I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”

It is always the province of the powerful to urge people to relinquish their power. Rarely is there a leader who asks an entire population to actively engage, to commit to being involved politically, and to elevate their own voices above the din of history. When we hear that economic recovery is not to be accomplished by magical leadership, but by “the active participation of an awakened electorate”, this is not a cop-out or a turning away from the can-do spirit; it is, rather, an honest explanation of the anatomy of a healthy democratic society.

People rely on each other, and on the wisdom of their elected leaders, but they also need to have the will to go on, to fight through discomfort in the face of difficulty. Malaise is not an excuse for abandoning a program of hard work on a hard-won opportunity. The Marathon shows how clearly this is so. Each person can make a new world, rooted in their own drive and resonating out through the relationships that bind them to others; the fabric of an entire corner of the world can be remade, by devotion to the hard task and the long run.

I did not run the New York City Marathon of 2010, but a close friend did, and in many ways, she’s a hero to those of us who had the chance to see her. Running in graceful form, after 21 miles, joyous and still on her feet after finishing the 26+ miles and walking the two further miles of warm-down, she was a celebration of her own abilities and a life of commitment to a sport that requires a unique inner strength; she manifest the solitude of the long-distance runner with elegance and aplomb, and I think we were all inspired by her achievement and by her good form.

It’s emboldening to feel that one is close to people with big dreams and big abilities. And it’s even more inspiring to think seriously about how much incredible difficulty some of the other runners had to overcome. There were blind runners, and an entire wheelchair division for both men and women, there were senior citizens with the stamina to fight through the wall and to finish, and there was a man who spent 69 days buried thousands of feet underground, who took up running as a way “to actively participate in my own rescue”.

There was a man we had the privilege of seeing more than once on the day who was running on two prosthetic legs. Despite having lost his lower legs, he committed to running a marathon, and did so, and he was in great form and was one of the faster in the crowd. Huge cheers erupted when he ran past, though most people had no idea they were waiting to cheer him. Against all odds, with great cause for dismay and surrender, he rose above what most would only dream and ran a marathon… with no legs. Literally.

This is what differentiates the runner of the long run with the haste of the impatient. The long run allows for amazing accomplishments, but it requires a commitment to achieve, to overcome setbacks and to be responsible for oneself and for one’s environment. It requires a thoughtfulness about character and commitment and a discipline to work toward the ideal, not to give up because it seems so distant or because someone else might be faster or more famous or privileged.

As a nation, we could use the lesson of this day, we could benefit from being reminded that giving in to cynicism or disappointment does not allow us to achieve great things, but keeping in mind the long view will allow us to run the long run, when all the cynics and dissuaders have given up and gone home, fallen by the wayside and collapsed under the weight of their own inviable arguments. To run the long run, you must keep the long view and run for the ideal, with patience and commitment. The great fabric of human passion was on display in New York City yesterday, and we who were there are all stronger for it.

On the second morning of the 54th Commission on the Status of Women, Gender Links and the African Woman and Child Feature Service —through the Gender and Media Diversity Centre— hosted a roundtable dialogue involving Marren Akatsa-Bukachi of the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), Francisco Cos-Montiel of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Revai Makanje of Hivos, Norah Matovu-Winyi of the African Women’s Development and Communication Network, and Jennifer Lewis of Gender Links as facilitator, with Mwendabai Yeta Mkhize and myself providing event support and reporting.

The discussion opened with comments on statistical analysis of proress toward the goal of achieving 50/50 parity. With a 7% improvement since Beijing, the discussion moved quickly toward the question of how to accelerate the rise of women in decision-making and leadership roles.

With not enough parliamentary-level attention focused on women’s issues or the specific virtues of achieving parity in representation, local government emerged as a potential area of strategic focus, in relation to promoting women’s access to positions of leadership and decision-making. Quotas were raised as a potential policy lever by which to promote parity. Revai Mekanje suggested working to adopt a “more catalystic” approach to fostering support networks and the cultural underpinnings for women to take leadership positions and influence policy.

Leadership, as such, was the next topic: women need access to leadership positions, and women too often do not see themselves as right for leadership positions. These cultural and psychological barriers to accumulating political capital need to be addressed. Francisco Cos-Montiel noted that in studies of Indian political participation, it was clear that women who were able to achieve leadership or decision-making roles, in politics or in the private sector, were almost uniformly from a societal and cultural elite. Similar trends were seen across South America, highlighting the need to build the political capital of women from marginalized communities.

Norah Matovu-Winyi viewed this as the challenge of “decolonization of the mind”, which was then framed by the group as a project of “depatriarchalization”. Matovu-Winyi explained that this problem relates to a psychological colonization, because it involves the ceding of authority to a traditionally or systemically more powerful other who, it is supposed, “knows more than we do”. Personal or community agency is excluded by the prejudice that leadership entails a special inborn quality or elevated worth. In order to counter this surrender of selfhood to disinterested traditional elites, Matovu-Winyi proposed a deliberate effort to “demystify leadership”.

Marren Akatsa-Bukachi suggested this project must also apply to positions of influence in the private sector. Enterprise and community leadership roles, outside of elective political office, can wield significant influence that determines numerous factors of the quality of life for women, girls and whole communities. Without access to leadership roles in the private sector, women are less able to influence policy locally or decide how resources and opportunity are distributed in relation to their communities.

Akatsa-Bukachi also noted the pervasive custom of how even food is distributed among men and women, and linked this to the problem of the colonization of the mind by a systemic prejudice that favors patriarchy. Women are often left only the toes of the chicken, for example, while men enjoy the thigh and breast-meat. This inequity is not only a household custom or a commentary on private relationship dynamics, but is in many ways politically relevant. It illustrates the distance at which women are kept from positions of leadership and decision-making, even in such intimate details of daily life.

Jennifer Lewis, the event’s discussion facilitator, noted this male-female relationship dynamic shows the need to “make the political personal”. Matovu-Winyi noted it’s vital to promote “democracy as a way of life” — without genuine equality in everyday relationship dynamics, the political landscape cannot be authentically democratic.

Lewis also moved the discussion toward the specific question of how to get beyond the numbers. There was consensus among all participants that outreach and support-building efforts need to be “more deliberate”. Cos-Montiel said there needs to be more focus on “strategic” thinking about how to both relay the message that will best build toward parity, but also about how to help women build the cultural capital that will allow them to access the political arena or move into decision-making roles.

Akatsa-Bukachi suggested women need to move away from “staccato involvements”, occasional interactions with the systems, networks and privileges that allow women to take on leadership roles. Women cannot just come to the table “at the last minute”, when a viable female candidate for office gains traction, or a specific issue of controversy comes to prominence, because that temporary support-base will dissolve as soon as the trend shifts.

There is a measurable need for women to build sustained, comprehensive networks of involvement in matters of policy, writing opinion articles, talking about and promoting real change for women, including the rise of strong candidates who will be able to capitalize on this more sustained support.

The “loneliness of leadership” experienced by women was raised as a significant factor contributing to the difficulty of building an sustained base of positions in political and private leadership. Actual efforts to measure such deficits and to explore ways to foster such sustained support communities could help to advance the cause of parity in leadership and to provide young women with a culturally more favorable environment in which their abilities and ambitions will be more directly sought and expected.

Social media may be integral to building the necessary sustained support networks. Examples of how social media and community media can come together to empower women and combat injustice have peppered the discussions of these first days of the CSW. Gender Links is using the UN gathering to cultivate a global debate about what role media play in fostering understanding and progress with respect to the treatment of women.

Lewis asked the discussion participants to propose their main priorities in relation to expanding the role of women in governance. Quotas and the need to transform political parties from within were the first two priorities suggested. Akatsa-Bukachi said the 50/50 goal is a “solemn declaration” that needs to be repeated until it saturates the conversation. She also noted the need to reach out to men, to involve them and make them aware of the real need to improve society by achieving parity. An extension of this priority, she said, is the need to overcome the problem of “feminist faces with patriarchal minds”, while keeping in mind the goal of building a broader long-term alliance for equality that includes both men and women.

Matovu-Winyi said existing systems need to be employed and improved, to make as much headway as possible in the elections —local and national, across Africa and beyond— of the first three years of this decade. She also noted that “no politician just appears on the scene” and called for the creation of substantive institutional supports for women to get involved in public life. She called for “more research” across the spectrum of issues related to why women are or are not empowered to access decision-making roles.

Cos-Montiel called for the inclusion of “women from the margins”, a strategic approach to building cultural and political capital for women, and close scrutiny of what role religious institutions play in sustaining the dominance of a patriarchal narrative or mindset. He noted the combination of hierarchy and patriarchy in the structure of the Catholic church, observing that such institutional structures effect extreme symbolic and socio-psychological influence, which can limit women’s readiness or willingness to push for greater access to decision-making roles in the community, at work or in the political sphere.

The dialogue closed after 44 minutes of lively and engaged discussion, with Norah Matovu-Winyi remarking that political supports for women will be “more authentic” when the narrative driving those social mechanisms is not focused only on the concept of rights for women as inherently virtuous, but deliberately integrates that foundational idea into a more dynamic discourse that gets closer to the daily needs and interests of non-activist women and the communities in which they live.

The UN General Assembly, which brings together every head of government in the world, to offer their country’s position on issues, their country’s demands regarding trade and conflict negotiations, their country’s hopes for a more harmonious world, this year truly grapples with issues of global consensus. Economic recovery, for many parts of the world, will require an unprecedented expansion of women’s rights and sustained attention to responsible environmental stewardship.

Climate change, or global climate destabilization, has come to the fore as the most severe and pervasive security threat of the 21st century. The G20 summit in Pittsburgh later this month will work in part as a prelude to the Copenhagen climate conference to be held in December. The goal is to achieve worldwide consensus on a comprehensive, binding strategy to reduce carbon emissions and to protect against the unwinding of climate patterns that have remained consistent throughout all of recorded human history.

