On This Day in History

I

t was rainy and windy a half century ago in Vancouver, and on this day in 1964 I set off for Lewis Jr. High School while my brother stayed home ill to read Year of the Gorilla . (He had just got it for his birthday.) I got my report card—mostly Bs, but an A in math and Cs in Art and PE. (My art teacher wrote that I “need[ed] to activate [my]self a trifle”.) My reading teacher observed that I was “Excellent in all reading—should give more attention to written work.” My social studies teacher wrote that I “could be doing better. More effort and less reading during class time.” He agreed with my PE teacher that my display of effort was unsatisfactory.

When I got home I found out that my brother had received a copy of something called Planet of the Apes, a Pierre Boule novel translated from the French. (I don’t know if it was a belated birthday present or just some random gift.) He let me read it, but I wasn’t impressed. The ending irritated me. Our hero manages to make his way back to earth from a planet run by apes only to find that the apes have taken over our planet as well. Or something like that. It’s been a long time since I looked at the damn thing.

Armistice Day

R

emember the war to end all wars? The war to make the world safe for democracy? The guns of August? The good ship Goeben that put out to sea because they told her to? (A terror to her foes was she and also to her crew.) Kaiser Bill? The sick man of Europe? The Zimmermann telegram? Uncle Sam’s Boys at the Capture of Boston?

No? Well, neither do I. The Great War, later downgraded by its flashier sequel to the First World War, or World War I, has finally slipped out of living memory. Oh, I’m sure there are a few aging souls who can still remember some aspect of the war as it impinged on their childhood, but those who directed it, fought it, and suffered through it are now gone, and their memories survive only as oral tradition or written narrative. Or bizarre mementos encased in old metal boxes passed down to uncomprehending family members.

I have—or used to have maybe—a small box containing a 1918 Red Cross lapel pin, a hand-embroidered handkerchief with an American flag, and other disjecta membra of the Great War. I know their stories, involving a great-uncle whose troop-ship docked in France just after the war ended and a great-aunt who did volunteer work as a young woman, but when I’m gone even those faint aftertraces of memories will fade into the Great Darkness.

Even the holidays we erect to commemorate events regarded as significant by one generation fade over time. Today is Armistice Day, commemorating the cessation of hostilities arranged by Erich Ludendorff to give German the breathing space to prepare for the next war, and reminding us that war is a thing not to be entered into lightly. Or rather, today was Armistice Day. When the War to End All Wars proved to be only the first in a series—easily surpassed by the Second War to End All Wars, and then the Third (a.k.a. the Cold War)—Armistice Day was repurposed as Veterans Day, a day to remember all the veterans of wars past and yet to come. And as the Mad Tea Partiers subsume the day into Freedom Week—celebrating America’s propensity for aggrandizing its own freedom by crushing the freedom of others—the memories of the day dissipate further.

I’d rather keep the original name. As cartoonist Walt Kelly once wrote:

The eleventh day of the eleventh month has always seemed to me to be special. Even if the reason for it fell apart as the years went on, it was a symbol of something close to the high part of the heart. Perhaps a life that stretches through two or three wars takes its first war rather seriously, but I still think we should have kept the name “Armistice Day.” Its implications were a little more profound, a little more hopeful. [from Ten Ever-lovin’ Blue-eyed Years with Pogo, as quoted by Vagabond Scholar]

But time passes, life goes on, and one generation’s vital memories become another’s old handkerchiefs and buttons, to be discarded like yesterday’s candy-wrappers  and milk-cartons. Or recycled into something more useful to the present moment, like an old gramophone case doing duty as a liquor cabinet. It’s the way of things—but I don’t have to like it.

Quotation of the Day

… economies no longer function like they did two and a half millennia ago. We are no longer limited by the amount of shiny pebbles we can dig up from the ground (or take from someone else). We aren’t on the gold standard anymore. If we need more money, we can create it. You might not like the implications of that (it seems to freak out goldbugs), but what it means is that we are only limited by constraints in the real economy: resource shortages (including human ones) and misallocation of resources.

Mike the Mad Biologist
(OklahomaCouldn’t Elect Someone Worse Than Sen. James Inhofe, Right?)

Day of Failure

S

ome years ago, on what must have been a 9^th of November, I watched in amazement as a newscaster, totally oblivious to recent history, observed about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall what a triumph this was for Ronald Reagan. While historians might debate the extent of his responsibility for the event, no one could deny that it happened during his administration.

Well, of course I was reminded of the exchange between Albert Alligator and a firefly during an expedition deep into the swamp in search of lost friends. Albert has taken charge, and the firefly demands that Albert do something leaderful. “There! Looky! It stopped rainin’ … How’s that?” says Albert. “You can’t take credit for that!” the firefly protests. “Why not?” Albert demands. “It happened durin’ my administration din’t it?”

