A Nocturnal Visitation
All roads once led to Rome. Now, sooner or later, every one comes to Washington. I experienced this fact anew a couple of nights ago when I was at home, minding my own business.
There came a distinct whirring sound from outside, as if a high performance automobile were going by, which was impossible, because Wisconsin Avenue is eight stories below my apartment here in the nation’s capital. Perhaps, I thought, a small helicopter was getting ready to land on the roof.
The noise soon ceased entirely and it was again quiet, so I returned to my reading.
Then there was a knock at the window and I looked up to see my old friends, Gidney and Cloyd, the Moonmen, hanging upside down, smiling as broadly as ever.
I opened a window and exclaimed:
- Hey guys -- how did you ever find me here?
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, they said, in unison.
- Very funny. And the saucer? Where’d you park the saucer?
- It’s up there, said Gidney, pointing.
I stuck my head further out the window, looked up and saw just the stars in the sky.
- We set it on ‘hover’ and turned on the cloaking device, continued Cloyd.
- May we come in?, they asked in unison.
- Yeah, like, how long do you think we can hang out here upside down? Do you think we’re bats or something?, added Gidney.
- Oh. Uh, uh, of course.
I cranked open another window, removed the screen and they swung in like acrobats. Flipping in mid-air, they landed on their feet with aplomb and a little bow.
- Well, gosh, guys it’s been a long time. May I put on a pot of the usual . . .
- Green tea! They shouted. Conversation is always like this with the Moonmen. They complete each other’s sentences, and mine. After a few minutes the tea had steeped and the moonmen’s faces took on a contented, dreamy expression as they took their first sips.
- Ahh, they sighed. Just like old times.
- It’s great to see you again. I never expected -- I mean, I thought you had been permanently reassigned to another sector of the galaxy.
- Nothing is permanent, in this galaxy or any other. We were recalled from our previous assignment because of our expertise and experience in Earthling Affairs, said Gidney.
Assuming a suddenly serious tone of voice, he continued:
- We’re on a mission from the Supreme All-Lunar Council to study Earthling scientists since the end of the Cold War and the rise of terrorism. We want to find out if Earthlings are any closer to the spiritual insights they will need in order to become members of the Inter-Galactic Council.
- The smartest people on earth in terms of technological sophistication have developed a puzzling, and, in our opinion, self-limiting materialism that prevents them from the spiritual and emotional growth necessary to become good citizens of the universe.
- Until we are satisfied that such growth has taken place . . .
- We will continue to cloak all of our activities from Earthling view and carry on conversation with only selected Earthling intellectuals, such as you.
- Aren’t you concerned about being discovered?, I asked as I poured more tea. You know, don’t you, that our physicists have figured out that some 95% of the matter in the universe is invisible?
- Of course, they chimed.
- Perhaps they’ll figure out that a lot of this matter is part of the vast inter-galactic civilization . . . . ?, I queried.
- We’re not concerned about that. Remember our comments about the self-limiting materialism of Earthling science. They’ll never get it at the rate they are going. But they might do some damage to earth’s delicate ecology . . .
- and perhaps the galaxy’s . . .
- if present trends continue, they concluded.
- By the way, your tea-making abilities are undiminished. Where’d you get this stuff?, asked Cloyd.
- Oh, it’s grown organically out in California and harvested under the full moon, as you suggested at your last visit.
- See, Gidney, some Earthlings are capable of learning.
They both smiled dreamily and drank long drafts of steaming tea.
- Well, aren’t you concerned that I might mention this visit in one of my columns and blow your cover?
They burst out laughing.
- No one would believe you, said Gidney, shaking his head.
- Remember our comment about self-limiting Earthling materialism, above, continued Cloyd with a knowing grin. Further, nobody important reads your essays . . .
- And still further, they all know that you are an inveterate jokester and would just assume that you were putting them on again, like in your essay on arugula. Remember? You claimed that the original name was Ur-oogla, used by the south seas oogle bird to make its nest more comfortable, or some such. Oogle birds, Moonmen – haha. Obvious nonsense, added Gidney.
- Anyway, getting serious again, can you enlighten us as to how Earthling science has stuck itself in such a cul-de-sac?
- Uh, um, why are you asking me?
- Well, we have asked others . . .
- While disguised of course as Earthling college students and occasionally news reporters.
- We have attended lectures . . .
- queried learned professors in their offices . . .
- but all we get, they continued in unison, is the usual blather about science, rationality, the evils of religion. Scientific materialism, which everyone else in the universe got over millennia ago, somehow remains the only philosophy. They are so dedicated to eliminating irrationality that they have become spiritually dead. And they have no idea how irrational they remain.
- It got so tiresome that we decided to conduct a little experiment, said Cloyd with a wicked twinkle in his eye. So we . . .
- Guys, you didn’t . . .
- . . . scrootched them! They shouted and tried to suppress their giggling.
- But guys, you’re not supposed to experiment on human subjects.
- but . . . but . . . but . . . . no one could tell the difference!
- Guys. Come on. You mean no one could tell that they were immobilized, frozen in place?
- No, no, no. There’s a special setting on the gun to scrootch the mind while leaving the body intact. We wanted to see if any other Earthlings could tell the difference between pre- and post-scrootching.
- So which ones have you scrootched – Dawkins? Hutchins? . . . . . ?
They kept nodding. I went on and on, naming every materialist scientist and polemicist I could think of. The Moonmen just shouted “Yes!” after every one. They were gasping for breath and pounding the floor. I checked the teapot to make sure they hadn’t slipped something into it.
- And, and, and . . . nobody noticed! We scrootched them and nobody noticed!, they repeated.
They were rolling on the floor now, their little green bellies showing under their shirts, which they always wear untucked.
- Guys – keep it down. The neighbors might notice if you carry on like this . . .
I noted with relief that Cloyd was not wearing his shoulder holster. At least I’m not getting scrootched this evening, I thought.
- Now when are you going to un-scrootch them?
- Why bother?
- It doesn’t make any difference, they said, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.
- Somehow this still doesn’t seem ethical . . .
- Well, if you’re a thorough-going materialist, you can’t get from is to ought, said Gidney with a naughty smirk.
- Don’t worry, continued Cloyd, the scrootching gradually wears off and there are no ill effects.
- Now can you explain the appeal of this desiccated world-view?, asked Gidney as they finally composed themselves. That’s the purpose of our visit tonight. From our vantage point and with our powerful observational devices, we can see that Earthling religion is thriving. Earthlings gather in great numbers to worship a variety of deities in vast outdoor temple-stadii, although you prefer to call this activity “sports.” Traditional religious figures like Pope Benedict occasionally use these facilities as well. Earthlings continue to gather in sites of long historical usage, according to our historians, such as Mecca, the banks of the Ganges, Lourdes. Rites of homage to Reproduction take place all over the planet, in underground “clubs,” “concert halls” and so on. A wide variety of traditional deities receive their due in churches, mosques and temples.
- Yet, said Cloyd, Earthling intellectuals and scientists like to tell themselves that they live in secular societies, under secular governments and that secularization (somehow not a religious movement) proceeds apace. You might as well try to explain. No one else can.
I let out a long sigh.
- No one can understand now how Calvin’s predestination appealed to people in the 16th and 17th Centuries. It no longer appeals to us. The so-called objectivity of the so-called scientific world view somehow appeals to a certain sort of person. Because of their know-how, these are very powerful people, whose opinions strongly influence others. William Blake and a host of other poets have been sharply critical of scientific myopia, but, as you know, not that many people read poetry, or take it seriously if they do. Science is knowledge – the only knowledge.
- Some people hoped, I continued, some years ago, during the 1960s, that LSD might liberate the scientific mind from its cage, but the genuine psychic exploration got lost in the political shuffle, as it were. It’s not at all clear that the behavior loosed by that chemical attaining wide circulation was at all to the good. Now the materialists endorse better living through the chemistry of anti-depressants of limited efficacy and disturbing side effects, but easy to use. Doctors and scientists generally do not want to do anything else because spiritual practices, meditation, breathing, moving to music, and so on, strike them as somehow un-serious, something a witch doctor would prescribe instead of a serious scientist.
- Yes, that is precisely the problem we have noticed. Is it truly hopeless?, they asked.
- No. It’s never hopeless. There are a few people you might talk to: Bryan Appleyard over in England, Charles Townes in Berkeley, Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest, also in England. But they are truly exceptional. The cultural divide between materialist science and religion, not to mention culture in general is wide and getting wider. Contemporary scientists spend so much time just keeping up with their own field and have little time for philosophy. They often have had no training either. I might add that while they are very smart people with a lot of education, they act as if they had flunked kindergarten: they don’t play well with others.
There was a long pause, one of those silences that descend on conversations from time to time.
- Perhaps you could write something, suggested Gidney.
- Like what? A play? A novel? Reinhold Niebuhr has already written about the propensity of the intelligent to self-deceive . . . .
- Yes, we know. He is required reading at the Lunar Service Academy.
- Perhaps you could run for office. The Lunar Council might be able to funnel some precious metals to your campaign. No one would ever know where it came from.
- We’ll advise you, they chorused.
- Could you, uh, scrootch my opponents?
- No need to! They giggled.
- Just go for the gold, suggested Cloyd, with a wide grin.
- Well, I’ll think about it.
Then they nodded towards in each other in the unspoken communication of a long partnership and said:
- Well, it’s time for us to go. Do think about it.
I walked them over to the windows. Their tiny, three-fingered hands shook mine and they grabbed the ropes that still dangled from above, as if suspended from sky-hooks, whereupon they curled into the sky.
- How do you do that? I asked, incredulously, looking up into the darkness.
- If we told you, we’d have to scrootch you, came the chorus from above.
A low mechanical sound followed, a flash of light, and they were off.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
June 17, 2008
How can one live in the nation’s capital and not pay attention to the presidential election process? Why bother to live here if one does not care about such things?