Women’s rights is now being viewed by more nations and by more major international organizations as key to the economic and political stability of fragile nations. The Obama administration, under the leadership of Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has made women’s rights a priority and has laid out goals for helping to promote women’s rights through economic development, modernization of educational systems, and democratization of the political processes in nations around the world.

A consistent theme of Sec. Clinton’s travels around Africa this summer was the need to end the out of control violence against women that plagues many African nations, and bring women into the fold of the political process and economic structures. She visited the eastern Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where one of the world’s most desperate and protracted civil wars continues to put women in jeopardy of random attacks on a daily basis and where mass rape has been used as a weapon of war.

Her message was clear: the United States does not intend to continue directing aid to regimes that do not combat the extreme conditions of violence and repression in which millions of women find themselves, but aid will be directed toward those policies that are designed to empower and protect women. There will be efforts to persuade China, which strongly backs some of the worst offending nations, like Sudan, to demand better treatment for women.

Pres. Obama has called for a global initiative to move toward the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons, which he admits may not occur during his lifetime. He and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev have already begun the process to establish a new comprehensive strategic arms reduction treaty (StART). Iran, under intense pressure from the international community to cease uranium enrichment, has also proposed a framework for eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide.

The nuclear question looms large, and will consume a lot of words in open and back-room negotiations. The UN Security Council can be expected to receive new pressure from western powers to threaten sanctions against Iran if it does not halt uranium enrichment. And the recent announcement of the Obama administration’s plans to scrap Bush-era plans for stationing missiles in Poland is thought to be in part a call on Russia to support sanctions against Iran.

In a recent CNN interview, with Fareed Zakaria, Pres. Medvedev sounded tougher on the Iran question than at any time previous: he said Russia would only ever provide Iran with “defensive” weapons equipment and would neither help Iran develop long-range ICBM nor come to Iran’s defense if it were attacked. He called on the international community to come together to secure peace and prevent conflict in the middle east.

Medvedev also confirmed that he had met in secret with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He said the meeting was kept secret at the Israelis request and that he had “honored the wishes of our partners”. He revealed that in that meeting Netanyahu, who has been under intense pressure from the west to tone down bellicose rhetoric, said Israel had no plans to attack Iran or destroy any of its research facilities, adding that he trusted Israel and hoped new partnerships could be created to prevent further conflict in the region.

Pres. Obama has invited PM Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to meet with him to discuss the path to lasting peace, during the UN General Assembly in New York. The two have accepted, setting the stage for what might be breakthrough negotiations on concessions from both sides that could lead to a two-state solution.

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

In a break from the Bush administration, Mr. Obama pressed early in his administration for new, U.S.-brokered talks between the two sides. In another departure, Mr. Obama has ratcheted up pressure on Israel, publicly calling for a total freeze in Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.

That issue has blocked progress in restarting talks so far. Palestinian negotiators have demanded a total freeze before agreeing to any substantive negotiations. Mr. Netanyahu has refused.

The US and NATO nations may refrain from openly pressing Russia on its interventions in the volatile Caucasus region, but the problem of Georgia and the former Soviet Republics along its borders must be dealt with. Abkhazia has declared independence with Russian diplomatic backing, and Georgia has sought to blockade Abkhazia as a protest against that declaration of independence. There are fears the blockade could lead to another bloody Russian intervention against a state that seeks to join NATO.

There is, however, an opportunity for a new era of cooperation between the Russian Federation and NATO. European leaders have proposed that with the US putting aside missile defense basing plans for Poland, the opportunity may exist to come together and create a unified missile defense system covering all of NATO and the Russian Federation.

But economic empowerment and global financial regulation may turn out to be dominant themes of the General Assembly meetings. The 2008-2009 global economic crisis has shown the vulnerability of poor nations to the unraveling of sometimes delicate international trade pacts and resource flows. The threat from intercontinental climate destabilization could result in the collapse of food supplies to half the world’s population and the migration of hundreds of millions of people, if one year’s monsoon doesn’t materialize.

The empowerment of poorer nations to be capable of competing for internationally trade resources, including food and water, is vital to preventing mass climate migration and the resulting destabilization of nation states in coming years and decades. The beginnings of these negotiations, to prevent protectionist measures and expand the internationally accessible resource base, will be taking place as world leaders meet in New York.

Rights and democracy as such will also be highlighted. The election of 12 June 2009 in Iran has stirred a global firestorm of opinion over what measures might be taken to guarantee transparency and prevent massive fraud engineered by leaders of government. More than 100 nations whose leaders will be in attendance have significant voting rights issues that must be addressed in order to legitimate their electoral processes and improve transparency.

The US will seek to lead on this question, even as dozens of its own states struggle to clarify election process and balloting laws, to ensure manipulation is not possible and guarantee the transparency of upcoming elections. New Jersey might be held up by some foreign states as an example of a state that still won’t guarantee its voters paper proof of their votes, while Venezuela may claim legitimacy on this point, a contrast that is sure to make for contentious negotiations on standards for international voting rights and ballot-counting transparency.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln faced the challenge of proving himself worthy of national leadership, with only 2 years experience in the House of Representatives, 11 years prior to his candidacy. He arranged to deliver a major policy address in New York City. The topic was daunting: he would make the argument in favor of federal control of slavery in the territories which might become new states. Southern states where slavery was not only legal but was the structural basis for their economic culture, were opposed to such a policy, believing it would lead to the powerful and populous northern states forcing Congress to ban slavery throughout the US.

Lincoln had become a national figure two years earlier when he engaged in a series of arduous (3-hour-long) debates on Constitutional law and the abolition of slavery, with Sen. Stephen Douglas. The debates were rapidly transcribed and in subsequent days published in full in newspapers throughout the country. The debates raised Lincoln’s standing from one of midwestern lawyer and founder of a radical party to that of leading political intellectual and prospective leader of a major national party.

Lincoln undertook an exhaustive research of the policies and political philosophies of the 39 individuals who signed the United States Constitution. He found that 21 favored allowing Congress to control the question of slavery in the territories, which were, after all, under federal authority and without functioning state governments. A successful address would elevate the cause of gradual legislative abolition to mainstream legitimacy and the Republican cause to national prominence.

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An eyewitness reportedly commented on Lincoln’s famously “ungainly” appearance, then added that when he spoke “his face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.” Excerpts from the speech, like the great final intonation that “Right makes might” were sent by telegraph across the nation, with his full speech to follow.

Tom Wheeler, speaking about his book, Mr. Lincoln’s T-mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War, told a New York Audience in 2007 that Lincoln’s visit to New York in 1860 was designed to help him capitalize on the major technological innovations that had expanded the influence of the publishing industry. He was photographed by Mathew Brady and his portrait was distributed along with his Cooper Union address across the US, standing in for the candidate and allowing him to forgo much of the vigorous campaigning that might otherwise be needed.

What follows is a transcript of that speech:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Mr. President and fellow citizens of New York:

The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in “The New-York Times,” Senator Douglas said:

“Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: “What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?”

What is the frame of government under which we live?

The answer must be: “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, (and under which the present government first went into operation,) and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the “thirty-nine” who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present Government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.

I take these “thirty-nine,” for the present, as being “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.”

What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood “just as well, and even better than we do now?”

It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue – this question – is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood “better than we.”

Let us now inquire whether the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it – how they expressed that better understanding?

In 1784, three years before the Constitution – the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the “thirty-nine” who afterward framed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the four – James M’Henry – voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he thought it improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the “thirty-nine” who afterward signed the Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition – thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance of ’87.

The question of federal control of slavery in the territories, seems not to have been directly before the Convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of ’87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the “thirty-nine,” Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James Madison.

This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.

Again, George Washington, another of the “thirty-nine,” was then President of the United States, and, as such approved and signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.

No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded territory. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere with it – take control of it – even there, to a certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so bought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the “thirty-nine” who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and comparatively large city. There were other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it – take control of it – in a more marked and extensive way than they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision therein made, in relation to slaves, was:

First. That no slave should be imported into the territory from foreign parts.

Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been imported into the United States since the first day of May, 1798.

Third. That no slave should be carried into it, except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to the slave.

This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Congress which passed it, there were two of the “thirty-nine.” They were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the line properly dividing local from federal authority, or any provision of the Constitution.

In 1819-20, came and passed the Missouri question. Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of the “thirty-nine” – Rufus King and Charles Pinckney – were members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that case.

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the “thirty-nine,” or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover.

To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20 – there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin, three times. The true number of those of the “thirty-nine” whom I have shown to have acted upon the question, which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way.

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers “who framed the government under which we live,” who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they “understood just as well, and even better than we do now;” and twenty-one of them – a clear majority of the whole “thirty-nine” – so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, under such responsibility, speak still louder.

Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the instances in which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they so voted is not known. They may have done so because they thought a proper division of local from federal authority, or some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way; or they may, without any such question, have voted against the prohibition, on what appeared to them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set down even the two who voted against the prohibition, as having done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in federal territory.

The remaining sixteen of the “thirty-nine,” so far as I have discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the direct question of federal control of slavery in the federal territories. But there is much reason to believe that their understanding upon that question would not have appeared different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all.

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have purposely omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any person, however distinguished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understanding may have been manifested by any of the “thirty-nine” even, on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times – as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris – while there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.

The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one – a clear majority of the whole – certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question “better than we.”

But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of “the Government under which we live” consists of that original, and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. Those who now insist that federal control of slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, that all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property without due process of law;” while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution – the identical Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical, same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same time within the session, had under consideration, and in progress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, and passed after the act enforcing the Ordinance of ’87; so that, during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional amendments were also pending.

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, were pre- eminently our fathers who framed that part of “the Government under which we live,” which is now claimed as forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories.

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation from the same mouth, that those who did the two things, alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were inconsistent better than we – better than he who affirms that they are inconsistent?

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience – to reject all progress – all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” were of the same opinion – thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from federal authority or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they “understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

But enough! Let all who believe that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,” speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask – all Republicans desire – in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

And now, if they would listen – as I suppose they will not – I would address a few words to the Southern people.