Well, us gotta be fair, as Pogo Possum observed, but this one was both wrong on the law and wrong on the facts. Merely because something happened while somebody was in office doesn’t make it that person’s responsibility, for good or ill, regardless of the Alligator Principle. And in fact Ronald Reagan wasn’t president when the wall fell—it was during the administration of his successor, George Bush I.

I mentioned the absurdity of the newscaster’s remark to several people, and was surprised to find that they all agreed with the newscaster against me—of course it happened on Reagan’s watch. I remembered quite clearly the events of the end of the cold war, and I was quite sure of my facts—but I looked them up anyway. (Like the Golux, I sometimes make things up.) But it is a fact, the Berlin wall fell on 9 November 1989, ten months into Bush’s regime.

I suppose this is a matter of what you choose to believe. If you wish to believe that the almighty Reagan huffed and puffed and blew down the entire Soviet Empire with some wimpy speech, well, there’s nothing to stop you. Mere facts are powerless against such an iron dream. I guess it could be one of his legendary third-term achievements.

But 9 November does mark the end of the hated Berlin wall, no matter what political spin you might care to put on it, and you can easily see why the Germans might want to celebrate it. Except, well, they don’t, exactly. 9 November comes with cultural baggage. It was 9 November in 1932 that Nazi thugs decided to launch their anti-Semitic campaign by smashing windows of Jewish-owned stores and burning down synagogues. If 9 November were a German holiday, you can bet what Erik Kartmann would be celebrating.

Interestingly, Joseph Goebbels announced the opening shots of the Holocaust at a celebration of another Nazi milestone—no, not the foundation of the SS—it was the anniversary of Hitler’s failed coup attempt against the Bavarian government nine years before, the almost-comic beer-hall putsch. Four police officers did lose their lives defending the republic against some two thousand right-wing gangbangers, but Hitler’s utter incompetence guaranteed its failure right from the start. After Hitler’s triumph at the ballot-box years later the whole event was romanticized, and Germans celebrated it as Reichstrauertag, a day of mourning.

Hitler’s attempted coup occurred five years to the day after Philipp Scheidemann had unilaterally proclaimed the monarchy ended and a republic established by shouting that information out the window to a crowd below. Okay, the reality was a little more complicated, but that moment endured in popular memory, and the ill-fated Weimar Republic was launched. Crippled by debt and deliberately undermined by cultural conservatives, it would eventually more or less vote itself out of existence, going out with neither a bang nor a whimper, but while it lasted it was a brief cultural oasis in the Reich’s otherwise grim history.

The republic, in many ways, attempted to embody the tolerant and open ways envisioned in the brief awakening of 1848. Robert Blum was one of the voices of this movement—poet, publisher, politician—and on 9 November (the day before his 41^st birthday) he became a martyr to it, when after being illegally arrested a few days before he was summarily executed. The spirit of 1848 was quickly flushed down the sinkhole of history as the various nations affected reverted to their primitive ways, but the day was remembered on the new calendar of progressive saints, as medieval writers used to recall the gruesome deaths of Christian propagandists on their various anniversaries.

The Germans now call it Schicksalstag, the fateful day. It is certainly a day of many failures—the failed revolution of 1848, the failed republic of 1918, the failed coup of 1923, the failed attempt to eradicate the Jewish people, the failed attempt to build a German socialist state. American presidents from George Bush I to Barack Obama have been annually declaring 9 November World Freedom Day for the past quarter century, but as far as I can tell it has never caught on except with right-wingers, who use it to buff up the shine on their St. Ronald icons. I’d leave it alone, personally. I’d hate to think that the cause of world freedom will end up just another goddamn failure.

Scalps and Strychnine

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t’s a gray, foggy November day, which suits my gray foggy mood perfectly. I could write about many things, but today I feel the call of the dead. I hear voices calling to me through the void of time, and I feel impelled—at least encouraged—to heed their words.

It was on this very November day in 1852 that one of those events occurred that would have significance past anything that its participants could have seen. Ben Wright, professional Indian fighter, headed down in the gray dawn to talk with the leaders of the Modoc tribe about establishing peace between them and the Euro-American settlers that were passing through their land. In a short while most of the Modoc negotiators would be dead, and Ben Wright would be riding back to the California town of Yreka in triumph.

These are facts. What actually happened in between is a matter of conjecture. Participants and other interested parties have left us a variety of inconsistent tales, and from them we can weave as we like whatever story pleases us.

