Quotation of the Day

When you look upon a global warming denialist, you are not seeing a person who is deluded, wrong, misinformed, or misguided. You are seeing a person who is intent on killing your grandchildren. You may want to treat them politely, you may want to be a dick to them. Do whatever works. But don't let them think for a second that you do not know what the consequences of their actions are. Don't let them get away with it.

Greg Laden

Quotation of the Day

We are suffering from flat earth economics because too many of us think macroeconomics is a morality play, not a way to solve problems and understand the world around us.

Mike the Mad Biologist

Is the Current Ringo Starr a fake?

No.

Hobbling Down Memory Lane

One artifact I own is an old walking-stick. When my knee abruptly gave out a year or so back and I was hobbling about my nephew found it somewhere and brought it to me to help me get around. I don’t ordinarily use it; there’s a crack running through it, and I can’t trust it to bear my weight, but it worked for that moment. It belonged to my great-grandfather G. F. Weaver who, in the 1930s, left it behind when he went for his final walk on the land where he’d found gold, just after signing over all his rights in it to his partners. His body was found a couple of days later at the bottom of a ravine where he’d apparently fallen, and his walking-stick was among the meager effects sent to his family.

He was an interesting guy, to judge from the contradictory accounts that have come down about him, a preacher, an inventor, a visionary, a horse-doctor, a man who abandoned his family (first absconding with the money from the sale of their crops) to seek a golden fortune out west, a man who traded the rights to an invention for land in Kentucky that didn’t exist, and according to his own story witnessed the assassination of the governor-elect there when trying to seek redress for his wrongs. To this day he has his partisans and detractors in the family. Me, I’m agnostic. Whatever he was, he was.

He was the youngest (and favorite) son of a farmer, James I. Weaver, a man whose entire life is encompassed in the fading script of the family Bible that sits in front of me as I write these words. Born in Kentucky in 1818, the son of a preacher, he married the daughter of a preacher in 1844 and died in Texas in 1888. If he had a life outside of farming, I’ve failed to find it. Tradition has it that he and his wife Rhoda wanted their son to be a preacher like their fathers, and G. F. was, at least briefly. He performed at least one marriage in Texas, before giving it up. Did I mention that G. F. was also a barber and a Bible-salesman?

Anyway, James’ father David (1791-1854) was a preacher, one of the mainstays of a Baptist church in the wilderness of Kentucky. “His labors extended over Laurel, Knox, Whitley and Clay counties,” Elder J. W. Moran wrote of him, “and few men have sacrificed more for the cause of Christ than he. He so ordered his life that the most hardened in wickedness could bring no charge against him. His voice was clear and musical, and his manner was very pleasing. He was greatly beloved by the people to whom he preached.” Blind in his latter years, he had to be carried to church to preach.

His father Samuel (1755-1842) was (thank God) not a preacher, Baptist or otherwise, though he was the progenitor of a large tribe of Weavers. He was a giant of a man—over seven feet tall according to family tradition—and lived at various times in his long life (he was almost 87 when he died) in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Kentucky. His name turns up in numerous land, tax, and census records, though as there were other Samuel Weavers abroad in the land it is difficult to be sure which belong to him, and which to others. As far as those records show his life was uneventful, spent in farming and raising a numerous brood of children with his wife—supposedly a descendent of Gutenberg, of printing-press fame.

In the 1830s he applied for a pension from the government on the basis of his participation in the Revolutionary War, and to that end narrated his experiences. About eighty at the time, his memory was none too good, and the accounts (there are two) filled with phrases like “he does not now recollect” and “neither does he remember”. Still, the story he tells runs something like this:

Somewhere around March in the year 1780, while living in Surry county, North Carolina, he was drafted to serve in the Continental Army. His company commander was Captain Jacob Camplin, who took the outfit south to Charleston, then under siege by the British. Before they got there “a call was made for men to stay and guard baggage wagons and he was one of these, he supposed about thirty, but for what cause the baggage was kept there at the time he can not say, but supposes it was in Consequence of the Siege…” For this reason he missed the siege of Charleston, which fell on 12 May of that year. Captain Camplin returned from the siege with a knee injury, according to Samuel Weaver, and he was delegated to look after him on his way back home, “which he did, tho under much difficulty and trouble, the wound being very severe.”

No sooner than he got home he was discharged, his three months being up, and he returned to his family home, where he walked into a domestic drama. It seems his father had just been drafted, and his mother was in considerable “distress of mind” at the idea of parting with him. So Samuel “resolved to go himself … if the officers would receive him, he told this to his father and Mother … but his father was preparing for the trip and said nothing in reply.” Carrying out this plan Samuel talked to the officer in charge, who “seemed to be much gratified” at the switch, and immediately discharged his father. Samuel soon found himself on his way back to Virginia where they joined troops also on their way south.

Samuel doesn’t say what troops they were, but the time and place suggests they could have been Maryland troops under De Kalb headed south to try to break the British stranglehold there. These troops were combined with others and the whole put under the command of Horatio Gates, who then led them to mass slaughter in a vain attempt to take Camden, South Carolina, on 16 August. Once again, however, Samuel Weaver missed the battle; he (along with others) joined Francis Marion. Presumably this was when the Swamp Fox and a few picked men were detached to cut off the expected retreat of the British after they were defeated at Camden.