I would say to them: – You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite – license, so to speak – among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section – gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started – to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live” thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment’s consideration.

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress, enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the Government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote LaFayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free States.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

But you say you are conservative – eminently conservative – while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;” while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the “gur-reat pur-rinciple” that “if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,” fantastically called “Popular Sovereignty;” but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,” declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, “It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.”

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States only. The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution – the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.

And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling – that sentiment – by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.

When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the lawyer’s distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree with one another about its meaning, and that it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact – the statement in the opinion that “the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.”

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it. Bear in mind, the Judges do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they pledge their veracity that it is “distinctly and expressly” affirmed there – “distinctly,” that is, not mingled with anything else – “expressly,” that is, in words meaning just that, without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to others to show that neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” is to be found in the Constitution, nor the word “property” even, in any connection with language alluding to the things slave, or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is alluded to, he is called a “person;” – and wherever his master’s legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as “service or labor which may be due,” – as a debt payable in service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man.

To show all this, is easy and certain.

When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live” – the men who made the Constitution – decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago – decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, “Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.” But we do let them alone – have never disturbed them – so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality – its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension – its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care – such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance – such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Minutes after the pilot of US Airways flight 1549 reported a “double bird strike”, he landed the Airbus A320 passenger jet on the Hudson River, at about 3:30 pm yesterday. Reports suggest the plane hit a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from New York’s La Guardia airport, with both engines being knocked out. All 155 people on board survived the water landing.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger has over 4 decades of flight experience, was a fighter pilot for the US Air Force, and is a certified glider pilot. He also serves as guest university lecturer in catastrophic emergency procedures and a consultant on emergency preparedness, who has worked with NASA and the NTSB.

Numerous experts have come forward to inform the press and the public that no such water ditching has occurred in the history of commercial aviation. Most crash landings occur over land, and though pilots and crew are prepared for how to react in an emergency water landing, no commercial jet has ever successfully ditched in the water with all on board surviving.

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The survival of the passengers and crew was even more unlikely, rescue officials say, because the plane was going under, and with the air temperature at just 20ºF (-7ºC) and the water at a frigid 36ºF (2ºC), hypothermia would set in almost immediately for anyone contacting the water or without warm dry clothes.

New York media are ecstatic with the event, with the New York Post proclaiming it the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ (New York governor David Paterson said “We’ve had a miracle on 34th Street — I believe we now have a miracle on the Hudson”) and the Daily News calling Capt. Sullenberger the ‘Hero of the Hudson’.

In a display of improvisation and community, numerous tourist and commuter ferries sped to the crash site immediately, with smaller boats arriving on the scene, as well as NY emergency rescue personnel and US Coast Guard, getting most of the passengers off the plane before the plane started listing and going under. (The last passengers and crew were rescued after the wings were mostly submerged.)

Capt. Sullenberger has still not yet spoken publicly, as he and the crew are being interviewed by the NTSB to determine what caused the plane to lose engine power and to learn from their testimony what steps precisely they took that enabled all on board to get out safely, even as the plane was going underwater.

The press have also widely reported information, delivered in a press conference by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, suggesting that Capt. Sullenberger himself walked the entire length of the plane twice, after everyone else was off safely, to be certain there were no people left stranded, injured or unconscious.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will have to vacate her seat in the United States Senate when she becomes Secretary of State, and speculation has been rife for weeks about who will fill that seat. Long seen as the top choice, both with the public and among party insiders, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of Pres. John F. Kennedy, will be the likely choice of Gov. Paterson of New York.

Kennedy is often described as “elusive” or “reclusive”, shying away from the public eye, unlike so many in her storied political family, but she has done important work for a number of charitable causes and has consistently involved herself in issues of public interest. She is now being described as a “forceful” candidate, though her contacts with the public over the Senate seat question have been limited.

The AP reported that “Two people close to Gov. David Paterson tell The Associated Press they believe Caroline Kennedy will be his choice, but the governor cautions he’s still looking.” Kennedy is the popular choice with voters, but some question how public a figure she will be if she takes over as senator; her private style is seen as a stark contrast with Clinton’s high profile, ambitious approach to the role of junior senator.

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New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver made headlines with his assertion that Paterson was on the verge of selecting Caroline Kennedy to fill Clinton’s seat once it becomes vacant. But the governor, through a spokesman, refuted the claim; Paterson’s spokesman said the governor is favoring no frontrunner and that he will make the selection after due deliberation.

It has also been reported that the governor will not appoint a “caretaker” senator to hold the seat till the next election in 2010, but would aim to appoint a senator who would serve ably and be a strong voice for New York before and after the 2010 election.

Kennedy’s approach to policy also seems to fit well with the president-elect’s pragmatic centrist style. She served as adviser and VP vetter for Obama, and on the subject of healthcare told the AP in a recent interview that:

We need to fix that system. It’s something we need to fix. It’s too expensive. We don’t invest in prevention. These things are affecting women and children. Also they’re completely tied together in a terrible way. I’d like to work to make sure there’s health and child care.

She is widely praised for her work on education issues, and her big-picture view of the national priority of education also meshes well with the incoming administration: “our country has an education crisis long term and we really need to solve it if we’re going to remain the strongest, most powerful, most admired country on earth”.

In what it says is an effort to defend its civilians against missile attack, Israel has launched a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory it formerly occupied and which is now under the control of the Hamas militant group’s political faction. Hamas seized control of Gaza in an armed coup against the ruling Fatah movement, which retains control of the West Bank. Israel’s ground assault, which includes columns of tanks and air support from helicopter gunships, comes after 8 days of airstrikes that targeted a number of top Hamas figures, and left over 430 Palestinians dead.

The stated purpose of the airstrikes, stopping rocket attacks into Israel, was not only not achieved, but rocket attacks have increased dramatically as Hamas vows revenge. That increase in attacks is thought to be partly the cause of the ground offensive. Israeli military officials have warned the campaign against Hamas could last for “many long days”, and some fear a renewed full-scale occupation of Gaza. Israel and the Palestinan Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, have said an international force should be deployed in Gaza to prevent further violence.

Protest rallies have spread across the region and into Europe and the United States. Hundreds demonstrated in San Francisco for an end to the overwhelming use of military force by Israel. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that:

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators — including several Jews — protested outside of the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco for the fourth time this week, venting anger over Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

The largely peaceful protest was among many public condemnations of the bombing around the world, in London, Manila and throughout the Middle East.

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One Jewish protester, who says he is a descendent of Holocaust survivors, is reported to have said he believes the people of Israel should be on the side of the defenseless and “identify with the oppressed — not imitate the oppressors”. Other demonstrators carried banners critical of Israel, including some comparing the situation in Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Demonstrations have become increasingly heated as images of dead and injured civilians have trickled out of Gaza.

In New York’s Times Square, hundreds gathered to demonstrate against the Israeli operation in Gaza, calling it a “massacre” and demanding a ceasefire. The rally was reported to be peaceful, but emotional, with The New York Times reporting that one protester “drove his wife and three children two hours to join the demonstration. His children, ages 10, 8, and 5, were bundled up in down jackets to protect them from the winter chill. Two of them waved small American flags, the other a Palestinian flag.”

According to the Times, the news of Israel’s ground invasion came by various media to Times Square in the midst of the demonstration, which “stretched four blocks and clogged much of central tourist district for several hours”. There was a smaller counterprotest that followed the pro-Palestinian demonstration, without incident. Protesters at that rally called for Hamas to shoulder the blame for the violence in Gaza and for the militant group’s destruction.

New York is a place where everything is just a little off kilter, pushed and angled by unwavering momentum, but there is flow and the hope of flow working in the depths of personal metaphysical craft, there is the dewy first light of possibility and the wisdom of the tempest-tossed, if —as Kipling says it— “you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”.

The city breathes and compresses, inhabits and yearns, makes patterns and delights in the rupture of unnecessary patterning, it aspires abruptly, consistently, and seeks self-definition, is wounded and implored and billowing with the call for anything more like or less like its oblique time-wary self-fashioning : every woman is a woman and brings all the joys and abilities of woman to the metaphysical calamity of feasting, and every man is a man and brings all the hardships and fantasies of man to the physical incarnation of the feasting dance : no matter what harangues and woodjumbles, what indelicate armors or ill-encumbered sanctities we assign them on first or second sight, or on the last flitting edge of visual contact, the tired judgment, the game of collapse collapsing within and draining away the sound and the sense of things, pushes for an even score, and then beyond into something more complicated, more unabashed.

It is an other-world, a mix of cultures, of acute binging instances of culture beginning, a weave of timing and tempo, of taste and absence, a place where solitude bleeds into reflection, concept, the sticky whimsy of a place that is also a form of place, a soughtafter lover for the placeseekers, a continuation of inward lacking and of the rhythms of spheres of memory and indication, halfway between being-here and not-being.

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The historic and landscape canvases of J.M.W. Turner have invaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a bath of vibrant color and the artist’s characteristic ability to paint the energy of forces converging in space and time. The exhibit is more than a mere retrospective; it will deliver to many visitors their first real taste of the pioneering British painter’s ambitious experiments with light, scale and texture, and it illustrates how his work informs many of the innovations that would later come in imrpessionist and avant-garde movements.

Turner’s early work looked to history and to dramatic natural scenes. With “Fall of the Reichenbach, in the Valley of the Oberhusli, Switzerland”, we find a powerful examination of the scale of nature and its meaning for the frail hope of humanity amidst its immense power. We see in deft combination the permanent masque of rock, the deep forgiving sky, the haunted intimacy of mist, a fervent beaming light, the impenetrability of nature’s organization at this place, the mystery of such providence, a vital softness that equates all beings facing the combination of forces, in sum, at the falls.

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We read that the artist has sought to convey the following:

philosopher Edmund Burke’s notion of the Sublime as the terror humans experience before the overpowering force of nature. The steep, rocky landscape —dominated by the 2,000-foot waterfall— towers over the shepherd and his flock.

