Happy Birthday, Thomas Hood

Unknown, Thomas Hood, n/d

SILENCE

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

   There is a silence where no sound may be,

   In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,

Or in the wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

   No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,

   But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

   Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,

   And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

Thomas Hood, born on this day in 1799

Vision.

From Lakota witness to the Ghost Dance ...

Before dancing, the ritual participants would enter a sweat lodge for purification. Then the worshippers, painted with sacred red pigment, would adorn themselves in a special costume which was believed to be a gift from the Father. The hallowed clothing was usually made of white cotton muslin cloth embellished with feathers and painted symbols seen in the wearers’ visions, as well as a prominent eagle figure. While many tribes of Plains Indians wore the ghost shirts and partook of the dance, only the Lakota believed that the clothing would protect them from the bullets of the white man -- an assertion that was made in response to the dancers feared intrusion by U.S. soldiers. This was an idea which agitated the government agents, who, rather than realizing the defensive nature of the ghost shirts, viewed them as symbols of aggression.

The actual dance was performed by all members joining hands to create a circle. In the center of the formation was a sacred tree, or symbol of a tree, decorated with religious offerings. Looking toward the sun, the dancers would do a shuffling, counter-clockwise side-step, chanting while they sang songs of resurrection. Gradually the tempo would be increased to a great beat of arousal. Some dances would continue for days until the participants "died," falling to the ground, rolling around and experiencing visions of a new land of hope and freedom from white people which was promised by the messiah. The dance often produced mass hypnosis in its transfixed participants, and thus, it became known as the Ghost Dance. Curious onlookers were prohibited, furthering the sense of mystery about the ritual and elevating the tension between the dancers, settlers, and soldiers.

They danced without rest, on and on...Occasionally someone thoroughly exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there "dead"...After a while, many lay about in that condition. They were now "dead" and seeing their dear ones...The visions...ended the same way, like a chorus describing a great encampment of all the Dakotas who had ever died, where...there was no sorrow but only joy, where relatives thronged out with happy laughter...The people went on and on and could not stop, day or night, hoping...to get a vision of their own dead...And so I suppose the authorities did think they were crazy - but they were not. They were only terribly unhappy.

Robbie Robertson, from Music for the Native Americans

You don't stand a chance
Against my prayers.

Maybe.

The WITCH'S LIFE

When I was a child

there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.

All day she peered from her second story

window

from behind the wrinkled curtains

and sometimes she would open the window

and yell: Get out of my life!

She had hair like kelp

and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now

and wonder if I am becoming her.

My shoes turn up like a jester's.

Clumps of my hair, as I write this,

curl up individually like toes.

I am shoveling the children out,

scoop after scoop.

Only my books anoint me,

and a few friends,

those who reach into my veins.

Maybe I am becoming a hermit,

opening the door for only

a few special animals?

Maybe my skull is too crowded

and it has no opening through which

to feed it soup?

Maybe I have plugged up my sockets

to keep the gods in?

Maybe, although my heart

is a kitten of butter,

I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.

Yes. It is the witch's life,

climbing the primordial climb,

a dream within a dream,

then sitting here

holding a basket of fire.

Anne Sexton

Happy Birthday, Mahal

Taj Mahal was born on this day in 1942.

"Lovin' in My Baby's Arms"...

Thanks, Jess.

Released.

Van Morrison released Magic Time on this day in 2005.

The title track ...

Shivers up and down my spine

It's a feeling so divine

Let me go back for a while

Got to go back for a while

To that magic time

Seas.

CORMORANTS

All afternoon the sea was a muddle of birds,

black and spiky,

long-necked, slippery.

Down they went

into the waters for the poor

blunt-headed silver

they live on, for a little while.

God, how did it ever come to you to

invent Time?

I dream at night

of the birds, of the beautiful, dark seas

they push through.

Mary Oliver

Adventurous.

Ari Weinzweig on the adventurous possibilities of leading while lost ...

Keep going. Feeling lost is not fun. I’m reminded every day now, though, that Archie never gave up. If he kept going while dealing with everything he had to overcome, I can get through, too!

This reminded me of the "teapot section in Edward Espe Brown's documentary How to Cook Your Life ... 

Soul-Making.