It is like living in the eye of the hurricane. While the actual campaigning and the deluge of television advertising usually take place elsewhere, the analysis and strategizing take place here. The thousands of commentators, newscasters, news analysts, pollsters, mavens, pundits and their attendant publications or broadcasts are usually based here. This year, somewhat unusually, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had their national headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington County. Living in Washington gives you a ring-side seat to watch the fight.
Finally, in early June, we know for certain who the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. Hillary Clinton started out as the presumed front-runner, soon fell behind as Obama, Edwards and Clinton finished 1-2-3, separated by a single percentage point, in Iowa. She made a quick recovery in New Hampshire, won Nevada, lost South Carolina and emerged from Super Tuesday in early February with a slight lead in delegates.
Then came her nightmare: ten straight losses in caucuses and primaries, all by substantial margins, which put her behind in delegates and stopped the superdelegates, as long had been expected by this point, from declaring for her. Obama suddenly had the momentum and the money. He had out-organized and out-hustled what should have been the smarter campaign, a campaign run by two of the smartest politicians in the country and a host of experienced, battle-tested advisers.
She shook up her campaign, focussed her message, found Obama’s weak points, caught some lucky breaks and essentially re-launched her campaign. For all that Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and her other spokespersons have said about how her campaign has made a better candidate out of Obama, perhaps they could return the compliment, for it is certainly the Obama campaign that has made Hillary Clinton the focussed, energetic campaigner that she has been for the past couple of months.
But the last primary has taken place and it is clear that Obama has the delegates. As President-elect Richard Nixon said in 1968, after perhaps the bitterest year ever in American politics, and after an extremely close election, “I have won some and I have lost some. Winning is a lot more fun.”
Yes, winning is fun and defeat is a foretaste of hell. Yet defeat is the ultimate test of character. Only those who lose gracefully deserve ultimately to win. Usually they are the only ones who do. It is a rare politician who has not tasted defeat and tasted it rather often. Likewise athletes. The vast majority of them never win a championship. As the Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, put it, “Even the best hitter in baseball walks back to the dugout looking foolish more than half of the time.”
There is some debate about the role of sports, particularly team sports, in American life. Perhaps these sports are over-valued in high school and college. Professional sports are awash in money and who knows, drugs and cheating. Nonetheless high performance athletes model for the rest of how to win and how to lose. In a highly competitive society, this is valuable behavior.
Generally, athletes don’t complain much. Their coaches do not allow it. They know that if you complain while being a loser, you will never be a winner. After the New York Knicks lost another heartbreaker to the Chicago Bulls several years ago, the New York papers showed photographs of what looked like fouls in the closing seconds. One member of the Knicks, I forget whom, responded with something like: “OK. There may have been fouls. But we still needed to put the ball in the basket, and we didn’t.” That was the end of it.
Richard Nixon did not lose particularly gracefully, but he did nothing to make it difficult for President Kennedy or Pat Brown to govern. He directed his bitterness toward the press, not towards the victors and eventually won his party’s nomination in 1968 because he simply did not give up. He toured the country giving speeches at every Republican Party gathering he could find. After a few years, almost every important Republican in the country owed him a favor. He was essentially unopposed in the Republican primaries in 1968.
This is a good lesson for Hillary Clinton, not to mention everyone else who is jostling for power in Washington, or wherever, which is just about everyone, sooner or later. She is in good health and can expect to live another twenty years. Compared to other Senators, she is not old and still will not be old in 2012 or 2016. In 2020 she will be as old as John McCain and younger than President Reagan when he ran for re-election. If Obama wins the coming election, she will be in good position to run in 2016, or 2012 if he loses.
Despite some disturbing signs from her and some supporters that they wanted to fight all the way to the convention, she stepped up to the microphones and klieg lights on Saturday to tell everyone to accept the verdict of the party, however it was determined, and support the nominee. If she and her supporters ever want to win in the future, they have to do this. How well they all do this will determine whether she will ever become an older and perhaps wiser president than she so ardently wants to be seven months from now.
- Richard Allen Hyde
June 17, 2008
How can one live in the nation’s capital and not pay attention to the presidential election process? Why bother to live here if one does not care about such things?
It is like living in the eye of the hurricane. While the actual campaigning and the deluge of television advertising usually take place elsewhere, the analysis and strategizing take place here. The thousands of commentators, newscasters, news analysts, pollsters, mavens, pundits and their attendant publications or broadcasts are usually based here. This year, somewhat unusually, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain had their national headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington County. Living in Washington gives you a ring-side seat to watch the fight.
Finally, in early June, we know for certain who the Democratic Party’s nominee will be. Hillary Clinton started out as the presumed front-runner, soon fell behind as Obama, Edwards and Clinton finished 1-2-3, separated by a single percentage point, in Iowa. She made a quick recovery in New Hampshire, won Nevada, lost South Carolina and emerged from Super Tuesday in early February with a slight lead in delegates.
Then came her nightmare: ten straight losses in caucuses and primaries, all by substantial margins, which put her behind in delegates and stopped the superdelegates, as long had been expected by this point, from declaring for her. Obama suddenly had the momentum and the money. He had out-organized and out-hustled what should have been the smarter campaign, a campaign run by two of the smartest politicians in the country and a host of experienced, battle-tested advisers.
She shook up her campaign, focussed her message, found Obama’s weak points, caught some lucky breaks and essentially re-launched her campaign. For all that Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and her other spokespersons have said about how her campaign has made a better candidate out of Obama, perhaps they could return the compliment, for it is certainly the Obama campaign that has made Hillary Clinton the focussed, energetic campaigner that she has been for the past couple of months.
But the last primary has taken place and it is clear that Obama has the delegates. As President-elect Richard Nixon said in 1968, after perhaps the bitterest year ever in American politics, and after an extremely close election, “I have won some and I have lost some. Winning is a lot more fun.”
Yes, winning is fun and defeat is a foretaste of hell. Yet defeat is the ultimate test of character. Only those who lose gracefully deserve ultimately to win. Usually they are the only ones who do. It is a rare politician who has not tasted defeat and tasted it rather often. Likewise athletes. The vast majority of them never win a championship. As the Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time, put it, “Even the best hitter in baseball walks back to the dugout looking foolish more than half of the time.”
There is some debate about the role of sports, particularly team sports, in American life. Perhaps these sports are over-valued in high school and college. Professional sports are awash in money and who knows, drugs and cheating. Nonetheless high performance athletes model for the rest of how to win and how to lose. In a highly competitive society, this is valuable behavior.
Generally, athletes don’t complain much. Their coaches do not allow it. They know that if you complain while being a loser, you will never be a winner. After the New York Knicks lost another heartbreaker to the Chicago Bulls several years ago, the New York papers showed photographs of what looked like fouls in the closing seconds. One member of the Knicks, I forget whom, responded with something like: “OK. There may have been fouls. But we still needed to put the ball in the basket, and we didn’t.” That was the end of it.
Richard Nixon did not lose particularly gracefully, but he did nothing to make it difficult for President Kennedy or Pat Brown to govern. He directed his bitterness toward the press, not towards the victors and eventually won his party’s nomination in 1968 because he simply did not give up. He toured the country giving speeches at every Republican Party gathering he could find. After a few years, almost every important Republican in the country owed him a favor. He was essentially unopposed in the Republican primaries in 1968.
This is a good lesson for Hillary Clinton, not to mention everyone else who is jostling for power in Washington, or wherever, which is just about everyone, sooner or later. She is in good health and can expect to live another twenty years. Compared to other Senators, she is not old and still will not be old in 2012 or 2016. In 2020 she will be as old as John McCain and younger than President Reagan when he ran for re-election. If Obama wins the coming election, she will be in good position to run in 2016, or 2012 if he loses.
Despite some disturbing signs from her and some supporters that they wanted to fight all the way to the convention, she stepped up to the microphones and klieg lights on Saturday to tell everyone to accept the verdict of the party, however it was determined, and support the nominee. If she and her supporters ever want to win in the future, they have to do this. How well they all do this will determine whether she will ever become an older and perhaps wiser president than she so ardently wants to be seven months from now.
- Richard Allen Hyde
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Washington Journal
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal: The Union Jack and Other Emblems
March 5, 2008
“One difference between the West and the South, I came to realize in 1970, was this: in the South they remained convinced that they had bloodied their land with history. In California we did not believe that history could bloody the land, or even touch it.”
So wrote Joan Didion in Where I Was From, a deeply personal history of California.
Back in June I drove down to Charlottesville, Virginia for a wedding, which took place in a large red brick Episcopal Church near the campus of the University of Virginia. I spent the night at a motel. In the morning, I walked around the famous old red-brick porticoed campus designed by Jefferson and justly celebrated since. Standing in front of the rotunda one looks past receding columns of student residences towards the southwest. It is like a miniature National Mall or Versailles, made all the more beautiful by being smaller and quite functional. Students still live here and I presume it is a very dear place to them during their college years and for the long years of remembrance afterward. I know that there are plenty of busy streets and highways not far beyond the horizon, which is partially blocked by a large building, but as the grassy lawn sweeps gradually downhill it leads the imagination into the infinitude of the American west.
I noticed some plaques on the wall of the rotunda building, monuments to the students of the University who had died in the Civil War. Their names were listed in alphabetical order with a quotation at the bottom:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”
It touched something deep within me, but I was unable to place it. I inquired of the student guides within. Not a clue. Look it up on the web, they suggested, motioning to a nearby screen and keyboard. It is from For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon, not a southerner at all, but one of the British World War I poets. He was too old to serve in the army, but he visited the front and served in the Red Cross. He wrote For the Fallen in 1914 and it is still used in services of remembrance by the many countries of the British Commonwealth, as I learned when I was a university student in Canterbury over thirty years ago.