In reality the British were not defeated, and Marion ended up lurking in the swamp, carrying out occasional raids against the Tories. Samuel Weaver vaguely remembered taking part in several night actions, and one day skirmish, but the one thing that stuck out in his mind about this chapter in his life was this:

During the time he was with Genl. Marion, a British Officer as he was told came into Camp, but for what he does not know, he was roasting & bakeing Sweet Potatoes on the Coles—Genl. Marion Steped up with the British Officer and remarked he believed he would take Breakfast, he felt proud at the request, puled out his potatoes, wiped the ashes off with a dirty handkerchief, placed them on a pine log (which was all the provision they had) and Genl. Marion and the British Officer partook of them. He has been told by some that this has been recorded in the life of the Genl. as a dinner, but this was a breakfast.

So, apparently, Samuel Weaver was the very soldier who took part in this famous episode, first revealed to the public by Mason Weems, of George Washington and the cherry tree fame. It’s a sobering thought.

After about a month with Marion Samuel Weaver ended up on hospital duty, was discharged, and returned home. This wasn’t the last of his adventures in the war—the next year he again volunteered and headed off to do battle at Guilford. Again he missed the battle; the volunteers stayed to help bury the dead and then went back home. And even then, according to his narrative, he enrolled as a minute man, and continued to be called up as needed for brief skirmishes.

Now, it’s Memorial Day, and I don’t want to cast aspersions on the memory of the old guy, but there are problems with this narrative. (I’m sure you already guessed that, if you’ve spent any time here.) First, Jacob Camplin, the captain whose knee was injured during the siege of Charleston? Okay, there really was a Jacob Camplin, seemingly, and he really did injure his knee—but not at the siege of Charleston. He injured it a year earlier, at the Battle of Stono Ferry, 20 June 1779. Near Charleston, true, but not at that time and place. Further, an account by a fellow named John Melugin (and this is not my research) seems quite similar to Samuel’s—Melugin left Surry County (like Samuel Weaver) under Captain Jacob Camplin headed for Charleston. During the events there he was assigned to drive a wagon and as a result missed the battle at Stono Ferry where Captain Camplin was injured. He then (like Samuel Weaver) went home.

Okay, so what? So the old guy was a year off, got the Siege of Charleston mixed up with the Battle of Stono Ferry—what of it? Well, the thing is, it’s not that simple. You see, Jacob Camplin didn’t come back from that battle to be helped home by Samuel Weaver or any other soldier—he was taken prisoner by the British, and not released for over a year. So that whole part of his story, the “difficulty and trouble” of getting the captain home with his severe injury, kind of drops out. And further, if the Stono Ferry redating be accepted, then there’s no way he could have been one of Marion’s guerillas, as Marion didn’t take up his career as the Swamp Fox until the next year. Samuel Weaver’s narrative is quite tight here—he gets home after nursemaiding Captain Camplin to find that his father has been drafted, and he sets out immediately to replace him, at this time joining up with Francis Marion. Poke at it anywhere and the story kind of unravels and falls apart.

One more thing—that sweet potato story. It was pretty well known in the 1830s, when Samuel Weaver was applying for his pension. Now I hadn’t originally planned on going into this, but as J. L. Bell is doing a nice job deconstructing this legend at Boston 1775, I’ve got to at least point people in his direction. There is considerable doubt as to whether this event even occurred, let alone that Samuel Weaver took the part he assigns to himself in it. I can’t help but wonder whether, perhaps, his own memories of events being shaky, he didn’t appropriate bits and pieces of stories around him to fill out an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

That he took some part in the Revolution doesn’t seem to be in question—too many people were willing to swear to it on his behalf. It doesn’t look like sheer fantasy, in the manner of William Drannan. But the specifics he recalls, when they can be checked on, are iffy. If he went out with Captain Camplin on the occasion when the captain’s knee was injured, it must have been in 1779, and the battle must have been Stono Ferry. If he escorted a wounded officer back from either Stono Ferry or the Siege of Charleston it can’t have been Captain Camplin, who was a prisoner of war at the time. If he was in the swamps with Francis Marion it is unlikely that he took part in a dinner (or breakfast as he insists) that nobody recalled until Mason Weems used it to pad out a heavily-fictionalized biography. It’s frustrating, but there it is. Like the crack running through my great-grandfather's walking-stick, there are cracks running through his great-grandfather's war stories. The old man’s memory can’t be trusted.

I doubt very much that he’s romancing; the stories are too mundane. (Again, take a look at William Drannan to see what happens when fantasy replaces memory.) But events have somehow become jumbled and are mixed with things that never were.

