http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n6/Frankly%20Speaking.html
Honolulu Record, September 6, 1951, vol. 4 no.6, p. 8
Frank-ly Speaking
By Frank Marshall Davis
Dicatorship of the Mind
Last week’s column, titled “What Is Loyalty?” in which the question of safe and disloyal ideas was discussed, was written before the seven local arrests. This new development therefore makes it possible to raise the issue of thought control on a concrete local basis.
The tempest around Judge Delbert Metzger’s decision to reduce bail and an editorial in last Friday’s Star-Bulletin, show with amazing clearness, how far we have gone down the road to dictatorship of the mind.
Our system of government provides for separation of the executive, the judicial and the law-making branches. This is supposed to provide checks and balances, to keep one from complete domination over the others. But it looks now as if this basic concept is being tossed out of the window, along with the First and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution.
Thought Control Now Covers the Courts
Judge Metzger has served two terms. From all I can gather, he has an enviable record for strict adherence to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. He evidently believes wholeheartedly in an independent judiciary. In his decisions, he has been guided by his conscience and the finest traditions of American jurisprudence. In the past, that is all we have asked of a judge.
But today, it is different. When Judge Metzger refused to bow to the dictates of the executive branch of government in the setting of ridiculously large bail in the case of the seven accused of violating the Smith Act, powerful members of the law-making branch of government and the White House announced he would be purged.
What this means it that thought control now covers the courts. Those judges who believe in an independent judiciary are to be intimidated and liquidated, when possible, if they refuse to bow to the dictates of Congress and the White House. Instead of preserving the Constitution, they are to subvert it to the convenience of Washington. No matter what the Eighth Amendment says about excessive bail, they are to ignore the Constitution and set excessive bail if Washington so orders.
Some Will Not Succumb To Prevailing Hysteria
But it is comforting to know that there are some men of such high principles and sound belief in democracy and the Constitution that they will not succumb to the prevailing hysteria. Judge Metzger is one of these Supreme Court Justices Black and Douglas are two others who stand as beacons in the deepening gloom.
By no stretch of the imagination can they be called Communists or fellow-travellers. Instead, they are sufficiently far-sighted and level-headed enough to know that the official pattern of anti-Communist action threatens the traditional rights of all Americans.
For once we accept the principle that one group may be outlawed and jailed for holding unpopular beliefs, what is there to prevent this from happening to any other minority group if it pleases those in power?
I think that coming generations—if the world survives the threat of atomic annihilation—will look upon the Supreme Court decision in the Smith Act in much the same way that we now glance back at the infamous Dred Scott decision of nearly 100 years ago.
Swallow Race Bias, Says Star-Bulletin
It was on March 6, 1857, that Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down a majority decision holding, in effect, that “a Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect” and stating that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were not for Negroes.
As in the recent Smith Act decision, there were two dissenting justices. History has proved the majority of seven wrong in the Dred Scott case and the two dissenters right; I believe that history will prove Chief Justice Vinson and the majority of six wrong when they stated, in effect, that “a Communist has no rights which others are bound to respect” and indicated that the Declaration and the Constitution are not for them.
Coming now to the Star-Bulletin lead editorial of Friday, August 31, the final paragraph stated, among other things, that any time you find a man or a newspaper trying to “overplay alleged ‘race discrimination’ . . . beware!”
To me, the meaning is obvious. In the drive for bigger and better thought control, the afternoon daily would have the victims soft pedal or swallow race discrimination without protest, under the threat of being called “Communists.” If I or any other victim of jim crow object to such treatment, or if a newspaper exposes and opposes such undemocratic conduct, then those who refuse to conform to white supremacy are to be termed “disloyal” and “subversive.”
As a matter of fact, race discrimination cannot be overplayed. After all, it has no business existing in a democracy. It must be completely eliminated, and the only way to get rid of it is to expose it and fight it. To those who have never been hurt by the white supremacists, race discrimination may not be real and can be viewed only as alleged, but to the families of the Martinsville Seven and of Willie McGhee, or to that air force veteran in Cicero, Ill., or to those who are barred from public places in Honolulu solely because of color, it is a cruel fact. And no amount of name-calling or thought control will keep us from fighting against it until it is completely destroyed.
http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n4/Frankly%20speaking.html
Honolulu Record, August 23, 1951, vol. 4 no.4, p. 8
Frank-ly Speaking
By Frank Marshall Davis
The Dewey Philosophy
In his speech at a luncheon meeting here Saturday, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York, two-time unsuccessful presidential candidate, stated flatly the backbone of bi-partisan foreign policy when he said:
“The time is coming when it will be necessary to draw a line and say: ‘This is the free world and no part of it shall be allowed to become Communist.’ “
The truth of the matter is that Dewey is late, as usual. That became our official policy with the signing of the Atlantic Pact. Our aid to the French in Indo-China and our intervention in Korea are the results of this policy.