There are some details that are all too clear. One of Wright’s men, in town to pick up supplies and vote, bought strychnine from a local druggist, for example. (It was believed by those who sold it to him that the poison was intended for the Modocs.) On the night of 7 November Wright sent beef over to the Modoc camp for them to have a feast, and one of his men (a native American) warned a friend of his in the camp not to eat the meat. And the next day during a talk that turned angry Wright pulled out his gun and started shooting, His men followed suit, and the Modoc negotiators ended up dead. Somehow things had gone wrong. These are facts.

Well, probably—as certainly as things ever get in history. What exactly went wrong? Decades later Captain Goodall, who bought the strychnine for Wright, told a regional historian

when at length it was found necessary to close the campaign on account of approaching winter and snow, a final talk was had, in which a beef was killed and well dosed with strychnine which I bought in Yreka and sent out to Wright. This was given to them and by them eaten half raw. But the plan failed of killing all of them off, for the heat of the fire deprived the poison of its strength. However it was successful thus far, that it made them all very sick with the “jerks,” and actually killed five of them—that is, made good Indians of them; or in other phrase “sunned their moccasins.”

On the other hand, George Gilless, who sold part of the strychnine to Wright, wrote:

Captain Ben Wright, in the Fall of ’52, sent to Yreka for strychnine, with which to poison the Modocs, who had been invited to his camp to treat for peace. A portion of the poison was supplied by the house in which I was then a partner in. We gave all the strych­nine we had. A gentleman now living in San Francisco (Captain William Clarkson) assisted my partner in obtaining an additional quantity, that which we contributed not being deemed sufficient. Swill, the Oregon Indian, did object to this mode of warfare, and his objection frustrated the attempt to poison the Modoc Peace Commission. The Modocs were afterward invited into camp to treat for peace, and Ben Wright and his troops did assault and kill nearly all of them. This information I had from Wright himself and it was the talk of the men generally belonging to his command on their entrance into Yreka after the close of their campaign. [According to other accounts Swill informed his Modoc girlfriend of the plot to poison them; presumably this is what Gilless is referring to when he wrote “his objection frustrated the attempt to poison the Modoc Peace Commission.”]

John Hallick, one of Ben Wright’s men, contradicted Gilless. In an 1873 interview with a local newspaper he told a story of long patient negotiations with the Modoc representatives. Eventually a woman serving as interpreter warned them that the Modocs intended to kill them all during the next day’s talks, and urged them to flee. Wright and his men, however, instead went secretly armed to the talks, and before the Modocs could carry out their treacherous plan, turned the tables on them by shooting them first. Another of Wright’s men is said to have confirmed the story.

A major problem with this story is that the weeks of negotiations never happened, as shown by the contemporary record. The key to understanding this is that the interview didn’t occur in a vacuum. Context matters. In this case the context is the then-ongoing Modoc War, in which negotiations with the besieged insurgents had in fact gone on for weeks. Hallick, or the interviewer, wanted to draw a parallel between current events and this twenty-year-old incident. Wright’s negotiations had taken no more than a few days, but to make the parallel better they needed to be strung out. To my mind, this casts doubt on a second parallel the interview makes much of. Supposedly the interpreter warned Wright of impending treachery. This was parallel to a warning given in the then-current 1873 conflict by an interpreter, a warning that proved all too accurate.

At least one old resident of the region, Elijah Steele, expressed his doubt about this new version of the story. He was out of town at the time of the event, so as he says

all I know of that was hearsay; but I know it was generally known that Ben Wright had concocted the plan of poisoning those Indians at a feast, and that his interpreter Indian, Livile [=Swill], had exposed to the Indians, so that but few ate of the meat, and that Wright and his company then fell upon the Indians and forty out of forty-seven, and one other, died of the poison afterward. There is one of the company now in the country who gives this version, and I heard Wright swearing about Dr. Ferrber, our druggist (now of Vallejo), selling him an adulterated article of strychnine, which he said the doctor wanted to kill the cayotes. That the plan was concocted before they left Yreka defeats the claim now made for them, that they only anticipated the treachery of the Indians.

What actually happened? I wasn’t there, and neither were you or anyone else living today, and the people who might have told something useful were busy grinding axes. But here’s what I think. I think that when Ben Wright gave the beef to the Modocs for a feast, it was adulterated with strychnine. Wright had gone to a great deal of trouble to secure it; it is difficult to believe that they would not have gone ahead with the plan. But Swill’s timely warning, at least to his girlfriend, probably did, as Steele wrote, discourage many of the Modocs from eating it, and the result was that the mass poisoning never came off, even if some did become sick or die. We know that Wright and his men kept watch on the Modoc camp all night, and when dawn came that some of them went down to the camp to continue their negotiations—or maybe to investigate exactly what had happened. If they were expecting to find only dead people, they were severely disappointed. They were instead confronted by an angry head man and his enraged followers. It is not clear why they were angry from the available accounts, but a failed attempt to poison them all would certainly fill the bill. Wright drew his concealed gun and shot one of the men, and Wright’s men started shooting at others. Early reports say that 31 Modocs were killed, and that two of Wright’s men were seriously injured. (How isn’t stated—the Modocs didn’t have firearms and their bows were supposedly unstrung.)

