(as printed in the Syracuse NY Journal, on 12-21-1934)
By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
THE case of Alexius Karllson, the alien Communist held at Ellis Island for deportation, is full of that ironic mirth which is said to make the gods laugh at all things mortal and which we on earth call the “horselaugh.”
Karllson, whose only use for America is to turn it into a Communistic slave-state, had his lawyer apply for a writ of habeas corpus. He wants to stay in this accursed capitalistic country. He demands the right to go on talking and plotting—neither of which he could do in his own ideological Utopia, Russia, without an early morning trip to the live-target yard.
Federal Judge Goddard denied the writ on the ground that membership in the Communist party was proof of conspiracy to overthrow the government.
Aside from the momentous nature of this decision, the question arises why these enemies of the American form of government are so loath to leave our shores.
They exhaust every legal resource of this hateful “bourgeois-capitalistic-ruggedly individualistic” democracy to stay here.
They appeal—with perfectly straight faces—to their “rights” per the constitution—that constitution which they would tear into bits.
They abjectly petition judges and bureau chiefs at Washington to keep them here, where they are, so they claim, being “exploited” and “enslaved”—those very judges and bureau chiefs that they would not only abolish but lift into the air with a gentle bomb or two.
They use, in a word, all the privileges that a free democratic country accords them—free speech, free pen and a free soap-box—TO ADVOCATE THE ABOLITION OR ALL THESE SWEAT-AND-BLOOD-BOUGHT PRIVILEGES.
WE PERMIT these aliens to use our own culture and civilized practices for the purpose of destroying us!
No wonder they want to stay here! Think of the loot! It is like inviting a man to sit in your office chair so that he can more comfortably shoot you.
The Communists, both of the foreign and home-spawned varieties, are strong for the preservation of American civil liberties when their own liberties are threatened.
But when they come into power, as in Russia, presto!– all civil liberties disappear and the Karllsons line up against a wall anyone who utters those words of hated democratic. capitalistic origin, civil liberties.
A political dissenter in Russia when arrested is hurried before a MILITARY TRIBUNAL. He has no counsel (that is a capitalistic custom). There is not even a trial. There is a “hearing” (the military tribunal HEAR themselves pronounce sentence). and the objector to Communism is hurried up against a wall.
The only writ of habeas corpus is written by the vultures if the fellow is not buried in quicklime.
Sixty-six of these cases in one day in the last Communist “purge”!
And Karllson and his Communist plotters gawp about their “rights”!
As a matter of fact, Karllson and his alien cronies know that they are having the time of their lives in free America. They never breathed freely before they came here.
But it is time to check the breathing of these plotters, of all plotters of all patterns—Communists, Nazists and Fascists—and make them understand that this democratic- individualistic republic is still a going concern.
The Communists dish it out (in Russia), but they can’t take it (in the U. S. A.).
THERE SHOULD BE NO CIVIL RIGHTS FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN THEM.
The dictatorship of the proletariat means the end of everything that is fundamentally American ! Liberty, self-reliance, private property, civil procedure, free speech, free press and even free movement.
It would be the return of ant-civilization. Instead of the free-flying eagle as our emblem a Communist regime would substitute A BUG.
What the Communists here need is a dish of their own cooking. Do unto them as they have done unto the minorities in Russia!
The time for action is NOW. Let democracy destroy Communism. Don’t wait until the Fascist man-on-horse-back appears!