orthodox Malthusianism (scorning to take refuge behind the bulwark of "Neo-Malthusianism") against all corners. If at times his manner appeared somewhat overbearing, and if he seemed harshly intolerant in little things, these weaknesses may readily be pardoned in one whose whole life was a tireless struggle against the monster of ignorance, and in behalf of the principles of liberty and enlightenment. On the larger issues, he never waivered; and when defenders where needed, he was never found wanting. His death leaves a gap which will not soon be filled; and his memory will not fade. 041b061a72