I’m reminded of another time, when a much more recent ancestor of mine—my father, actually—lay dying in a Portland hospital. A veteran of World War II, he kept returning to scenes long past, his once-sharp mind dulled with drugs and delusions. Convinced for some reason he was in a war zone, he would ask about the enemy—how close they were, and whether we were going to be evacuated. “How long was your father in Vietnam?” one of the attendants asked. It was a tough question. I didn’t know where the Vietnam thing was coming from. He’d been on a hospital ship in the Pacific, he’d been in occupied Japan, but Vietnam? He was in Portland that whole time, to my personal knowledge, working as an engineer at a radio station. I smiled weakly, and somebody said—I don’t remember who—“He must be having somebody else’s flashbacks.”

Maybe Samuel Weaver was having somebody else’s flashbacks.

Incompetent Buffoon Bites the Dust

Having faded into irrelevance, locked in the dustbin of our memories, Osama Bin Laden today was executed by CIA operatives at a mansion near Islamabad, Pakistan, in which country he has been a welcome guest for some years. In real life a wealthy playboy heir to a construction fortune, Osama liked to dress-up as a super-heroic Qur’an scholar and defender of the faith with a secret identity that fooled no one. Puffed-up by his triumph in a walk-on rôle in the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980s he returned to Saudi Arabia the towering hero of his fantasies, though unheard of outside of the tiny Arabian kingdom.

When Saddam Hussein sent troops to invade Kuwait, potentially threatening the kingdom, Osama made a comic-opera proposal to personally defend the borders with his troop of merry men who would fight the invaders with faith—and was stung when the king rejected him in favor of the most powerful military force in the world. What did the United States have that he and his little gang of misfits didn’t, he wondered. He made such a nuisance of himself that he was invited to leave the kingdom in no uncertain terms, and he stomped off in a huff to nurse his hurt feelings in Sudan, where, to add injury to insult, his family cut off his multi-million-dollar allowance.

Soon even the Sudanese grew tired of him, and he found it expedient to return to the scene of his fancied triumphs in Afghanistan. From there he helped finance a series of failed attempts to stir up trouble in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere. Still rankling over his rejection by the Arabian authorities, he blamed the United States for all his problems. Calling himself the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders he announced his intention of killing Americans throughout the world. The 1998 attack on US embassies in Africa, however, resulted mainly in the deaths of Africans, and his inept plot to attack millennium celebrations in the United States was easily foiled.

Fortunately for him, however, this blundering boob met his match when George W. Bush entered the White House through an unlocked back door. Donning the mantle of the U. S. President, Bush declared Bin Laden and his friends to be no threat to the country, and called off the dogs. The result: nineteen conspirators, armed with box-cutters, hijacked four airliners and flew three of them into various buildings. (The fourth was easily taken down by the passengers, who unfortunately lost their lives in consequence.) The result was history, of a sort. Several thousand people died in the mayhem, but nothing of any military consequence was achieved, and this pipsqueak (and the world) now had an enraged idiot colossus on his hands.

Like a blind giant the United States started flailing about. An early blow took out one of Osama’s most hated opponents, Saddam Hussein, no doubt to his delight, but the destruction of his hosts in Afghanistan forced him to relocate abruptly. His network in ruins, he was reduced to crouching in the rubble of his dreams and issuing occasional rambling diatribes that the media dutifully carried, and operatives of the world’s intelligence services pored over for clues to his whereabouts. Fortunately friends in neighboring Pakistan took him in, and looked after him—until United States operatives under Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, stormed his hideout and executed him. It was an inglorious end to a futile and wasted life. Nobody is likely to miss him much—certainly not the Indonesians, Egyptians, Kenyans, and others whose family-members he had murdered to fuel his sadistic fantasies. The team that executed him dragged back his corpse as a ghastly souvenir. I suppose it will be returned to his family for burial or something equally civilized. Personally I hope they have his skull hollowed out for use as a visitor’s ashtray at the White House.

In the meantime, his spirit lingers on. News comes of an explosion in Afghanistan that killed four people, in addition to the human bomb. Somebody had strapped explosives to a twelve-year-old and sent him to his death. For politics.

Quotation of the Day

There are plenty of people who consider themselves Tea Partiers solely because they want to pay fewer taxes, just as there are fiscal conservatives who will always vote Republican even though they have no use for religion and climate-change denialism. Too bad—everyone wants to pay fewer taxes the last time I checked, and regardless of whatever the people behind the “real” teabagger movement supposedly wanted when they kicked the whole circus into action, it’s nothing but a teeming refuge of ugly hypocrites and the worst shitbags the United States has to offer.

Kemibe

The Unicode and Other Mythical Beasts

I want to write something but nothing comes. A sense of impending doom overwhelms me—like the “Eli’s Coming” episode of Sports Night. Does it mean something? It never does. Random synapses firing or something (and I’m sure the smartass college students who room here would set me straight on what a synapse is). My days are eaten up with trivia as I try to get moved in to my new computer; I’m back to obsessively searching for my perfect font. The Latin characters (used for English and French) should look reasonably decent, since they’re what I normally write in. But I have to have all the Greek characters (accents and breathings, right?), the Coptic characters, and the goddamn standard symbols for the days of the week—the symbol for today being ♀. It’s surprising how few fonts have all the Greek characters, given that classical scholarship is hardly dead yet. And fewer still have the Coptic, which is perhaps not surprising, but, you know, the language is in liturgical use. A number of fonts have the astrological symbols—of which the ones I need are a subset—but those never seem to have the complete Greek collection. So once again I end up switching from font to font, using one for Greek, one for English and French, and still another for the various symbols. Does this make sense?