And he has. It was Turner’s unique ability to perform these feats of historic ingenuity, of philosophical reflection, of commentary on the vast uncertainty of the fate of humanity, that made it possible for him to move so ably between depictions of daunting natural landscapes and crucial historic encounters, structures, or of monuments that mark the landscape of history. Turner was a translation, somewhat knowing, somewhat lonesome and unwitting, of the romantic movements, bold and garish, caught up with heroic resonance, into the impressionist, able to see without seeing, to envision the act of encountering light, shape and meaning in once complex interplay of phenomena.

In the painting “Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, Restored”, Turner tempts us to share in a study of plenty, refinement, restoration, beauty. It is a song for the replenishment of the hungry soul, Bacchic festival, a ritual exploration of the romance of Narcissus, the elegance of natural light, architecture in its ancient aspiration and its nowaday claim to continuing. There is a question about the origin and the repetition, which means precisely that dewy elegance of the mind working on the environment, taking stock and shaping new directions, informed by experience.

It would be simple to say the painter could not be thinking these things as he worked to copy from his imagination the qualities of a now ruined ancient structure, but the restoration as presented is a sign of what is lacking and aspired to in a new modern age, a comment on the golden and the greener ages, the “aspirations of memory”, the hope of what a future of dreamscapes might be, if realized. What Turner does so well, thematically, is nest these questions in the visual landscape: what amount of courage is involved in recreating what once was emblematic of excellence? How to do it in a way that speaks today’s language?

“The Battle of Trafalgar”, the artist’s largest canvas, was painted from memory, from sketches, from other works, 14 years after the fact, under George IV. It is, for this reason, both heavily criticized on grounds of inaccuracy and heavily lauded for capturing the spirit of a moment that shocked the British world, jolted it with electric urges, and yet had become more mythology than history just a few years later. [continued below...]

In Turner’s rendition of the maritime battle, we find humanity falling out of the rigging, falling out of the human-built structures of intrigue, nation, contest, combat, value, propriety… humanly falling to the flaming tide… nature threatening to prove it is more vast, more patient, than so much bloodlust and gallantry. The battle is structured as if it were a whipping of plasmic amorphous agglomerations of human pretense and vehemence, a merengue of pale fire and clean light in which the fog of war and the mists of legend combine to tell of gain and loss together.

In this massive canvas and in his depiction of the event from the base of the mizen-mast on Nelson’s ship, we see Trafalgar is a pyrrhic victory: the loss of the heroic leader, the end of something and the edge of chaos, all telling a story about the years to come, at least as much as of the years preceding. There is a conception of what combat means, the failure of the human world to govern itself, to make sense of relations, attitudes, cravings… Turner’s approach to combat is simultaneously moralistic, Spartan and Baroque, insofar as this is possible.

In Turner’s depiction of combat, humanity crashes against itself with the violence of great tides and celestial fire, a storm of natural energy that breaks in a definitive way the everyday order of the human world: victory is loss, death is emergence, the aftermath is the manifestation of a tragic foreboding that ruled the preceding history, the vertigo of a great falls, the roaring isolation of that place of destiny where the falling river cascades into the mist of its own pools, the accretion of uncontainable irreconcilable forces, the explosion of sunlight coming through cloudscape.

Turner’s lyric “The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire” ventures into classical themes, historic-event landscapes, the old model of decorative masterworks, palatable from countless disciplines, and aims to bring to this art, now reshaped by techniques of the romantic movement, strains of perfect light, perfect atmosphere, the yellow glinting of departure, of ongoing, of the meaning of transition, surpassing, cycle and the setting sun. [continued below...]

As with the sun rising pale and hopeful in “Dido Building Carthage” (above), here we savor riches seen, unseen and expended, empire falling away before the brash caresses of sunlight. There are delicate precise lines and turbulent luminous mists, telling equal truths, at odds and in kinship with each other, alternating between the placid and the awesome. Turner’s narrative is housed in a passion for the expressive quality of the visible brush-stroke, the texture of the optical experience, dimension raised to the eye as against the predetermined meaning with which a place would have been invested by ambition, fortune and failure.

“The Tower of London” gives us a glimpse of how, for Turner, watercolor is more the art of seeing than is oil. This is because the colors must work together on a single plane of light and shadow. A color cannot be blended and reworked, kneaded obliquely into the desired hue. It is, or it isn’t, and when it isn’t, it’s already too late. Light is thinness; shade is density.

The piece tells us that landscape, for Turner, is not about what is seen, but about how it might be seen. It is not about perspective as much as it is about the layering of light, the problem of intervening shadows, the glazing and distortions presented by fog and weather. In “Approach to Venice”, the artist offers a palette of unabashed luminous spaces, gaseous parameters of world-making, and the sleek densities of the human hand, each working to reveal the muted auspices of a social urge, coming near to shore, the beginning of a day of trade, or a visit to foreign shores.

“Europa and the Bull” is an unfinished work, which is congruent with the origin myth. Europa is ravaged by the bull in which Apollo has manifest himself. The piece swims with Hindu and Hellenic underpinnings, that make the Christian narrative a weighty comment on the future evolution of Europe as a civilization, steeped in conflict, hoping for something more pure, more liberal, somehow free of the weight of its origins, free of the weight of its dark history, ready to engage the entire world in open dialogue.

Unfinished, the work speaks less plainly than it could of the artist’s intent. It is, in some ways, no more than a teasing of one of the lost origin myths, a study of social pretensions, a wishing in action… but there is room for speaking about the unfinished work as a new representation of Turner’s approach to light, as a comment on light itself: “Sunrise with Sea Monsters” is not only unfinished, its title is apocryphal, and relates only to what the posthumous viewer may think is the subject of the work.

This unfinished canvas opens onto the “role of the reader”, gives us a vision of light, water and life, a snapshot of multidimensional kinetic energy. Caught up in a lemon-ivory wash, a whirl of density at the center of the work was misread by the 20th century fascination with arbitrary harbingers of the unconscious, where life and motion, intent and accident become dark, monstrous hints of an unseen world. So the painting acquired its speculative moniker of “sunrise with sea monsters”.

Leaving the exhibit, I am overstimulated, have seen too much, have seen a ravishing exhibit that was just beginning to be born to this audience of the moment, to this New York phase in the life of the artist. I can safely say, anyone paying attention to what is on show here, will find their perception enriched, focused, and put on course to see deeper into the mythology of our moment and our collective comment on the art of perception. This, I think, was part of what Turner himself was working for all along.

CLINTON PROMISED “YOU’LL ALWAYS FIND ME ON THE FRONT LINES OF DEMOCRACY FIGHTING FOR A BETTER FUTURE”, PLEDGED SUPPORT TO OBAMA

Top aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign began telling the press that she intended to officially concede defeat, withdraw from the campaign and endorse Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, as the Democratic party’s nominee, as early as the morning after the final primary votes. She scheduled a farewell gathering for campaign staffers and supporters on Friday, the date pushed back to allow more people to attend. And on Saturday, she followed through and gave a rousing speech to supporters, officially endorsing Obama and calling on her supporters to follow suit.

In her speech, Sen. Clinton noted the great strides made for women by way of her historic campaign. She thanked all the volunteers who helped her to become the first woman who came so close to the presidency, and urged female supporters not to be discouraged by her defeat. She told her supporters to keep in mind that:

You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States.

The big news, however, was her impassioned and unequivocal call for support for her former rival, Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois. The New York senator did not shy from clarity on this point, saying:

The way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand, is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States.

Speculation is widespread that there will now be a campaign to gain the 2nd spot on the Democratic ticket, as Obama’s vice-presidential candidate. Obama last week announced a 3-person vice-presidential search and vetting team, and in the interest of deference to and unity with Sen. Clinton, aides to Obama “said they would move slowly in the search, allowing passions from the bruising primary battles to cool.”

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Caroline Kennedy, who is described as having become a close friend and adviser to Barack Obama, since she endorsed him, will be part of the panel helping to select his vice-presidential nominee. The search is expected to be arduous and slow-going, and there may be a good amount of intrigue as to whether Sen. Clinton is part of the ticket or not. A poll last week showed that a majority of Democrats favored a joint Obama-Clinton ticket.

The search may also be highly secretive, as is custom with the VP search and vetting process. On Friday, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton ducked the press and “disappeared” for several hours, in order to have a private discussion. It was later discovered that their meeting took place at the Spring Valley residence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). What was discussed was not made public, though a joint statement was issued saying that the meeting was “productive”.

According to the Washington Post’s “The Trail”:

While she could not talk about the details of the Obama-Clinton meeting, Feinstein said she has spoken several times to Clinton this week and understands that she wants to secure certain assurances from Obama that the issues and voters she cares about will have their voices heard, first at the convention in Denver and then in his administration should he win in November.

Clinton’s endorsement, and the mood expressed by all after the meeting, seems to indicate she received the assurances she sought, so she could go to her supporters and confidently urge them to back Obama. The two may have to do some work together to achieve the goal of party unity, which many believe has been damaged by a heated, 17-month primary campaign.

Sen. Clinton’s speech worked up to the refrain: “When we live in an America that [has achieved X], we will live in a stronger America, and that is why we must help elect Barack Obama our president”, which she repeated while covering a number of issues, ranging from renewable energy to universal healthcare to overcoming discrimination or workplace inequality and to serving the health and wellbeing of the troops.

She called the historic primary campaign between the first woman and the first African-American with legitimate chances of winning election to the US presidency “part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union”. She added, “There are no acceptable limits and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century, in our country.”

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious and the stakes are too high, to dwell on what might have been; we have to work together for what still can be”, promising to “work my heart out to make sure that Barack Obama is our next president.” She thanked her friends and supporters for their work and commitment, finishing her speech by calling the November election an opportunity to “take back our country”.

A new study has found that selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI, or anti-depressants), sex-hormones, painkillers and anti-biotics in significant quantities in the drinking water of 24 out of 28 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Though the term “trace amounts” appears multiple times in today’s reporting of the findings, that term does not necessarily speak to quantity.