An unknown writer in Yreka gave the earliest account of events:

On Monday morning last, three persons ar­rived from Capt. Benjamin Wright’s camp, with information that a fight had taken place on Monday morning previous with the Indi­ans, and that thirty-one Indians had been killed, and two of our citizens wounded and wanted medical aid. [21 November 1852, printed in the Shasta Courier of 27 November 1852]

On 10 December a courier informed the Oregon Weekly Times “that Capt. Wright with his company of 25 men, near the great Tule Lake near the Southern trail, had a fight with the Indians, in which he was completly [sic] victorious, having killed forty-seven—and brought in 47 scalps, several horses, bows and arrows and various Indian ictors [sic].  Two men only were wounded.” By March of the next year the Indian Department was receiving reports that “A party of citizens under the conduct of Captain Ben Wright last fall massacred over thirty Indians out of forty-eight, who had come into Captain Wright’s camp by invitation to make a ‘peace.’” This same report indicated that the peace talks were only a ruse on Wright’s part to get the Modocs into a place where he could kill them.

Now we are often told that we shouldn’t judge historical figures by modern standards; they were men of their time and culture and lived according to their own codes. Fair enough. But by the standards of their day, as well as ours, murdering peace negotiators under a flag of truce is reprehensible. Even if we accept the later version of some of Ben Wright’s men, that they only committed treachery to forestall treachery, it is nothing but an attempt to claim that two wrongs—one of them only meditated—somehow make a right. And if it is true that they invited men to a peace conference with the intention of killing them en masse—then there is no excuse for their actions. Not by our code, certainly, but also not by theirs. It is an abomination, poison or no poison.

The Fact that Criticism Exists is the Offence (by The Ex-Muslims Forum)

[The following comment was posted in reply to a piece called “Why I don’t believe people who say they loathe Islam but not Muslims” written by Andrew Brown. “It is psychologically unnatural to claim that you hate an ideology without hating the people in whose lives it is expressed” he claims. He makes a tortured claim that hating aspects of Islam is essentially the same thing as racism. This brought forth a well-reasoned reply:]

A

s Exmuslims, we critique Islam because there are many aspects of Islam that need to be critiqued. In particular, we seek to oppose Islam’s apostasy codes, which are oppressive and lead to persecution.

We have found it is quite difficult to get some people to listen to our stories because they fear that acknowledging these issues will contribute to a critical view towards Islam.

The idea is that particularly reactionary teachings and aspects of belief that lead to critical judgements of Islam are in and of themselves prejudiced. The resulting logic of this is that Islam should have special privileges, in as much as basic human conscience and ethical critical judgement of people living in a secular culture should not apply, or be expressed, towards Islam.

The fact that criticism exists, is the offence.

Effectively, this is to propose a kind of proxy blasphemy code and apostasy code, wherein the liberal secular space defers to Islamic taboos. Dissenting Muslims and Exmuslims have to conform to these proxy codes too. Everyone else is free to critique their own religion, and other faiths and ideas too. But Islam must be protected.

However, Muslims are free to critique all religions, belief systems and moralities, because evangelising Islam, and proffering critique and judgement is not only a divine prerogative, but the closing down of ethical, critical judgement towards Islam is also a divine right.

As we can see, this is an ethical and moral mess.

This is an aspect of liberal relativism that is morally flawed and unsustainable without damaging basic principles of liberal secularism. It also means that aspects of Islam that need to be criticised, like Islam’s apostasy codes, remain unexamined, and with that authority unquestioned, their capacity to hurt people and cause harm increases.

Another fear is that being critical of aspects of Islam manifests in prejudice towards Muslims, and this is an understandable response given how parts of the far-right do project generalising narratives of communal responsibility on Muslims. As Exmuslims, we understand this, because being from ethnic minorities ourselves (apart from growing numbers of former white converts) we are also prone to be in the targets of bigots who project their hostility onto anyone who “looks” Muslim, whatever that is supposed to be.

The key to dealing with this is for the Left to take ownership of the issues that need to be critiqued, and do so through the prism of liberal secular values, so that they cannot be co-opted by the nationalist right, who have agendas that are not tolerant.

Sadly the instinct of relativism too often prevents this reckoning from occurring. The silencing of Exmuslims voices is the norm, although we are trying to change this.