And why on earth does the Unicode have room for chess symbols, and dominos, but not for the standard weather symbols used by meteorologists? Do these reflect real priorities? If space can be allotted for Shavian script, why not for Tengwar? I bet more people write the latter than the former (though for me it’s the other way around). And why are the Coptic symbols split up, while Greek gets not one, but two sets of letters with acute accents? Do we really need so many spaces reserved for stars and snowflakes?

And why is it that the more complete a font is, the more likely it is to have inelegant-looking Latin characters? Is this some kind of political statement?

The Dance is Over (Well, Maybe)

As a result of the gods know what arcane political calculations President Obama smoothed the path of his Republican opponents by releasing a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate, obtained through a special waiver granted by Hawaiian officials in deference to his position. Well, that, and they were tired of fielding the endless requests for it by every Tom, Dick, and Harriet with an axe to grind. Bankruptcy enthusiast and real-estate mogul Donald Trump claims credit for this development—will Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal be far behind?

Will this make any difference to hard-core birthers? It’s doubtful. First, Hawaii doesn’t count as American soil. Second, the Founders required that both parents be US citizens. (It does too say that in the Constitution! Use your magnifying glass, damn it!) Third, Barry What’s-his-name gave up his citizenship as a child when he chose to grow up in Indonesia. And fourth, he’s black. (Did I just say that aloud?) Anyway, however you stack it up, he has no business being president.

Personally, I was enjoying watching the birth-certificate shuffle the major Republican candidates were stuck with. Too bad somebody had to ruin the fun.

Quotation of the Day

I said I didn’t know him. That was true—
I knew a man with answers, someone who
Pulled fish out of the air, handed out bread
From empty sleeves until the thousands fed,
Healed blindness, mocked the money-men—and I
Believed Him when he said we wouldn’t die.

R. F. Harrison, from “Holy Saturday. The Place of the Skull” ©2001

Quotation of the Day

You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Obama has produced his birth certificate. There were announcements that ran in two contemporaneous Hawaiian newspapers at the time. The head of the Hawaiian medical records has announced, “I have seen the long form you all want.” I don’t know why the long form is considered more credible than the short form. They’re both from the same office. The State Department accepts the short form or as we call it, the birth certificate.

Ann Coulter

Ignorance and Arrogance: a quasi-repost

[The following was written 3 December 1990 under the title “Three short notes” and belongs to the prehistory of this weblog. The George Bush mentioned is of course the father; I doubt that I’d ever heard of the son at that time.]

Two instances of surprising ignorance in my weekend’s reading: Bruce Michelson in an essay on The Mysterious Stranger mentions that Mark Twain already had the idea for the book before The Innocents Abroad; he goes on to say “In the Alta California letters from which Twain’s first real book developed, there is a sketch for an ‘Apocryphal New Testament,’ in which Jesus returns to earth as a playful boy:”—and the passage that follows is Twain’s description of two incidents (the clay birds and the dyer’s shop) from the Infancy Gospels. It sure looks as if Michelson thought Twain was inventing a plot, instead of repeating a well-known story, and even if Michelson somehow was unfamiliar with the Infancy Gospels, he must have read The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts, and this matter is dealt with in the introduction. (Another oddity is the fact that Michelson speaks of the second manuscript (Young Satan) as if it were the first, and overlooks the first (“Mr. Black” etc.) altogether.)

In Tell Me Why Tim Riley seems to think that George Harrison wrote the words of “The Inner Light” (from the Tao Te Ching), instead of merely setting them to music. “George’s philosophical musings are less condescending than those of ‘Within You Without You,’…” And yet, even if we grant Riley’s ignorance of one of the greatest religious works of all time, he has read I, Me, Mine, and that should have straightened him out. Worse yet, in his description of The Beatles Forever he quote Schaffner as saying, “The lyrics to Harrison’s ‘The Inner Light’ were ‘pinched almost verbatim from a Japanese poem by Roshi, translated by R. H. Bluth’”.

George Bush, it is reported, has appointed Robert Martinez of Florida to the post of drug czar here in the land of the free—another illustration of how phony this “war” on drugs really is. During Martinez’s reign in Florida drug use has increased. What is the secret of his success? He emphasizes punishment over education, jail over treatment. How does Bush justify his choice? He points out that 61 (or some such number) men have been executed in Florida during Martinez’s rule—a revealing admission. It’s blatant now—he doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that the “war on drugs” is a phony war to conceal the real war on the Bill of Rights. One thing’s for sure—whether we have Conservatives or Moderates in office, the government gets more and more power over the citizen.

[Note and Update: The Bruce Michelson essay referred to above was “Deus Ludens: The Shaping of Mark Twain’s ‘Mysterious Stranger’” in NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 44-56.]

