I had a desultory talk with one devotee of expediency not long ago, a good friend and a thoroughly excellent man. He was all worked up over the activities of Communists and what he called pink Socialists, especially in the colleges and churches. He said they were corrupting the youth, and he was strong for having them coerced into silence. I could not see it that way. I told him it seemed pretty clear that Mr. Jefferson was right when he said that the effect of coercion was to make one half the people fools and the other half hypocrites, and to support roguery and error all over the earth; look at Germany and Italy! I thought our youth could manage to bear up under a little corrupting — they always have — and if they were corrupted by Communism, they stood a first-rate chance to get over it, whereas if they grew up fools or hypocrites, they would never get over it. I added that Mr. Jefferson was right when he said that it is error alone which needs the support of government; truth can stand by itself. One glance at governments anywhere in the world proves that. Well, then, the surest way to make our youth suspect that there may be something in Communism would be for the government to outlaw it.

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About Albert Jay Nock

Albert Jay Nock was a 19th-century American writer, social theorist, and critic. Albert Jay Nock was an American libertarian author, editor first of The Nation and then The Freeman, educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, and served as a fundamental inspiration for the modern libertarian and conservative movements, cited as an influence by William F. Read more on Wikipedia →

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