Brown, John Keats,1819

Let the fish philosophize the ice away from the Rivers in winter time and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the sands of Africa, Whirlpools and volcanoes – Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness –The point at which Man

may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature and no further – For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning it enjoys itself – but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun – it can not escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances – they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature – The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears" from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven – What a little circumscribe[d] straightened notion! Call the world if you Please ”The vale of Soul-making” Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say ‘Soul making’ Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence – There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions – but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.  Intelligences are atoms of perception – they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God – how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them – so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence?  How, but by the medium of a world like this? 

John Keats, from a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 February - 3 May 1819

Happy Birthday, Satie

Isn't a bookshop, to some extent, a temple to browsing? The books are before us; they invite us to rest in the caress of the finger and the gaze—we retreat into them, absorbed.

Erik Satie, born on this day in 1866, from A Mammal’s Notebook: The Writings of Erik Satie 

Simone Dinnerstein performs Gnossienne No. 3 ...

Strike.

Thank you, Kurt.

Truthful.

van Gogh, Window in the Bataille Restaurant, 1887

One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. 

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, 21 July 1882

Discovery.

Lewis (Samuel), Clark, Harrison, Samuel, Bradford and Inskeep, A map of Lewis and Clark's track, across the western portion of North America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean : by order of the executive of the United States in 1804, 1814

A closer look at this beauty is HERE.

The greatest camping trip ever began on this date in 1804 when Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and The Corps of Discovery left St. Louis for the Pacific Ocean.

We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod. The good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life. 

Meriwether Lewis

An interactive map is HERE.

Stephen Ambrose's masterful storytelling makes Ken Burns' documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery outstanding and inspiring ...

I was born at the wrong time.

Experience.

My experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.

Ulysses S. Grant

Mac,

John Denver, "The Eagle and The Hawk"

A favorite of Mum's that was on high-rotation on Van Wormer Road ...

Peace.

My Mum instilled in me an appreciation for books and reading, art, music, and stillness.  She taught me how to cook.

She lived the importance of faith and patience, skills I still aspire to.

 

A mother is the truest friend we have. When trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.

Washington Irving

Today I'll raise a small glass ("not too much") of Johnny Walker Red, and toast her smile, her compassion, and her loving encouragement and patience.

Psychedelic Furs, "Pulse"

See the dancer in there reeling

Paint the sky upon the ceiling ...

Into.

Tiepolo, Allegory of the Planets and Continents (detail), 1753

Dreams and fables I fashion; and even while I sketch and elaborate fables and dreams upon paper, I so enter into them that I weep and am offended at ills I invented. But am I wiser when art does not deceive me?

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Satie, Gymnopédie No. 1

Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs ...

See.

Van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890

What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest.

Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody.

This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge.  As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation.

By persistent I mean in the first place continued labor, but also not abandoning your approach because of what someone else says. I have hopes, brother, that in a few years, and even now already, you’ll gradually see things by me that will give you some recompense for your sacrifices.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, 21 July 1882

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

The Style Council released Our Favorite Shop on this day in 1985, and, just like that, the soundtrack for the next forty summers was created.

Happy.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 

Tears from the depths of some devine despair 

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,  

In looking on the happy autumn fields,  

And thinking of the days that are no more. 

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from "Tears, Idle Tears"

Impulse.

We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers, and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.

Stephen Fry

Chet Lemon, Rest in Peace

Chet Lemon has passed.

Keep.

Clive Staples Lewis has the antidote to automatonophobia ...

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century - the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" - lies where we have never suspected it.  None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

C.S. Lewis, from "On the Incarnation"

Thanks, Kurt.

Victory.

On this day in 1945, the United States and Great Britain celebrated Victory in Europe Day ...

We can build such a peace only by hard, toilsome, painstaking work--by understanding and working with our Allies in peace as we have worked with them in war.  The job ahead is no less important, no less urgent, no less difficult than the task which now happily is done.  I call upon every American to stick to his post until the last battle is won. Until that day, let no man abandon his post or slacken his efforts.

President Truman, from his news conference on V-E Day

Wild.

Drasler, Reading Glass, 2005

At some time in the future, if the human mind becomes something totally different from what it is now, we may learn to separate literary creation from intellectual honesty. At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. 

George Orwell, from The Prevention of Literature

Without.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Marcus Aurelius

Happy Birthday, Robespierre

École française, Portrait of Maximilien Robespierre, 1790

Democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are of their own making, do for themselves all that they can do well, and by their delegates do all that they cannot do for themselves.

It is therefore in the principles of democratic government that you should seek the rules of your political conduct.

