Rudolph Rocker Quotes
Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.
Rudolph Rocker, 1873-1958, German Anarchist Writer and Philosopher and Editor, Anarcho-Syndicalism, 1938
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The University Presidents had written to the American Public arguing that the German aggression was the result of the militarists in the German society dominating the people and pushing them to war. They argued that most German people were not really responsible. Lamprecht took exception and argued that the German policy was the democratic will of the majority of the German people. He claimed that Germany at the time was more of a de facto democracy than America—as the Untied States did not have a Voting Rights Act or any way of de facto ensuring that all citizens could vote—particularly Negroes in the South. While he was accurate about the voting aspects of a democracy, Germany neither had the Constitution nor a judiciary that was independent and co-equal to the executive and legislature, but Germany did not have the institutions with democratic traditions. The greatest embarrassment to modern Germans is that Adolf Hitler was actually elected by a majority of Germans and was very popular until things in Germany started to go poorly. This quotation is very important in that it shows the importance of a Constitution to limit the powers of even a popularly elected government.
Referring to sit-ins at southern lunch counters:
Johann Rudolf Rocker was a German anarchist writer and activist. Though often described as an anarcho-syndicalist, he was a self-professed anarchist without adjectives, believing that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social freedom of men".