According to the Washington Post:

Pharmaceuticals, along with trace amounts of caffeine, were found in the drinking water supplies of 24 of 28 U.S. metropolitan areas tested. The findings were revealed as part of the first federal research on pharmaceuticals in water supplies, and those results are detailed in an investigative report by the Associated Press set to be published today.

Health effects are not known, as the question of prolonged unplanned exposure to sub-medical dosages has not been adequately researched, if at all, by the pharmaceutical community or by public health authorities. As the Toronto Daily News points out, in reference to the drugs found in drinking water: “Experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body”.

Utilities insist their water is safe for human consumption, but the Associated Press investigation found that water authorities are more often than not reluctant to disclose any information about testing for pharmaceuticals in the water supply. The AP also found that “while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.”

Among the more astonishing findings in the study was the range of pharmaceutical contaminants found in the Philadelphia metropolitan area:

Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.

18.5 million people across southern California are reported to be affected by potential exposure to anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications found in “a portion” of the drinking water supply to that region.

The AP also reported that

The federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven’t: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

Part of the problem is that pharmaceuticals are not entirely absorbed by those who taken them for medical reasons and water treatment systems are not as yet capable of removing trace pharmaceuticals from water that will be released back into the general public water supply.

Last August, AlterNet published in its environment section a report on apparent behavioral and physical mutations in fish and wildlife exposed to prolonged persistent doses of pharmaceutical runoff. The article specified that long-term effects of such exposure in human tissue are not yet well-studied or well-known, though:

A 1999 (EPA and German) study of pharmaceutical and other personal-care products concluded the “undetectable effects on aquatic organisms are particularly worrisome because effects could accumulate so slowly that major change goes undetected until the cumulative level of these effects finally cascades to irreversible change — change that would otherwise be attributed to natural adaptation or ecologic succession.”

Also, the AlterNet story warned that “Pharmaceuticals have already been linked to behavioral and sexual mutations in fish, amphibians and birds, according to EPA studies.” As such, the EPA was by August 2007 planning “preventative measures” to protect against adverse effects on the human population, though there was some suspicion the doses might be high enough to indicate expired pills being flushed by consumers.

• The New York Times: “Drug Traces Common in Tap Water”
• Washington Post: “Area Tap Water has Traces of Medicines”
• Toronto Daily News: “Antibiotics, Antidepressants, Sex Hormones Found in U.S. Drinking Water”
• Charleston Post & Courier: “Local water authorities say impact on health is unanswered question”
• AlterNet: “Pharmaceuticals in Our Water Supply Are Causing Bizarre Mutations to Wildlife”

The Democratic party is again facing questions about its handling of the primary process in some precincts in New York City, where initial “unofficial” tallies reported zero votes for Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, rival of local junior senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination. The undercounts occurred in precincts bordering on precincts where Obama won handily, raising further questions about who had access to that information and how it could have been so erroneous.

The question has been raised by several party leaders as to how any candidate could be expected to have received zero votes and why the problem was not corrected sooner. Some have suggested the extreme error points to the unlikelihood of wrongdoing, while others allege some sort of conspiracy to steal enough votes to add one or two delegates to the Clinton tally. There is no evidence of any campaign operatives being involved.

• New York Times: “Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote”
• Daily News: “Hillary’s New York superdelegates are feeling the heat”

The figures from the biggest day of primary voting in US history are coming in, and reveal a lot of interesting detail about the make-up of the campaigns. Sen. John McCain was the day’s big winner, though he did not win enough delegates to seal the nomination. McCain, still struggling to convince many conservative Republicans, won 9 states on the day, including the big states of California, Illinois, Missouri, New York and New Jersey.

The Democratic contest was more complicated: Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York won her home state, as well as the big prize of California, but many of her victories were closer margins, whereas Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois won many smaller states, and by enormous margins, taking Idaho 80% to 17%, Alaska 74% to 25%, Kansas (where he was born) 74% to 25%, Minnesota 67% to 32% and Colorado by the same margin. There is some speculation that when the counting is done, Obama, who won more states but with much smaller populations, may come away with more delegates, due to the Democratic party’s proportional delegate assignment rules.

Fmr. Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won 6 states, possibly 7 if Alaska officially goes his way, including a 90% to 5% margin over McCain in Utah (Romney is a Mormon, Mormons comprising the majority of Utah’s population). Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee also won 5 states, and has declared his intention to stay in the race and keep fighting for the nomination.

• NY Times: “Primary Season Election Results”

The biggest prize in the Super Tuesday 24-state primary vote today will be California, with more than 36 million inhabitants, the most populous state in the nation. Observers expect Clinton and Obama to nearly split the delegates available, which amount to more than 50% of the total. The Republican contest could be close to being decided, if frontrunner McCain achieves a “sweep”, as some expect, with more than 40% of delegates in play, and a winner-take-all rule in some GOP contests.

Until two weeks ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) led her principal Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama (IL) by a margin of more than 10%. By this weekend, that margin had shrunk to 2%, with some polls showing Obama with a lead. By this morning, polls suggested Obama has opened a 13 percentage point lead over Clinton 49% to her 36%, possibly gathering to his cause many voters who had supported the progressive campaign of fmr. Sen. John Edwards (SC). A SurveyUSA poll conducted during the same period shows Sen. Clinton with a 10% lead.

Georgia, where Obama holds a commanding 20 percentage point lead, according to the latest Zogby poll, is expected to be important to the candidate’s maintaining momentum through the day and into the coming contests. Bloomberg reports “or the next 90 minutes after polls close in Georgia, returns will come in from 10 states, including primaries in the Northeast. Anything other than victory for New York Senator Clinton in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Delaware would be a coup for Obama, an Illinois senator.”

Among Republicans, new frontrunner Sen. John McCain (AZ) has pulled ahead in many key states, and himself predicts he will defeat rival Mitt Romney in his home state of Massachusetts. Pollster John Zogby says “It looks like a big day for McCain with Romney making a last stand in California”.

McCain’s momentum, based on his victories in South Carolina and Florida, seems to give him the edge in terms of support and energy, though many conservative Republicans are wary of his “credentials” in the area of social and fiscal conservatism. His tough talk on issues of war and security has brought momentum from that part of the Republican electorate concerned about defense issues, though there is general skepticism across the nation on issues of economic recovery and fiscal policy.

• Reuters: “Obama, Romney lead in California on Super Tuesday”
• Reuters: “Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby Super Tuesday Polls”
• Bloomberg: “Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney Battle Coast to Coast”

Across the United States, problems are being discovered with what are supposed to be the state of the art in balloting technology: digital touchscreen voting machines. Security questions were raised initially when the machines were widely distributed, by a handful of companies, with no hard-copy record of voters’ intent, which led to a nationwide movement calling for “verified voting”, or voter-verified paper trails.

State after state has accepted that the absolute standard for a truly reliable voting and vote-counting process must be a process where voters can actually see the official record of their votes, verify that their votes were recorded correctly, and where those hard-copies can then be checked by both machine and by human intervention, if such a recount is needed. Florida and California have both scrapped their touchscreen machines, amid mounting concerns about reliability and security.

A team of researchers at Princeton University has demonstrated the ease with which the machines can be hacked and thousands of votes shifted or stolen, leaving little or no trace and with no means by which to return to any record of “voter intent” (a standard which most states require constitutionally). Allegations of suspicious interactions between company executives at Diebold and other voting machine manufacturers or maintenance firms has raised fears that the machines have already been used to sway the outcome of past elections (Ohio in 2004 is one possible case).

In southern California, San Diego election workers were permitted to take the machines home with them on the eve of elections, leading to what is possible the most severe security breach in US elections since the 2000 debacle in Florida raised real concerns about the legitimacy of the vote-counting process. Instances of votes for one candidate actually being recorded for another are infamous and disturbingly frequent.

Clive Thompson has written for The New York Times:

“In the last three election cycles, touch-screen machines have become one of the most mysterious and divisive elements in modern electoral politics. Introduced after the 2000 hanging-chad debacle, the machines were originally intended to add clarity to election results. But in hundreds of instances, the result has been precisely the opposite: they fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices ‘flip’ from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish.”

So, even where the “paper trail” is implemented, to shore up the technology against its own inherent flaws, there are problems with the quality of the manufacturing or maintenance, it would seem, leading to the possibility that votes are simply erased, lost, or never recorded. Roughly one-third of the electorate will cast their votes in November 2008 on touchscreen machines, unless action is taken to prevent this unproven technology from interfering with voters’ ability to express their choice.

Across the United States, problems are being discovered with what are supposed to be the state of the art in balloting technology: digital touchscreen voting machines. Security questions were raised initially when the machines were widely distributed, by a handful of companies, with no hard-copy record of voters’ intent, which led to a nationwide movement calling for “verified voting”, or voter-verified paper trails.

State after state has accepted that the absolute standard for a truly reliable voting and vote-counting process must be a process where voters can actually see the official record of their votes, verify that their votes were recorded correctly, and where those hard-copies can then be checked by both machine and by human intervention, if such a recount is needed. Florida and California have both scrapped their touchscreen machines, amid mounting concerns about reliability and security.

A team of researchers at Princeton University has demonstrated the ease with which the machines can be hacked and thousands of votes shifted or stolen, leaving little or no trace and with no means by which to return to any record of “voter intent” (a standard which most states require constitutionally). Allegations of suspicious interactions between company executives at Diebold and other voting machine manufacturers or maintenance firms has raised fears that the machines have already been used to sway the outcome of past elections (Ohio in 2004 is one possible case).

In southern California, San Diego election workers were permitted to take the machines home with them on the eve of elections, leading to what is possible the most severe security breach in US elections since the 2000 debacle in Florida raised real concerns about the legitimacy of the vote-counting process. Instances of votes for one candidate actually being recorded for another are infamous and disturbingly frequent.

