“Bless Their Honest Irish Hearts” by Charles C. Johnson

March 17, 2014March 20, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Before St. Patrick’s Day comes to a close, it is useful to consider the contributions of one individual, not native to the Emerald Isle but, despite being a Congregationalist Yankee, did much toward welcoming and assimilating Ireland’s immigrants to a place of respect and honor in one of the most Irish-heavy areas of America, the city of Boston. Rather than enhancing racial or religious bigotry by demanding instant results, Coolidge diffused tensions through mutual respect and patient education. Treating the Irish no differently than anyone else who came here to work hard, live honestly and become citizens, he taught what being American is all about, free of hyphens, committed to liberty, grounded in Christian forbearance and confident enough to hold faith in our founding ideals. In this way, he did more to establish the Irish (and immigrants of all countries) as full-fledged Americans than most recognize. Coolidge would experience an unbroken series of political victories as a result, thanks in part to these “Coolidge Democrats” who understood that for immigration to benefit everyone, the responsibilities of citizenship must be taken just as soberly as its rewards. Character came first and it was that very insistence on standards, despite the career risks for Coolidge personally, that prevailed at the ballot box. Coolidge did not need a herd of consultants to validate the Golden Rule for him. As he would observe later in life: The person who is right makes his own luck. Cal points the way toward the Founder’s vision for an assimilated, prosperous and peaceful people preserved through an incremental, not immediate, process; a pathway to citizenship earned by obedience, not bestowed by political calculation for electoral advantage.

“A rarer specimen than Davis’ recent great discovery, Honesty” by “Ding” Darling, The Des Moines Register 8-31-1924

“Why America Will Stay On Top”

March 16, 2014March 16, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

“Why America Will Stay On Top”

Interviewing the ever-insightful scholar Paul Johnson, Brian M. Carney discusses why ideas matter more than people and how the World’s deepest thinkers have been anti-intellectuals. Johnson, who has explained the substance behind Coolidge’s record in “The Last Arcadia,” chapter 6 of his book Modern Times, keeps an enduring confidence that Americans will find a renewed strength from the power of its founding ideals. This unshakable faith in the people of the country to summon both the will and the work to clean up the mess left by a self-anointed ruling class of intellectuals is right at home with the full assurance Calvin Coolidge held toward Americans as a people. Our thirtieth president, the last to earn a classical education, would firmly agree with Mr. Johnson. In fact, Coolidge would likely find himself quite at home with the most profound philosopher of civilization (a distant second to Christ, of course), the plain, simple-living, anti-intellectual Socrates.

Jacques-Louis David’s “Death of Socrates” depicting the ultimatum imposed on the philosopher to recant his ideas or be forced to drink hemlock. He continues to discourse on the truth of the eternal and spiritual. The painting dates from 1787, the year the Framers were thinking through the principles of sound, constitutional government.

“We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. It is on that side of life that it is desirable to put the emphasis at the present time. If that side be strengthened, the other side will take care of itself. It is that side which is the foundation of all else. If the foundation be firm, the superstructure will stand” — Calvin Coolidge, June 19, 1923, “The Things That Are Unseen,” delivered at Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts.

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp” — July 5, 1926, spoken at the Sesquicentennial Stadium in Philadelphia.

Julius Caesar…Coolidge and Family

March 15, 2014March 16, 2014 / gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Julius Caesar...Coolidge and Family

In observance of the Ides of March, here is an old offering from the Coolidge family album: a photo of Julius Caesar Coolidge (far left) as a boy, the President’s uncle, taken with his family: father, Calvin Galusha; mother, Almeda Brewer; and brother, John Calvin (far right). While Calvin Coolidge never met Julius, who died two years before the future President was born, he experienced much the same mixture of joy and sorrow, play and hard work of which Calvin later summarized from his own experience:

“It would be hard to imagine better surroundings for the development of a boy than those which I had. While a wider breadth of training and knowledge could have been presented to me, there was a daily contact with many new ideas, and the mind was given sufficient opportunity thoroughly to digest all that came to it. Country life does not always have breadth, but it has depth. It is neither artificial nor superficial, but is kept close to the realities” (The Autobiography, p.33).

Like many families of the early nineteenth century, the courageous deeds of heroes from antiquity intermixed with the unshakeable convictions of religious heroes from the Reformation and Great Awakening to be perpetuated in the choice of names for babies born to those early pioneers of Vermont and beyond. What better way to evoke great things for new lives than to name one for the brave conqueror and another for the stalwart reformer?