Polite Kid

If the quote which is the title of this post is not recognizable to my readers, it's from the dialogue in the Frank Capra film classic, 'Meet John Doe.' In one memorable scene, 'Connell', as played by James Gleason, says these words to the 'John Doe' character:
Connell: Yessir. I'm a sucker for this country. I'm a sucker for the Star Spangled Banner�and I'm a sucker for this country.
I like what we got here! I like it! A guy can say what he wants -- and do what he wants -- without having a bayonet shoved through his belly.
Now that's all right, isn't it?
You betcha. All right. And we don't want anybody coming around and changing it, do we?
...No sir. No sir. And when they do, I get mad! I get b-boiling mad. And right now, John, I'm sizzling!
...I get mad for a lot of other guys besides myself--I get mad for a guy named Washington! And a guy named Jefferson--and Lincoln. Lighthouses, John! Lighthouses in a foggy world! You know what I mean?''
I suppose these words are always meaningful to me, because, like Connell, I am a sucker for this country, and like Connell, I get mad -- boiling mad -- at the idea of anybody changing it. Right now, of course, people are trying to change this country in various ways, and they are doing so without the consent of the people of this country.
And like Connell, I, too, get mad for a lot of other guys, for those Founding Fathers, and all the generations who went before us. But the Founding Fathers and all the good and great men who preceded us are 'lighthouses' in a fogbound world, beacons to those lost and adrift.
I hope there are some words here that ring true to some of my readers, or which provide some food for thought or some illumination.
"[I]f the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them." - 'Candidus', (Benjamin Austin) in the Boston Gazette, January 20, 1772
"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."- Thomas Jefferson
"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it." - Patrick Henry
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand (1961)
''People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those, who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous, more or less.'' Edmund Burke
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
''What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the power of kings and princes.'' - Samuel Adams
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry
"If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable." - Thomas Jefferson
"There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing." - Daniel Webster
"In spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair the future? The truth is this: the march of Providence is so slow, our desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so feeble, the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope." - Robert E. Lee
I like to end on a note of hope, so I will conclude with Lee's encouraging phrases.

Labels: American History, Founding Fathers, Quotations

We are in the midst of a great transition from narrow nationalism to international partnership. - Lyndon B. Johnson
"Sept. 11th must spur us to launch a new era of American internationalism. Let's not squander this opportunity." - Robert Kagan, January 2002
"There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization." - Oscar S. Straus
"As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education and world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism." - Sir John Huxley, father of the U.N. education program
"It is, if people will but think steadfastly, inconceivable that there should be world control without a merger of sovereignty, but the framers of these early tentatives toward world unity have lacked the courage of frankness in this respect. They have been afraid of bawling outbreaks of patriotism, and they have tried to believe, that they contemplate nothing more than a league of nations, when in reality they contemplate a subordination of nations and administrations to one common rule and law." - H.G. Wells, The Salvaging Of Civilization
"We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands." - Arnold Toynbee, "The Trend of International Affairs Since the War", International Affairs, Nov 1931
''I think the subject which will be of utmost importance politically is mass psychology. ... Various results will soon be arrived at [including] that the influence of home is obstructive ... in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can reach the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment. ... Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. ... Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion; the other is nationalism.'' - Bertrand Russell, 1953, The Impact of Science on Society
"Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissonance and stress." - Thorstein Veblen
"The root of the problem is very simply stated, if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort of federalism, as the states of the American Union, for instance, are organized, there would be no international war as we know it...The main obstacle is nationalism." - Norman Angell
"It is our clear duty to strain every muscle in working for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent. This goal undoubtedly requires the establishment of some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all...." from Vatican II document, 'Pastoral Constitution On the Church In the Modern World', 1965
"�You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast immanne, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars���It is the international system of currency that determins the totality of life today��There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT & T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the Nations of the world today��..We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations��our children, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine�.one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit�..all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused." - from the movie 'Network', 1975
"The old order passes from view; the new world rises upon our vision....We have vindicated the right of social control....There must be developed a national spirit of service....Society must break the stranglehold of capitalism....The natural resources of the nation must be socialized....The state must socialize every group....Men must learn to have world patriotism. World patriotism must be a faith....There is no more justice for the claim of absolute sovereignty on the part of a nation than on the part of an individual....The only alternative is World Federation...with a world parliament, an international court, and an international police force....Men must have an international mind before there can be a world federation. They must see and affirm that above the nation is humanity. Internationalism must first be a religion before it can be a reality and a system." - Samuel Zane Batten, 'The New World Order'

