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Snippets

I attended a Quaker-style meeting about racial justice. I went believing that I need to know my prejudices to have a chance of overcoming them. The meeting was a personal success. As soon as someone started to read a poem, I realized that I am instinctively intolerant of poetry. Having confronted this inner demon, I have resolved to work on lessening my poetic prejudice. Suggestions?

“It seemed preposterous that there were still poets out there among us.” Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands.

Whoever said that slow and steady wins the race never attended a track meet.

Often after a natural calamity—hurricane, tornado, earthquake, fire—a person who pretends to believe in God’s love says that the devastation has been the Lord’s judgment on the United States, usually because we have not punished some people for the “sin” of loving someone of their sex. Now there have been outbreaks of Covid-19 after people have congregated in churches. How now should we interpret God’s judgment?

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” Jonathan Swift.

          The Christian radio station gave a few brief Bible readings, although where the sacred words left off and commentary began was not always clear. It also presented short inspirational stories and exhortations. Mostly, however, it played music, and mostly that music fell into the rock category. I remembered back to when rock ‘n roll started. (Alas, I am old enough to remember when “Rocket 88,” Bill Haley, and Elvis Aron were all new.) I recalled how ministers smashed 45s saying that rock was music of the devil. This made me think about how powerful He is. In only the relatively short span of my lifetime, He had transformed a genre that would send me to eternal damnation into music that was now for the devout. Hallelujah!

“It is the test of a good religion whether you make a joke about it.” G.K. Chesterton.

I parked downtown the other day at a parking meter. I fumbled for coins but found that there was unexpired time—long enough for me to complete my errand–on the meter. It was not a huge joy, but it did make me feel a bit better. Metered parking, however, increasingly requires us to go to one of those machines and buy a slip with a time printed on it to put on the car’s dashboard. This wipes out that possibility of finding unexpired time on a meter. Those slip machines deprive us of a good feeling, minor though it is. Or does anyone, when leaving a parking place, give the slip with time remaining on it to someone pulling into a spot? If someone handed me such a slip, it would produce joy and effusions of thankfulness. Even so, I have never handed my unexpired slip to another driver.

Will a new generation know what “Rita the Meter Maid” is about?

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The Barista Is Not an Essential Worker (concluded)

As models of coffeemakers, kinds of beans, and grinders proliferated (I now own a burr grinder. It, some coffee advisor assured me, would produce a revelatory improvement in coffee taste. Its price certainly did something to my senses, but I am not sure I can tell the difference in the resulting coffee from that produced by my old-style blade grinders. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I once fantasized about buying coffee bean roasting equipment, but good sense and a lack of money won out.), it became easier and easier to make good coffee.

Then along came Starbucks. I did not understand its popularity. One of the joys of coffee is its variety of tastes and aromas, but Starbucks and its clones overwhelmingly served espresso-based drinks. Espresso is a desirable form of coffee, and it can be hard to make at home even with some of the incredibly expensive machines on the market. There is some justification for going to a coffee shop to get it, but many I knew went to Starbucks every day, and this was their only form of coffee. They were missing out on all the possibilities coffee has to offer. They, however, felt sophisticated drinking espresso just like the French or Italians.

When it comes to food and beverages, there is much to admire in France and Italy. Their coffee, however, is not one of those things. As far as I can tell, the only coffee in those countries is espresso in one form or another. I realize that there can be better or worse espresso, but all good espresso tastes relatively the same. The French and Italians are missing out on a whole world of coffee roasts, tastes, and aromas. It would be as if the French only limited themselves to brie and the Italians gorgonzola. Great cheeses, but there are a myriad of other possibilities. The French and Italians may be knowing about many foodstuffs, but coffee is not one of them. If you want to gain sophistication about coffee, go to Denmark, Peru, Costa Rica, Vienna, Stockholm, or Tanzania.

But I do have to give France and Italy some respect on the coffee front. At their espresso places they serve the beverage in some sort of porcelain cup. It may not be the finest bone China—coffee should not be served that way anyway—but it is at least some sort of real cup. New York has always had many places to get a respectable cup of coffee—diners, delis, sidewalk carts. If you go into a place where you could sit, coffee comes in a porcelain cup not in a paper or Styrofoam container, and that is at it should be. But at Starbucks, always in a paper container, and while that may be necessary for coffee to go, paper is not the desirable way to drink coffee. The fabled, humble Greek diner offering a real cup to those sitting in a booth is more sophisticated than Starbucks on this point.