There are three main layers of silencing of apostates voices. The first layer is the hardcore religious silencing, which includes notions that we deserve to be killed and harmed. Under that is a second layer of some Muslims who may not agree we should be persecuted, but don’t want to have these problematic aspects or religion talked about, because of feelings of embarassment, fear of the consequences, or cognitive dissonance regarding apostasy / blasphemy codes. The third layer underneath this is the relativism of white liberals who are often in concordance with silencing instincts over these issues, including silencing of Exmuslims, for the reasons we outlined earlier. Often, relativist liberals simply pretend we don’t exist.

But silencing never works, and it only increases the problems.

It is important to understand that anti-Muslim bigotry is real. At the same time, the reality of the need for Islam to be critiqued has to be acknowledged by the Left, and by Muslims who live in liberal secular democracies too.

[”This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more details see our FAQs.”]

[h/t Ophelia Benson, who preserved the text]

Cursed Be All Learning!

T

he underbrush has grown thickly about the internet since I’ve been down with the moving sickness, and frankly it’s beyond either my interest or abilities to hack it back. Luxuriant growths of strange fungi have emerged, and old thorny vines re-established themselves. (I see David Barton has a new version of his unconfirmed quotations page up, for example—and it is a rare growth indeed!) The gamergate creepers are everywhere, threatening to strangle the old growth columns, and the social injustice perennials are in full bloom.

While tramping through this tulgy undergrowth I came across this little toadstool of a website, attributed to a certain Pastor Stephen Andrew, entitled USA Christian Ministries, and containing a page of USA HistoryQuotes about God and the Bible, many of them fake. It’s apparently been there since at least 21 February 2012 (though not apparently in exactly the present form) and is a rich growth of frauds and forgeries. We find such familiar hoaxes as the Washington prayer book and the 1792 congressional proclamation approving the holy bible for use in schools. There are the rank misattributions, like the John Quincy Adams “cornerstone” quotation being attributed to his father, or the Reformed Dutch Synod’s “true religion” remark being assigned to George Washington. Not to mention the absurdity of attributing a comment by an anonymous 1956 writer to Patrick Henry. There are unsupported attributions, like Henry’s deathbed tribute to the Bible. There are incorrect citations, as when words from Noah Webster’s 1836 letter to David McClure are attributed to his preface to the 1828 dictionary. (I have read through the thousands of words in that preface, and fascinating reading it is, if you are interested in the correct pronunciation of the English language, or the derivation of its words, but he does not there discuss his views on the use of the Bible in education.)

There are the weird distortions, such as this version of Washington’s advice to the Delaware tribe:

You do well to wish to learn … above all the religion of Jesus Christ [in our schools].

You know, you don’t get to use ellipses and brackets to change the meaning of a quotation—that’s as much fraud as simply making words up and attributing them to somebody else. The same is true with his version of what he likes to call the “First Ammendment”:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [Christian denomination], or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And apparently, if this site is to be believed (and I see no reason why it should), both Noah and Daniel Webster said “Education is useless without the Bible”. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent trying to run that idiotic claim down. I can easily believe that either of them—or both—actually said that, especially in the context of the whole Girard’s college imbroglio. For those who don’t know the story, Stephen Girard, the wealthiest man in the United States of his time (he bailed out the government during the 1812 war), left his fortune to a variety of public works in his adopted country. One of these was a school for the education of orphans. His French relatives wanted the cash, and Daniel Webster was one of the lawyers who fought to help them in their attempt to rob orphans of an education. One of the provisions in Girard’s will was that no priest or minister should set foot on the grounds of his school, and the anti-college team twisted that into a claim that no religion would be taught at the school. Daniel Webster claimed that a charitable bequest that excluded Christianity was invalid under the law, because, it seems, there could be no charity outside of the Christian context, and the bequest should therefore be set aside in favor of Girard’s family members. Daniel Webster cited Noah Webster (among others) in support of his position. Ultimately the judge sidestepped the whole issue by pointing out that the exclusion of ministers did not prevent religious education by laymen, and that therefore that whole line of argument was irrelevant.

I could easily imagine either Webster claiming that “education is useless without the Bible” in this context, but I haven’t found it. And, for the record, Girard’s school for orphans was indeed founded, and is still in operation to this day, though his desire that all girls and black children be excluded from his bequest is no longer honored.

Moving on, I see that Pastor Andrew’s collection of James Madison quotations is absolutely perfect—there is nothing genuine in the entire lot. They are out-and-out fakes, all of them. Taking them in order they are:

We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.

This is a well-known fake; Madison never wrote anything like it. Many of the words are Clarence Manion’s, taken from various forms of his 1950s lecture on “The Key to Peace”, and the entire thing may have been inspired by a few words of Madison’s in the Federalist Papers, but it doesn’t appear to be any older than about 1958. (Some writers claim a 1937 source, but the existence of that item is doubtful, to say the least.)