Labels: Globalism, Internationalism, Nationalism, One World, Quotations

More ''lighthouses in a foggy world'', with some wisdom on these subjects.
Liberty, equality, fraternity -- and democracy:
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice."
-- John Adams
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes. Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the Laws." - Noah Webster, History of the United States
"The destiny of any nation at any given time depends on the opinion of its young people, those under twenty-five." - Goethe
''If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" - Herbert Spencer, The New Toryism, 1884
"I could see how 'democracy' might do very well in a society of saints and sages led by an Alfred or an Antoninus Pius. Short of that, I was unable to see how it could come to anything but an ad-hocracy of mass-men led by a sagacious knave. The collective capacity for bringing forth any other outcome seemed simply not there. To my ideas the incident of Aristides and the Athenian mass-man was perfectly exhibitory of 'democracy' in practice. Socrates could not have got votes enough out of the Athenian mass-men to be worth counting, but Eubulus easily could, and did, wangle enough to keep himself in office as long as the corrupt fabric of the Athenian State held together. As against a Jesus, the historic choice of the mass-man goes regularly to some Barabbas." - Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs
"A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot." - Plato, The Republic, VIII
"Democracy arose from men thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal in all respects." - Aristotle, Politics
"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments." - Aristotle, Rhetoric
"If there were a nation of gods they would be governed democratically, but so perfect a government is not suitable to men.'' - Rousseau, Du contrat social, III
"Equality may exist only among slaves." - Aristotle
"Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: 'Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.� - Alexis de Tocqueville
"Political equality is against nature. Social equality is against nature. Economic equality is against nature. The idea of equality is subversive of order.'' - Edmund Burke
''There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.'' - Thomas Jefferson
"It is inequality that gives enlargement to religion, to intellect, to energy, to virtue, to love and to wealth. Equality of intellect stabilizes mediocrity. Equality of wealth makes all men poor. Equality of religion destroys all creeds. Equality of energy renders all men sluggards. Equality of virtue suspends all men without the gates of Heaven. Equality of love stultifies every manly passion, destroys every family altar and mongrelizes the races of men. Equality homogenizes so that cream does not rise to the top. It puts the eagle in the hen house so that he may no longer soar." - R. Carter Pittman
"The acceptance of democracy by all European nations is deadly for the proper governorship, freedom, law, order, respect of authority and religion, and at the end will lead to chaos, out of which will appear the worldwide tyranny" - The Duke of Northumberland
"Democracy does not exist for a long time - it wastes, exhausts and destroys itself. There was never a democracy that didn't kill itself" Samuel Adams
"The American form of government is the republic. The true freedom does not exist either under despotism or excesses of democracy" Alexander Hamilton
"Democracy always leads to conflicts and instability, but never provides for the security of the citizens or their property. Usually it is very short at life, and very bloody at death" -- James Madison
"Between republic and democracy there is the same difference as between order and chaos" - John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
"Democracy is the rule of mobs, tempted by newspaper editors" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
''Enforced fraternity destroys liberty.'' - Frederic Bastiat

Labels: Democracy, Egalitarianism, Equality, Founding Fathers, Politics, Quotations