Quotation of the Day

A teabagger trying to get cuts that have absolutely no chance of getting through simply to raise his credit with voters is just kosher pork-barreling.

DingoJack about Paul Ryan's proposed budget

Quotation of the Day

There is ignorance that is merely a lack of knowledge or study; we are all ignorant of far more subjects than we are knowledgeable about. And then there is ignorance that is acquired as false knowledge, a set of myths and falsehoods that one ingests that give the illusion of understanding a subject when one does not.

Ed Brayton

The Impotent Rage of the Clueless

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

Psalms 2:1

As robots insist on spamming my posts I’ve made it a policy to close comments down after a couple of weeks, so I only have to tend to a few recent entries. If a friend of the blog stops by an older post, as sometimes happens, or somebody else contributes something valuable and I happen to notice it, then I’ll okay it. If somebody decides to unload a bucketful of bile at an old post, it will probably go down the toilet without being read. I’m sorry, but my time is reasonably valuable, and I have better things to do as I prepare to be finally pigeonholed in that great archive in the sky.

But the squawk of a complacent gull when he realizes he’s been had by some fast-talking con-artist is music for my soul. One of this breed—a character going by the handle TSVDP—saw fit to spam an earlier post with his inane jibber-jabber. Apparently his feelings were hurt on learning that his favorite Patrick Henry quotation—the one about “this great nation” being founded on Christianity, not religious freedom—is a piece of modern tripe, concocted in living memory and disseminated by sleazy hucksters out to fleece such gullible lambs as he. “You don’t make a point at all,” he squeals, “If not it confirms what Henry said and that he was a Christian.” Well, yeah, not that anybody has ever denied that Henry was a Christian, or a slave-owner, or a father, a lawyer, a legislator, an orator. None of that’s at issue here. The only question before us is the author of that “this great nation” and “religionists” quotation—and fortunately that’s a fact easily determined.

Let’s review, shall we, the bizarre history of this quotation. It begins, in a way, with something Patrick Henry actually did write. On 20 November 1798 the once-fiery orator and successful lawyer sat down to write his last will and testament. After carefully dividing up his lands, money, and slaves amongst his wife and children, he added a pious afterthought:

This is all the Inheritance I can give to my dear family, The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed[.]

The founder passed away in June of the next year, leaving damn little behind him as a legacy to the nation. His words, that had inspired a revolution, were for the most part lost. When William Wirt attempted to collect them for his sketch of Patrick Henry’s life (issued 1816) he had to do for the most part with recollections, fragments, and speeches patched together from the fading memories of those who had been present.

Around 1823 somebody thought it worthwhile to excerpt the “religion of Christ” passage from Henry’s will, and it went the rounds of various periodicals. It wasn’t quite the way Henry had written it, however. Somehow it had undergone a strange metamorphosis:

I have now disposed of all my property to my family; there is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian Religion. If they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would be rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.

This version was reprinted in numerous sources up to the present time, but not without challenge. Some time in the early 1840s James W. Alexander, a Presbyterian minister, went to Charlotte county, Virginia, and obtained the actual words direct from the will. He published them in 1847 as part of a volume called Thoughts on Family Worship. The two versions have remained in competition ever since.

In 1956 a historical revisionist writer for The Virginian used the passage—the fake version—as a springboard for his own thoughts on religion in America. This author wrote:

There is an insidious campaign of false propaganda being waged today, to the effect that our country is not a Christian country but a religious one—that it was not founded on Christianity but on freedom of religion.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by “religionists” but by Christians—not on religion but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here.

In the spoken and written words of our noble founders and forefathers, we find symbolic expressions of their Christian faith. The above quotation from the will of Patrick Henry is a notable example.

Several people thought this piece of revised history was worth quoting on its own, but it wasn’t until 1988 that somebody had the bright idea of crediting part of the 1956 comment to Patrick Henry himself. It appeared as his (according to David Barton) in a book called God’s Providence in American History by Steve C. Dawson, and was almost immediately picked up and popularized by Barton himself in his Myth of Separation. From there it spread far and wide. Somebody even added that it was from a speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses in May 1765, despite the fact that Henry was first seated there late that month and no speeches of his are recorded for that time except the famous one in support of his Stamp Act resolutions, reconstructed from memory years after his death. The incongruity of Henry’s speaking of “this great nation” before it even came into existence, and his foreknowledge that “peoples of other faiths” would be “afforded asylum, prosperity and freedom of worship here” at a time when religious freedom was nonexistent in most of the colonies apparently shot by the oblivious transmitters of Barton’s fantasies. The thing is, like Chief Seattle lamenting the demise of the buffalo, Henry just plain knows too much. It’s a dead giveaway.

But Christian nation fantaisists apparently have no sense of history whatever. Like their idiot founder, history is whatever suits their fancy. You like the Fifth Monarchy slogan, no king but king Jesus? Why not give it to John Hancock and John Adams and have them say it at the beginning of the battle of Lexington? Does it matter that they weren’t there? Does it matter that there is no record of it’s being said? Not in the least. History by this logic can be whatever you want it to be. If it feels right, then it’s history. Much easier to go by your gut than to do, oh, say, actual research.