I was working as a volunteer for one of the drug crisis centers that sprang up like mushrooms in those years and somehow got the assignment of contacting a veterans group that had some experience in counseling shell-shocked and lonely veterans. So one warm spring evening I found my way into a church basement in that ancient town to talk to these aging veterans about my work with teenagers freaked out on LSD and etc. They listened attentively, responded in some fashion that I forget, thanked me for coming and asked me to join them in their closing prayer. We stood, they lit some candles, my teenage brain came to some sort of stillness, and they recited, slowly, deliberately:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them,” the last words intoned loudly and deliberately.
They blew out the candles.
I slowly walked up the hill to my residence hall, taking in the view at dusk of Canterbury Cathedral below. Birds twittered. Church bells rang. It was spring of 1972. The Vietnam War was sputtering to a conclusion. Apparently these guys had been meeting regularly since 1918 to pray and care for anyone who needed help. Their war ended over fifty years ago, and there was yet another war after that. They had been dodging bullets and artillery shells at age 19, while my contemporaries and I were dodging the draft and drug-induced demons.
Later that spring a friend and I hitch-hiked back to Canterbury from London and caught a ride with a lorry driver. He remarked matter-of-factly at one point that his entire unit was wiped out in Normandy, except, obviously, for him. We shook his hand when he left us off by the Norman walls that still encircle the city.
No question about Europe being bloodied with history; or Washington, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, where a general’s statue graces every traffic circle, where the crocusses and daffodils are blooming. In my study overlooking the National Cathedral, I keep thinking about the Royal Navy Ensign flying above HMS Rodney and HMS King George V as they destroyed the Bismarck in May of 1941. The Royal Navy Ensign is a red Cross of Saint George on a white flag, with a Union Jack in the upper left quadrant, not unlike the banner that we often see these days fluttering in front of an Episcopal church. What difference does a symbol make?
A red cross in use since the Crusades, if not before, versus a swastika, a symbol found in many cultures, used by German nativist groups in the late 19th Century, then borrowed or absorbed by the Nazi Party and used as a battle flag. The German armed forces in World War II also used the traditional black iron cross as a personal decoration and identification device on its vehicles, but the symbol of choice for parades, ships, planes and tanks was the swastika. The word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit, I have read, and simply means “good luck.” Rudyard Kipling used the symbol as decorations for his book covers until the Nazis started using it.
An anti-Christian regime that wanted to remake history confronted the European nation that was most proud of its ancient heritage, still ruled by a king, whose ships flew an ancient Christian emblem, yet were strong and modern enough to keep the German Navy at bay.
His Majesty’s ships had to break off the engagement that distant morning in May because they were running out of fuel and because the firing of their enormous guns was threatening to shake the ships apart. They fired over 2,000 shells at the Bismarck. Somewhere around 500 of them found their mark, leaving the ship a smoking ruin. The Nazi captain never struck his colors. Destroyers moved in to sink it with torpedoes, but a recent investigation of the hulk on the ocean floor revealed that the ship finally sank because it was scuttled. The Nazi crew opened up the valves to let in the sea before abandoning ship.
British cruisers moved in to pick up the survivors, some 200, then quickly departed for fear of submarines. Some historians have criticized the British commanders for not lingering longer. After sinking the battleship Scharnhorst in waters off of northern Norway in December of 1943, the British could rescue only 36 out almost 2,000 crew members. Conditions then were even worse: a boiling pitch-black sea in the middle of winter. It is worth noting that German submarines or surface ships during World War II rarely picked up anybody. They offered no quarter and fought until they sank.
The captain of the Scharnhorst decided to go down with guns blazing, which sounds in a way admirable until one learns that his radar had been knocked out and all his gunnery officers could do was fire at muzzle flashes. They did virtually no damage. The radar-guided British guns eventually found the range and literally broke the Scharnhorst in two, whereupon it sank within minutes.
Afterward, Admiral Fraser said to his officers on board HMS Duke of York: "Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today.”
What difference do flags and national anthems make? Would the British Captain and crew have been as courteous, as chivalrous without an ancient Christian symbol fluttering above their heads? Would the Second World War have come to as satisfactory a conclusion without President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and ship’s company singing hymns that they learned in school on board HMS Prince of Wales off the coast of Newfoundland in 1941?
During World War II, over 1 million agents reported to British intelligence, people from every country in Europe and every continent on earth. They all knew that the English-speaking world offered them a far better deal than what the Germans and Japanese had in mind. Every time a Nazi raider left its moorings in a Norwegian fjord, the Norwegians relayed the news to London.
In the end, a sense of fair play may be the best thing we have to offer a world that is bloodied with history.
Washington Journal: The Union Jack and Other Emblems
March 5, 2008
“One difference between the West and the South, I came to realize in 1970, was this: in the South they remained convinced that they had bloodied their land with history. In California we did not believe that history could bloody the land, or even touch it.”
So wrote Joan Didion in Where I Was From, a deeply personal history of California.
Back in June I drove down to Charlottesville, Virginia for a wedding, which took place in a large red brick Episcopal Church near the campus of the University of Virginia. I spent the night at a motel. In the morning, I walked around the famous old red-brick porticoed campus designed by Jefferson and justly celebrated since. Standing in front of the rotunda one looks past receding columns of student residences towards the southwest. It is like a miniature National Mall or Versailles, made all the more beautiful by being smaller and quite functional. Students still live here and I presume it is a very dear place to them during their college years and for the long years of remembrance afterward. I know that there are plenty of busy streets and highways not far beyond the horizon, which is partially blocked by a large building, but as the grassy lawn sweeps gradually downhill it leads the imagination into the infinitude of the American west.
I noticed some plaques on the wall of the rotunda building, monuments to the students of the University who had died in the Civil War. Their names were listed in alphabetical order with a quotation at the bottom:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”
It touched something deep within me, but I was unable to place it. I inquired of the student guides within. Not a clue. Look it up on the web, they suggested, motioning to a nearby screen and keyboard. It is from For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon, not a southerner at all, but one of the British World War I poets. He was too old to serve in the army, but he visited the front and served in the Red Cross. He wrote For the Fallen in 1914 and it is still used in services of remembrance by the many countries of the British Commonwealth, as I learned when I was a university student in Canterbury over thirty years ago.
I was working as a volunteer for one of the drug crisis centers that sprang up like mushrooms in those years and somehow got the assignment of contacting a veterans group that had some experience in counseling shell-shocked and lonely veterans. So one warm spring evening I found my way into a church basement in that ancient town to talk to these aging veterans about my work with teenagers freaked out on LSD and etc. They listened attentively, responded in some fashion that I forget, thanked me for coming and asked me to join them in their closing prayer. We stood, they lit some candles, my teenage brain came to some sort of stillness, and they recited, slowly, deliberately:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them,” the last words intoned loudly and deliberately.
They blew out the candles.
I slowly walked up the hill to my residence hall, taking in the view at dusk of Canterbury Cathedral below. Birds twittered. Church bells rang. It was spring of 1972. The Vietnam War was sputtering to a conclusion. Apparently these guys had been meeting regularly since 1918 to pray and care for anyone who needed help. Their war ended over fifty years ago, and there was yet another war after that. They had been dodging bullets and artillery shells at age 19, while my contemporaries and I were dodging the draft and drug-induced demons.
Later that spring a friend and I hitch-hiked back to Canterbury from London and caught a ride with a lorry driver. He remarked matter-of-factly at one point that his entire unit was wiped out in Normandy, except, obviously, for him. We shook his hand when he left us off by the Norman walls that still encircle the city.
No question about Europe being bloodied with history; or Washington, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, where a general’s statue graces every traffic circle, where the crocusses and daffodils are blooming. In my study overlooking the National Cathedral, I keep thinking about the Royal Navy Ensign flying above HMS Rodney and HMS King George V as they destroyed the Bismarck in May of 1941. The Royal Navy Ensign is a red Cross of Saint George on a white flag, with a Union Jack in the upper left quadrant, not unlike the banner that we often see these days fluttering in front of an Episcopal church. What difference does a symbol make?
A red cross in use since the Crusades, if not before, versus a swastika, a symbol found in many cultures, used by German nativist groups in the late 19th Century, then borrowed or absorbed by the Nazi Party and used as a battle flag. The German armed forces in World War II also used the traditional black iron cross as a personal decoration and identification device on its vehicles, but the symbol of choice for parades, ships, planes and tanks was the swastika. The word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit, I have read, and simply means “good luck.” Rudyard Kipling used the symbol as decorations for his book covers until the Nazis started using it.
An anti-Christian regime that wanted to remake history confronted the European nation that was most proud of its ancient heritage, still ruled by a king, whose ships flew an ancient Christian emblem, yet were strong and modern enough to keep the German Navy at bay.
His Majesty’s ships had to break off the engagement that distant morning in May because they were running out of fuel and because the firing of their enormous guns was threatening to shake the ships apart. They fired over 2,000 shells at the Bismarck. Somewhere around 500 of them found their mark, leaving the ship a smoking ruin. The Nazi captain never struck his colors. Destroyers moved in to sink it with torpedoes, but a recent investigation of the hulk on the ocean floor revealed that the ship finally sank because it was scuttled. The Nazi crew opened up the valves to let in the sea before abandoning ship.
British cruisers moved in to pick up the survivors, some 200, then quickly departed for fear of submarines. Some historians have criticized the British commanders for not lingering longer. After sinking the battleship Scharnhorst in waters off of northern Norway in December of 1943, the British could rescue only 36 out almost 2,000 crew members. Conditions then were even worse: a boiling pitch-black sea in the middle of winter. It is worth noting that German submarines or surface ships during World War II rarely picked up anybody. They offered no quarter and fought until they sank.
