For too many history disintegrates into a quest for perfection. It becomes virtually an act of salvation to either canonize or demonize, foisting expectations on others we would miserably fail to approximate ourselves were the tables turned. In what has achieved new heights of absurdity in recent years, we effortlessly damn or redeem others for the splinter we perceive in them all the while blindly oblivious to the beam in our own eyes. Such an indictment has been unleashed on Christopher Columbus, the man who may not been the first to arrive from other continents to the Americas but whose actions and motivations opened doors for unprecedented good fruits, many of which we now enjoy in truly historic measure. His coming can hardly be chalked up to an event with no redeeming results at all, can it? Would we give everything we are away to return to 1491? After all, we don’t really live that way on other fronts: Grease spot in the driveway? Bulldoze the concrete. Muddy shoes? Throw them away. Smudged phone? Trash it. Dirty clothes? Burn them. Pet with a non-debilitating physical defect? Terminate it. Dinner burnt? Kill the cook. Of course not! We forbear, tolerate, cherish, understand. We are too often astonished at the supposedly novel realization that humanity, as individuals and as peoples, lack perfection. This is something we have not possessed for quite a long time now. This used to be thoroughly understood but that was also when history was not taught as a set of disconnected sub-sub disciplines unrelated to any other knowledge, especially philosophy, theology, and any of the sciences.

Perspective & Proportion

Perspective and sense of proportion are measures of maturity. The lack thereof are likewise indicators of immaturity, the childishness of inexperience and a gauge of the untaught. History classrooms, as James W. Loewen (in Lies My Teacher Told Me) points out, instead of imparting the wisdom of ages usually leaves the student less informed than when he or she entered. Literature has gone much the same direction. We comprehend less now than many generations could extemporaneously recount and yet we are more certain in our rigidly vengeful ignorance than they in their far broader insight. We are ready to cast every conceivable negative consequence (whether or not connected directly or logically) upon the historical targets of our discontent. Ultimately, this is born of a discontent with ourselves. Our childish rage, fueled as is often the case by Marx’s view of the world (himself one of history’s most inept prophets), incinerates everything to build a new world. It turns out the measure of that new world is a continually sliding and amorphous scale of values, the very product of minds devoid of perspective and proportion. Those do not come from humanity because, as history once taught, humanity is imperfect and sinful.

Tares & Wheat

The quest to find perfection in human ideals, to either canonize those we deem worthy or demonize those we lack the maturity to understand, will always fail. It will fail in no small part because the real world is not so neatly divisible as so many marbles can be sorted by color and size according to our tastes and preferences. The real world, as He once said, is both tares and wheat. One cannot be uprooted without also destroying the good we intend to keep. That task is left to the only perfect Judge capable of measuring both justly and graciously. Our feeble and immature attempts to assume that responsibility end only in torment not only for those who indulge in it but for their intended targets. It will destroy whatever good can be gleaned from the opportunities that routinely come our way, the people we meet who are different from ourselves, with motivations we may not instantly understand but with a little extra effort, we could. Under such a regime, there is no room for growth and improvement. One mistake earns eternal infamy. It does take effort to gain some perspective we have not seen and discernment to place what is new and different to us into its proper perspective, its wholesome degree of importance. If we would do that, instead of finding ourselves increasingly ossified by our discontent, we might discover the abundant possibilities for the best global improvement project there can be: ourselves. We would pursue what is good…and find it in the unlikeliest of places and people, even in those we first dismissed. Give it a try and then when each of us has exhausted the limits of our potential, we might have cause to find fault with someone else.

It was Calvin Coolidge who once said, “We shall be much more effective for good if we treat men not as they are but as they ought to be. If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and every one else only by their conduct we shall reach a very false conclusion. When we have exhausted the possibilities of criticism on ourselves it will be time enough to apply it to others. The world needs high social standards and we should do our best to maintain them, but they should rest on the broad base of Christian charity.”

President Coolidge dedicating the Meade Memorial, 1927.

It was one hundred and thirteen years ago yesterday (October 4th, 1905) that a thin, red-headed attorney of Northampton married a lovely, dark-haired girl of Burlington, a former teacher at Clarke School for the Deaf. They were married in a quiet corner of the bride’s family home, the residence of the Goodhues at 312 Maple Street. As rain pummeled the roof, fifteen guests gathered in the parlor, a house bedecked with evergreens and blossoming selections from the mother of the bride’s garden. Just after 2pm, the company watched as Reverend Edward Hungerford performed a simple, unadorned ceremony. Dr. A. H. McCormick of Northampton served as the groom’s best man while Ethel Stevens of Williston, a classmate and close friend of the girl, served as the bridesmaid. The bride wore a gown of soft gray and hair arranged high with combs and velvet ribbon. In her hands, she held a fresh bouquet of cuttings, also from her mother’s garden.

While the focus in Burlington that day devolved around the wedding of Frederica Webb and Ralph Pulitzer, featured conspicuously near the front of Burlington’s Free Press, the union of Calvin and Grace Coolidge, while getting a small mention near the bottom of the wedding announcements, theirs would – in time – prove even more significant for its impact upon America’s direction as a nation.

As both Cal and Grace would say on different occasions, they felt made for each other. In their modest and quiet way they proved it to the end. What each saw in the other formed part of that beautiful blessing called marriage. Life brought its struggles and griefs but what they had remained (and grew richer) through all the challenges. That personal and intimate bond in marriage, through persistence in good times and bad, remains a marvel even to those who know its worth firsthand.

The couple honeymooned in Montreal, visiting all the theaters they could before returning to their new home in Northampton. As they set up temporary quarters at the Norwood Hotel for three weeks, the new husband was able to secure one-half of a rented duplex on Massasoit Street. It would prove to be the start of an excellent match, a pair of many opposites but a team of resilient partnership and admirable devotion for the next twenty-seven years.

Happy Anniversary, Cal & Grace!

“It is my duty to extend to every individual the constitutional right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. But I have another duty equally constitutional, and even more important, of securing the enforcement of the law. In that duty I do not intend to fail.

“Character is the only secure foundation of the State. We know well that all plans for improving the machinery of government and all measures for social betterment fail, and the hopes of progress wither, when corruption touches administration. At the revelation of greed making its subtle approaches to public officers, of the prostitution of high place to private profit, we are filled with scorn and with indignation. We have a deep sense of humiliation at such gross betrayal of trust, and we lament the undermining of public confidence in official integrity. But we can not rest with righteous wrath; still less can we permit ourselves to give way to cynicism. The heart of the American people is sound. Their officers with rare exception are faithful and high-minded. For us, we propose to follow the clear, open path of justice. There will be immediate, adequate, unshrinking prosecution, criminal and civil, to punish the guilty and to protect every national interest. In this effort there will be no politics and no partisanship. It will be speedy, it will be just. I am a Republican, but I can not on that account shield anyone because he is a Republican. I am a Republican, but I can not on that account prosecute anyone because he is a Democrat.

“I want no hue and cry, no mingling of innocent and guilty in unthinking condemnation, no confusion of mere questions of law with questions of fraud and corruption. It is at such a time that the quality of our citizenry is tested–unrelenting toward evil, fair-minded and intent upon the requirements of due process, the shield of the innocent and the safeguard of society itself. I ask the support of our people, as Chief Magistrate, intent on the enforcement of our laws without fear and without favor, no matter who is hurt or what the consequences.”

— President Calvin Coolidge, before the National Republican Club at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, February 12, 1924.

Photo credit: Library of Congress.