Evidence? The Christian Nationites don’t need no stinking evidence when they set out to invent new legends about the past. Or as TSVDP puts it, “No one has to prove anything that has been around and in books for hundreds of years to Atheist Scum trying to rewrite history.” I love the way he turns the world upside down. It’s not Rushdoony and Barton and that gang out to rewrite history—no, it’s the generations of historians that came before them who are doing the rewriting—via time machine, I suppose. And by the way 1988—the date this “religionists” nonsense first appeared as Henry’s in any book—is hardly “hundreds of years” ago, though maybe it seems that way to Ahistoricist Scum like TSVDP. Neither is 1956, the date it was first written, for that matter. Yeah, okay, I know it’s the twenty-first century now, and 1988 is so twentieth century, but that hardly adds up to “hundreds of years”. Or maybe TSVDP has a numerancy problem. Maybe all big numbers look alike to him. Maybe he meant to say “dozens” instead of “hundreds”. He might as well have said “millions”—it would have been just as accurate.

There is one point I do agree with our clueless comment-slinger about, though. “…your boogey man David Barton is a joke,’ he writes, “most people don’t even know who he is…” I don’t know about that last comment, seeing as he’s giving lessons on constitutional law (believe it or not) to congressmen and being featured on popular shows in the mainstream media and advising the Texas Board of Education on history (despite his complete lack of any qualification for the task), but he definitely “is a joke”. Which makes it all the more puzzling, if TSVDP feels that way, that he feels obliged to go way out on a limb to support one of Barton’s, uh, errors—to put it charitably. Nobody ever heard of this Patrick Henry “quotation” before Barton put it in a book—and if it weren’t for his footnote, nobody would even know that he wasn’t the one who first came up with it.

As a parting shot our feckless friend returned a third time to add, “Your comment FAILS in all possible ways that Henry did not say this. The burden of proof is for you to prove he did not say this.” Well, no. Mind you, even if it were I have amply shown that this alleged observation cannot belong to Henry’s time, that it is not found in his writings, and that it was written by somebody else more than a century and a half after Henry’s death. That’s pretty conclusive, really. But it’s all window-dressing, and entirely unnecessary—done only for my own satisfaction. It is always up to the person making a positive assertion to show evidence that what he says is true. In the case of a quotation, fortunately, that burden of proof is easily met. All it takes is a citation to a primary source. Martin Porter’s first principle of quotation is a good rule to follow here: “Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.” If no source is given, or a nonsense source like “May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses”, then—lacking other evidence, or the time or inclination to follow up on it by doing actual research—a reader is entirely justified in assuming that the alleged quotation is fake.

Notes
A transcription of Patrick Henry’s will is found at the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial website. An earlier transcription appears in George Morgan, The True Patrick Henry (Philadelphia, 1907), pp. 455-7.

The oldest example of the fake version of the quotation from Patrick Henry’s will I could find was in the 29 November 1823 issue of The Manchester Iris, a Weekly Literary and Scientific Miscellany, vol. II, p. 387.

Quotation of the Day

Maybe things in America would be better if the “Beast” that the GOP wanted to “starve” was the Military-Industrial Complex, rather than than the old, the poor and the civil service.

DaveAwayFromHome

Quotation of the Day

The Senate has killed Mr. Windom’s foolish Bill for the “suppression of obscene literature,” to which we made reference some time ago, by simply letting it die, without notice—for lack of the bottle out of which tender infants are often fed. This is well—and what we expected. But how about those reformers who hold meetings to urge an Amendment to the Constitution, which shall insert the names of God and Christ therein?

Every once and a while this old beldame Earth has a fit of morals, which jerk some people like St. Vitus’s dance; and when it subsides, having the tendency rather to retard than promote the exalted aims of Christianity. Moral excesses become ridiculous. Ridicule cheapens. And when Christianity is lampooned by well meaning Bigotry, even that Holy Faith cannot entirely escape harm from contact with the keen sene of humor which is so universal in the human mind.

To see a breach of this “moral” sort made in the Constitution, and then to behold the struggle of the Sects for additional “Sectarian Amendments!” What Satirist could withhold his pen, what Cartoonist his pencil, in view of a spectacle—in this age of the world—like to that? And yet just such a precedent is sought after by the folks whom we are criticising.

Weekly Mercury, Salem, Oregon, 28 March 1873, p.2

Springtide for Himmler

Not feeling well, here. I don’t know why; there’s probably some good reason for it. Blame it on old age, maybe—my sixtieth birthday is fast approaching, but I don’t really think that’s it. The weather is uncertain and changeable, alternately threatening and inviting, and that could be darkening my emotional landscape too, but again, I don’t really think that’s it. Life here is imploding fast as well; the foreclosure grinds on, with no end in sight, taking its emotional toll, my one brother is rapidly approaching the end of his financial rope, and taken as a whole things continue rapidly to deteriorate. This isn’t even van-by-the-river time; my van’s in the shop, and everything looks chancy and uncertain.

