On the Danger of Cynicism

June 2, 2013June 2, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

It has always been easier to criticize and find fault than to contribute toward and respect the constructive ideal. Optimists, always the creators, have to work not only to realize what previously seemed impossible but they also have to overcome the destructive habits of the pessimists. Those pessimists are the first to surrender in the face of difficulty while they trumpet the message of hopelessness. “Nor is it worth trying,” these closet nihilists aver. Failure to measure up to certain expectations is enough for some to give up entirely on a project and declare defeat for the cause. America is no different. It has always had a healthy share of pessimists and other weak-willed “experts” who knew it would fail in this or that endeavor. The purpose of America, as Coolidge would reiterate, remains valid. It has raised for all the world to see a set of truths that preserve liberty with duty in a way that no set of principles has before, or can surpass. The failure to eradicate all the failings and frailties inherent in human nature is no more proof of failure than evidence of any grander success by empowering government now to accomplish it for us. For these “armchair” critics, it discredits the entire foundation and persuades them that progress means abandoning moral clarity, surrendering confidence in self-government entirely and trusting in our modernity to move past the “old” and “inadequate” concepts of an “ignorant” and “limited” eighteenth century existence. It would be one thing to adopt so foolhardy and naively defeatist outlook for oneself. These self-proclaimed skeptics are imparting this to the next generation, however, through “modern education.” To this issue of education, Coolidge turned in June of 1922, when he said,

“This is the civilization which intelligence has created and which sacrificed has redeemed. We did not make it. It is our duty to serve it. Education ought to assess it at its true worth. It ought not to despise it but reverence it. If there be in education a better estimation of true values, it must be on the side of a great optimism. Under its examination human relationship stands forth as justified and sanctified. There is no place for the cynic or the pessimist. Who is he that can take no part in business because he believes it is selfish? Who is he that can take no part in religion because he believes it is imperfect? These institutions are the instruments by which an eternal purpose is working out the salvation of the world. It is not for us to regard them with disdain; it is for us to work with them, to dedicate ourselves to them, to justify our faith in them…The great service which education must perform is to confirm our faith in the world, establish our settled convictions, and maintain an open mind.”

The annual American Educational Research Association meeting in April made evident that improved testing and eradicating poverty are but symptoms of an education missing its core. As schools all across the country let out for the summer, now is an ideal time to consider the service education is actually rendering for us and our children. Is it consigning our proven ideals to failure, proclaiming a gospel of hopelessness and permanent moral uncertainty? Is it rejecting the worth of Christian standards of behavior because America is forever trapped, they claim, in racism, hypocrisy, chauvinism, bigotry and oppression? Is it championing the control of a few who can finally achieve the perfection which is our right, if only we abandon this failed framework of eighteenth century slaveholders? Such goes the cynic’s mantra. What is not so readily apparent are the rocks waiting on the other side of those words. It has wrecked and will continue to wreck the lives of those who are taught to embrace pessimism, to rely on the force of government to compensate for all of America’s shortcomings. The cynic, ultimately, doubts liberty. America has never worked, he assumes, so why work at it as responsible and informed citizens? Just as Coolidge remarked, though, an open mind can co-exist with settled convictions. Forever holding out undecided on everything is the perfect soil for cynicism. Moral relativity, taught by too many schools in this country, is actually moral surrender in a more subtle form. On the contrary, knowing certain things are right and true broadens the mind to keep learning. It is the pessimist whose mind is closed, failing to accept that the people can be trusted with their liberty far more than government has or ever will. Education serves its purpose when it keeps that flame of optimism in our ideals alive. It is the more difficult task than the ease of cynicism but faith is vindicated in the end.

“Law and Order,” 1920

May 31, 2013June 2, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 2 Comments

“Law and Order,” 1920

In 1920, even as Calvin Coolidge would become Vice President-elect, few suspected that his voice, as clear and well-suited for radio as it was, would become a frequent part of life in the coming decade. As he would tell Senator James Watson, “I am very fortunate that I came in with the radio” (“As I Knew Them,” p.239). Jerry Wallace, in his superb book, “Calvin Coolidge Our First Radio President,” has found that not only was Coolidge the first to make full use of radio as President but he would become an instantly known and beloved voice of the era. As radio ownership would skyrocket in the 1920s, families would grow up with that distinctive “nasal twang” of President Coolidge on the waves. Of his one hundred and thirty-five Presidential speeches, including the first of his messages to Congress in December 1923, over thirty percent of those were delivered on the radio (some 40 messages, between 1923-1929). In this speech, Coolidge potently encapsulates his philosophy on government and citizenship. The text of this recording, produced by Nation’s Forum during the 1920 campaign to introduce the Harding-Coolidge team, is as follows:

“It is preeminently the province of government to protect the weak. The average citizen does not lead the life of independence that was his in former days under a less complex order of society. When a family tilled the soil and produced its own support it was independent. It may be infinitely better off now, but it is evident it needs a protection which before was not required.

Let Massachusetts continue to regard with the greatest solicitude the well-being of her people. By prescribed law, by authorized publicity, by informed public opinion, let her continue to strive to provide that all conditions under which her citizens live are worthy of the highest faith of man. Healthful housing, wholesome food, sanitary working conditions, reasonable hours, a fair wage for a fair day’s work, opportunity — full and free, justice — speedy and impartial, and at a cost within the reach of all, are among the objects not only to be sought, but made absolutely certain and secure.

Government is not, must not be, a cold, impersonal machine, but a human and more human agency: appealing to the reason, satisfying the heart, full of mercy, assisting the good, resisting the wrong, delivering the weak from any impositions of the powerful. This is not paternalism. It is not a servitude imposed from without, but the freedom of a right to self-direction from within.