If I don’t make my own coffee in New York, there is another reason to avoid Starbucks to get the caffeine. Any New York deli or cart strives to serve a cup in less than a New York minute. If I want coffee, I want and expect it now. Starbucks, however, operates on what I take to be a Seattle minute, which is longer than sixty seconds. I have to wait and wait for the coffee. This should not be acceptable to any self-respecting New Yorker.

But the major issue with Starbucks is cost. I can make good, often excellent, coffee for loose change, and I can get respectable coffee from many places for a buck and some coins. Not at Starbucks. Their coffee requires breaking out a five or ten dollar bill or plastic. I knew people before the pandemic who first thing in the morning went to Starbucks and brought a venti skimmed latte back to their apartment. I doubted their wisdom as I mentally calculated their annual coffee expenditure, but I assumed that these people had money to waste.

My law students walking into class with a too large Starbucks cup were a different matter. They were financing their education with hefty loans and most would graduate with debt well into six figures. (The harm of law student debt is a reason why I left the profession earlier than I had once thought that I would, but that is a story for another day.) Perhaps because their debt was so large, buying over-expensive coffee did not seem like a big deal, but when they strolled to their seats with a five-dollar beverage in their hand, I wondered about their priorities and values.

But now I read that the pandemic has changed coffee habits. Some who brought back Starbucks to their homes every morning have realized that they could invest $500 or more in an espresso maker and recoup their money in months by making their own lattes instead of trudging to the barista and back. And perhaps they also realized that coffee should be drunk out of a real cup. (I stayed in a Paris apartment a few years back that was outfitted with a Nespresso machine, which I learned made quite good espresso. I bought one–which while not cheap did not cost hundreds of dollars–when I returned, and I use it occasionally—I still want a variety of coffee tastes and aromas–for a quite good lungo.) Apparently, many others have learned that they have the skills to make acceptable coffee at a reasonable cost and that there is a world of possible tastes that can be explored inexpensively. Perhaps, as a result, Covid-19 will be a boost to coffee growers around the world. That’s not a reason to praise the pandemic, but it would be one tiny bright spot in an otherwise dark time.

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The Barista is Not an Essential Worker

          Covid may affect coffee customs. Apparently many people realize that they can live without Starbucks. They have learned that not-difficult task of making coffee.

I have been into Starbucks or one of its clones a few times, but not often. This is not because I don’t drink coffee. I am addicted to it, and I don’t feel right until I have copious amounts each morning. (Before some medical procedures, I have been told not to eat or drink anything after midnight. Most often abstaining from food has not been a big deal, but the lack of coffee takes a toll. As I await the knife, needle, or probe, I have been asked by attending medical personnel, “How are you feeling?” I don’t know if this is just politeness or a serious inquiry, but it is senseless. I want to snap back but try hard not to, “I am jumpy, jittery, and a bit headachy and queasy. How do you expect I feel without my two or three mugs of coffee?”) I like coffee; I desire coffee; I want coffee; I need coffee. It just doesn’t come from Starbucks.

          I presume I tasted coffee before I went to college, but I don’t remember it. However, a month or two into my freshman year (oops: Old style and politically incorrect—first year), I was drinking coffee. Then it was not so much a morning drink but was instead ingested while studying in the late afternoons or early evening to stave off the drowsies. Perhaps I got coffee at the student union or some other place on campus, but as I often studied in my room, I soon bought a percolator, the way to make coffee in those distant days.  I don’t remember what coffee I bought or where I bought it, but I do know that when the liquid in the pot got cold, I plugged the machine back in. Now the sensible thing would have been to clean out the basket that held the grounds before the reheating, but I did not do that until the pot was empty. The coffee got repercolated often more than once. The coffee became more sludge-like each time this happened which could be several times in a day. I assume that I started out drinking this concoction with sugar and milk, but if so, I quickly gave them up as unnecessarily difficult to keep in the room. Unsweetened black it was then and still is.

          If I could drink the resultant tar, my taste buds for coffee could not have been very refined, but at some point, I realized that some cups of coffee tasted better than others. As with other of my preoccupations, I became obsessed with coffee after I moved to New York City. This was fueled with an overheard conversation at the unlikely place of the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was doing work there, and while it was the summer of the Pentagon Papers, not all of the talk was about civil liberties. Strong opinions were common on many topics so it was not completely surprising that two very bright attorneys were stridently discussing the merits of making coffee by percolating or by dripping. A shocking conversation to these ears. There were other ways to make coffee besides percolation? Although I had nothing to add to the conversation, I listened intently, and like the good lawyer and civil libertarian I wanted to be, I weighed the arguments and evidence. I concluded that the drip man had the better of it.

