Freedom: A FIGHTING FAITH vi

The expansión of the Powers of government may often by an essential part of society´s attack on evils of want and injustice.  The industrial economy, for example, has come largely inaccessible to the control of the individual; and, even in the field of civil freedom, law is the means society has for registering its own best standards. Some of the democratic exhilaration consequently has to be revived by delegation; this is why we need the Franklin Roosevelts.  Yet the expansión of the Powers of government, the reliance of leadership, as Whitman perceived, have also become a means of dodging personal responsability.  This is the essential importance of the issues of civil rights and civil liberties.  Every one of  us has a direct, piercing and inescapable responsability in our own lives on questions of racial discrimmination, of political and intelectual freedom - not just to supoport legislative programs, but to extirpate the prejudices of bigotry in our environment, and, above all, in ourselves.
Thorough this joint democratic effort we can tap once again the spontaneous sources of community in our society. Industrialism has covered over the springs of social brotherhood by accelerating the speed and mobility of existence.  Standardization, for example, while it has certainly raised levels not only of consumption but of culture, has at the same time cut the umblilical cord too early; it has reduced life to an anonimity of abundance which brings less fulfillment than people once got from labor in their own shop or garden. More people read and write; but they read and write tends to have less connection to themselves.  We have made cultura available to all at the expense of making much of it the expression of a common fantasy rather than a common experience.  We desperately need a rich emotional life, reflecting relations between the individual and the community.