Daresay

It was in the free states of New England that William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator, abolitionist, found "contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slaveholders themselves." Among his own, he was considered a disturber of the peace. This did not deter him: "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen--but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat in a single inch--and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and hasten the resurrection of the dead. It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence--humble as it is--is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years--not perniciously, but beneficially--not as a curse, but as a blessing. And posterity will bear testimony that I was right."

In retrospect, how clear it seems that he was right--a fact then obscured, even in the most progressive section of the United States, by a fog of fears and falsehoods. History has vindicated his ideas when most of his contemporaries wouldn't--openly.

It is a delusion to expect what is right to be pervasive and popular--to expect that expressing or doing what is right will bring immediate recognition or riches. It was never thus. What is right will not enlist the already and many enslaved. Their chains will move them to speak and act to their own subjection. To reverse the networked economic and social enforcement of pernicious political correctness, to avert the slavery of former abolitionists, we should expect to earn some ignominy in the short-term. But while we can, we should speak and act--in spite of economic and social penalties--in favor of truth and freedom--content to bear the contempt of the decadent, the dissolute, and the daunted--to await the consolation of a future vindication.