          Ezra Pound clinched the move to drip coffee. I then had a fascination with the poet, editor, and traitor and read much about him. For one of the many books I have not written, I had thought about exploring whether his broadcasts from Italy during World War II, for which he was prosecuted, should have been protected by the First Amendment. I registered information about his career and opinions, but a personal detail struck me: Pound started each day be dripping boiling water over coffee grounds held by a cloth suspended above a coffee cup. I thought it made perfect sense to have a morning ritual making coffee. It would suit me better than prayers. (My fascination with Pound had an important limitation. I did not study and try to make sense of his Cantos. I am not crazy and have stayed out of St. Elizabeth’s.)

          I adapted Pound. First thing each morning while water was heating, I put a scoop of coffee in a one cup filter inside a holder and placed it over a coffee mug. When the water boiled, the gas was turned off and a tablespoon of water was sprinkled over the coffee. It was important, I have been reliably told, to let the coffee “bloom” to bring out all subtleties and aromas. Then a mug’s worth of hot water went into the filter and in a few moments, I had my beverage. A second or third cup would be prepared in the same way. Every sip, from first to last, was hot, fresh coffee.

          Although this was the right way to make coffee, I quickly learned that the kind of coffee mattered. In those distant days, the national commercial brands were the only coffee choices in grocery stores, but I found that a few specialty stores sold something different—whole beans from all over the world. The first place I started buying non-grocery coffee was a few blocks away from my office across from City Hall in the neighborhood then nameless but now called Tribeca. The area was not then a luxury residential neighborhood but a place for small industries. One of those concerns roasted coffee beans; I am not sure of its name, but Simpson’s comes to mind. The business must have been selling in bulk to restaurants and other commercial establishments, but it would sell a pound or two of freshly roasted coffee to anyone who was willing to trek up to the fourth floor of the loft building. I did and found a few desks hidden among piles of burlap bags of coffee beans with the incredible smell of roasting coffee permeating everything. It was then I started purchasing freshly roasted beans.

The coffee was good, but as I remember there were only a few kinds. Then I learned that there were specialty stores and roasters in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn– McNulty’s, Schapira’s, Porto Rico, and Damico’s—with multitudes of coffees. There were roasts of different darknesses that made the resulting brews taste different. I learned that coffee came in an array of beans and that arabica produced a different taste from peaberry. Coffee came from Africa, South America, Central America, Indonesia, the West Indies, Hawaii, and they all tasted different. Coffee grown at high altitude would taste different from something planted at sea level. And I learned that such beans could be mixed into an almost infinite number of differently tasting blends. I learned that some coffees were rarer than others and their prices could vary sharply.

I found that making good coffee was within my capabilities. I found that coffee tastes had many possibilities. And when I made it, compared to many other sensations, it cost me comparatively little. New coffee equipment became available. Eventually, even though I still think it is the best way to make coffee, I gave up the one-cup-at-a-time method and bought a drip coffeemaker for home, for travel, and for the office. I never amortized the cost, but two or three daily mugs (a cup and saucer never suited me) cost me less than a dollar a day, and maybe only quarter of that.

(concluded July 17)

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Snippets

The news article was about Disneyland opening again. The actors’ union that represents the performers in the various productions around the theme park is concerned about the adequacy of the safety procedures. Not unusual news these days, but what caught my eye was the information that those who walk about the grounds in the regalia of Disney characters are not represented by the actors’ union. Instead, they are represented by the Teamsters. That made me pause. I wondered: Do Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or perhaps Goofy know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried?

The headline on a right-wing website said: “At least 20 shot, 7 killed in 24 hours in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago.” I wonder if that site every says, “45 people have been murdered every day in Trump’s America.”

The billboard urged me to worship at the nearby Most Holy Trinity Church. I wondered if there were a Lesser Holy Trinity Church or a Non-Holy Trinity Church.

“Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.” John Banville, The Sea.