The captain of the Scharnhorst decided to go down with guns blazing, which sounds in a way admirable until one learns that his radar had been knocked out and all his gunnery officers could do was fire at muzzle flashes. They did virtually no damage. The radar-guided British guns eventually found the range and literally broke the Scharnhorst in two, whereupon it sank within minutes.
Afterward, Admiral Fraser said to his officers on board HMS Duke of York: "Gentlemen, the battle against Scharnhorst has ended in victory for us. I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today.”
What difference do flags and national anthems make? Would the British Captain and crew have been as courteous, as chivalrous without an ancient Christian symbol fluttering above their heads? Would the Second World War have come to as satisfactory a conclusion without President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and ship’s company singing hymns that they learned in school on board HMS Prince of Wales off the coast of Newfoundland in 1941?
During World War II, over 1 million agents reported to British intelligence, people from every country in Europe and every continent on earth. They all knew that the English-speaking world offered them a far better deal than what the Germans and Japanese had in mind. Every time a Nazi raider left its moorings in a Norwegian fjord, the Norwegians relayed the news to London.
In the end, a sense of fair play may be the best thing we have to offer a world that is bloodied with history.
California Journal
In Search of a Sense of Place
California Journal
November 12, 2007
I arrived in California again in late October. While I have spent the last twenty years living on one coast or the other, over the past couple of years I have developed a truly bi-coastal life. Home base is still an apartment on the highest point of land in Washington, but for several months each year I become a migrant worker of sorts and practice massage in beautiful places in California.
I found a classy yoga studio and restaurant (yoga upstairs, restaurant downstairs) in downtown Napa (Napa is a city, a county, a river, a valley and the second most visited place in California after Disneyland), where, it so happens, every Thursday night there is yoga class followed by dinner, family-style at a great long table. The young chef rolled out roasted Jerusalem artichokes to start with, followed by an arugula (urugla? aroogla?) - persimmon salad with shaved parmesan.
Geez, just three days in California and I’m eating stuff I don’t even know how to SPELL.
Then several enormous round platters appeared: radish salad (three kinds of radishes, or was it four? Five?). Thin ones, thick ones sliced into long curlicues, a red one, a black one, plus some little green things. I think. Next came great shallow bowls of roasted Brussels sprouts in a dark, yummy sauce, surrounded by grits; not polenta, but white, thick, viscous, creamy gree-its. Lordy.
What next? Thin-crust pizza. Accompanied by local wines, of course. I had a light pinot grigio and a spicy zinfandel, both of which complemented everything.
Dessert? Dessert: various sorbets and a lime tart with orange-pomegranate sauce.
The great architecture historian and critic Vincent Scully wrote of the old Pennsylvania Station in New York, that through its arches, modeled on the baths of Caracalla, one entered New York City like a god. In California,the food and wine are godly enough.
I dined with some friendly people mostly in my age range, somewhere around fifty, including a gentleman who looked so much like New York Mayor Bloomberg that I had to remark on it. Everyone notices, he said.
Several of them had been to Burning Man.
Burning Man?
A great Woodstock festival, sans rain, held in the Nevada desert every September. Pack everything in, pack everything out. A city in the middle of nowhere appears, then disappears after three or four days, during which everyone there is a work of art, or gets to act like one. Everything is free. The climax is the burning of an immense effigy of no one in particular, hence the name.
I announced my recent arrival from Washington. People shook their heads, grimaced, scowled, made gestures with their hands as if waving away insects, or bad smells. Can you go back there and change it?, someone asked. Well, welcome, someone else said, as more food appeared and smiles returned. These people seemed happy as clams in the wine country and apparently hadn’t thought of moving anywhere else; perhaps Hawaii.
Now that I’m in a good mood, and having referred to the unpopularity of Washington, I would like to amend my last missive, which, in its early redaction, was rather embittered in tone, if not outright Manichaean. I added the following paragraph to balance things out a bit:
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President Bush and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
This seems worth repeating on Veteran’s Day.
Now how DO you spell “arugula”? And what IS it, anyway? Let’s see. I think I have Hoefnagel’s Comprehensive Guide to Edible Plants, Fifteenth Edition, 2005, lying around here somewhere . . .
Ah.
Arugula: South Pacific herbaceous plant related to the common dandelion, with soft furry leaves, favored by the famous south seas Oogle Bird for making its nest. The happy cry of the bird “oogle, oogle, oogle,” while nesting gave both plant and bird their names. 19th century Christian missionaries cultivated the plant, hybridized it into its current form and transplanted it in Europe. In the process they got rid of the furry texture but retained its wonderfully astringent flavor. German botanists theorized that it was one of the first plants on earth, hence adding the prefix ur- and giving us the current pronunciation, “ur-oogle-a,” meaning the original or primordial “oogla”(Germans pronounce the final “e.”) Late Twentieth Century marketing consultants hired by the International Uroogle Growers Association concluded that the plant needed a further Europeanizing of its spelling for the English-speaking market (double o’s did not pass with a number of focus groups, neither did the initial “u” or final, enunciated “e”), which gives us the current, “arugula,” which looked vaguely Italian and thus excellent for sales to international food fanciers; although this, like all English spellings, is contested.
Well, whaddya know?
California Journal
November 12, 2007
I arrived in California again in late October. While I have spent the last twenty years living on one coast or the other, over the past couple of years I have developed a truly bi-coastal life. Home base is still an apartment on the highest point of land in Washington, but for several months each year I become a migrant worker of sorts and practice massage in beautiful places in California.
I found a classy yoga studio and restaurant (yoga upstairs, restaurant downstairs) in downtown Napa (Napa is a city, a county, a river, a valley and the second most visited place in California after Disneyland), where, it so happens, every Thursday night there is yoga class followed by dinner, family-style at a great long table. The young chef rolled out roasted Jerusalem artichokes to start with, followed by an arugula (urugla? aroogla?) - persimmon salad with shaved parmesan.
Geez, just three days in California and I’m eating stuff I don’t even know how to SPELL.
Then several enormous round platters appeared: radish salad (three kinds of radishes, or was it four? Five?). Thin ones, thick ones sliced into long curlicues, a red one, a black one, plus some little green things. I think. Next came great shallow bowls of roasted Brussels sprouts in a dark, yummy sauce, surrounded by grits; not polenta, but white, thick, viscous, creamy gree-its. Lordy.
What next? Thin-crust pizza. Accompanied by local wines, of course. I had a light pinot grigio and a spicy zinfandel, both of which complemented everything.
Dessert? Dessert: various sorbets and a lime tart with orange-pomegranate sauce.
The great architecture historian and critic Vincent Scully wrote of the old Pennsylvania Station in New York, that through its arches, modeled on the baths of Caracalla, one entered New York City like a god. In California,the food and wine are godly enough.
I dined with some friendly people mostly in my age range, somewhere around fifty, including a gentleman who looked so much like New York Mayor Bloomberg that I had to remark on it. Everyone notices, he said.
Several of them had been to Burning Man.
Burning Man?
A great Woodstock festival, sans rain, held in the Nevada desert every September. Pack everything in, pack everything out. A city in the middle of nowhere appears, then disappears after three or four days, during which everyone there is a work of art, or gets to act like one. Everything is free. The climax is the burning of an immense effigy of no one in particular, hence the name.
I announced my recent arrival from Washington. People shook their heads, grimaced, scowled, made gestures with their hands as if waving away insects, or bad smells. Can you go back there and change it?, someone asked. Well, welcome, someone else said, as more food appeared and smiles returned. These people seemed happy as clams in the wine country and apparently hadn’t thought of moving anywhere else; perhaps Hawaii.
Now that I’m in a good mood, and having referred to the unpopularity of Washington, I would like to amend my last missive, which, in its early redaction, was rather embittered in tone, if not outright Manichaean. I added the following paragraph to balance things out a bit:
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President Bush and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
This seems worth repeating on Veteran’s Day.
Now how DO you spell “arugula”? And what IS it, anyway? Let’s see. I think I have Hoefnagel’s Comprehensive Guide to Edible Plants, Fifteenth Edition, 2005, lying around here somewhere . . .
Ah.
Arugula: South Pacific herbaceous plant related to the common dandelion, with soft furry leaves, favored by the famous south seas Oogle Bird for making its nest. The happy cry of the bird “oogle, oogle, oogle,” while nesting gave both plant and bird their names. 19th century Christian missionaries cultivated the plant, hybridized it into its current form and transplanted it in Europe. In the process they got rid of the furry texture but retained its wonderfully astringent flavor. German botanists theorized that it was one of the first plants on earth, hence adding the prefix ur- and giving us the current pronunciation, “ur-oogle-a,” meaning the original or primordial “oogla”(Germans pronounce the final “e.”) Late Twentieth Century marketing consultants hired by the International Uroogle Growers Association concluded that the plant needed a further Europeanizing of its spelling for the English-speaking market (double o’s did not pass with a number of focus groups, neither did the initial “u” or final, enunciated “e”), which gives us the current, “arugula,” which looked vaguely Italian and thus excellent for sales to international food fanciers; although this, like all English spellings, is contested.
Well, whaddya know?
Friday, October 26, 2007
The World War II Memorial
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 26, 2007
I spent a lot of time on the National Mall during this warm and almost rainless summer of 2007. Every day was a good day for bicycling around the city and the great central park at its heart. I did not particularly like The World War II Memorial when it replaced the old the Rainbow Pool, just off 17th Street directly west of the Washington Monument, several years ago.
Nonetheless I found myself visiting it often and finding that it gave rise to a lot of thought. The fountains are beautiful and the old Rainbow Pool certainly needed fixing up. It attracts a lot of visitors, including, touchingly, World War II veterans, increasingly frail, having their photographs taken with loved ones and the memorial as a backdrop. With the passing of time, the surrounding trees have gentled the vertical forms of the memorial into the environment and it does not look so shockingly new.