We then have

Religion [is] the basis and foundation of Government.

This one is particularly childish. What he actually wrote (in Memorial and Remonstrance on the Religious Rights of Man) was:

… Because finally, “the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience” is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the “Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,” it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis.

Note that the word “religion” is part of a quotation and the words “the basis and foundation of government” are part of the title of a work he is referring to. The fraud could hardly be more transparent.

Finally we have

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.

This is so obviously not Madison’s it is amazing that anybody could be taken in by it. As Jeffrey Shallit noted in a piece on this fake quotation (Yet Another Christian Fake Quote) Madison was more likely to say things like “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect” than “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” How did this bizarre attribution occur? A commenter on that site (me, actually, back when I still had access to my library) suggested “The Madison misattribution probably results … from human error (and failure to check sources). William J. Federer wrote in the Madison section of his America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (p. 410):

Home-schooled as a child, Madison attended Princeton University under the direction of Reverend John Witherspoon, one of the nation's premier theologians and legal scholars. The University's first president, Jonathan Dickinson, had declared: “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.”

Somebody seeing this sentence in quotation marks in a section devoted to Madison quotations could easily be excused for mistaking it for Madison's words.”

So it would seem to be a simple case of misattribution. It was Jonathan Dickinson, not James Madison, who said “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.” But did he? For the sake of his posthumous reputation I would hope he didn’t—but hopes are not the same as evidence. I did look for it—but I couldn’t find it.

The oldest reference to the saying that Google Books turned up was from a sketch of a speech given by the Reverend S. S. Cox D.D. in October 1845 recorded in the Permanent Documents of the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, Volume 1, p. 30. He attributed the following words to “a venerable man [by] the name of Witherspoon”:

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not coincident with the cross of Christ; cursed be all that learning that is not subservient to the cross of Christ.

The “venerable man [by] the name of Witherspoon” was no doubt John Knox Witherspoon (1723-1794), signer of the Declaration and president of the College of New Jersey. William Federer mentioned him along with Dickinson in the bit quoted above. But could Witherspoon have actually said these bigoted anti-intellectual words?

Well, yes he could, kind of. Context matters here. The words appear in a sermon he published in 1768, one of a group “selected in order to form a little system of the truths of the gospel”. The sermon in question is number VIII, entitled “Glorying in the Cross” and taking for its text Paul’s letter to the Galatians chapter vi, verse 14, given there as “But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the manner of sermons “Glorying in the Cross” meanders on for a bit, as Witherspoon tries to establish to his own satisfaction at least what exactly is meant by by its subject. “The word here translated glorying, signifies at the same time exulting, or rejoicing; and therefore to glory in the cross, is the same thing as to rejoice in the Saviour.” He moves on to ask “in what it was the apostle did not glory.” From elsewhere in Paul’s works (the latter portion of II Corinthians maybe?) Witherspoon concludes there were at least three things “he renounced as any subject of boasting. 1. His learning as a scholar; 2. His privileges as a Jew; 3. Even his zeal and activity as a minister of Christ.”

Are you still with me? Do you see where we’re going here? “The apostle Paul” he observes “had been brought up at the sect of Gamaliel, and seems to have been well accomplished in every branch of human science. Yet he speaks of it with great neglect, or rather with a noble disdain, when compared with the doctrine of the cross…” Witherspoon asks rhetorically “What is the meaning of this renunciation of human learning and wisdom? Is there any real opposition between learning and the cross? Would not the legitimate use of human wisdom lead us to embrace it?” For him this renunciation implies, first “An admiration of the divine glory in that which had not on it any of the marks of human wisdom…”, second “such a superlative admiration of this glorious and interesting object, that all the knowledge he possessed, and the honour he could otherwise acquire, seemed to him unworthy of regard…”, and third, “humility and self-denial, with the noble contempt of vain embellishments, which showed he was not building a monument to himself, but seeking the honour of his Saviour.”

And at this point he enters the caveat that is the source of this passage:

Mistake me not, my brethren: I am not speaking against learning in itself; it is a precious gift of God, and may be happily improved in the service of the gospel; but I will venture to say, in the spirit of the apostle Paul's writings in general, and of this passage in particular, Accursed be all that learning which sets itself in opposition to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which disguises or is ashamed of the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning which fills the room that is due to the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning which is not made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ!

As is my custom I have bolded the material that is reflected in the misquotation under consideration. (It will be noted that the first and third of Cox’s curses have Witherspoon’s first and fourth curses as their source; the second however is not parallel to either Witherspoon’s second or third. Go figure.) So, yeah, Witherspoon is indeed the source of the fake Madison quotation; the context mitigates the anti-intellectualism of it somewhat. But not much, no.