But, in order to lay the foundations of democracy among us and to consolidate it, in order to arrive at the peaceful reign of constitutional laws, we must finish the war of liberty against tyranny and safely cross through the storms of the revolution: that is the goal of the revolutionary system which you have put in order. You should therefore still base your conduct upon the stormy circumstances in which the republic finds itself; and the plan of your administration should be the result of the spirit of revolutionary government, combined with the general principles of democracy.

Now, what is the fundamental principle of popular or democratic government, that is to say, the essential mainspring which sustains it and makes it move? It is virtue. 

Maximilien Robespierre, born on this day in 1758, from "On Political Morality"

Happy Birthday, McCulloch

Ian McCulloch was born on this day in 1959.

Echo and The Bunnymen: Lay Down Thy Raincoat and Groove, Albert Hall, 1983 ...

Golden.

J.M. Barrie’s "Courage: The Rectoral Address delivered at St. Andrews University," May 3rd 1922 ... 

How comely a thing is affliction borne cheerfully, which is not beyond the reach of the humblest of us.  What is beauty?  It is these hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent; it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to you who are to follow them.  Sometimes beauty boils over and them spirits are abroad.  Ages may pass as we look or listen, for time is annihilated.  There is a very old legend told to me by Nansen the explorer--I like well to be in the company of explorers--the legend of a monk who had wandered into the fields and a lark began to sing.  He had never heard a lark before, and he stood there entranced until the bird and its song had become part of the heavens.  Then he went back to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did not know and who did not know him.  Other monks came, and they were all strangers to him.  He told them he was Father Anselm, but that was no help.  Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a hundred or more years before.  Time had been blotted out while he listened to the lark.

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling over; perhaps the same thing.  Then spirits walk.

They must sometimes walk St. Andrews.  I do not mean the ghosts of queens or prelates, but one that keeps step, as soft as snow, with some poor student.  He sometimes catches sight of it.  That is why his fellows can never quite touch him, their best beloved; he half knows something of which they know nothing--the secret that is hidden in the face of the Monna Lisa.  As I see him, life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous.  Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness; they don't like that.  If the seekers were kind he is the one for whom the flags of his college would fly one day.  But the seeker I am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is "the lad that will never be told."  He often gaily forgets, and thinks he has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water, was always the first to leap into it.  One can see him serene, astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanks of a boy:

   Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun

   hold a red torch above the farthest seas,

   and the fierce island pinnacles put on

   in his defence their sombre panoplies;

   Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun

   like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees,

   till all the beauty of the scene seemed one,

   led by the secret whispers of the breeze.

   The sun's torch suddenly flashed upon his face

   and died; and he sat content in subject night

   and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought

     and found him;

   a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place;

   And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height,

   shivered, and turned away; but the mists were

     round him.

If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken an ill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you to be careful.  Henley says in that poem we were speaking of:

   Under the bludgeonings of Chance

   My head is bloody but unbowed.

A fine mouthful, but perhaps "My head is bloody and bowed" is better.

Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation. Courage.  I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sides before your time.  You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by.  Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.  Diligence--ambition; noble words, but only if "touched to fine issues."  Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity--that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish.  Look to it that what you are doing is not merely toddling to a competency. Perhaps that must be your fate, but fight it and then, though you fail, you may still be among the elect of whom we have spoken. Many a brave man has had to come to it at last.

Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks

Speaking of long-living ...

Thanks, Kurt.  That was a blast.

Live.

Thanks, Kurt.

Peter Rowan

... with and without Salmon on the side.

Part One

Part Two

Serve.

No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?

St. Maximilian Kolbe

Happy Birthday, Scarlatti

Vaccaro, Alessandro Scarlatti, 1770

Alessandro Scarlatti was born on this day in 1660.

Juliette de Banes Gardonne, mezzo-soprano, Patrick Langot, cello, Benjamin Narvey, théorbo, and Camille Delaforge, clanger, perform Scarlatti's "Se ti lascio" ...

Far-Off.

BELTANE

Have you ever stood in the April wood and called the new year in?

While the phantoms of three thousand years fly as the dead leaves spin?

There's a snap in the grass behind your feet and a tap upon your shoulder.

And the thin wind crawls along your neck --- it's just the old gods getting older.

And the kestrel drops like a fall of shot and the red cloud hanging high ---

Come --- a Beltane.

Have you ever loved a lover of the old elastic truth?

And doted on the daughter in the ministry of youth?