Clive Thompson has written for The New York Times:

“In the last three election cycles, touch-screen machines have become one of the most mysterious and divisive elements in modern electoral politics. Introduced after the 2000 hanging-chad debacle, the machines were originally intended to add clarity to election results. But in hundreds of instances, the result has been precisely the opposite: they fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices ‘flip’ from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish.”

So, even where the “paper trail” is implemented, to shore up the technology against its own inherent flaws, there are problems with the quality of the manufacturing or maintenance, it would seem, leading to the possibility that votes are simply erased, lost, or never recorded. Roughly one-third of the electorate will cast their votes in November 2008 on touchscreen machines, unless action is taken to prevent this unproven technology from interfering with voters’ ability to express their choice.

PRESS CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS ‘INDEPENDENT THINKERS’ CONCERNS ABOUT INTEGRITY OF AMERICAN POLITICAL CULTURE IN TERMS OF PUBLIC SERVICE, ACCOUNTABILITY

While speculation is widespread that the purpose of the Oklahoma meetings, involving 17 former and current politicians and public servants, is to announce the candidacy of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, for the presidency, the groups says it only wants to lay out a series of principles of bipartisanship in government, which they hope presidential candidates will adopt. The mass media rumor mill is suggesting the group will propose Bloomberg as an independent candidate for the presidency, with fmr. Democratic senator Sam Nunn as his running mate.

One of the goals they propose is fixing the public education system, to set a national goal to restore the American public educational system to the rank of ‘top 5′ worldwide, while now it is “somewhere in the mid-twenties”, as stated by fmr. senator Bob Graham (D-FL). Mayor Bloomberg proposed that among the most serious problems facing the nation at present are energy policy and the education system, and that the current system is best reflected by energy bills that do nothing to overhaul or strengthen energy policy for the future and farm bills that help “agribusiness” but do little to shore up the long-term health of the agrarian economy.

Fmr independent Maine governor Angus King said the nation is facing a kind of “slow-motion catastrophe”, in which institutions and the ability of people and public servants to work together for the public good are disintegrating, due to factors that we are not protecting ourselves against. He proposed that a “non-partisan” government could set itself on a course to have the necessary “10- to 20-year vision” to work on policies that will actually help the country become stronger and evolve for the better.

King warned that the majority of members of the panel view the current moment as “a tipping point”, beyond which the United States could enter a period of “permanent decline”. He also noted that there is no reason that decline needs to be built into the future evolution of American society, politically and economically, but that the energy of the American people can be harnessed to find the solutions needed to face the greatest coming challenges.

Fmr. Republican senator and Clinton-administration Defense Secretary Bill Cohen said “for every right that you claim, you’ve got a duty you must perform”, in reference to the 1940 threat Europe and the West faced against “a mechanized evil on the loose” in Nazi Germany. Cohen suggested that this standard be applied broadly to public life and to the community structures Americans use to help the country function and to make their lives better.

There is a clear parallel between the message of this group of centrist and independent politicians, analysts and public servants, and the campaign for “change” more broadly, as spoken by candidates on both sides of the presidential campaign. What the Oklahoma 17 are proposing is a strategy clearly stated that would 1) bring together leaders and thinkers from across the political spectrum, 2) reduce partisan extremism, and 3) lead to a more responsible stewardship of the system and of the natural and social environment for future generations.

They are also proposing that universities across the nation become involved in this movement for collaborative citizenship, potentially hosting conferences that promote and explore the principles and the questions put forth by this group, in the interests of leading to a culture of bipartisanship and an attempt to both inform and to interact with the majority center in the American political spectrum.

Former US pres. Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative (CGI) holds a major international stakeholders’ and donors’ conference each year in conjunction with the UN’s General Assembly, in New York City. This year’s convention brings together 1,300 delegates from 72 countries. 52 active or former heads of state are participating, in only the 3rd year of this no-nonsense charity initiative.

‘Members’ contribute $15,000 in order to participate and must ‘commit’ to contributing or carrying out work of some concrete kind. They must come to the event with a plan already laid out and a clear agenda for enacting the plan. Political leaders, NGOs, business people, from around the world attend, with the aim of finding creative solutions to the world’s most serious or deep-rooted problems. They must produce financial backing to bring their planned project to life before the following year’s convention.

In order to ensure that the process is not just talk or debate, CGI requires as a condition of membership that those who do not follow through on their commitments be barred from attending the following year. Between the first and second conventions, 17 participants were not allowed back. Between the second and third (this year’s), only five failed to return. The idea is to ensure that the event is not misused as a way to ‘network’ with powerful people, that its initiatives be a form of concrete progress and an example to other charitable endeavors.

The first two years of CGI raised over $10 billion for causes around the world, funding more than 600 ‘commitments’ worldwide. The concept behind the initiative is to ensure that people with the conceptual and technical expertise have direct contact with the most influential backers to enact the kind of change needed specifically in certain areas.

As is prominently announced on the CGI website in a quote from Mr. Clinton, the idea is “to turn good intentions into real action and results”. By building the requirement to follow through into the process of attending, proposal and planning, CGI has become an innovative example of effective global leadership, where interests come together and shared benefits can be both illustrated and made reality.

MORE AT
AP: “Clinton Global Initiative Hears Pledges” [2007 convention]
Washington Post: “Clinton Gathers World Leaders: Nonpartisan Conference Focuses on Global Improvement” [on 1st convention, in Sept. 2005]

SEVEN LIES THAT INFORM THE PUSH FOR AN ENGLISH-ONLY UNITED STATES

Is the United States an “English-speaking nation”, or a place where all cultures are welcome to converge, mix and evolve? To answer this question, we must consider that there is a natural human tendency to fear what is perceived as the definite and invasive “other”, that which is different and which we feel can be categorized in a way that fits our worries.

The human space is fluid, adaptable, sensitive to evolving circumstance. This is why democracy is the only legitimate form of government. The identity of groups, or for that matter of individuals is not implacable, nor is it absolutely relative. It follows the vicissitudes of the human health and mind, and requires sincere dialogue with the other in order to reach its fullest potential.

The push to establish a single national language can only be sustained on the basis of a number of false premises. We will explore seven such lies and misperceptions here, all of a particular sort, having to do with a way of rationalizing one’s aversion to difference or to change. And, in each case, it is fairly easy to illustrate how the lie works against the interests of both a democratic society and American tradition itself.

1.

The first key false premise is that there is an irrevocable danger to one’s identity, one’s security, one’s community and the integrity of one’s culture, if confronted with difference, if (to use the logic of the open market) one is forced to compete in the realm of ideas.

This is not only patently untrue (as will be shown in the enumeration of the other misperceptions that provoke xenophobia), but it would require that we reject both American history and the values of a democratic society. American society has never been uniform, has always had to find ways to bring harmony among disparate groups, and from the Constitution forward has sought to defend the rights and the role of minorities in society.

During the Second World War, the most decorated division was comprised largely of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Northwest and Native American tribes have lent soldiers, code-readers and specialists to all the wars since then.

E pluribus unum, the national motto, meaning ‘of the many: one’, has long been interpreted not as a call to flatten and evacuate the richness of an immigrant and pioneer culture, but to harness it, to make a more vibrant and adaptable continent-wide market, rich in ideas, abilities, distinctive methods and innovations.

2.

The second basic untruth to examine is that government sanction of a national language leads to greater unity and a stronger uniform sense of national identity. First, it’s worth referencing the brief glimpse of American history above and the words of great leaders who defended the idea of a potent national character, stemming from the global origins of the US population, to see that this is not even the goal of American society.

But more importantly, there are clear examples that show that imposed uniformity does not bring a healthy sense of national identity, but can in fact create and exacerbate divisions in society. France has a national one-culture policy that proclaims French the national language and requires that immigrants assimilate seamlessly into that one culture, leaving behind the trappings and traditions of their homelands.

Children are forbidden from wearing culturally specific clothing in schools, and the 31 other languages indigenous to France are simply ignored by the government as a matter of cultural policy. Foreign languages spoken widely in people’s homes, like Arabic, Berber, Lao and Vietnamese, are relegated to non-French status and communities that maintain close ties to their family culture often find themselves bunched into ethnic ghettoes, where many French citizens commonly identified as non-French due to their cultural background or race, are concentrated through several generations.

The result of this one-language policy has been constant and oppressive tension leading to the near total isolation of communities lacking the resources or the opportunity to integrate into the larger officially French culture, despite being French-born for one, two or three generations.

The explosive tensions promoted by this policy, and reinforced by the tacit discrimination it appeared to permit, led eventually to the riots of November 2005, which began in largely multigenerational, “immigrant” ghettoes in the northern Paris suburbs and spread quickly to 20 such suburbs and eventually 70 cities across the country and into neighboring countries.

The French interior minister (now president of the Republic), Nicolas Sarkozy, further inflamed tensions by suggesting that the young men involved were by nature “scum” and that he would deport everyone who was accused of participation. Apparently ignoring the proportion of French citizens involved, his view seemed obscured by racial considerations. He further pledged a comprehensive purge of immigrants; the one-culture policy fueled this irrational xenophobia, directed at communities officially invited into French society during the post-WWII period of rebuilding.

So, two evident problems with this lie of a sole unifying language: the declaration of a single culture does not erase cultural diversity (for this reason Europe pressured Turkey to eventually recognize its Kurdish minority, which it had officially labeled an historical fiction), and in the case of Paris, most of the “immigrant” youths were French born.

It is not the difference in culture that creates cross-cultural tension, but the refusal of the majority to accept that their nationality is not diminished or degraded by the presence of people who think and behave differently, but who also identify with that larger national identity.

3.

A third major false premise of the English-only movement is the belief in some sort of past golden age in which English was the sole unifying language, spoken by all and to the exclusion of all others. This is not only untrue —the gold rush of 1849 brought not only easterners to northern California, but also communities of adventurous emigrants from China and east Asia, as well as Chileans and Russians in signficant numbers— it is utterly ridiculous in its denial of historical reality.