For my part, I am unenthusiastic about ideologies that would set limits on inquiry. I mean, I have nothing against the gospel per se; there are some nice things in it, considering that it was the product of a benighted and savage era. It is as straw compared to the work of Aristotle or Archimedes, and less useful than the advice of Sun Tzu, but it has its points. When used to impede the advance of knowledge, however, I will venture to say in no uncertain terms, Accursed be all that learning that limits itself to the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning that exists only to exalt the cross of Christ! Accursed be all that learning that erases knowledge for the cross of Christ! and once more, Accursed be all that learning that is made subservient to the honour and glory of the cross of Christ! Such “learning” is unworthy the efforts of the minds that wasted their abilities on it, loving the darkness rather than shining their lamps into the shadowed corners of the cosmos to see what really was there. It’s akin to those lawyers who would rob orphans of an education if that education didn’t include their particular unsubstantiated pet notions.

Still, at least the reverend John Witherspoon had a mind, and made what appears to be a sincere effort to come to grips with the meaning of his text. Today's Christ-mongers are too busy selling a product to worry about such niceties. Manufacturing appropriate quotations and rewriting constitutions to suit their theological fancies are more their speed. Research is hard. Why do it, if you can just make things up? Use your ellipses as scissors and your brackets as paste and you can make anybody say anything you like. It's not like people have access to repositories of documents they can visit, or even conjure up in their own homes if they have an internet connection. No, they'll believe whatever you tell them. And trusting pastors with websites can be counted upon to spread your message.

And so with that I bid a fond farewell to this fantastic fungal growth in a remote corner of the online woods. I would suggest that the good Pastor Andrew needs to weed his garden a bit. There are a lot of tares mixed in with his wheat.

Guy Fawkes Day

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hat little I know about Guy Fawkes is that he was a Catholic conspirator who plotted to blow up Parliament in 1605 or so, when the King’s Men were still performing at the Globe plays like Hamlet and Every Man in His Humor, and James I (of future King James Bible fame) was on the throne after the death of his distant relative Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII. Fawkes got nowhere in his plot, because one of his co-conspirators took the precaution of warning a Catholic member of parliament to stay away, which kind of gave the show away. No doubt this is a sort of Drunk History version of events, in that I am writing from memory, without even bothering to consult Wikipedia or the like, but I don’t really care at the moment. I can’t write, I have no future, my books are in storage, and I’m paying more money a month than I make for the privilege of sleeping on somebody’s sofa in a basement. Historical accuracy on a throw-away entry is not exactly a high priority at the moment.

I’m not fond of terrorists, as a general rule, but I do have fond memories of Guy Fawkes—bonfires, fireworks, the smoke and sparks seen through an evening autumn mist. But these can’t be your memories (I hear you protest); you’re a goddamn American, born and bred in the fictitious nation of Cascadia. You wouldn’t have celebrated Guy Fawkes Day. What are you trying to pull?

And that is true, more or less. You see, what we were celebrating wasn’t so much Guy Fawkes Day, despite the bonfires and fireworks and burning in effigy (at least once)—it was a birthday. One of my brothers was born on 5 November. At some point—I think maybe it was when we got The Phoenix and the Carpet—we learned about this English holiday that happened to fall on my brother’s birthday, and as it seemed cool, we borrowed elements of it to enliven the festivities. We kept it up for years, actually, though eventually, like all good things, it came to an end.

There’s no point to this; I’m just typing words randomly in the hopes that they will somehow fall into pleasing patterns to lighten somebody’s day. Not mine, apparently—my light seems to have gone out for good. But somebody’s. When I started this I intended to somehow lead artfully to a cool piece by J. L. Bell about the end of Pope Night in Boston, but things veered off in an unexpected direction, so I’m just going to drag it in by main force. Go read that—it will entertain and enlighten. And maybe sometime in the future I will again have something to say. Right now I’m going to crash out on my rented couch, and hope that things look better when I wake up.

George Washington, Perpetuity, and the Young

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oday went down the tubes in another futile attempt to locate the source of an alleged George Washington quotation, to this effect:

The perpetuity of this nation depends upon the moral and religious training of the young.

In the earliest appearance that I can find, Marion Lawrance’s 1916 Special Days in the Sunday School, it is already cited as a “famous quotation” and yet, for all its fame, earlier occurrences elude me. There are other forms of this saying about what the perpetuity of this nation depends on—the “religious education of the young”, for example—but none of them is even that old.