Industry must be humanized, not destroyed. It must be the instrument not of selfishness, but of service. Change not the law, but the attitude of the mind. Let our citizens look not to the false prophet but to the pilgrims. Let them fix their eyes on Plymouth Rock as well as Beacon Hill. The supreme choice must be not to things that are seen, but to things that are unseen.

Our government belongs to the people. Our property belongs to the people. It is distributed. They own it. The taxes are paid by the people. They bear the burden. The benefits of government must accrue to the people. Not to one class, but to all classes, to all the people. The functions, the power, the sovereignty of the government, must be kept where they have been placed by the Constitution and laws of the people. Not private will, but that public will, which speaks with a divine sanction, must prevail.

There are strident voices, urging resistance to law in the name of freedom. They are not seeking freedom for themselves, they have it. They are seeking to enslave others. Their works are evil. They know it. They must be resisted. The evil they represent must be overcome by the good others represent. Their ideas, which are wrong, for the most part imported, must be supplanted by ideas which are right. This can be done. The meaning of America is a power which cannot be overcome. Massachusetts must lead in teaching it.

Prosecution of the criminal and education of the ignorant are the remedies. It is fundamental that freedom is not to be secured by disobedience to law. Even the freedom of the slave depended on the supremacy of the Constitution. There is no mystery about this. They who sin are the servants of sin. They who break the laws are the slaves of their own kind. It is not for the advantage of others that the citizen is abjured to obey the laws, but for his own advantage. That what he claims a right to do to others, that must he admit others have a right to do to him. His obedience is his own protection. He is not submitting himself to the dictates of others, but responding to the requirements of his own nature.

Laws are not manufactured. They are not imposed. They are rules of action existing from everlasting to everlasting. He who resists them, resists himself. He commits suicide. The nature of man requires sovereignty. Government must govern. To obey is life. To disobey is death. Organized government is the expression of the life of the commonwealth. Into your hands is entrusted the grave responsibility of its protection and perpetuation.”

Frost on Coolidge

May 29, 2013June 2, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

While some may think there was little to connect a Grover Cleveland Democrat with a life-long Republican, it would come as a surprise that Coolidge’s life was filled with such connections. He was not a man given to airs or sense of superiority, personally or politically. He would consider Democrats among his closest friends, even allies. He would count numerous Irish immigrants among his supporters. The Democrat presidential candidate of 1928, Al Smith, was a good friend. He married into a Democrat family. These relationships were not due to some lack of commitment to principle, for Coolidge’s consistency and conviction were widely known. It was due to a set of convictions that transcended political posturing. It was an agreement with what America was all about, whether you were Republican or Democrat. It was a respect for people stemming from a mutual reverence for America’s ideals. Character and perspective on both sides made it possible to have principled disagreement but still work toward common aims as Americans. Without integrity, civility has no pillars on which to stand. When the ideals of America are no longer shared and character is demonized, it is no wonder that both a sense of proportion and civility are missing as well.

One of the most predictable acquaintances Coolidge encountered, however, was Robert Frost. As Joseph A. Conforti in his book, Imagining New England, examines the identity and mindset of the commonly caricatured “Yankee,” he features both the President and the poet. While, as Coolidge biographer Fuess observed, Coolidge was unique for combining so many — if not all — of the qualities of a “Yankee” in a single person, Frost could not be more different in upbringing and politics. But what did Frost think of Coolidge? There is often an assumed affinity of the two but, again, Frost was a Cleveland Democrat while Coolidge held loyally to the Republican Party all of his life. Frost, widely regarded as a New England rustic, was born and raised in the city, San Francisco to be exact. Coolidge, as we know, came from the rugged hills of Vermont and hailed from rural western Massachusetts, not the sophisticated social circles of Boston. Frost was largely ambivalent when it came to politics; Coolidge joked that his hobby was “running for office.” Frost would never finish college while Coolidge would not only graduate but give the witty “Grove Oration,” for his class. It was Amherst that would enable these lives to cross paths. Frost would come to the College on and off from 1916 through 1938 to teach English. Meanwhile, Coolidge rose in state and national affairs, serving as a trustee of his alma mater through his retirement from public life. They certainly knew each other and among the several interesting observations made by Conforti is this, quoting from Lawrance R. Thompson’s Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915-1938,

“Frost admired Coolidge; he identified with his political and cultural conservatism, praised his ‘overthemountain nature,’ and respected his kindred descent from ‘a modest, frugal, and unpretentious line of Puritan farmers’…Frost’s political detachment and poetic rejection of social criticism provoked literary enemies who saw him as a product of the same stingy soil that gave birth to Coolidge.” Frost would be defended “against such critics” and his apologists would share the “Coolidge-like Yankee moral vision that emerges from much of his verse.” As Robert Coffin, of Yankee magazine fame, would write, “Frost likes his people in individual, not mass formation. He isn’t blaming their troubles on the capitalists or the environment, but on the way life is built and the way they are built…” Such an outlook would have found Coolidge in agreement.

As Coolidge would preside over the lively and energetic Twenties, Frost would become, in Conforti’s words, a “New England version of Will Rogers” personifying the folk wisdom and authenticity of American character. One reporter summarized the traveling poet this way, Frost’s temperament “was one of inexpressible gentleness, with humor and strength and whimsical sincerity.” It seems Coolidge and Frost were more alike than is apparent at first glance. But then this is America at work, bringing two very different individuals together around transcendent ideals, common principles of character and, tempered by realism, an abiding faith in her purpose.