press has but little of that old world
quality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that it is so. With its
limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation
reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is
fairly and properly matter of light importance to us. Our press does not
reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not
reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence
laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not
reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy,
which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it does
not reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred,
which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the land
and the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it. In the
sense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three carat
royalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill of
awe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem.
Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to
my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of
human liberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and
steadfast protector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental.

Tracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came to
this country. I was right. I was right to seek out a land where such
healthy principles and theories are in men's hearty and minds. Think of
the innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well he
brought that out, and how true it is. There's manifestly prodigious
force in reverence. If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he's
your slave. Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have been
diligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy and
nobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverence
them; and now, as a natural result, to reverence them is second nature.
In order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of the
opposite kind into their dull minds. For ages, any expression of
so-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime. The sham
and swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he is
himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to
reverence and what is not.