While waiting to play tennis, Boris and I could hear his wife and her companions a few courts over. “Covid” was said more than once, which was not surprising since Roseanne is an M.D./Ph.D. who works for a drug company that makes vaccines. Boris said, “Poor Roseanne. She can’t get away from the pandemic talk. The women call her ‘the cute Dr. Fauci.’” After a beat, I asked, “Only the women?” Boris shot me a look but did not say a word. I felt, as an Australian friend would put it: “As welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.”

When you get to be of a certain age, you realize that there are only two times. If it is dark, it is time for bed. If the sun is up, it is time for a nap.

Trump retweets right-wing attacks on Tammy Duckworth. It is understandable that the president cannot identify with her. She does not have bone spurs on her feet.

Various crazies have maintained that the pandemic is a hoax. It is a conspiracy by the left to discredit Trump although how this conspiracy has foisted Covid-19 on the world is not clear. I am seeking to create another conspiracy. Places around the country that have quickly re-opened have seen a surge in infections. Communities of color have been hit harder with the coronavirus than white communities. People of color are expected to vote overwhelmingly against Trump in November. Suppressing the votes of minorities aids Trump. Trump is trying to get the country wide open as quickly as possible. Connect the dots. I think that this conspiracy is baseless, but it has more of a basis than that the pandemic is a hoax. 

“I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.” Alexandre Dumas fils.

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Dear Scrotty Students. Really? (concluded)

          The “Dear Scrotty Students” letter that supposedly addressed a controversy concerning a statue said that “a key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition [is that] you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic—otherwise your idea is worthless.” The letter did not tell us why the students said that the Rhodes statue should be removed, so we can gauge the worth of their contentions, but, on the other hand, it presented little by the way of logic and facts for keeping the statue of Rhodes other than to say that he was an Oxford benefactor. I understand that money often trumps everything else, but I hoped that the university would present at least some reasoned argument for keeping the Rhodes monument. Instead, the response attacked the change-seekers’ heritage, country, and continent: your ancestors lived in mud huts; the Bantus have not contributed to modern civilization; South Africa has high rates of murder and sicknesses. Even if true, so bloody what?  That “reasoning” does nothing to explain why Rhodes statue should stay where it is. Surely, I thought, a spokesperson for Oxford ought to know the meaning of non sequitur and avoid it.

          The supposed letter did say that Oxford “always prefers facts and free, open debate.” But it closed with: “you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.” You can’t believe both statements. That closing is not a tenet of open debate, but of the closing of the British, or at least, the Oxford mind. No one who is truly an educator should ever say that I won’t listen to you. No one who believes in open debate would ever say that they have nothing to learn from someone else.

          This “reasoning” is akin to the following scenario: A brit tells me that kale is healthy and will not invariably make me puke. I reply: “I do not need to respond to your reasoning. I won’t even listen to your contentions. I have nothing to learn from you. You are English, and your ancestors were brutal, murderous, disease-spreading colonists, and your country can’t even play good rugby anymore.”

          An intelligent, reasoning person should have quickly questioned the authenticity of a letter employing such schoolyard logic (“So’s your mother”). Americans especially should have had doubts when the letter asked, “Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution?” Jefferson, of course, was not a drafter of the Constitution, and the question is unlikely to have come from an informed person.

After reading the letter, I did five minutes of internet research, and I was not surprised to find that the letter was indeed a fake. It was a product of a writer on Breitbart.com in 2015. He had concerns that the relatively moderate and reasoned approach by Oxford to the Rhodes statue controversy had not been firm enough. He wrote the “letter” but prefaced it with: “Here is the letter Oriel College should have written to the campaigners from Rhodes Must Fall.”

Subsequent appearances of the letter on the internet and in emails have dropped this introduction, and without this preface it elicits many comments of praise from people who have reflexively accepted it as authentic. Why the commendations? It must be the intemperate tone towards the African students. Like the actual letter writer, the praise-givers must be fantasizing that this is what they would have said to those seeking change if they were the head of Oxford. In their fantasy world, this is a convincing letter.

Some versions of the letter place an asterisk after “Autres temps, autres moeurs” in the text, and that phrase is translated after the letter’s conclusion. Apparently whoever placed the footnote and those who forward the letter don’t expect their readers to understand the foreign language even though the letter castigates those who lack this comprehension: “If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?” The irony seems lost on many who read this passage.

Once again, I am reminded of the power of the internet. It places a world of knowledge at our fingertips, but many can’t spend the few moments to seek it out. They are not equipped to detect sloppy thinking and prefer to remain in the ignorance that the internet could dispel. But they can use the internet to pass along stupidities to other like-minded people.

