Democracy and the police power

Title

Identifier

Editorial

Language

English

Source

The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XXVII (Issue No.11) November 1951

Year

1951

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

The task of the new Conservative Government will not be an easy one for it is always difficult to back-track and much that has been done will have to be put up with. As Mr. Churchill has pointed out, an island holding 50,000,000 people grows food enough for only 30,000,000 and must produce goods to buy the rest,—without most of the income once derived from empire investments. “To do this”, in the words of the Christian Science Monitor (Boston), “involves immense problems of modernization of industries, resuscitation of incentive, and liberation of energies...” One thing which should be recognized, in the Philip pines as in the United States, is that socialism has more or less surreptitiously also made great inroads in both coun tries. The course of events in Britain holds a serious lesson for us. "Flushing Meadow, N.Y., Q'ct. 18 (INS)—The United States warned Premier Mossadegh of Iran today that the Anglo7Iranian oil dispute threatens peace and that it is the United Nations Security Council’s duty to intervene to safeguard peace...” "Washington, Oct. 18 (AP)—...Secretary of State Acheson, urging Egypt to show ‘restraint’, said the United States considered invalid the Egyptian cancellation of the two treaties. . . The spirit of responsi bility to others requires that no nation carelessly precipitate events which can have no constructive end but which by their nature create those elements of confusion and weakness whichtpmptaggression...” Democracy stands for the right of self-government. It recognizes the sovereignty of the governments and peoples of other nations. It opposes Democracy, aggression against and interference with and the Police other governments and peoples. Power These are noble conceptions, but, on occasion, lead to confusion, espe cially when it is attempted to apply them to the problem of maintaining international law and order. This is basically a police problem, and it is well un derstood that the police power is the inherent power of all governments to maintain the general security. In the democracies the police power is exercised within certain accepted constitutional and statutory limits, but within these limits the police arm of the government has clear right and authority to restrain the behavior of individuals and even to restrain them in the exercise of their individual rights when this behavior or this exercise becomes a danger to the community. The police do not hesitate to “interfere” in such cases; they do not wait for “consent”; they “invade” private premises; they use “force” if necessary. And none of this is “un-democratic”. It is as much a part of democratic government as of any other type of government. Today we have at least the beginnings of a world government, of a world judiciary system, of a world police organization. This machinery should be put to the fullest possible use when it becomes advisable to restrain an in ternational law-breaker, any nation, large or small, which defiantly makes a world nuisance of itself, even a world menace. The noted political scientist, Charles E. Merriam, has said on this point: “The person who does not consent to some established order be comes an outlaw. He can not claim a right without conceding a counter right. A nation within a jural order of the world no more loses its personality than does an individual in a democratic society. The nation which will not participate in a world order becomes an outlaw. It can not claim a right without admitting a rule of law. Neither outlaw indi viduals nor outlaw nations can complain if the treatment of outlaws is visited upon them.” We should clearly understand that while democracy may limit, it does not abrogate the inherent police powers of government, and that this should hold good interna tionally as well as nationally. When wrong is being done by any nation, endangering the entire world community, it is not only the right, but the duty of the other nations to interfere, forcibly if necessary. No apology is called for. In commenting on the assassination last month of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan of Pakistan, the New York Times pointed out that no fewer Government than thirteen important political leaders by Murder in Islam have been murdered since 1945,— five of them this year. That is a fearful thing, and one may well wonder what hope the Mohammedan world can have for the future with their most outstanding leaders being wiped out at such a rate. But assassination, under a legalistic guise, has become the practice on a far greater scale in all the totalitarian countries where it has assumed the proportion of a general massacre not only of all the old leaders but thousands of others among the better educated classes who are feared as potential leaders of opposition. It was reported after the last World War that the Nazis in the Balkan countries had murdered a large pro portion of the members of all the professional groups, including even physicians and teachers. And the com munists are continuing this most terrible form of national destruction in the oppressed countries, in a deliberate effort to render them forever without leaders of their own and to reduce the people to nothing but mobs of slaves. President Truman, in his opening address at the San Francisco peace conference a month or two ago, said, in an aside, that there are “thugs” among the nations, and surely there never were more dreadful regimes than those of the thugs and assassins of the 20th century. The word thug comes from the Hindu name of a secret fraternity among the worshippers of the goddess Kali in Northern India, which made a profession of murder, usually by strangling, and which was not suppressed until the 1830’s. The word assassin has a similar derivation and comes from the Arabian designation of a secret order founded in Persia toward the end of the 11th century whose members committed widespread murders under the influence of hashish; it spread into both Syria and India and lasted for several hundred years. These were criminal organizations one read about in works of history or in novels, perhaps with only a romantic shiver, for they existed long ago and far away. It is different today, when half the world lives under such evil officially enthroned and all mankind is menaced. Despite its apparent strength, it would seem impossible for such rule to last, that it must collapse of its own rotten ness or be overthrown either from within or without, or both. It is certain that such a rule is able to establish itself anywhere only by disguising its true nature. But the truth will out, and the truth shall make us free. ‘FTtHE Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, when they were written, were revolutionary documents. But they J. were revolutionary in a very unusual sense. “Many revolutions are simply a resort to force and violence to impose a new despotism upon the people. But these documents were for a very different purpose; their aim was to make despotism impossible. Both the Declaration of Independ ence and the Constitution seek to make the rule of law and the concepts of justice the dominating factors in government. And to a large extend they have succeeded.”—President Truman 370

pages

370

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