Of the more than 300 languages currently spoken in the United States, at least 154 are indigenous languages, which predate the arrival of European colonists five centuries ago. Of those native languages still spoken inside the territory of the United States, about half are endangered, 7 have only 1 fluent speaker, and 42 have 10 or fewer speakers.

It is not the multiplication of languages that is the problem, but the disappearance of vast amounts of linguistic culture and knowledge from American society.

Immigrant languages have also played a role in making American society what it is. After decades of being treated as an unwanted ethnicity, Italian Americans, most often poor immigrants from southern Italy, or their descendants, in New York and other cities, speaking their own language, some even to this day, after several generations, introduced a new culinary culture into American society.

At the death of the New York restauranteur Delmonico in 1881, the exiled Cuban poet José Martí, writing in Spanish, noted the outpouring of popular affection for the man and his life’s work, specifically citing the gratitude expressed by many for his having introduced sauces, garnishes and ingredients that all agree enriched American culture and society.

At the founding of the republic, English was deliberately chosen as the language of standard use in law and government, not as a means of establishing a national vernacular, but simply to provide continuity in law, as the entire legal tradition of the British colonies in North America had been drafted in English.

There were even competing camps arguing that German or French should be used, to accentuate the break from England and because there were a large number of colonists who spoke those languages as their mother tongue. In fact, as of the 2000 US census, there were in the United States only 24,515,138 citizens of English ancestry (single or multiple ancestry included), while there were 42,885,162 citizens of German ancestry, 36,419,434 of African-American ancestry, 30,594,130 of Irish and/or Celtic ancestry, and 31,107,889 who were foreign born.

English-language culture has been a leading feature of American society, throughout its history, and has been most prevalent in publishing (books, magazines, newspapers and government documents), but it has never had an exclusive dominion over the American mind, and it does not represent any primary ethnic origin for the non-indigenous United States, as a republic. The United States is, as it has always been, and to its credit, the most linguistically diverse industrialized democracy in the world.

4.

A particularly insidious lie at the root of the English-only movement is the fear of an “invasion” of Spanish speakers. It is simply untrue that the Spanish-speaking population of the Americas could eclipse the English-speaking population of the United States and displace English as the unofficial lingua franca of the republic.

There are an estimated 450 to 500 million Spanish speakers across the globe, 40 million of whom live in Spain and 40 million more of whom already reside in the US itself, most of them speaking English as well. Spanish is also spoken by millions of people in Europe, south Asia and Africa.

The population of the US in 2000 was 281,421,906, according to the US census. The Census Bureau by 2006 estimated that figure at 298,820,183. The total number of people the US Census Bureau reported living in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries (including Mexico and Puerto Rico) in 2006 is 309,631,738.

So, unless every country in Latin America were emptied, there is no risk of a de facto overtaking of the English language in the US; nevermind the fact that there is no evidence of any hemispheric conspiracy to make the US a Spanish-speaking country.

Ultimately, it is the failure of imagination in the way individuals form their own sense of identity that generates the fear, not so much of foreigners or of another language, but of having to compete with fellow citizens who know more than one language.

The English-only movement is pushing very deliberately to limit the richness, vitality and adaptability of American culture, as well as its ability to learn of and respond to international crises or national security issues. It is in this that the nation itself faces the most serious threat to the potency and resilience of its linguistic and democratic culture.

5.

There is also the pernicious suggestion that people speaking other languages are not loyal Americans. This is directly tied to the false projection of “American” as connoting “English-speaking” and “white”.

What’s more, immigrants who have faced political hardship, economic depression, harsh journeys on foot or cramped in tiny enclosed spaces, violent smugglers and real mortal peril, all in hopes of reaching the promise of American society, tend to prize more passionately and more personally the freedoms and the rights afforded by American law than American-born citizens can normally imagine.

Throughout American history, from the Revolution, through the Civil War, into the World Wars and including the 2003 Iraq invasion, foreign-born US citizens and non-citizens have fought on behalf of the United States, risking their lives for a country whose ideals they believe in and to which they hope to one day belong.

6.

The sixth lie we must examine, which gives comfort to those who oppose the United States’ brave history of cultural diversity, is that suspicion of something one does not understand, or which is outwardly different, is somehow a useful tool in the furtherance of democracy, helping to seal the system against unwanted intruders.

This assumes many things: one, that democracy must be a closed system (the USSR, North Korea and Cuba have very effectively demonstrated the flaws of hermetically sealed societies)… two, that it is the sole privilege of an essentially distinct human population (who decides which people are essentially and naturally entitled to participate? how does one get around such stratification being antithetical to the US Constitutional system?)… three, that democracy means uniformity (we have covered this above).

Each of these rhetorical bases is contrary to the meaning, the direction and the lessons of American history. And each ignores the phrasing of the nation’s founding documents.

In his famous “I have a dream” speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said the “promissory note” represented by the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution had been “returned, marked insufficient funds”. He meant that the nation had to recognize that its core aspirations had not been achieved, precisely because a group identified by outward differences was still excluded from true equality before the law.

It is not by generating new exclusions and separating out the already-here from the imminent newcomers that we will make the United States more American in its identity and ideals, but rather by embracing the diversity of culture and the open humanity professed by the nation’s founding documents, Revolutionary treatises and greatest examples of community spirit.

7.

There is, lastly, the fundamental lie that says that official classification of all other languages as secondary, by establishment of an official state language, does not mean one discriminates or that the system of open democracy becomes less open.

In fact, there is no way around the basic truth that the declaration of a national language has only one purpose: to institutionalize discrimination in a way it has never been done before in the United States. And beyond that discrimination, its most immediate effect would be the degradation of the quality of the system of democratic rights and principles itself.

During the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain, from 1939 to 1975, his government declared Castilian (the language we know as ‘Spanish’) the national language of Spain. People who spoke one of the other languages widely spoken in Spain (Catalan [català], Basque [euskera] or Gallego [galego]), were pushed out of positions of importance, robbed of their property and systematically persecuted for not speaking the proper “Christian” tongue, as Franco’s regime would have it.

Eventually, people were detained, forced to do hard labor, enslaved by the state to build a tomb for the dictator, tortured and killed, because their use of a distinct language was perceived as a grave threat to national unity, despite those languages having been part of Spanish society for a thousand years or more, long before anything like a “Spanish” state came into existence.

When Columbus sailed to the Americas in 1492, he was sponsored by the two kingdoms of Castilla-Leon and Catalunya-Aragon, joined in the marriage of Isabel de Castilla and Fernando de Aragon. It was not until the year 1714 that a single Spanish state was established under Castilian rule.

Since the transition to democracy, beginning in 1975, the present day constitutional republic has four co-official languages, persecution on the basis of language usage is forbidden, no matter the language, and the society is more politically and culturally vibrant, more economically prosperous, in closer contact with its neighbors, more sustainable as a political system, observing and protecting the principles of democracy, an example to other nations.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution promised that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … [or] to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. So, the amendment to Senate Bill S.2611, proposed by Sen. Inhofe, which aims to strip all Americans of the right to interact with their government in any language other than English, directly assaults a basic constitutional liberty. It deliberately makes communication between the government and the people less effective and undermines the right of individuals to solicit the correction of an injustice.

That means less accountability in government when facing certain segments of the population, which is a stratification of legal protections and an abstract but very real form of segregation, enacted by law. Enactment of such legislation would not only violate Constitutional principles, it would hamper the ability of the people of the United States to gather information, share information, and assist in the direction of the republic, a right without which democracy is just an idea.

• YourDictionary: “How many indigenous American languages are spoken in the United States? By how many speakers?”
• Wikipedia: “Languages of France”
• US Census Bureau: “Census 2000 Gateway”
• US Census Bureau: “World Population Information”

A great and resonant thinker dies, and a great and resonant newspaper publishes an obituary dismissing his work as destructive and “abstruse”. It is an unjustifiable communicative travesty. When Jacques Derrida passed away, in October of this year, the New York Times wrote that his work was an attempt to undermine Western culture, despite his work being one of the most successful and persistent efforts of the last century to revive, clarify, enliven and apply Western thought to the problems of meaning, justice, creative work and political order.

The obituary was full of factual errors and infected with a hard-line bias against complex and rigorous thought. The facile and mistaken point of view that to distinguish between meaning and truth is to call for nihilist or morally bankrupt agendas in thought and politics… it failed to look at the work itself or the man himself and instead paraphrased poorly wrought critiques and conceptual gossip to try to discredit a monumental life of study in Western philosophy.

That complex and rigorous thought, involved in much of postmodern theory, which characterized Derrida’s research and theory, has proven vital to extending human understanding in disciplines as diverse as science, literature and policy. The Times obituary railed against this level of self-conscious complexity, accusing Derrida of questioning the very right of Western thought to exist at all. It is as if the goal were to declare, against all evidence, that we are not living at this moment, after what has been seen and done, as if nothing had been learned from political history, as if the 21st Century did not exist… because postmodern is not a philosophy, it is an era, and one not easily defined.

It is, however, also one in which the notion of unquestionable tradition is no longer tenable in any sense; too many crimes have been committed against history and against truth for anyone to accept that unquestioned tradition, disseminated from the top down, can stand as sole arbiter of truth. And, of course, this idea of critical analysis is quite clearly a central current in the evolution of Western culture as we know it and live it. Critical thought is vital to applying any idea, no matter how valid or universal, to a complex world.

This obituary, meant to mark the passing of an influential thinker and scholar was so shockingly ill-informed a portrait of a life that it sparked a wave of written protest among colleagues and supporters, online and in letters to major newspapers. As one response noted, the logic of the obituary as printed would have dismissed the work of Einstein as irrelevant. His work was difficult, esoteric, even mind-boggling to some, and unique in that his greatest achievements solved problems he himself had invented (it was by extension obscure, “irrelevant” and difficult to put into practice)… but this did not reduce his contribution to the future of scientific thought and discovery, nor did it undermine the fullness of Western culture.