I wonder if “scrotty” should be applied to them.

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Dear Scrotty Students: Really?

A friend asked me what I thought about an email recently forwarded to him. Its preface said, “The letter below is a response from Oxford University to black students attending as Rhodes Scholars who demand the university removes the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.” The letter said:

Dear Scrotty Students,

Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.

This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”

Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.

And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.

You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the‪ #‎blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American mind”. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the world’s greatest university.

Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.

That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!”  No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea is worthless.

This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”

Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.

And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your ‪#‎rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”. One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!

Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.

And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.

Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.

Yours, Oriel College, Oxford

(Punctuation as in the copy forwarded to me.)

          Before I responded to my friend, I asked the spouse to read it. Her immediate reaction mirrored my own: “Is this real?” I certainly hoped not. If it had been an official Oxford response, I would have lost respect for what I had thought was a great university. Of course, part of my concern was the intemperate tone, but more disturbing was the poor logic. If this is how Oxford teaches its students to think, it would be a poor place to get an education. And I thought that any marginally informed person should have been skeptical about the letter.

(concluded July 10)

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Statues and the Executive Order

Peacefully and violently, many have questioned some of our public statues and monuments. Trump responded by issuing an executive order.

He prefaced the order by saying, “Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding.”

Trump went on to command: “It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. . . The Attorney General shall prioritize within the Department of Justice the investigation and prosecution” of such matters. The order concludes: “This order is not intended to, and does not, affect the prosecutorial discretion of the Department of Justice with respect to individual cases.” Prioritize, but you still have all your discretion. Prosecute, but only “as appropriate.”

What, then, does the executive order do? One thing it fails to do is to give guidance on what duties within the DOJ should be given shorter shrift. If Department of Justice attorneys shift priorities to statues, then other matters in the DOJ bailiwick will have to have a lower priority. What now should get lesser attention? Immigration? White collar crimes? Antitrust matters? Drug crimes?

But what I most noticed is that the president said that others have a “deep ignorance of our history.” He said something similar a few years ago in response to a movement to remove memorials to Confederate soldiers. President Trump then said that he was “sad” at the removal of “our beautiful statues” and that “you can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” I wonder, however, if Trump applies these statements to himself. Has he ever sought to learn about our history after looking at those beautiful statues?

The president has a home in Manhattan’s Trump Tower. It is a short distance from a great, amazing, huge collection of public statues and monuments—Central Park. I wonder how often he has gazed at them and was inspired to learn more history.

The southeast corner of Central Park, the closest entrance to the Park from Trump’s penthouse, is only a few minutes’ walk (or more likely, a few minutes’ golf cart ride) from the Tower. There he would have encountered a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman on horseback. If looking at the monument inspired him to read about that General, he might have learned that Sherman’s capture of Atlanta is credited with guaranteeing Abraham Lincoln’s re-election and thereby the defeat of the Confederacy. Lincoln pledged to preserve the Union; his opponent was expected to make peace with the Confederacy. Does Trump think about what would have happened had Sherman failed at Atlanta? He may not think about what it would have meant for slavery and Blacks or the cotton trade and the New York financiers who backed it or how it would have affected our country’s expansion into the territories, but surely you might think that he would wonder how Mar-a-Lago and his Charlottesville winery would have been affected if they were now in the Confederate States of America.

If he sought to learn more about Sherman, he would learn how important the defeat of the Confederacy was to this American patriot. He could learn that Sherman, like many others of his era, had changing views about Blacks; that thousands of freed slaves joined his March to the Sea; that he settled thousands of the recently-freed on land expropriated from Southern whites, in what were some of the first actions of Reconstruction. Trump might be inspired to learn more about Reconstruction; its end in 1877 that wiped away many of these gains for the former slaves that had been initiated by Sherman; and the institution of Jim Crow that did much to shape our present nation.

Trump might learn that Sherman declined the Republican Presidential nomination of 1884 by saying, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” Would he find this amazing? If you don’t want to do the work of a President, you should figure that out and say so before running for the office.

A block away from Sherman’s likeness are statutes of Simòn Bolivar, the Venezuelan who is known for liberating much of South America from Spain, and José de San Martin, the Argentine who helped liberate both Argentina and Peru from Spain. He might learn from these figures that Latin Americans do not look kindly on foreign powers trying to dictate to them. But, of course, if Trump had learned this, he probably would not have made some of his statements about Venezuela and Mexico.