Nonetheless, this memorial has problems. The major problem dates back to the enabling legislation in 1993 that called for a memorial to the efforts of World War II veterans and the nation. Such a memorial would be appropriate for any number of sites in Washington, in or at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, near the Roosevelt Memorial, or some other site off the central axis of the Mall. The current site, which no one in 1993 even considered, cries out for a lot more than a veterans memorial.
The focus of a war memorial on this site, should not be on veterans, or the nation, or on the war itself, but on the overarching meaning and purpose of the Second World War. The focus of the Lincoln Memorial is not on the Civil War itself, and certainly not on its battlefields (the architectural focus of the World War II Memorial), which are well-preserved and memorialized elsewhere; but on Abraham Lincoln and his words, chiseled in stone, that articulate the meaning of that war for all people and generations to come.
No memorial can do justice to those who have sacrificed in war. Memorials are for the living. Memorials should instruct the living in the reasons for the sacrifice, inspiring us to live our lives in a way that honors those who died. Lincoln said at Gettysburg,
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they [those fallen in battle] did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
The National Mall is defined by the Capitol on the east, the Lincoln Memorial on the west and the Washington Monument in the middle. John Hay, who served as personal secretary to Lincoln and later as Secretary of State, well articulated the importance of the area west of the Washington Monument: "As I understand it, the place of honor is on the main axis of the [MacMillan] plan. Lincoln of all Americans next to Washington deserves this place of honor. He was of the immortals. You must not approach too close to the immortals. His monument should stand alone, remote from the common habitations of man, apart from the business and turmoil of the city; isolated, distinguished and serene." Lincoln gets this position because his life and words so clearly enunciated the broader significance of that great civil war. His memorial, fittingly, is not an arch of triumph, which was proposed, but a temple of unity and freedom, which are clearly celebrated in the speeches chiseled in the stone walls and in the murals above.
The practice of American democracy is a constant negotiation between unity and freedom. To the Lincoln statue's right, across the Tidal Basin, rests another temple of unity and freedom: Jefferson’s. The two temples constantly put forth the noble words, a philosophical anchor to the often rancorous debates within Congress and between Congress and the President. At the center of the architectural debate is the Washington Monument, around which the other buildings revolve in perpetual conversation.
Anything that gets between these five buildings must have something terribly important to say. It must do more than congratulate the nation for having won a war and thank its veterans in particular for having done the heaviest lifting. It must articulate, in the way the Lincoln Memorial does, not just the national, but the universal significance of this victory. This would be the case whatever the war. It is even more the case for World War II, which was an allied effort from start to finish. We fought the Civil War to save democracy as an appropriate form of government for a great power. Four score years later, we fought another war for the same reason, when democracy was even more threatened.
Of course, the debate over the meaning, not to mention the purposes and causes of World War II, will reverberate through chancelleries, universities, newspapers, bars and coffeehouses for centuries to come. Some see it as the defeat of fascism, or militarism, or Nazism. Some see it as the triumph of democracy over a much graver threat than the royalism that attempted to strangle infant American democracy in the crib. Some see it as the finest hour of the British Empire or the pivotal event of the American Century. Some combine these latter two views to proclaim World War II, Soviet participation notwithstanding, as the triumph of the English-speaking peoples, and Anglo-Saxon notions of government.
These views all merit consideration, but only one deserves a stone monument in the nation’s front yard: the triumph of democracy through collective security. It was not at all clear during the decade of the 1930s that democratic governments would survive the threat of totalitarian regimes of both the right and the left. At the beginning of the war, it was widely wondered -- quite justifiably so -- whether the world’s remaining democracies could work together to defeat a common foe. Thus World War II tested a proposition as profoundly as the Civil War did: whether nations conceived in liberty could long endure. Allied leaders, sobered by the near failure of this proposition, decided to found the United Nations before the war was even over, and no decent, sober person anywhere, wanted the United States to stay out of this League of Nations, Round Two.
Almost all political commentators agree that the United States of America is the world’s only superpower. It does America no good, however, to make this point too loudly or too often. There is considerable debate today, as there long has been and well should be, about unilateralism and multilateralism in American foreign policy. Whatever the merits of each, World War II was incontrovertibly a multilateral effort. The United States did not defeat fascism, militarism and Nazism by itself. It behooves us to clearly celebrate this fact in any national World War II Memorial, especially one in such a prominent place. The triumph of democracy through collective security should be the theme of this memorial. Our soldiers died not just for one nation free and interdependent, but a globe covered with nations free and interdependent. As after the Civil War, out of this struggle demanding allied unity should come a new birth of freedom. A World War II memorial in this place should clearly articulate this faith.
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 26, 2007
I spent a lot of time on the National Mall during this warm and almost rainless summer of 2007. Every day was a good day for bicycling around the city and the great central park at its heart. I did not particularly like The World War II Memorial when it replaced the old the Rainbow Pool, just off 17th Street directly west of the Washington Monument, several years ago.
Nonetheless I found myself visiting it often and finding that it gave rise to a lot of thought. The fountains are beautiful and the old Rainbow Pool certainly needed fixing up. It attracts a lot of visitors, including, touchingly, World War II veterans, increasingly frail, having their photographs taken with loved ones and the memorial as a backdrop. With the passing of time, the surrounding trees have gentled the vertical forms of the memorial into the environment and it does not look so shockingly new.
Nonetheless, this memorial has problems. The major problem dates back to the enabling legislation in 1993 that called for a memorial to the efforts of World War II veterans and the nation. Such a memorial would be appropriate for any number of sites in Washington, in or at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, near the Roosevelt Memorial, or some other site off the central axis of the Mall. The current site, which no one in 1993 even considered, cries out for a lot more than a veterans memorial.
The focus of a war memorial on this site, should not be on veterans, or the nation, or on the war itself, but on the overarching meaning and purpose of the Second World War. The focus of the Lincoln Memorial is not on the Civil War itself, and certainly not on its battlefields (the architectural focus of the World War II Memorial), which are well-preserved and memorialized elsewhere; but on Abraham Lincoln and his words, chiseled in stone, that articulate the meaning of that war for all people and generations to come.
No memorial can do justice to those who have sacrificed in war. Memorials are for the living. Memorials should instruct the living in the reasons for the sacrifice, inspiring us to live our lives in a way that honors those who died. Lincoln said at Gettysburg,
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they [those fallen in battle] did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
The National Mall is defined by the Capitol on the east, the Lincoln Memorial on the west and the Washington Monument in the middle. John Hay, who served as personal secretary to Lincoln and later as Secretary of State, well articulated the importance of the area west of the Washington Monument: "As I understand it, the place of honor is on the main axis of the [MacMillan] plan. Lincoln of all Americans next to Washington deserves this place of honor. He was of the immortals. You must not approach too close to the immortals. His monument should stand alone, remote from the common habitations of man, apart from the business and turmoil of the city; isolated, distinguished and serene." Lincoln gets this position because his life and words so clearly enunciated the broader significance of that great civil war. His memorial, fittingly, is not an arch of triumph, which was proposed, but a temple of unity and freedom, which are clearly celebrated in the speeches chiseled in the stone walls and in the murals above.
The practice of American democracy is a constant negotiation between unity and freedom. To the Lincoln statue's right, across the Tidal Basin, rests another temple of unity and freedom: Jefferson’s. The two temples constantly put forth the noble words, a philosophical anchor to the often rancorous debates within Congress and between Congress and the President. At the center of the architectural debate is the Washington Monument, around which the other buildings revolve in perpetual conversation.
Anything that gets between these five buildings must have something terribly important to say. It must do more than congratulate the nation for having won a war and thank its veterans in particular for having done the heaviest lifting. It must articulate, in the way the Lincoln Memorial does, not just the national, but the universal significance of this victory. This would be the case whatever the war. It is even more the case for World War II, which was an allied effort from start to finish. We fought the Civil War to save democracy as an appropriate form of government for a great power. Four score years later, we fought another war for the same reason, when democracy was even more threatened.
Of course, the debate over the meaning, not to mention the purposes and causes of World War II, will reverberate through chancelleries, universities, newspapers, bars and coffeehouses for centuries to come. Some see it as the defeat of fascism, or militarism, or Nazism. Some see it as the triumph of democracy over a much graver threat than the royalism that attempted to strangle infant American democracy in the crib. Some see it as the finest hour of the British Empire or the pivotal event of the American Century. Some combine these latter two views to proclaim World War II, Soviet participation notwithstanding, as the triumph of the English-speaking peoples, and Anglo-Saxon notions of government.
These views all merit consideration, but only one deserves a stone monument in the nation’s front yard: the triumph of democracy through collective security. It was not at all clear during the decade of the 1930s that democratic governments would survive the threat of totalitarian regimes of both the right and the left. At the beginning of the war, it was widely wondered -- quite justifiably so -- whether the world’s remaining democracies could work together to defeat a common foe. Thus World War II tested a proposition as profoundly as the Civil War did: whether nations conceived in liberty could long endure. Allied leaders, sobered by the near failure of this proposition, decided to found the United Nations before the war was even over, and no decent, sober person anywhere, wanted the United States to stay out of this League of Nations, Round Two.
Almost all political commentators agree that the United States of America is the world’s only superpower. It does America no good, however, to make this point too loudly or too often. There is considerable debate today, as there long has been and well should be, about unilateralism and multilateralism in American foreign policy. Whatever the merits of each, World War II was incontrovertibly a multilateral effort. The United States did not defeat fascism, militarism and Nazism by itself. It behooves us to clearly celebrate this fact in any national World War II Memorial, especially one in such a prominent place. The triumph of democracy through collective security should be the theme of this memorial. Our soldiers died not just for one nation free and interdependent, but a globe covered with nations free and interdependent. As after the Civil War, out of this struggle demanding allied unity should come a new birth of freedom. A World War II memorial in this place should clearly articulate this faith.
