“The alternative,” said Prof. Miller, “must be a new public opinion which will condemn the egoism of a nation or race as severely as it condemns that of an individual. When there are personal relations between people of different nations or races there is no basis of conflict, but when trained prejudice is let loose reason vanishes. Every, man with a brogue is a bolshevik or a hun, and every one of different color is inferior. All are to be exploited, and in the opinion of certain captains of industry the immigrant is merely a labor comodity. The breakdown of prejudice will come when the injunction of Imanuel Kant is followed to ‘treat every person as an end, not as a means’.
“Individual egoism is a vice and there is a social demand for its suppression. Group egoism is magnified as the highest virtue at present whether in religion, nation, or chamber of commerce.
“Patriotism is beginning to descend to chauvinism and the next step must be national tolerance to correspond to religious tolerance. All the new states of Europe make constitutional protection of minorities to meet this necessity. The relation of races has not yet reached its crisis so there is little restraint on racial egoism.
“In every case public opinion has trained its groups to rationalize about their respective superiority. But this training has been artificial and mythical. People have been justified in satisfying their egoism through legend, religion, the press, the law, neighborhood gossip, and now by science. Most immigrants are learning to fear and sometimes hate America just as the Jews have feared and despised the Christians, for their haughty airs and much moralizing.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