Which makes it hard to concentrate on anything. I spent some time today organizing books, mainly getting stray volumes back on the shelves where they belong, which has something of the deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic feel to it, truth to tell. The thing is, nothing is that urgent, probably. Resolution on the house is likely to be months away, as I understand it, and my family is generally resourceful; even if we crash and burn, we’ll probably do it with a certain degree of dignity. And I’ve had other birthdays. I’ve never had a sixtieth before, but then, I never had a twenty-seventh, or a forty-second, until I actually had one. Honestly, I never really thought I’d get past thirty-three.

And so springtide cometh, where the days are more nearly equal to the nights than not, and flowers start blooming and the grass becomes ragged and in need of a mowing. A chancy, uncertain time of year at best. Storm clouds are as likely as sunshine, and sometimes both come at once. The news abroad fits with the season—gloomy and indecisive. I read how some Army commander found fifty thousand dollars and change to host a third-class hillbilly revival on government facilities with his full endorsement, but could only spare a tiny venue and no financial wherewithal to bring Richard Dawkins and an all-star lineup to the same base. I can’t say I’m disappointed; I expected no less from the customarily two-faced US military. And chaos reigns in Wisconsin, where a venal governor is determined to cut the pay for public employees, forbid future union negotiations over work conditions and benefits, apparently in order to pay off his financial backers. (My hope is that this will prove a pyrrhic victory, as the American people wake from their long slumber to fight back against the mad tea-partiers and other business-as-usual crazies—but the American people seem to be perfectly capable of long-time survival despite having their heads firmly in the sand. Or rather up their collective rectums.) Elsewhere Alan Abel wannabe James O’Keefe is promoting is latest hoax, this time aimed at PBS, though why anybody is still paying him any attention beats me. How many times are the mainstream media (Fox in particular) going to cash this guy’s bad checks? Once bitten and all that, right? Middle-East meltdown goes on. Afghanistan deteriorates. Gaddafi threatens to jump ship (jump, baby, jump!). Some guy in Portland calls 911 to report himself as a house-breaker—seems the owners have returned and he’s afraid they might be armed. None of it makes much sense—but then that’s what one would expect in this chaotic and uncertain universe.

Classic mindscum—I started with nothing in particular to say, and I ended up nowhere in particular. Pile up enough words together and sense emerges—sometimes. I don’t think this was one of them. Put it down to the weather. Maybe I’ll feel better in a day or two.

Quotation of the Day

If someone needs ancient literature for explicit moral guidance, they cannot reasonably think of themselves as able to make moral decisions. They have surrendered their moral responsibility to their holy book.

Duane Smith

Quotation of the Day

There is one reason and one reason only to read the comments on a random news site. If, for some reason, you are having a high level of hope for humanity and decide you just want to squash that right away so it doesn’t fester, go find yourself a nice Web 2.0 outlet and read away to your heart’s content.

Geds

Were They Reading the Same Book? pt. 2

Sunday’s observation about the Bible presenting “the grandest characters in all history” came from one James Wingate, Schenectady County (New York) Commissioner in 1902. The issue was mandating Bible-reading in the schools, a position favored by State Superintendent Charles R. Skinner at that time. Information was gathered from principals and superintendents and various other officials about the practice in their respective districts, along with their recommendations as to policy. Skinner supported mandatory Bible-reading “without note or comment” and saw no conflict with the New York Constitution:

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference shall forever be allowed in this state to all mankind…

How reading from a religious text, as part of a religious service involving the recitation of a prayer, with or without note or comment, could possibly be done “without discrimination or preference” he never explained, but rather seems to think that it is somehow self-evident:

There is a wide distinction between the opening of schools with religious exercises taken from the catechism of some church according to a formula prescribed by some sect or denomination and the reading of portions of the Bible without note or comment. The first may be decidedly objectionable to parents of other denominations, while to the other it would seem no reasonable objection could be raised. … Religious freedom consists in a man’s professing and enjoying what religious faith he pleases, or in the right of rejecting all denominational beliefs. This freedom is in no degree restricted when the Bible is read in the public school.

Not everybody agreed with Skinner. Charles E. Gorton, Yonkers school superintendent, wrote:

I am quite content with the present status of the Bible in the public schools, and suspect that an attempt to do more with it would lead to endless trouble, and very likely properly so. We have children of every faith in the schools. The Bible is the foundation of the Christian religion, and the King James version is the foundation of Protestantism. The Catholics would object to the reading of that version; the Jews would object to the New Testament; other religious sects would object to any reading whatever. Except so far as relates to ethical instruction, I believe we had better let the Bible alone in the public schools, and even as a code of ethics there are many other religious sects who claim that their writings are just as sound as the Bible, and quite likely they are. In my judgment it is quite right to maintain the separation between secular and religious education.