Washington Journal
In Search of a Sense of Place
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 20, 2007
It has been a dry summer in Washington. There may have been two inches of rain since May. Grass that has not been watered turned brown in early August. The humidity has generally been low by Washington standards, although, of course, there have been days when your skin felt like it had thousands of tiny insects dancing on it within minutes of stepping outside. Now with leaves slowly turning and still no rain, the weather reminds me of Califonia, where late summer fades imperceptibly into fall and fall seems like it will last forever. In Asia they call this monsoon weather: Dry, dry, dry. Finally it rains.
Yes, it has also been hot. It is always hot in Washington in the summer. This summer was about normal in that respect. But it has not rained. The grass on the National Mall is in desperate need of rain. I am told that there is no money in the National Park Service’s budget for watering.
Literature majors know that this is the background of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Even non-majors probably know that too much has been made of that poem already. Nonetheless, it has never been more apt. Weather is not the only dry phenomenon in Washington these days. Washington waits for a new president as anxiously as farmers await the rain; people here are just as surly as when the rain does not come and the crops are ruined. The rain, the actual, physical rain, will come a lot sooner than the change of government, probably before even the first primary election, which is still months off.
The Bush Presidency staggers on. Everyone, including Republicans, is sick of it. As in some species of ants, the main body is long since dead, but the stinger, the vaunted public relations team, keeps on fighting. Elsewhere, the whole political apparatus is afflicted with the dry heaves. Politicians keep opening their mouths to speak, but nothing comes out.
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
I have been reading David McCullough’s biography of President Truman, the unremarkable man who became FDR’s third vice-president after the charming and personable Henry Wallace became just a bit too loopy to be vice-president to an obviously ailing President Roosevelt. The unremarkable Truman became a remarkable president.
When he first arrived in Washington, as a senator, in 1935, he generally walked from his apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue to the Capitol (over five miles), arriving so early that he was issued a special key to get to his office. As President, he made momentous decisions. He was his own chief of staff. He was the last president to write his own speeches and the last with only a high school education. He reorganized the entire foreign policy apparatus of the government, combining the War and Navy Departments to make the Defense Department. His Secretaries of State, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were perhaps the best ever to hold the office. The Marshall Plan, which loaned or gave Europe billions of dollars when a billion was still a large number, has been characterized as one of the most unselfish acts ever undertaken by a government. It was also one of the wisest. Europe is free today because of it. Where would we be without it? Truman held 324 press conferences.
Harry Truman certainly waged the most remarkable election campaign for president in the history of the office. After being counted out by pundits and pollsters from beginning to end, he won the popular vote by over two million. His party won both houses of Congress by wide margins. Disregarding the polls, the people spoke. Democracy worked.
The often-overlooked fact of this storybook campaign is that a shift of less than 50,000 votes in Illinois and California would have given the election to his opponent, Thomas Dewey. This is something to ponder, for it is quite possible that the popular vote winner of this coming election in 2008 will lose the election. There is no telling at this point whether the disgruntled winner/loser will be a Republican or Democrat.
Let us assume that Hillary Clinton and Rudolf Giuliani, both of whom are intensely disliked by members of the opposite party, will be the nominees. It will certainly be a close, hard-fought election. How will the supporters of either of these candidates feel about winning the popular vote yet losing the election in the electoral college? It is not clear who will be more insufferable, as winner or loser, with such a result. George Bush won a contested election and has not had a popular presidency. Can we afford to do this again?
Let’s face it: the electoral college has long outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any to begin with. The primary system worked fairly well, for a while, but now it is time for it to go as well. It is high time for a complete federal election overhaul: one national primary day and abolishing the electoral college. Federal election standards, and funding, for all elections. I believe it is in the interest of both parties and the entire electorate to do this.
I know the argument for primaries: it gives at least a few voters the opportunity to see candidates up close and ask questions. But why should this privilege go to voters in the same states year after year? Further, I submit that the system no longer works to give lesser-known candidates a chance. The candidate with the most money and backing from party leaders usually wins, and that candidate has often been a second-rate candidate. We have had numerous chances for a fresh faces: Gary Hart in 1984 (four years before he self-destructed), Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean and John McCain in 2004 all would have been more interesting candidates than what we ultimately got. They ultimately were done in by superior funding, powerful backers and television. Bill Clinton is the notable exception. Can anyone even name whom he was running against in 1992?
So why bother with the charade? Either reform the primary system or let the party leaders and a few super-rich folks get together and choose the candidates in a beautiful, air-conditioned corporate retreat center (the proverbial smoke-filled room is long gone) in July and start the campaign right afterward. Save everyone a lot of time and trouble.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
Washington Journal
Richard Allen Hyde
October 20, 2007
It has been a dry summer in Washington. There may have been two inches of rain since May. Grass that has not been watered turned brown in early August. The humidity has generally been low by Washington standards, although, of course, there have been days when your skin felt like it had thousands of tiny insects dancing on it within minutes of stepping outside. Now with leaves slowly turning and still no rain, the weather reminds me of Califonia, where late summer fades imperceptibly into fall and fall seems like it will last forever. In Asia they call this monsoon weather: Dry, dry, dry. Finally it rains.
Yes, it has also been hot. It is always hot in Washington in the summer. This summer was about normal in that respect. But it has not rained. The grass on the National Mall is in desperate need of rain. I am told that there is no money in the National Park Service’s budget for watering.
Literature majors know that this is the background of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland. Even non-majors probably know that too much has been made of that poem already. Nonetheless, it has never been more apt. Weather is not the only dry phenomenon in Washington these days. Washington waits for a new president as anxiously as farmers await the rain; people here are just as surly as when the rain does not come and the crops are ruined. The rain, the actual, physical rain, will come a lot sooner than the change of government, probably before even the first primary election, which is still months off.
The Bush Presidency staggers on. Everyone, including Republicans, is sick of it. As in some species of ants, the main body is long since dead, but the stinger, the vaunted public relations team, keeps on fighting. Elsewhere, the whole political apparatus is afflicted with the dry heaves. Politicians keep opening their mouths to speak, but nothing comes out.
Yet unselfish acts occasionally take place in this city. The Bush administration announced stronger sanctions against and froze the assets of the weird generals who run Burma. President and members of Congress warmly welcomed the Dalai Lama and gave him a medal, which left the Chinese government fuming. Acts like this remind us that freedom is still the name of the game in Washington, and throughout America. Our government, like all government, everywhere, makes compromises. Likewise, it makes clear occasionally what it ultimately values. In this country, it’s freedom.
I have been reading David McCullough’s biography of President Truman, the unremarkable man who became FDR’s third vice-president after the charming and personable Henry Wallace became just a bit too loopy to be vice-president to an obviously ailing President Roosevelt. The unremarkable Truman became a remarkable president.
When he first arrived in Washington, as a senator, in 1935, he generally walked from his apartment on upper Connecticut Avenue to the Capitol (over five miles), arriving so early that he was issued a special key to get to his office. As President, he made momentous decisions. He was his own chief of staff. He was the last president to write his own speeches and the last with only a high school education. He reorganized the entire foreign policy apparatus of the government, combining the War and Navy Departments to make the Defense Department. His Secretaries of State, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were perhaps the best ever to hold the office. The Marshall Plan, which loaned or gave Europe billions of dollars when a billion was still a large number, has been characterized as one of the most unselfish acts ever undertaken by a government. It was also one of the wisest. Europe is free today because of it. Where would we be without it? Truman held 324 press conferences.
Harry Truman certainly waged the most remarkable election campaign for president in the history of the office. After being counted out by pundits and pollsters from beginning to end, he won the popular vote by over two million. His party won both houses of Congress by wide margins. Disregarding the polls, the people spoke. Democracy worked.
The often-overlooked fact of this storybook campaign is that a shift of less than 50,000 votes in Illinois and California would have given the election to his opponent, Thomas Dewey. This is something to ponder, for it is quite possible that the popular vote winner of this coming election in 2008 will lose the election. There is no telling at this point whether the disgruntled winner/loser will be a Republican or Democrat.
Let us assume that Hillary Clinton and Rudolf Giuliani, both of whom are intensely disliked by members of the opposite party, will be the nominees. It will certainly be a close, hard-fought election. How will the supporters of either of these candidates feel about winning the popular vote yet losing the election in the electoral college? It is not clear who will be more insufferable, as winner or loser, with such a result. George Bush won a contested election and has not had a popular presidency. Can we afford to do this again?
Let’s face it: the electoral college has long outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any to begin with. The primary system worked fairly well, for a while, but now it is time for it to go as well. It is high time for a complete federal election overhaul: one national primary day and abolishing the electoral college. Federal election standards, and funding, for all elections. I believe it is in the interest of both parties and the entire electorate to do this.
I know the argument for primaries: it gives at least a few voters the opportunity to see candidates up close and ask questions. But why should this privilege go to voters in the same states year after year? Further, I submit that the system no longer works to give lesser-known candidates a chance. The candidate with the most money and backing from party leaders usually wins, and that candidate has often been a second-rate candidate. We have had numerous chances for a fresh faces: Gary Hart in 1984 (four years before he self-destructed), Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean and John McCain in 2004 all would have been more interesting candidates than what we ultimately got. They ultimately were done in by superior funding, powerful backers and television. Bill Clinton is the notable exception. Can anyone even name whom he was running against in 1992?
So why bother with the charade? Either reform the primary system or let the party leaders and a few super-rich folks get together and choose the candidates in a beautiful, air-conditioned corporate retreat center (the proverbial smoke-filled room is long gone) in July and start the campaign right afterward. Save everyone a lot of time and trouble.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
In Search of a Sense of Place. July 10, 2007.
In Search of a Sense of Place
RAH from Washington
July 10, 2007
Martin Luther, American.
