LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

than a strong personal taste for personal autarchy. American anarchy and
Italian Fascism, being in perfect accord about the desirability of personal
autarchy. Not a right but a duty. That may be exotic, it may be alien to
the British bullheadedness. You were better off when the school boys
recited Macaulay and meant it. Your sense of values was probably better
in those days.
But so recently as 1931, there were still voices: in fact right up till the
war broke loose there were still voices, and AUDIBLE voices in
England, and no one ever called Mr. Chesterton an exotic. I may in my
hot youth have called him various other things. But I got over it.
Now in 1931 Mr. Chesterton was telling you, (November 21, 1931, in
G.K.’s [weekly]) Mr. Chesterton wrote:
The press is a machine for destroying the public memory. When it is
called the daily press, it means that it exists entirely to wash out the
popular recollection of yesterday.
Public Opinion left to itself would have the proportion of perspective. It
would see certain events as big, even when they are no longer new; … It
would naturally recognize old friends or foes, the man who has figured
in these affairs— —
The great strikes and the great war, that refers [to]. He is talking of a
dirty bit of work now forgotten, namely Ramsey MacDonald.
MacDonald ought to be called Mr. MacNab when he is a Bolshevik
robber stealing all our goods, and then called Mr. Mackintosh when he is
our beautiful shining protector against the storm of Bolshevism in the
state.
The principle implied could be applied otherwhere. I don’t want to
divagate into flogging the dead horse MacDonald. I would willingly