Anti-Statism in German Literature, as Exemplified by the Work of John Henry Mackay

Extract

Emerson's and Thoreau's individualistic, anti-government writings, it is said, developed out of an American background. Our land of liberty, out of fear that government might come to concern itself too familiarly with matters pertaining to the personal thinking and behavior of individuals, has nurtured from its beginning a lively suspicion for concentrations of political power. This suspicion is everywhere in American letters, which have been ever eager to slap government's fingers when it became over-forward. Each individual, as our thinkers and writers repeatedly tell us, should insist on solving his own problems without dictation from external forces, whether from the laws of a too aggressive legislature or from a next-door neighbor who considers himself an arbiter of behavior and taste. Of seekers for political office, Emerson predicted: “Wake them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true and leave government to clerks and desks.” A recent article on the American individualist maintained, “His political ideal will, of course, be Jefferson, his prophets will be Emerson and Thoreau; his poet, Whitman.”