Word: kohr
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...Kohr to disagree with Professor Chafee's sensible statement of the duty of the citizen to cooperate with his government is but to carp with the law as it has stood since the founding of the Republic. To state that it is the duty of the citizen to appear before congressional committees is only to state that it has always been the right of the government to compel him to do so. This is old stuff, beyond cavil, and common knowledge to anyone concerned with the workings of American government...
...appears, however, that Mr. Kohr's letters is addressed not to the positive law of the Unites States but so some loftier principle, perhaps to that current of political theory which found expression in the conception. "The Right of Resistance," a tradition traceable in Western political literature down through the centuries. But not even in Althusius or Locke two savants whom Mr. Kohr might have used as footnotes to his exposition, will he find adequate answers to the crucial questions which ask, first, precisely when does a legitimate government become--as the classicists put it--a "tyranny" justifying disobedience...
Whilst I found myself in warm sympathy with Professor Kohr's attack upon blind conformity, in his letters published in the CRIMSON for February 5, I was, I admit, startled by his dictum on democracy. I had hitherto accepted Lincoln's definition of democracy as government by the people; Professor Kohr tells us that "the most characteristic feature of democracy is not cooperation but opposition." Freedom to oppose is indeed of the essence of democracy, but to regard the government as something set up by the popular vote which it is then the main duty of the people to oppose...
Alluding to the professor's statement that it is "the duty of citizens to cooperate in government," Leopold Kohr, assistant professor of Economics at Rutgers, extended this conclusion and alleged that in a totalitarian state this would enslave the individual. "The characteristic feature of democracy," he said, "is not cooperation but opposition which in the eyes of government always looks like obstruction...
...confession as his "duty to collaborate with government" would prescribe, but the one who following the superior code of his Church would rather die. Those whom one has not betrayed should not betray one either. This is the issue confronting not the law but ever dying individualistic civilization. Leopold Kohr Assistant Professor of Economies Sutpers University...