We nationalized risk, socialized failure, taxed boldness, and administered everything else. Result: a magnificent country that builds nothing anymore, that manages its decay with a funereal elegance, and where the most gifted young person dreams of only one thing—leaving.
Freedom doesn't die assassinated. It dies anesthetized, to applause.
From my infancy I was taught to love humanity and liberty. Enquiry and experience have since confirmed my reverence for the lessons then given me, by convincing me more fully of their truth and excellence. Benevolence toward mankind excites wishes for their welfare, and such wishes endear the means of fulfilling them. These can be found in liberty only, and therefore her sacred cause ought to be espoused by every man, on every occasion, to the utmost of his power. As a charitable but poor person does not withhold his mite because he cannot relieve all the distresses of the miserable, so should not any honest man suppress his sentiments concerning freedom, however small their influence is likely to be. Perhaps he “may touch some wheel” that will have an effect greater than he could reasonably expect.
-John Dickinson, from his first Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania
Been reading The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding. More than a few historians are troubled by the contradiction between the sentiments of liberty inherent in the Founding and the reality of enslavement. 250 years and a bloody civil war later, we are still dealing with the echoes of that contradiction. Reading Dickinson's first letter, the question arose, "was Dickinson a slave owner?" Google says yes. Dickenson College puts it this way: "The founders of Dickinson College believed in the principles of the enlightenment and yet still found ways to rationalize ownership of other human beings."
I have always had, no matter the regime (I make no exceptions), a repugnance for bureaucracy. . . . I noticed that, to get ahead, one needed to be pliable and obsequious to those who gave you orders, and duplicitous or violent towards those who take orders from you. In France, the administrative state does not conduct itself with the general welfare in mind, but only in the interests of those who govern. And no one can hope to rise in the ranks without subordinating his interests to those of others. . . . And though many things I encountered in my judicial career displeased me, I embraced what seemed to me the only career in civil service that gave me any independence from the transient groups that cycle through power in our country, the only one where one can both be civil servant and oneself.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, from a letter to his nephew Hubert, 1854
The State Governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal Government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organisation of the former. Without the intervention of the State Legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all.* They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will perhaps in most cases of themselves determine it. The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State Legislatures.** Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chose very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State Legislatures. Thus each of the principal branches of the federal Government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State Governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious, than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State Governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little if at all, to the local influence of its members.
-The Federalist #45, James Madison, January 26, 1788
*in 1800, the President was elected by the Electoral College. In ten states, at that time, the Electors representing that state, were appointed by the State Legislatures.
**the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, established the direct election of U. S. senators in each state.
And what I dare say our cunning Chief Justice [Marshall] would swear to, and find as many sophisms to twist it out of the general terms of our Declarations of rights, and even the stricter text of the Virginia 'act for the freedom of religion' as he did to twist Burr's neck out of the halter of treason. May we not say then with him who was all candor and benevolence 'Woe unto you, ye lawyers, for ye lade men with burdens grievous to bear.'
-Thomas Jefferson, from his 1/14/1814 letter to John Adams
A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the Whole Force of the Common Enemy. While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick virtue.
-Samuel Adams, from this 2/12/1779 letter
One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best.
Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.
Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.
Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.
I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.
-Warren Buffett, from this Thanksgiving letter
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when they are young nor weary in the search when they have grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more.
-Epicurus, as cut-and-pasted from this letter
Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.
Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.
Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.
I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.
I wish all who read this a very happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even the jerks; it’s never too late to change. Remember to thank America for maximizing your opportunities. But it is – inevitably – capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards.
Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.
Warren Buffett, from his last annual letter
Dear Kit,
I was so pleased to get your letter of November 12th a few minutes ago. As you can see from the length of time it took to get across that our mail has been almost nil for the past month or so. Right now the APO is specializing in clearing our Christmas boxes, so the letter mail is more or less overlooked. This sort of puts us between the dive and the deep - for we want our boxes and yet honestly think the letters ease the loneliness and homesickness that is so deep in our hearts. . . .
When Terry told me about the new baby I was happy as anything for both of you. And I can easily understand you joy and eagerness for the little boy or girl to round out your lovely trio.
I certainly can understand the worries of people about what kind of world the baby will be brought into. The life you and Terry and I and everyone else are living just now is certainly a miserable one and far from pleasant. Yet this much I know, the people of all countries will see to it that when this hell on earth is finished we will see a life and live a life that will be worthy of human beings and Christians. I know that even on my lowest and bluest days I have put into combat during the past two years never have I doubted that once the war was over we could manage to pull the strings of our lives together and forget all we have had to put up with. No one can ever realize just how precious and pleasant and hopeful life can be until it is almost snatched away. I have had one or two close calls that left me so scared I didn't realize how lucky I was. Then I knew so deep within my heart that it almost hurt that even in the midst of the most terrible war man has known just to live and be with people is worth all the hurts and agony man inflicts on man.
No Kit, a little child brought into the world at such a time as this is probably more fortunate than ever.
I seldom thought about this before I went into combat, but one begins to get a far different slant on all that life means. If you could see what these fellows go through for each other, how much each one depends on his buddy simply for his life, then you could know and appreciate all this talk of mine. Very few GIs are sentimental enough to talk about things like this and yet the American boy overseas is the most sentimental guy in the world.