But many administrators favored preaching the Bible. They offered a bewildering variety of not necessarily consistent reasons for this choice. One that jumped out at me—as it still does when offered by modern-day Bible-pushers—is the strong desire to proselytize other people’s children, whose parents, perhaps, did not see the value of it. Some examples:

Many argue that religious teaching should be left to the homes and churches, but statistics prove that these two agencies are not fully performing this important function and that a large number of the children of our state do not come under any religious influence whatever.—C. F. Walker, Superintendent, Elmira

As a matter of fact very many of our students would grow up with no knowledge whatever of this book were it not for what they heard read from it in the public schools.—W. C. Franklin (no location given)

Some of the children in that way may hear the precious word, who never would hear it at any other time.—E. Everett Poole, Commissioner, Chenango county, first district

Every day the teacher should impress upon the minds of the pupils the importance of leading a Christian life.—Charles B. Hanley, Commissioner, Hamilton county, sole district

I believe the Bible should be used daily in the public schools, because … [m]any children will not learn the truths of the Bible unless it is used in the public school.—Libbie J. Sweetland, Commissioner, Tompkins county, second district

In the rural districts a great many children never have a Bible lesson read, or even attend a Sunday school, and a few moments spent in the morning are not lost, but lay before the child and student a new field of thought.—Charles C. McCall, Commissioner, Wyoming county, second district

How does this square with the child’s right of free exercise of his or her religion without discrimination or preference? As is almost always the case in these discussions the rights of the child go unmentioned. Parental objections are noted, however. We saw above how Skinner steamrollered over objections by parents of other persuasions by saying that “no reasonable objection could be raised” by say Jews or Muslims to readings from the Christian sacred writings. (Would he have felt the same if the passages in question had been from the Quran or Tao Te Ching?) Some joined in blaming the parents who objected.

This recognition of the Bible as a standard of morals and as an aid in character-building cannot be reasonably criticised.—James M Crane, City Superintendent, Newburgh.

While it is not the business of the public schools to teach religion, I am firmly convinced that they fall far short of their duty if they fail to inculcate morals, and in no way can this be done so efficiently as by the use of the Bible.—D. E. Batcheller, City Superintendent, Olean

A diploma from a high school should be a guarantee that the possessor has a reasonable familiarity with the Bible.—J. E. Massee, School Superintendent, Watervliet

...as long as we are Americans and our institutions are founded on Christian ethics let us teach our children the fundamental principles of righteous living as taught in the Bible.—Charles D. Niver, Commissioner, Albany County, first district

The preamble of our [New York] constitution recognizes God, our courts use the Bible in administering oaths and the United States is recognized as the great Christian nation. Protestants and Catholics alike accept the Bible as the word of God. What harm then can come to our children from having the Bible in the public schools?—E. B. Whitney, Commissioner, Broome county, second district

Spite of assertions to the contrary, this is a religious state, since the preamble to our constitution explicitly recognizes “Almighty God”; and since the whole tenor of our constitution is framed in accordance with the principles of the New Testament, and is at variance in many respects with the principles of any of the other religions of the world, it is also a Christian state.—J. Irving Gorton, Superintendent, Ossining

Take that, non-religious and non-Christian parents. Screw you, and screw your children too, as far as J. Irving Gorton et al were concerned. More rational observations came from other officials:

In my judgment it is hardly probable that the Bible could be taught in the public schools of the state without the instructor coloring his teaching with his personal belief. I have no sympathy with the notion that has been put forward that it is not possible to teach morals without teaching religion at the same time. It seems to me that the safe thing to do is to keep church and state work pretty clearly separate.—H. H. Snell, Superintendent, Hoosick Falls

I think it is not wise to attempt to teach any form of religion in our public schools. I question the desirability of such teaching in public schools. I certainly believe the public schools should be kept free from any religious teaching by sectarian ministers or teachers.—George Griffith, Superintendent, Utica

...controversy over its teaching is the basis of much of the most violent and destructive antagonism of the world’s history, and for this reason, and this only, it has been excluded from the public schools, which, admittedly, must be secular only.—C. B. Gilbert, Superintendent, Rochester

I believe that the Bible should not be read in the public schools, but should be left to special classes, special schools and the home.—J. C. Van Etten, City Superintendent, Dunkirk

It is my observation and belief that no moral benefit is derived from it. It antagonizes some of the patrons of the public schools. Morality and right living can better be taught by the example of upright, honest, conscientious teachers.—William R. Tremper, Commissioner, Dutchess county, second district

In my opinion the reading of the Bible in the public schools would be an occasion for dissatisfaction among the parents of the children. In as much as Bibles differ, and the schools are made up of children of different religious denominations, the home is the more satisfactory place for such instruction, where they may be allowed to follow the dictates of their own conscience.—John S. Bizel, Commissioner, Franklin county, first district

Given the difficulties at hand, you’d think there had to be a pretty compelling reason for trying to shoehorn the Bible in. And various administrators put in their two cents worth on that. Literary excellence, moral example, historical importance—these are some of the reasons given. With any luck I’ll get a chance to examine these in a later section. Uh, in view of my track record, don’t hold your breath, mmm-kay?

[Since I inadvertently published the introduction to this piece on Sunday, I figured I’d keep it up, publishing sections until I come to an end, or get tired of it.]