Nor has Derrida’s most intimate examination of the great ideas of that cultural tradition. One Harvard professor notes the outrageous suggestion made by the obituary’s author that Derrida (a Jewish man) used logic that could extricate Hitler from the charge of anti-semitism… a pointless, fantastical assertion, made in extremely poor taste and not supported by the facts of the man’s work or life. In fact, Derrida has been one of the leading figures of our times in resuscitating vigorous ethical thought to be applied to a world with increasingly blurred lines and mixed messages.

Jacques Derrida was not a destructive thinker: his deconstruction is a productive, generative and regenerative philosophy that instead of abandoning the ideals of the Western canon, asks more of them, and more of us in pursuing them. He demanded, in his writing and in his lectures, a view toward truth that doesn’t pretend to already have truth in some kind of metaphysical bear trap. Truth eludes the grasp of those who seek to define it. This does not mean that no religious thought, no moral or ethical thought, no legal order can be employed… it means one must commit to safeguarding them against abusive manipulation by fundamentalists who falsely assert that change does not exist.

The most grave concern about the Paper of Record’s handling of this important occasion is the apparent lack of regard for the truth, coupled with the willingness on the part of a major journalistic institution to engage the public with a patently vacuous and even maliciously wrong account of events, ideas and of a life. It speaks of a culture of administrative hubris where journalism and investigation have been brushed aside in favor of more pedestrian concerns, like circulation, “sexiness” or fashion.

This may not be the culture at the Times, as such, but the unwillingness to read extensively into the background of an idea or of a complex investigative career, such as Derrida’s, has come to prevalence as the news (as a machine) is driven ever more forcefully by televised sound-bites and glazed-over and mismatched clichés. It is much easier to assert that something that questions tradition is destructive than to comprehend how it serves to reinvent and enhance.

In a roundtable discussion at Villanova University in 1994, Derrida noted that “bad journalists… [were] from the beginning a terrible problem for me…” because they promoted “this caricature, this lack of respect for reading.” The philosopher went on to add that “respect for the great texts, for the texts of the Greeks and of others, too, is the condition of our work.”

It is sometimes said that the thought of Derrida can be summed up with the idea that there is only the text, that all fits within some elaborate language play. This leads some opponents to argue that Derrida’s deconstruction is an excuse to relativize all qualities or truths, to diminish the potency of accurate or dedicated scholarship. But this interpretation is wrong and its root is too simple: in the text, there is a making of reality and in a sense, what exists also records what made it, records the effort of what came before and the pressures that existed elsewhere, which shaped the pressures that existed in the emergence of what now presents itself… the “text” into which everything can be seen to fit is a kind of universal fabric which functions most fully in its most delicate and local of details; the text is what is and the record of what is and the language of what may be, but it does not exclude humanity, the individual or moral underpinnings.

Derrida committed a great part of his scholarship to an elaborate and consequential study of ethical concerns: in no way does he dismiss the ethical in human interaction; in fact, he asserts that one must transcend the notion of the ethical contract and “give” beyond hope of recompense, to be truly ethical. He asks an impossible, because only there, in the exercise of a hope for the overcoming of all the many and likely flaws of egotism (there in that hope) does one locate the realm of ethical behavior. How can the conscious self transcend the conscious self? Scientifically, it seems we cannot, but ethically, it is the beginning of legitimate human engagement.

Deconstruction prescribes an awareness of the interpenetration of influences and of meaning, be it directed or accumulated. Simplistic critics have said this leads to nihilism, in which nothing has meaning and nothing can be considered true, but this is not the aim of Derrida’s work. Instead, he maintains that for meaning to be alive, for assertions about truth to be relevant and useful, they must adjust to the constant change inherent in natural and symbolic systems. Physicists have discovered that this is true of the natural world, that systems which cease to exchange information with their surroundings, die.

This line of critical theory “deconstructs” these phenomena (humanity, the individual, moral underpinnings) as concepts, as constellations of intellectual resources, as conventions that play a role but do not convey absolutes… it is therefore vital to remember that this deconstruction is not an undoing; it is an examination, a road to explication, to the unfolding of implied, or hidden, or new meaning.

So though the individual as idea can be probed and unfolded as a means to understanding what surrounds the human experience, it is not erased by deconstruction: in fact, through the complicated, ongoing, evolutionary pursuit of ethics inherent in Derrida’s ideas, the individual is strengthened, given a role to play, asked to respond to the Other, to emerge from pretense and prejudice and to see into the other, and even to do so, at least in part, as the other would have it.

Applying Derrida’s work, in this light, to political and cultural thought, we find a philosophy that reinvigorates democracy, ethics, artistic expression and even theology. Deconstruction makes it difficult to maintain a stagnant and inflexible dogma which never contemplates fact or circumstance, but it does not undermine one’s faith in the existence of something beyond our reach… it actually posits that truth is very much like many theologians have described it: a fullness beyond the reach of the fullness of worldly circumstance, a clarity beyond the web of influences and ambitions that drive human events, perhaps even an impossible… but not, for that, a nonexistent.

So Derrida wrote and spoke a lot… one would have to, in order to keep the dialogue open, which was his goal, after all. He was tremendously productive and pursued the new explications, the new affirmations in deconstructive analysis. He took on administrative roles, founded new schools and fora for the teaching and discussion of philosophy, promoted the idea of instilling both the study of the Western tradition of philosophy and of critical thought in younger students, to strengthen the intellect of our age, and asked difficult questions because he viewed it as an intellectual obligation.

It is therefore particularly poignant and sad to see an ill-informed, morally aimless diatribe thrust out into the world of ideas as an attempt at usurping his life’s work. What it proves, though, is the validity and necessity of Derrida’s analysis of meaning and the communication and recording and reliving of it. Ultimately, the lie is irreversible: it exists, has been implemented, has flourished (dressed in the grey silk of journalistic legitimacy), but it does not and cannot outpace either the truth of the matter or the questioning that will extract the ripest meaning from the text.

Yes, as Derrida would have noted, every utterance is affirmation, and the lie is now part of the text, but it is not Derrida’s text; the lie does not belong to him, nor does it possess him. Moreover, it does not cast him in any responsible or sustainable light. His was a story of the quest to understand further; the lie is by contrast a hapless, unsuccessful attempt to declare things otherwise. In the face of such an unjust manipulation of fact, of history and of language, the central idea of deconstruction is made only more luminous and relevant: the honest thinking individual must embark upon a new kind of research, to get beyond the attempted closure of dialogue, to find the words that keep the conversation, the analysis, the study and explication alive…

RELATED ESSAYS & LETTERS

• Mark Taylor: What Derrida Really Meant
• Judith Butler: Letter to NYT
• Yve-Alain Bois: Letter to NYT

THE RICHARD AVEDON RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION AT THE MET

It was the last night of the year, and we were visiting the belly of the whale: old shimmering Menäting, the Island Place. We sought the center of a culture of collective insight, a distillation of plunder and purchase, lend and lease, ache and expansion. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: temporary exhibit: Richard Avedon, Portraits (in black and white): floating above Fifth Avenue: visions out of time: an artful pillage of posture and concealment. It was a display of selfhood in multiple manifestation… an array of recorded vessels of suffering, suffrage, denial, awareness, harbors for history.

We saw Oppenheimer’s stilted surprise, maybe nuanced by a gesture of feigned regret, maybe sincere, seeing the brilliance of terror, a halo of mortification over the head of the pilot who delivered O’s devastation to Hiroshima. In the pilot’s eyes we saw the unbearable draw of hundreds of thousands dead at the flip of a switch, the knowledge of an incomparable crime which no one had the courage to stop. We saw the utter failure of all human systems outside the basest urge to annihilate… the moral fabric of history’s long anguished striving torn on two sides and splitting… then three sides, then four… we saw the glistening of a tear that said six million, one million more, then twelve, then thirty!

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We saw the face of a man born into slavery and the grave and ravenous turmoil within him even eighty years hence, how he spoke with eyes of lucid interrogation about the worst weaknesses that posed as strength in our perverse history… an antecedent realm of madness, mayhem and moral vacuity, where devils were honored, revered and given sway, and angels were trodden underfoot, cooked and devoured, to feed an addiction.

We saw two walls of defiance, two covens of law-breakers, face to face in a struggle to define democracy, define humanity, write the epilogue to a culture’s sense of the Good… on the north wall the silk-dressed, close-cropped, wrinkled sodden directors of a war; opposite, looking into them from the southern wall of the gallery, seven conscientious objectors, eyes filled with hope, disappointment, vision, bodies poised for civil disobedience, faces overburdened with natural growth, not with a napalm-consciousness… the Directors use the law to violate its own principles of the sanctity of individual liberty and of life itself; the Objectors use individual liberty, and their lives’ sacred sprawl, to violate civic regulations and to speak for peace, to speak for the voiceless, to remake the discourse in a broader mold.

Avedon’s work itself seems to be structured around a fundamental ‘island place’ of individual being. The subject is starkly portrayed, in silence and asymmetry, against the abstraction of a white background. The whole of an individual’s life experience seems visible through the features into which he or she has developed by way of that experience. Eyes, flesh, posture, each speak of the impression of the living world into life itself, and of the reverse. Each image seems to speak of a convergence of forces and futilities in the conscious life of the individual self.

It is this act that makes Avedon’s work miraculous, and allows for a sweeping commentary on the human condition to emerge from each of his portraits, from each face looking out from the walls in this room, on the last day of the calendar year, in the belly of the whale. As philosopher Emmanuel Levinas explains, that moment of contact with selfhood is not just the key to unlocking what is individual, within the individual, it is the key to tapping into what is transcendent in being and developing selfhood. The universal glows from within the particular.

Avedon’s best work is the highest expression of this complex truth. In his keen examination of the particular, the angular features of a face, the way experience has imprinted itself in the gaze or the complexion of an individual, he locates and transmits universal human experiences. He translates the specific into the shared, the tragic into the beautiful, the vulnerable into the noble and the time-tested, so that the nature of human experience is more apparent, more fully within reach, more available.