Martin Luther was one of the greats, whose preaching and writing has made a huge impression on the United States of America.
No, I did not leave off the last name. Martin Luther King indeed had a great impact on America, but it is his namesake that inspires this particular meditation on the city of Washington and the United States of America this Fourth of July week.
What makes America America? Or, generally, what makes a place a place?
Significant geography, geology, physical characteristics: location, location, location.
Also significant historical events, important people, people in general; what people do here and have done here. What people think about here.
A book has come out comparing the United States and its capital to Rome. The history and thought of Greece, Rome, Israel and Europe all have exerted their influence on the United States. This influence is easily discovered, not to mention that of Africa, Asia and countless other histories and thought-forms. America is a melting pot, a salad-bowl, a crucible. And, unquestionably, America is a free country.
Today let me give Luther his due. Without him, there would be no United States, or Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King speaking about freedom from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Luther’s understanding of Freedom and Love, in brief, are what transformed the medieval world and more than any other ideas, or forces, led to all of us in America being here and now, July of 2007, with a capital on the banks of the Potomac. Let me trace this trajectory by means of a picture and a story.
Two years ago I was asked to lecture at the State Department School of Foreign Service on the history of religion in America because our press and cultural affairs officers were getting a lot of questions on this topic. I could think of no better way to begin than by showing the cover of the paperback edition of Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness. The cover shows a parting of the clouds and a pilgrim in classic garb in the palm of God’s hand. It is a simple, crude, even childlike, yet almost breathtaking drawing for it well conveys a sense of America as God’s chosen land and Americans as God’s chosen people.
In the introduction to the book, Miller tells how he got interested in the New England Mind and its continuing influence on America and the world: “To bring into conjunction a minute event in the history of historiography with a great one: it was given to Edward Gibbon to sit disconsolate amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome, and to have thrust upon him the ‘laborious work ‘of The Decline and Fall while listening to barefooted friars chanting responses in the former temple of Jupiter.”
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) served in the British Army and was in Rome around the time of what the Europeans call the Seven Years and Americans call the French and Indian War (1760-something). After this experience he wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in which, in short, he blamed Christianity for the fall of the Rome. As Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the best and the brightest became leaders of the church rather than going into the military or into the government and the ancient Roman virtues and martial spirit fell away, or so he argued.
“It was given to me,” continues Miller, “equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States, while supervising, in that barbaric tropic, the unloading of drums of case oil flowing out of the inexhaustible wilderness of America. . . . What I believe caught my imagination, among the fuel drums, was a realization of the uniqueness of the American experience; even then I could dimly make out the portent for the future of the world, looking upon these tangible symbols of the republic’s appalling power. I could see no way of coping with the problem except by going to the beginning. . . . The beginning I sought was inevitably – being located in the 17th century – theological.”
He wrote this in 1956 of an experience that had taken place thirty years earlier, in 1926. There is much irony, of which Miller was certainly aware, in this juxtaposition of Gibbon blaming Christianity for the fall of Rome and Miller, a self-avowed atheist, crediting Christianity for the rise of America, for providing the innermost propulsion for the Republic’s appalling power.
What was the result of Perry Miller’s quest? What did provide the innermost propulsion? I believe the answer in brief is these two words, much meditated upon by Paul, Luther, Calvin and the Reformers, and ultimately Abraham Lincoln and every living American: freedom and love, especially freedom. The quest for freedom is what America has been about from the very beginning and it is what Christianity was about from the very beginning. I know this sounds rather audacious, but try it on for size.
Admittedly, Jesus did not use the word “freedom” very much, just twice, once in Matthew and once in John, for five uses of the Greek word “eleutheros” altogether. “Eleutheros,” by the way, has become a botanical term which reveals the meaning of this word: It means, simply, “wild, “ as in eleuthero ginseng, wild ginseng, which grows all over the northeastern United States. It’s the best ginseng root in the world, I might add.
But it is no exaggeration to say that freedom was of utmost importance for Paul. Paul uses the word “freedom” in his writings over twenty times and it is a key concept in his letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. In Paul’s understanding Jesus sets us free from sin, free from the fear of death, free from death itself. If Paul were here to be questioned on the matter he might say that Jesus did not talk about freedom much, but He WAS freedom, and love, and a lot of other qualities besides. He embodied freedom and love and made it possible for us to exercise both. There is some speculation that his preaching about freedom is what landed Paul in jail and eventually got him executed. For freedom has not always and everywhere been viewed as positively as we Americans do. Freedom is often confused with license and this confusion can lead to dangerous consequences.
To go back to the beginning, here is what Paul wrote to the Galatians:
Galatians 5: 1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
This talk of freedom, and love, did not languish in the Bible unnoticed, but it really achieved salience when a young German monk named Martin Luther studied the letters of Paul intensively and extensively and based his rebellion against the papacy upon it. Quite early in his tumultuous life as a reformer, in the tumultuous year of 1520, Luther penned a letter to Pope entitled:
On the Freedom of a Christian - Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen
In this letter, Luther claimed that as fully forgiven children of God, Christians are no longer compelled to keep God's law, the Old Testament law, or any law; however, they freely and willingly serve God and their neighbors. The core meaning of the Gospel, according to Luther is that Christians are free to love.
The exact two sentences from the German are:
A Christian is a free lord over all things, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all things, subject to all.
This work is very forcefully written (in German; the Latin is surprisingly different) in paragraphs beginning: Firstly. Secondly. Thirdly. And so on, paragraph after paragraph until, finally, ‘Thirtiethly.’ No introduction, no conclusion. It ends with ‘Amen.’ You can imagine Luther’s fist banging on the lectern as he makes his points, one after the other. He also attached to this letter a clever, cheeky, outrageous introduction and, without waiting for a reply – I don’t think he expected one - printed thousands of copies in both Latin and German. It sold like hotcakes. Then, basically, he had to run for his life.
This act – Luther defining Christians as free persons bound to each other by love, not by fear of a sovereign - was the beginning of the modern understanding of human beings as citizens, not subjects. It was rightly considered revolutionary in its time and of course it was and is, still revolutionary, audacious.
Freedom and love, love of freedom, being free to love, are what have provided the innermost propulsion to these United States and the American people. This spirit of reformation transmitted itself through Calvin to the New England Puritans and it soaked into the American soil and it has born a rich harvest with astounding consequences, from our great Civil War to barrels of American oil being unloaded in the Congo in 1926, to Americans landing on beaches from Normandy to Guadalcanal, to American culture recognized, for good or ill, as friend or foe, throughout the world we live in.
This spirit of reformation has been articulated by many Americans, but by no one so well as America’s answer to Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln. It is a commonplace of religious studies that America has produced a lot of religion but not many great theologians, that religion has thrived in America while theology has gone bankrupt. This statement, while clever, is seen as less true when you understand that America’s greatest theologian is disguised as America’s greatest president.
Now I do not claim that Lincoln read Luther – he probably didn’t. But he did read the Bible assiduously, especially as the Civil War dragged on. And while he never joined a church, he did attend one throughout the war, quite regularly, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church downtown. I do claim that this Reformation understanding of freedom and love had simply soaked into American culture at the time and emerged in Lincoln’s speeches with astounding clarity and power.
At Gettysburg in November of 1863 Lincoln concluded his two minute address with a one-paragraph peroration:
“It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – through love be servants of one another - - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . .”
After a terrible civil war, he promised us a new birth of freedom.
In so doing he reiterated what he had already said in his Second Message to Congress in December of 1862:
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.”
And what he already said in an extemporaneous speech he gave on February 21, 1861 to a crowd gathered at Independence Hall, Philadelphia:
“I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance . . . . “
Freedom for Lincoln and I believe for Americans in general, is somewhat akin to the Hebrew notion of Shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of war or conflict, but the presence of something precious and essential for human life. Likewise freedom is not just the absence of constraints, but the presence of human dignity, a quality that we treasure for ourselves and recommend to all people. Freedom is the prerequisite virtue for all other virtues. Lincoln and so may other Americans essentially secularized the concept of Christian freedom and made it the law of the land and the cornerstone of the American way.
How appropriate then MARTIN LUTHER King arose not long ago to claim freedom for all Americans, his voice ringing like the Liberty Bell from the steps of Lincoln’s Memorial, proclaiming freedom throughout the land.
The short story of American history is that America fights for freedom. Our war memorials all over Washington demonstrate this. Let me just mention one to get us up to date, the most recent one, the World War II Memorial on 17th St. at the heart of the National Mall.
In my opinion this World War II Memorial makes too many statements, yet it is starting to blend into the site and the fountains are quite beautiful. Amidst a number of statements engraved on the walls, we find one that is almost spine-chilling in its resonance:
“We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”
The author of this terse and tough-minded quotation is none other than George C. Marshall. If we remember that this General Marshall was also the author of the Marshall Plan, we get a sense of what freedom means in America. Freedom is not just absence of conflict or absence of foreign control, but the presence of well-being. Marshall recognized that if we did not help Europe economically, Europe would not remain free.
We cannot read his statement now without being stunned into philosophy, especially if we walk along the reflecting pool to ponder the memorials to Korean and Vietnam War veterans, or read the newspaper. American power is not overwhelming. The wilderness of America is not inexhaustible.
We do not know how the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will turn out. However they do, I think it important to remember at the beginning of this summer that America, the Idea of America and the ideals of America will remain strong. America will remain a free country and we will remain a free people; and a free people working together may not always be overwhelming but are certainly unconquerable; and the love of God will remain inexhaustible.
It was Martin Luther who brought these ideas from Saint Paul to the fore: for freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore in freedom, and with freedom, love.
Martin Luther, American. America would be a far different place without him.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
RAH from Washington
July 10, 2007
Martin Luther, American.
Martin Luther was one of the greats, whose preaching and writing has made a huge impression on the United States of America.