Those of you who read this blog even occasionally will have noted that I like great quotes. Now, I know some people have a dim view of those who resort to quoting others to make a point, but I think a well-chosen quote from an appropriate source is effective. I personally find a lot of mental and spiritual food in the words of great writers and thinkers of the past.
I've collected a number of books of quotes, some of them quite old, and I of course find the older books more profound than much of what passes for wisdom today. Just compare today's Bartlett's with one from, say, 90 years ago.
The difference in the quality of the quotes, and the points of view represented is stark. Political correctness has also tainted the recent versions, which is to be expected. For those reasons, it's valuable to go back to the older books to get some intellectual oxygen, as it were, and to escape the stifling air of PC.
And speaking of quotes, here's an interesting piece from the Times Online:
Never said it: 10 famously inaccurate quotes
Following my post on Voltaire and his failure to say "I disagree with what you have to say but I defend to the death your right to say it" here are ten other famous characters who didn't say the things most often associated with them.
Sherlock Holmes: Elementary, my dear Watson
Except for the fact that it's not. The most notorious resident of Baker St never actually used these words in the original books. Not that that's stopped his onscreen counterparts.
Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
And nothing is precisely what the statesman had to do with this phrase. Blame Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for the first mistaken attribution. The words do not appear in any of Burke's papers.''
I've quoted that line which is supposedly by Burke more than once, and wrote one blog entry about why I thought the quote does not make sense. Then a commenter told me that the phrase was in fact mis-attributed to Burke.
The other wrongly-attributed quotes are others that are often repeated; read the rest at the link.
One other incorrect quote which comes to my mind is the famous 'Biblical phrase' which enjoins us to ''hate the sin, love the sinner."
In a past blog post, I repeated that phrase, which all of us have no doubt heard many times, and again, a commenter pointed out to me that the phrase is not in the Bible, and upon some reflection I had to admit that I had never seen it anywhere in the Bible, and I am familiar enough with the Bible to have some memory of it if it were found there, though I don't have the Bible memorized.
I have done searches to be sure that the quote does not appear in some slightly different wording in the Bible, but I can find none nor can I think of even a similarly-phrased verse in the Bible.
Do any of you know the origin of this overused phrase? I know that it is popular today because it fits so well with our postmodern secular philosophy of nonjudgmentalism, and the phrase is most often pressed into service to scold Christians who criticize homosexuality.
Another popular phrase which I have heard quoted as being Biblical is 'God helps those who help themselves.' I have read that in some survey or poll, a large percentage of people believed that the phrase came from the Bible. But of course it does not, and as the answer here indicates, Ben Franklin was the author of the quote, and the idea itself is not consistent with Biblical teaching.
Another apparent misquote is the one attributed to George Orwell saying "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
According to this Wikipedia page on misquotations, it is not a legitimate Orwell quote.
The page has many other examples of misquotations, some of them from popular culture, especially movies, apparently the largest source of the quotes often repeated these days.
One more contested quote is this one from Samuel Adams, which I, like a lot of people, have quoted on occasion:
'It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.''
But the correct version is apparently this one:
It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.''
Another phrase which is so often quoted on the Internet is the phrase by George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' However it's usually misquoted in some way, as this interesting piece tells us:
As a reference librarian, I have heard many variations on this theme by George Santayana.
This particular quotation has eluded more than one library customer, who recalled the keyword "history" instead of what American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) actually said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (from "Life of Reason I"). Searching for the wrong word in indexes can get you nowhere, fast. When using either book indexes or online search engines, it pays to think of synonyms and other other words of related meaning.
On August 26, syndicated columnist Trudy Rubin misquoted Santayana (""Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.") in her "Wordlview" column, "Bush's bid to tie Iraq to Vietnam doesn't work."
A deliberately incorrect Google search (with search terms "santayana," "remember history," and "doomed to repeat"), yielded 269 Web pages misquoting Santayana ("Those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it."). Those who cannot remember quotations are condemned to paraphrase them.''
Do any of you have examples of misquotations?

Labels: Famous People, Literature, Quotations