But what burns me up is the naked gall shown by Dewey and the rest who shape our foreign policy when they assume that America has some divine right to dictate to other peoples and nations the kind of government they may have. It is a contemporary version of the master race theory we were supposedly trying to destroy in Nazi Germany.
Force and Violence To Deny Self-Determination
What Dewey says, in effect, is that we must use force and violence, if necessary, to keep a nation from accepting communism even though the majority of the people of that nation have expressed a desire for communism.
As a matter of fact, the people of America have the right to establish a socialist or communist government if they so desire. The right to replace one form of government with another is an historic right. It was the backbone of the Declaration of Independence and was repeated often by Lincoln, the immortal leader of the party whom Dewey pretends to follow. Some 200 years ago an English king had Dewey’s idea and used force and violence to try to keep the people of the 13 American colonies from forming the kind of government they wanted.
But Dewey is not interested in the desires of the people to improve their lot. Had he lived, during the days of Jefferson and Hancock and Franklin and the others who laid the cornerstone for our nation, I firmly believe he would have sided with the British. In his speech here Saturday, he praised the French forces in Indo-China and the English in Malaya. And what are these forces doing? They are trying to crush the efforts of the non-white peoples of Indo-China and Malaya to win independence and control of their lands, just as did the people of the 13 colonies less than 200 years ago.
Colored People Interested In Status of U. S. Negroes
To further show Dewey’s character, not long ago Doris Fleeson mentioned in her syndicated column that Dewey, while in Singapore, was “shocked to find an incident of racial prejudice involving a few hundred people out of 150,000,000. is front-page news in Singapore and elsewhere and considered worthy of a four-column photograph on page one.” This “incident” was the recent race riot at Cicero, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.
To Dewey, this disgraceful spectacle was a minor thing. His indignation was not that such could happen in America, but that it should get around to the rest of the world! What Dewey refused to see is that the majority of the people in Singapore are as dark or even darker in their skin coloring as the Negro war veteran who was the victim of mob action in Cicero. And to the people of Singapore, there is this unanswered question: If America is as democratic as it claims to be, if the U. S. has the kind of government which Dewey says it has, why are there such incidents as the Cicero riot aimed at a fellow citizen purely because he is the same color as the majority of the people of Singapore? You get the idea that none may criticize or change one iota of what Dewey calls the “free world.” This means that the colonial peoples must be content with their inferior lot under their white European masters, while internally we are expected to turn our backs on a Cicero riot and give three extra-loud hurrahs for Dr. Ralph Bunche. Anything else is communism and must be fought.
Actually Calls for International Loyalty Probe
What Dewey and the rest of our foreign policy makers are calling for is a kind of international loyalty probe.
Here at home individuals have been blacklisted and fired from government jobs and private employment because they dared openly to fight against conditions and practices which they believe to be completely contrary to democracy. They opposed the status quo; automatically, they were disloyal.
The people who are fighting to throw off French and British domination in Indo-China and Malaya also oppose that status quo. They, too, are disloyal. And by putting them down, the French win praise from Dewey for helping preserve the “free world.”
The free world of Gov. Dewey is being molded into the shape of official America, with its reverence for the status quo. That means the undiscriminating preservation of what is bad along” with what is good, and in this we have the basic weakness of the whole matter.
Can We Stop, Change For the Better?
I know of no person with even moronic intelligence who wants to toss out the many good things in America. But in the eyes of certain powerful people, an attempt to eradicate anything evil is interpreted as a move to wipe but everything. It’s either all or nothing at all. Do not harm one little hair on the head of our beloved status quo, or you will be considered an outlaw.
That, as I see it, is the Dewey philosophy. Even with our guns and planes and money and atom bombs, how much of it can we force upon the rest of the world?