No, I did not leave off the last name. Martin Luther King indeed had a great impact on America, but it is his namesake that inspires this particular meditation on the city of Washington and the United States of America this Fourth of July week.
What makes America America? Or, generally, what makes a place a place?
Significant geography, geology, physical characteristics: location, location, location.
Also significant historical events, important people, people in general; what people do here and have done here. What people think about here.
A book has come out comparing the United States and its capital to Rome. The history and thought of Greece, Rome, Israel and Europe all have exerted their influence on the United States. This influence is easily discovered, not to mention that of Africa, Asia and countless other histories and thought-forms. America is a melting pot, a salad-bowl, a crucible. And, unquestionably, America is a free country.
Today let me give Luther his due. Without him, there would be no United States, or Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King speaking about freedom from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Luther’s understanding of Freedom and Love, in brief, are what transformed the medieval world and more than any other ideas, or forces, led to all of us in America being here and now, July of 2007, with a capital on the banks of the Potomac. Let me trace this trajectory by means of a picture and a story.
Two years ago I was asked to lecture at the State Department School of Foreign Service on the history of religion in America because our press and cultural affairs officers were getting a lot of questions on this topic. I could think of no better way to begin than by showing the cover of the paperback edition of Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness. The cover shows a parting of the clouds and a pilgrim in classic garb in the palm of God’s hand. It is a simple, crude, even childlike, yet almost breathtaking drawing for it well conveys a sense of America as God’s chosen land and Americans as God’s chosen people.
In the introduction to the book, Miller tells how he got interested in the New England Mind and its continuing influence on America and the world: “To bring into conjunction a minute event in the history of historiography with a great one: it was given to Edward Gibbon to sit disconsolate amid the ruins of the Capitol at Rome, and to have thrust upon him the ‘laborious work ‘of The Decline and Fall while listening to barefooted friars chanting responses in the former temple of Jupiter.”
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) served in the British Army and was in Rome around the time of what the Europeans call the Seven Years and Americans call the French and Indian War (1760-something). After this experience he wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in which, in short, he blamed Christianity for the fall of the Rome. As Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the best and the brightest became leaders of the church rather than going into the military or into the government and the ancient Roman virtues and martial spirit fell away, or so he argued.
“It was given to me,” continues Miller, “equally disconsolate on the edge of a jungle of central Africa, to have thrust upon me the mission of expounding what I took to be the innermost propulsion of the United States, while supervising, in that barbaric tropic, the unloading of drums of case oil flowing out of the inexhaustible wilderness of America. . . . What I believe caught my imagination, among the fuel drums, was a realization of the uniqueness of the American experience; even then I could dimly make out the portent for the future of the world, looking upon these tangible symbols of the republic’s appalling power. I could see no way of coping with the problem except by going to the beginning. . . . The beginning I sought was inevitably – being located in the 17th century – theological.”
He wrote this in 1956 of an experience that had taken place thirty years earlier, in 1926. There is much irony, of which Miller was certainly aware, in this juxtaposition of Gibbon blaming Christianity for the fall of Rome and Miller, a self-avowed atheist, crediting Christianity for the rise of America, for providing the innermost propulsion for the Republic’s appalling power.
What was the result of Perry Miller’s quest? What did provide the innermost propulsion? I believe the answer in brief is these two words, much meditated upon by Paul, Luther, Calvin and the Reformers, and ultimately Abraham Lincoln and every living American: freedom and love, especially freedom. The quest for freedom is what America has been about from the very beginning and it is what Christianity was about from the very beginning. I know this sounds rather audacious, but try it on for size.
Admittedly, Jesus did not use the word “freedom” very much, just twice, once in Matthew and once in John, for five uses of the Greek word “eleutheros” altogether. “Eleutheros,” by the way, has become a botanical term which reveals the meaning of this word: It means, simply, “wild, “ as in eleuthero ginseng, wild ginseng, which grows all over the northeastern United States. It’s the best ginseng root in the world, I might add.
But it is no exaggeration to say that freedom was of utmost importance for Paul. Paul uses the word “freedom” in his writings over twenty times and it is a key concept in his letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians. In Paul’s understanding Jesus sets us free from sin, free from the fear of death, free from death itself. If Paul were here to be questioned on the matter he might say that Jesus did not talk about freedom much, but He WAS freedom, and love, and a lot of other qualities besides. He embodied freedom and love and made it possible for us to exercise both. There is some speculation that his preaching about freedom is what landed Paul in jail and eventually got him executed. For freedom has not always and everywhere been viewed as positively as we Americans do. Freedom is often confused with license and this confusion can lead to dangerous consequences.
To go back to the beginning, here is what Paul wrote to the Galatians:
Galatians 5: 1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
This talk of freedom, and love, did not languish in the Bible unnoticed, but it really achieved salience when a young German monk named Martin Luther studied the letters of Paul intensively and extensively and based his rebellion against the papacy upon it. Quite early in his tumultuous life as a reformer, in the tumultuous year of 1520, Luther penned a letter to Pope entitled:
On the Freedom of a Christian - Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen
In this letter, Luther claimed that as fully forgiven children of God, Christians are no longer compelled to keep God's law, the Old Testament law, or any law; however, they freely and willingly serve God and their neighbors. The core meaning of the Gospel, according to Luther is that Christians are free to love.
The exact two sentences from the German are:
A Christian is a free lord over all things, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all things, subject to all.
This work is very forcefully written (in German; the Latin is surprisingly different) in paragraphs beginning: Firstly. Secondly. Thirdly. And so on, paragraph after paragraph until, finally, ‘Thirtiethly.’ No introduction, no conclusion. It ends with ‘Amen.’ You can imagine Luther’s fist banging on the lectern as he makes his points, one after the other. He also attached to this letter a clever, cheeky, outrageous introduction and, without waiting for a reply – I don’t think he expected one - printed thousands of copies in both Latin and German. It sold like hotcakes. Then, basically, he had to run for his life.
This act – Luther defining Christians as free persons bound to each other by love, not by fear of a sovereign - was the beginning of the modern understanding of human beings as citizens, not subjects. It was rightly considered revolutionary in its time and of course it was and is, still revolutionary, audacious.
Freedom and love, love of freedom, being free to love, are what have provided the innermost propulsion to these United States and the American people. This spirit of reformation transmitted itself through Calvin to the New England Puritans and it soaked into the American soil and it has born a rich harvest with astounding consequences, from our great Civil War to barrels of American oil being unloaded in the Congo in 1926, to Americans landing on beaches from Normandy to Guadalcanal, to American culture recognized, for good or ill, as friend or foe, throughout the world we live in.
This spirit of reformation has been articulated by many Americans, but by no one so well as America’s answer to Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln. It is a commonplace of religious studies that America has produced a lot of religion but not many great theologians, that religion has thrived in America while theology has gone bankrupt. This statement, while clever, is seen as less true when you understand that America’s greatest theologian is disguised as America’s greatest president.
Now I do not claim that Lincoln read Luther – he probably didn’t. But he did read the Bible assiduously, especially as the Civil War dragged on. And while he never joined a church, he did attend one throughout the war, quite regularly, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church downtown. I do claim that this Reformation understanding of freedom and love had simply soaked into American culture at the time and emerged in Lincoln’s speeches with astounding clarity and power.
At Gettysburg in November of 1863 Lincoln concluded his two minute address with a one-paragraph peroration:
“It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – through love be servants of one another - - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom . . .”
After a terrible civil war, he promised us a new birth of freedom.
In so doing he reiterated what he had already said in his Second Message to Congress in December of 1862:
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.”
And what he already said in an extemporaneous speech he gave on February 21, 1861 to a crowd gathered at Independence Hall, Philadelphia:
“I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance . . . . “
Freedom for Lincoln and I believe for Americans in general, is somewhat akin to the Hebrew notion of Shalom. Shalom is not just the absence of war or conflict, but the presence of something precious and essential for human life. Likewise freedom is not just the absence of constraints, but the presence of human dignity, a quality that we treasure for ourselves and recommend to all people. Freedom is the prerequisite virtue for all other virtues. Lincoln and so may other Americans essentially secularized the concept of Christian freedom and made it the law of the land and the cornerstone of the American way.
How appropriate then MARTIN LUTHER King arose not long ago to claim freedom for all Americans, his voice ringing like the Liberty Bell from the steps of Lincoln’s Memorial, proclaiming freedom throughout the land.
The short story of American history is that America fights for freedom. Our war memorials all over Washington demonstrate this. Let me just mention one to get us up to date, the most recent one, the World War II Memorial on 17th St. at the heart of the National Mall.
In my opinion this World War II Memorial makes too many statements, yet it is starting to blend into the site and the fountains are quite beautiful. Amidst a number of statements engraved on the walls, we find one that is almost spine-chilling in its resonance:
“We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other.”
The author of this terse and tough-minded quotation is none other than George C. Marshall. If we remember that this General Marshall was also the author of the Marshall Plan, we get a sense of what freedom means in America. Freedom is not just absence of conflict or absence of foreign control, but the presence of well-being. Marshall recognized that if we did not help Europe economically, Europe would not remain free.
We cannot read his statement now without being stunned into philosophy, especially if we walk along the reflecting pool to ponder the memorials to Korean and Vietnam War veterans, or read the newspaper. American power is not overwhelming. The wilderness of America is not inexhaustible.
We do not know how the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will turn out. However they do, I think it important to remember at the beginning of this summer that America, the Idea of America and the ideals of America will remain strong. America will remain a free country and we will remain a free people; and a free people working together may not always be overwhelming but are certainly unconquerable; and the love of God will remain inexhaustible.
It was Martin Luther who brought these ideas from Saint Paul to the fore: for freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore in freedom, and with freedom, love.
Martin Luther, American. America would be a far different place without him.
Copyright, 2007
Richard Allen Hyde
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