Looking at it from the other end I find from searching through George Washington’s works in print and the Library of Congress online collection of his papers that the general was not fond of the word perpetuity, using it only in the legal phrase “in perpetuity”, and he appears to have shown little or no interest in the moral or religious education of the young. The moral and/or religious education and/or training and/or instruction of the young seems to have been on intense interest to a number of people during the nineteenth century, especially during the latter half, but not to the father of his country. (I’m speaking here of the words, by the way, not necessarily the subject.)

Perpetuity is an odd word to have chosen here, anyway—isn’t a word like perpetuation more like what the author must have had in mind? I tried various combinations of synonyms, but without any luck.

The phrase “perpetuity of our nation” or the like seems to have been popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As examples let me give you:

Edward P. Ingersoll, D.D. in 1881:  The perpetuity of our nation is guarded by the church. [“National Dangers and Guards,” in The Preacher and Homiletic Monthly, Volume 5 (Funk & Wagnalls, 1881) p. 78]

William Jennings Bryan in 1896: Our form of government recognizes the right of the States to do certain things, and the perpetuity of this nation depends as much upon respecting local self-government as it does upon recognizing national supremacy. [The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896 (W. B. Conkey Company, 1896), p. 519]

The mayor of Seattle in 1906: As has been well said, the perpetuity of our nation and institutions, and the welfare and happiness of our people, depend upon the intelligence of our citizenship. [Proceedings at the Opening of the Seattle Public Library Building, December 19, 1906 (Ivy Press, 1907, unnumbered page]

It seems curious that Washington should have so neatly anticipated a turn of phrase that would not become popular until a century had passed, and that that saying should not emerge until that very time. Honestly, it passeth belief. My strong suspicion, given this, is that this saying—who ever really said it—belongs to this era, rather than to the time of the founders.

I could be wrong. If anybody knows when and where George Washington said or wrote this thing, or what genuine words of Washington this saying paraphrases, or whatever the true story is, I would be quite interested in hearing from you. Write me—or post it at Wikiquote. Nothing depends on it—but I’d like to know.

Of a Dog, a Landslide, and a Speech

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n this day in history (according to Wikipedia and the BBC) the Russians launched a dog into space in 1957, Lyndon Johnson beat the shit out of Barry Goldwater in a landslide election in 1964, and Richard Nixon called on the “Silent Majority” to support his war effort against a vocal minority who had the temerity to object to being shipped off as cannon-fodder in a “limited” war that never seemed to end.

What do these events have in common, other than the date? Probably nothing, except that each of them is something I actually remember, something that struck me about it at the time. Getting into space excited me as a child; I wanted to be part of it—but I felt sad for the sacrifice of the dog the Russians hurled into the great unknown. As a teenager the Goldwater-Johnson election was the first race that I felt I had a stake in; Goldwater terrified me with his plans to escalate a war in support of a corrupt government in a remote part of the world, and I was afraid his presidency would lead inevitably to a nuclear war. (I think I still have a drawing I did at the time showing the earth in rubble with the only intact artifact being a pro-Goldwater sign. And I’ve written before about the stark insanity of Nixon’s speech about how we, the American people, should sit down and shut up. It was none of our business how a war that might take our own lives (or the lives of our family-members or friends) was conducted. Nixon had a plan. A plan to get us out of that war Goldwater wanted so desperately to get us into. As a joke of the time had it, They said if I voted for Goldwater we’d be dropping bombs on Vietnam. Well I did, and we are.

Well, anyway, Laika, I drink to your memory.

Quotation of the Day

If all works of god are of infinite wonder, then the stars are amazing and transcend all knowledge of them as mere spheres of nuclear fire.

And so does Ebola. The same god that creates such beauty, also created the deadly diseases we fear.

Avicenna Last (A Rather Nice Story)

Hallowmas

Today, it appears, is Hallowmas, or All Saints’ Day, day 2 in the Tripartite celebration that is Allhallowtide, or more simply, the Hallowmas Season. It’s a time for remembering the dead, perhaps envying them. Conjuring the internet genii from the vasty deep I learn that hallow is one of our Germanic words for what our Latin side might term sacred. It comes from Old English halgian, which in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *haila-ga- (the * means that it is a reconstructed word, not actually found as a fossil entombed some inscription or folio somewhere). And in turn this came from the Proto-Indo-European *kailo-, meaning apparently something like boding well or the like. A hallow (noun) is a hallowed person, somebody sanctified, a saint. Hallowmas remembers the hallows, the saints, all of them—hence the name All Saints’ Day. It’s followed by All Souls Day.

This filler entry has been brought to you by Stage Fright, Writer’s Block, and the number 4.

Quotation of the Day

Atheism is completely meaningless if it means simply eradicating theistic beliefs without reducing the harm that generally follows in their wake.

Heina Dadabhoy
(LGBT Muslims: Past & Present Realities, Not “An Oxymoron”)