A short hike, or even shorter ride, from these men on horseback is Balto’s statue. Balto was the Siberian husky that led a final team of sled dogs delivering diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, a story that was covered breathlessly by newspapers worldwide. Surely there are lessons to be learned here about humanitarianism and the mainstream press. And perhaps the president might also realize that he ought to have a puppy.

Maybe Trump has seen these statues near his penthouse, and though I find it doubtful, even learned something from them. I am more confident, however, that Trump has not learned from a statue at the other end of the park from the one of Sherman. It is near 110th Street, which borders Harlem. There he could see a statue of Frederick Douglass. Enough said.

Central Park has, not surprisingly, more statues and memorials, including ones of Beethoven, Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns, and many others. But perhaps the most important one to visit if you are in the park these days is on the east side of the park near 74th Street—Alice in Wonderland. Surely there is much to contemplate at her feet.

Posted on by rjonakait

Was the Declaration on the Fourth of July?

My personal Fourth of July routine has included re-reading the Declaration of Independence.

Only recently, however, have I learned that the Declaration of Independence, or at least widely accepted versions of it, contain revisionist history. The document we celebrate on July 4 has fifty-six signers. But the only signatures on the original Declaration, which was attached to the official proceedings of Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, were that of John Hancock as President of the Congress and Charles Thomson, who was not a delegate, as Secretary.

The Declaration of Independence on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum is different and does contain the fifty-six signatures. Although the Archives version says, “In Congress, July 4, 1776,” it was, in fact, executed later. On July 19, 1776, Congress resolved that that the Declaration be engrossed on parchment and that it “be signed by every member of Congress.” The signers, then, did not sign on July 4, 1776. Most signed on August 2, 1776. You might think that the revision is minor since the signatories had agreed on July 4 to adopt the Declaration; they only failed to put their John Hancocks on the original document. However, several members of Congress on July 4, 1776, were absent on the day the Declaration was adopted. Even so, they later signed the engrossed copy. Furthermore, several other signers were not even members of Congress on the Fourth of July. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was appointed as a congressional delegate by Maryland on July 4 (is it surprising that the Maryland legislature was working on a holiday?) but did not present his credentials to the Continental Congress until July 18. He still signed the parchment. Five other signers were not appointed until July 20.

The National Archives Declaration states that it is “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Such unanimity language does not appear on the original Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, because it was not unanimous. The New York delegation abstained on that date and sought further guidance on how it should vote from the New York State convention. Only eleven days after the Declaration was adopted did the New York delegates receive approval to vote for independence.

I have now realized that I have been reading both versions of the Declaration of Independence without noticing that they varied. The copy that is in reach above my desk is of the original one promulgated on July 4, 1776, without all the signatures and without the unanimity language, while the version I have most often read reprinted in newspapers and in broadsides is the historical re-write. I don’t know what to make of the fact that the most famous version of the Declaration is revisionist history, but it does not matter much which version you read because both contain the memorable language that we most often ascribe to Thomas Jefferson that begins “When in the course of human events. . . .”

Even after reading this text many times, I note the archaisms, but still admire the rhythm and the phrasing of the Declaration’s first section—“a decent respect to [not for] the opinions of mankind. . .”; “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established. . . ,” “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

When we think about the Declaration, we usually only contemplate the opening paragraphs, but I am also fascinated by the list of elegantly written grievances about the King to justify the Revolution. I have tried to remember, not always successfully, what specifics had occasioned the often-vague complaints. Some of my frustration at my lack of historical knowledge was relieved when, after many perusals of the Declaration, I read American Scripture: Making of the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier, who wrote, “Today most Americans, including professional historians, would be hard put to identify exactly what prompted many of the accusations Jefferson hurled against the King, which is not surprising since even some well-informed persons of the eighteenth century were perplexed.” (Even so, I find it ironic today that the indictments included the assertions that the Crown had impeded immigration to our shores and prevented free trade.) Indeed, one of the assertions does not appear to be true. My own research into the American jury system for a book mirrors Maier’s conclusion: “Even the most assiduous efforts have, however, identified no colonists of the revolutionaries’ generation who were actually transported ‘beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.’” Even Jefferson, it seems, was not above a bit of revisionist history.