Somehow out of all this madness and blindness the people of the world will find the true way of life as Christ taught so long ago. No matter how it may seem to us at the moment, there are the ever encircling arms of God to lead us through the blindness into the light. Something I saw before I went into the service comes back to me now—it runs on this order:
Kit, this must sound very jumbled and rather incoherent but I have been grasping for words as I write. How I wish I might be sitting with you and Terry. I know so well that it would be far easier to talk to you about this and then I could get across what is really in my heart and mind.
There is so much to live for and so many pleasant things to do for and with close friends, that it honestly hurts to be here.
But then two years of combat makes a man sentimental even though there is seemingly nothing but cynicism and bitterness in his heart. . . .
With my best wishes and love to each of you for a Merry Christmas!
Affectionately,
Dan
This is part of a letter my Dad wrote to a dear friend. Despite the heading, he was probably in Belgium, not Germany. The Battle of the Bulge started three days after he wrote this letter, and he participated in said battle. He enlisted, at age 29, shortly after Pearl Harbor. He was part of the Ninth Infantry that chased Rommel across Africa, fought in Sicily, then landed in Cherbourg on D-Day +3. He entered Germany and then was sent back home in early March of 1945, just before the crossing of the Remagen Bridge. As I grew up, Dad would NEVER talk about the war. It was only after returning from the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day at Normandy that he said he had a collection of old letters and offered me the chance to read them. Quite the gift from a father to a son. He died of congestive heart failure at age 84. I miss him still.
A salute to the veterans.
Written in the Year 1727.
I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called “A Voyage round the world.” But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm: And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in England during some part of her majesty’s reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay even by two successively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the academy of projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo (as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, be applied to any of the Yahoos, who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or feared, the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither.
-Jonathan Swift, as culled from this version of Gulliver's Travels
I cannot appease my melancholly commiseration for our Armies in this furious snow storm in any way so well as by studying your Letter of Oct. 28.
We are now explicitly agreed, in one important point, vizt. That "there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents."
You very justly indulge a little merriment upon this solemn subject of Aristocracy. I often laugh at it too, for there is nothing in this laughable world more ridiculous that the management of it by almost all of the nations of the Earth. But while We smile, Mankind have reason to say to Us, as the froggs said to the Boys, What is Sport to you is Wounds and death to Us. When I consider the weakness, the folly, the Pride, the Vanity, the Selfishness, the Artifice, the low craft and meaning cunning, the want of Principle, the Avarice the unbounded Ambition, the unfeeling Cruelty of a majority of those (in all Nations) who are allowed an aristocratical influence; and on the other hand, the Stupidity with which the more numerous multitude, not only become their Dupes, but even love to be Taken in by their Tricks: I feel a stronger disposition to weep at their destiny, that to laugh at their folly.
- John Adams, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813
Another of our friends of 76 is gone, my dear Sir, another of the Cosigners of the independence of our country. And a better man, than Rush, could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest. We too must go; and that ere long. I believe we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the Declaration. Yourself, Gerry, Carroll, and myself are all I know to be living. I am the only one South of the Patomac. Is Robert Treat Payne, or Floyd living? It is long since I heard of them, and yet I do not recollect to have heard of their deaths.
-Thomas Jefferson, from a May 27, 1813 letter to John Adams
I am weary of contemplating Nations from the lowest and most beastly degradations of human Life, to the highest Refinement of Civilization: I am weary of Philosophers, Theologians, Politicians, and Historians. They are immense Masses of Absurdities, Vices and Lies. Montesquieu had sense enough to say in Jest, that all our Knowledge might be comprehended in twelve Pages in Duodecimo: and, I believe him, in earnest. I could express my faith in shorter terms. He who loves the Workman and his Work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of him.
-John Adams, from his June 28, 1812 letter to Thomas Jefferson
In your favour of April 8th, You “wonder for what good End the Sensations of Grief could be intended”? You “wish the Pathologists would tell Us, what the Use of Grief, in Our Å’conomy, and of what good it is the Cause proximate or remote.” When I approach Such questions as this, I consider myself, like one of those little Eels in Vinaigre, or one of those Animalcules in black or red Peper or in the Horse radish Root, that bite our Tongues So cruelly, reasoning upon the το παν ["totality"]. Of what Use is this Sting upon the Tongue? Why might We not have the Benefit of these Stimulants, without the Sting? Why might We not have the fragrance and Beauty of the Rose without the Thorn?
-John Adams, from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 6, 1816
His tour of midland and north England in the company of two fellow scientists gave Franklin the chance to study the Industrial Revolution that was booming there. He visited an iron and tin factory in Rotherham, the metal casting shop in Birmingham, and a silk mill in Derby where 63,700 reels were turning constantly "and the twist process is tended by children of about 5 to 7 years old." . . .
Franklin had denounced English mercantile trading laws, which were designed to suppress manufacturing in her colonies, by arguing (a bit disingenuously) that she would never have to fear that America would become an industrial competitor. In his letters from his tour in 1771, however, he sent detailed advice about creating silk, clothing, and metal industries that would make the colonies self-sufficient. He had become "more and more convinced," he wrote his Massachusetts friend Thomas Cushing, of the "impossibility" that England would be able to keep up with America's growing demand for clothing. "Necessity therefore, as well as prudence, will soon induce us to seek resources in our own industry."
-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
...........................reading cursive is now a superpower. My kids can't read my parents' letters—and they were really good letter writers.
The failure to teach cursive in many of our schools may eventually be more harmful than we realize.
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