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.”

On Sports and Exercise

May 19, 2013May 19, 2013 / gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

President Coolidge stood before those gathered at the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation, May 22, 1924, to address the importance of developing not only sound minds but also sound bodies. What made this possible, however, was not thanks to Washington’s involvement. It would never succeed to mandate or coerce fitness programs. It was going to come from taking advantage of the opportunities America’s liberty affords. He would observe the lifestyles of people had changed from those early days of settlement, when most worked outdoors and acquired the exercise of “active outdoor life in the open country.” Such was not so widespread anymore, Coolidge noted. However, “All of this makes it more necessary than ever that we should stimulate every possible interest in out of door health-giving recreation.” The President would emphatically remind his audience that this was not a responsibility of the Federal Government. “Necessarily they are largely local and individual, and to be helpful they must always be spontaneous.” There was no place for Washington telling people what to eat or how to exercise. To do so would defy freedom and undermine the very purpose of voluntary activity.

The conference should not expect him or any one else in the District to furnish the solutions. What the conference could do was bring private individuals together and coordinate their resources with ingenuity, exercising decisions at the local level for ways to restore the “natural balance of life” with both its physical and mental cultivation. For Coolidge, outdoor activities in all its forms — exercise, gardening, hunting, fishing and sports among so many others — afforded Americans the advantage of cherishing the wholesome in life. It knew no ethnic or racial bounds, it was a means to developing character, “a universal appeal.” Coolidge had seen men and women, of all backgrounds, work side by side during the War and that needed to continue in peace. Competitive sports — foremost baseball — afforded one such way to fully share in the identity of what America meant. While the rigors of training did not open participation in certain sports to the general public, such games “have no superior” when it came to “creating an interest which extends to every age and every class, for giving an opportunity for a few hours in the open air which will provide a change of scene, a new trend of thought, and the arousing of new enthusiasm for the great multitude of our people…”

If activities did not “represent an opportunity for a real betterment of the life of the people,” they were not worthy of America. They must “minister directly to the welfare of all our inhabitants.” The entertainment of ancient Greece and Rome, while they may have started on this ideal plane were, in the end, corrosive to the good and virtue of all people. Such could not be allowed a foothold in America’s pursuit of recreation. “It is altogether necessary that we keep our own amusements and recreations within that field which will be prophetic, not of destruction, but of development. it is characteristic of almost the entire American life that it has a most worthy regard for clean and manly sports. It has little appetite for that which is unwholesome or brutal.” Such ideals are what the moral experiment of America was all about.

Athletics and activity were a crucial resource to allocate and encourage, but it cannot be planned or enforced from a central government. It was up to the parents, civic-minded organizations, and volunteers in each neighborhood to foster a healthy balance of work and play. The supposed “High Priest of Big Business” (according to ignorant historians), President Coolidge, explained that balance as he continued speaking, “Our youth need instruction in how to play as much as they do in how to work. There are those who are engaged in our industries who need an opportunity for outdoor life and recreation no less than they need opportunity of employment. Side by side with the industrial plant should be the gymnasium and the athletic field. Along with the learning of a trade by which a livelihood is to be earned should go the learning of how to participate in the activities of recreation, by which life is made not only more enjoyable, but more rounded out and complete.”

As recreation, including sports from hunting to football, become less about the balance of good character in all people, and more about eradication of life’s risks, the good is being regulated away. When government is allowed to intervene in the name of public safety, to foster an environment of central management, ministering only to material gain, it deprives society of the intangible value of voluntary activities and outdoor exercise when and how individuals choose. Government, with all its good intentions, always fails to supply the needs of the soul and in the end, a people is left devoid of balance, empty, divided and dependent.

It was once understood by that man from Vermont that exercise and recreation “should be the means to acquainting all of us with the wonders and delights of this world in which we live, and of this country of which we are the joint inheritors. Through them we may teach our children true sportsmanship, right living, the love of being square, the sincere purpose to make our lives genuinely useful and helpful to our fellows…Our country is a land of cultured men and women. It is a land of agriculture, of industries, of schools, and of places of religious worship. It is a land of varied climes and scenery, of mountain and plain, of lake and river. It is the American heritage. We must make it a land of vision, a land of work, of sincere striving for the good, but we must add to all these, in order to round out the full stature of the people, an ample effort to make it a land of wholesome enjoyment and perennial gladness.”

President Coolidge throwing the opening pitch in this 6-5 win by the Senators over the Yankees, April 22, 1924. Coolidge’s record stands at 3-1 for wins following opening pitches for the Senators. His only loss came from Boston beating Washington in 1928. As for the World Series, Coolidge threw first pitch for game one (1924), was present for games six and seven, and pitched again for game three in 1925. 1924 was the one and only championship for the National Capital to date.

Vice President-elect Coolidge meeting the team captains in 1920’s Amherst versus Williams game.

President Coolidge successfully hunting fowl in Georgia during his brief stay there in 1928.

Coolidge, in the summer of that same year, fishing on the Brule River in Wisconsin with the faithful Rob Roy and their guide John LaRock. Notice Coolidge’s aptly christened canoe.