“Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws”
-Mark Twain, Following the Equator
Stoke the fears and superstitions of the people and the laws will bend to the hysterics of the crowd.
“Public shows of honor are pleasant, but private ones are pleasanter, because they are above suspicion.”
-Mark Twain, letter to Will Bowen, December 19, 1888
Don’t tell me how honorable you are. Show me.
“…the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”
-Mark Twain, letter fragment, 1891
MoveOn.org’s ad and most of what I hear Limbaugh say is designed to provoke. And provoke it does: hours on end of meaningless pronouncements and shortsighted platitudes, while accomplishing nothing – no binding legislative action from this legislative body – except to further the divisive nature of character assassination through partisan politics.
This isn’t what we elect a congress to do, is it?
“It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one…the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.”
-Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal
A theory such as Intelligent Design seems to fall short in explaining the madness endemic in human behavior. At least that’s the way Twain saw it, especially as he grew older (and wiser).
Lest we feel any twinge of superiority to the times in which he expressed himself, a serious consideration of our world today shows that Mark Twain’s words are no less applicable now as they were then.
Mr. Clemens surely turns in his grave.
“Now then, to me university degrees are unearned finds, and they bring the joy that belongs with property acquired in that way; and the money-finds and the degree-finds are just the same in number up to date–three: two from Yale and one from Missouri University.
It pleased me beyond measure when Yale made me a Master of Arts, because I didn’t know anything about art; I had another convulsion of pleasure when Yale made me a Doctor of Literature, because I was not competent to doctor anybody’s literature but my own, and couldn’t even keep my own in a healthy condition without my wife’s help. I rejoiced again when Missouri University made me a Doctor of Laws, because it was all clear profit, I not knowing anything about laws except how to evade them and not get caught.
And now at Oxford I am to be made a Doctor of Letters–all clear profit, because what I don’t know about letters would make me a mutli-millionaire if I could turn it into cash.”
Mark Twain, Autobiography
It shouldn’t be the degree that really matters, but, if the degree holder has really learned anything, what it represents.
“A wanton waste of projectiles”
–Mark Twain, The Art of War (speech)
It seems that police departments in America are experiencing a “lack of bullets” (something to strive for, perhaps, in world we can only hope to achieve) becuase of the bullets are going to the war effort in Iraq.
Keeping America safe.
“Better a broken promise than none at all.”
-Mark Twain
No good politican is worth his or her salt without a good promise or two to pacify and seduce the body politic.
Whether it can ever be kept is beside the point.
"Nothing helps scenery like bacon and eggs"
-Mark Twain, Roughing It
Getting acquainted with a vast and magnificent land such as one finds traveling north, ever north, up through Alaska, finally settling but a hare’s breath from the Arctic Circle requires, first and foremost, a hardy breakfast.
“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates–1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don’t know what happened on either occasion.”
-Mark Twain
Without a true sense of history, beyond a rote recitation of dates and events, the human saga in which we find ourselves loses its context and meaning. Real progress never happens if we forget the past.
“Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship”
-Mark Twain, Layman’s Sermon (speech)
The foundation of a Republican Democracy is the active participation of its citizenry.
Without the informed, concerned, and active interest of the populace for the public execution of government and power, that power naturally consolidates, like a funnel, toward the narrow bottom.
The question then becomes, what is the state of our Republic today, and what are you going to do about it?