Sometimes, however, in reading the Declaration I think about what I have learned about writing from Strunk and White in Elements of Style and similar books. The advice is consistent: Eliminate extraneous words; strive for clarity; be succinct. I look at the opening paragraph and think that it violates these precepts. It reads: “When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”

If I had drafted the Declaration, it would have read: “We are declaring independence from Great Britain. Here is why.” Clear and succinct, but hardly memorable, and I recognize again Jefferson’s linguistic genius. (The spouse says that after finishing Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, she can no longer hold Jefferson in the highest regard.) My conclusion has been tempered as I have learned that the Declaration was preceded by ninety or so state and local Declarations whose phrasings often were echoed in the Fourth of July proclamation and that Jefferson’s draft was frequently improved by the editing done by other delegates to the Continental Congress. But even so, Jefferson produced the draft that in its final form still lives centuries later. And it will and should continue to live as long as some still read it. On this Fourth of July, read it. All who consider themselves American should.

Posted on by rjonakait

Conscience of a Baptist (concluded)

          In the days when I attended the church, Baptists seldom mentioned abortion. That may have been because then there was little public discussion of it, although I have learned since that there were many private discussions of the practice as many people sought one. The lack of a Baptist discussion, however, may also have been due to Baptists’ reverence for the Bible and for liberty of conscience. The last time I checked a biblical concordance—admittedly quite some time ago, but surely this has not changed—“abortion” was not in it. One has to interpret or extrapolate from verses and contexts to conclude that the Bible condemns abortion. Biblical passages can be construed to say that life begins at conception, but what “conception” meant in biblical times is not clear. I doubt to ancient Israelites it meant a sperm fertilizing an egg. Other biblical passages, however, indicate life begins with the first breath. But even though the Bible does not explicitly, and may not implicitly, condemn abortion, it is also hard to suggest that it supports the view that abortion should be the choice of the woman and her doctor.

          A Baptist, however, might extrapolate from Baptist principles and conclude that because there are ambiguities in the Bible on the matter, whether an abortion is sinful must remain a matter of conscience. The opinion would hold that the state cannot dictate what is sinful and should not dictate that a woman cannot have an abortion. In fact, when some states began to change their absolute proscriptions of abortion before Roe v. Wade in 1973, many Southern Baptist leaders held quite liberal views on the subject. For example, a poll in 1970 found that 70% of Southern Baptist ministers supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the pregnant woman; 64% supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity; and 71% supported abortion in cases of rape. The next year the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution stating, “We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such circumstances as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

          This liberal viewpoint, however, soon vanished. Since Roe v. Wade, the Southern Baptist Convention has passed many resolutions about abortion that are much different from the 1971 pronouncement. On the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Convention stated that that Supreme Court “decision was an act of injustice against unborn children as well as against vulnerable women in crisis pregnancy situations. . . . We lament and renounce statements and actions by previous conventions and previous denominational leadership that offered support to the abortion culture. . . . We pray and work for the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision and for the day when the action of abortion will be not only illegal but unthinkable.”

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, then, Southern Baptist shifted away from dogmatic opposition to school prayer and aid to religious school and towards dogmatic opposition to abortion. These moves have had more than a religious impact because they are all opinions that affect how people vote. Southern Baptists, for example, now want their elected officials to be strongly against abortion and generally friendly, at least, to public support of religion, or at least some forms of religion. This certainly has had importance for the country since the Southern Baptists are the country’s largest Protestant denomination.

Over the last generation or two Southern Baptists seem to have moved even further to the political right than they were before. Perhaps people who are better historians, sociologists, or theologians than I can explain why, but I do point out that the Southern Baptists were not alone in the rightward lurch during this period. Something similar also occurred with the National Rifle Association, which had been largely an apolitical group interested mainly in marksmanship and gun safety, but was captured by an element that began the NRA’s move to become one of the most important conservative organizations in the country. Both Baptists and the NRA moved to the right at the same time. Is there a connection?

          Baptists, and other evangelicals, have become a major political force. Baptists are at the core of the modern conservative movement even though these Baptists no longer seek the traditional principles that defined Baptism. They now advocate the intermingling of church and state. Toleration of private consciences no longer seems a defining principle

Nevertheless, when I see one of those white frame New England Baptist churches, I still hope that their congregants believe that religion should not be founded on ritual or coercion or enforced rules. Instead, it should be founded on the consciences of individuals, persuasion, reason, and toleration. I want those bedrock principles of Baptism, and of the country, to remain.