By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
THE following primer for all naughty Americans could be compiled from a day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month reading of the red, pink and sour-green publications published in the land of the good-natured sucker, the U.S.A.:
To defend fundamental American institutions is now Fascism.
To be wealthy is to have your heel on the neck of the poor.
To war against the enemies of democratic doctrines is to be sold to the “interests.”
To believe in the competitive system stamps you as a Wall Street wolf.
To announce yourself as a rugged individualist means you are getting ready to shoot down pajama-stitchers.
To believe that Jefferson was a greater man than Lenin brands you as a “bourgeois” and a “tory.”
To denounce the crimes of the Cheka and the GPU is treason to the ideal of the brotherhood of man.
To wear an American flag in your lapel means that you advocate calling out the state militia to suppress labor unions.
To believe that the Constitution of the United States is a superior document to “Das Kapital” is proof-positive that you are working your help to the bone.
To merely whisper that Communism should not be taught in state-supported institutions brands you as an enemy of Stalin’s Nutopia.
To believe that alien enemies should be deported to the lands of their birth makes you a paid agent of Adolf Hitler.
To denounce a Russian blood purge means you are not “social-minded.”
To adhere to the capitalistic system of economic development as the best for ALL the people in the long run is prima facie evidence that you are for child-labor, sweat-shops and the 24-hour day.
To believe that the state is the servant of the individual links you with the White Guards.
To even suspect that our freedom is not wholly in the keeping of the carmine Civil Liberties Union nails you as a brutal coal-and-iron baron.
To announce that state-aid, as a principal, is an anti-American doctrine, is to put yourself in the class of beetle-browed predatory Cro-Magnons.
To even insinuate that the American boudoir branch of Leninism and the spats-and-monocle phalanx of the New Vision is merely a publicity racket in some vacuous skulls is to be branded as a poor slob of a Victorian who still reads Dumas and Walter Scott.
To believe that America has its own political philosophy and social ideals that have no relation to Marxist fiddle-faddle, diddle-daddle and walla-walla is to line you up with the savage capitalistic seamstress-starvers.
To assert that Communism is worming its way into the army and navy means that you are for making war immediately on Russia, Japan and Irak.
To even mildly observe that a Moscowegian who plots the violent overthrow of the American government should be brought to heel is certain proof that you have secretly torn up the Declaration of Independence.
To sit in your seat while the “Internationale” is being played in Madison Square Garden is treason to the world proletarian state. Horrendus horrors!—They may even find a copy of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in your pocket!
To asseverate that it is more important that a man should be free mentally, physically and verbally than that he should be “secured” in his livelihood stamps you as a gold bloc buzzard.
In a word, the American system is doomed. The Politburo has spoken, you poor American fish!
Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “New American Primer,” Syracuse Journal, March 20, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).