Thrust your head between the breasts of the fertile innocent.

And taken up the cause of love, for the sake of argument.

Or while the kisses drop like a fall of shot from soft lips in the rain ---

Come --- a Beltane.

Happy old new year to you and yours.

The sun's up for one more day, to be sure.

Play it out gladly, for your card's marked again.

Have you walked around your parks and towns so knife-edged orderly?

While the fires are burned on the hills upturned in far-off wild country.

And felt the chill on your window sill as the green man comes around.

With his walking cane of sweet hazel --- brings it crashing down.

Sends your knuckles white as the thin stick bites.

Well, it's just your groaning pains.

Come --- a Beltane.

Ian Anderson

Uselessness.

Firchau, Drew, Pine Plantation, 2009

We shall never fully understand nature or ourselves, and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.  The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.  We lack trust in the present, this moment, this actual seeing, because our culture tells us to trust only the reported back, the publicly framed, the edited, the thing set in the clearly artistic or the clearly scientific angle of perspective.

John Fowles, from The Tree

Prevent.

How can I number the worlds to which the eye gives me entry? - the world of light, of colour, of shape, of shadow: of mathematical precision in the snowflake, the ice formation, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal: of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging line of the mountain faces. Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes, should so profoundly tranquillise the mind I do not know.

Perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm on what is only a confusion: one has to look creatively to see this mass of rock as more than jag and pinnacle - as beauty. Else why did men for so many centuries think mountains repulsive? A certain kind of consciousness interacts with the mountain-forms to create this sense of beauty. Yet the forms must be there for the eye to see. And forms of a certain distinction: mere dollops won't do it.

It is, as with all creation, matter impregnated with mind: but the resultant issue is a living spirit, a glow in the consciousness, that perishes when the glow is dead. It is something snatched from non-being, that shadow which creeps in on us continuously and can be held off by continuous creative act. So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.

Nan Shepherd, who described her role at the Aberdeen College of Education as having the “heaven-appointed task of trying to prevent a few of the students who pass through our Institution from conforming altogether to the approved pattern," from The Living Mountain

Thank you, Rachel.

Spirit.

McCandless, Self-Portrait, 1992

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. 

The very basic core of a person's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Christopher McCandless, A.K.A. Alexander Supertramp, last seen on this day in 1992

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Grant

In this sentiment no class of people can more heartily join than the soldier who submitted to the dangers, trials and hardships of the camp and the battle-field, on which ever side he may have fought. No class of people are more interested in guarding against a recurrence of those days. Let us then begin by guarding against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign—the people—should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

Ulysses S. Grant, born on this day in 1822, from his remarks made at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, 29 September 1875

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Hot Chocolate, "Confetti Day"

Frank & Bingo, "Well, Did You Evah?"

And.

Collins, Roquefort and Picholines, 2011

Slowly.

It was a quick walk to Lipp’s and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on a bench against the wall with the mirror in the back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and potato salad.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread with the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, "Deiseal"

Control.

Personal authenticity, in the classical understanding of liberal-arts education, consists in self-mastery—in placing reason in control of desire. According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires—it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.

Robert P. George

Merrier.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Done.

Done and done.

Thanks, Walker's Arms.

Bring.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

William Blake, from "Jerusalem"

Alert.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, from Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)

Handel, The Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351)

The Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Richard Egarr, perform La Rejouissance and Menuets ...

Obeyed.

The alternative to power is law: law freely accepted and freely obeyed. Only by observing the rule of law – law that applies equally to the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless – do we escape the tragic cycle of freedom that begets conflict that leads to chaos, resulting in the use of force that generates tyranny, the freedom of the few and the enslavement of the many. God reveals Himself in the form of law, because law is the constitution of liberty. That is the moral shape of a society of freedom under the sovereignty of God.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, from Essays on Ethics

Acknowledge.

We were once a proper country and will be again.

Found flittering through the echo chamber …

No.

We are a nation of laws, not men.

This is the mentality of playground politics, seemingly just at the outset, but passionately metastasizing in demagoguery.  Legitimacy is found in the Constitution, not the passions of pantry pundits, and certainly not the leper with the most fingers.

John Adams reminds ...

The goal of politics is to promote happiness, and this depends on the structure of government.[T]he divine science of politicks is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government, which are generally institutions that last for many generations, there can be no employment more agreeable to a benevolent mind, than a research after the best…

Virtue is a key ingredient. If there is a form of government then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote a poem in 1946 ...

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9