"Marriage"

All marriages are spirited but not as dynamic as the world in which we live. Thank God. It is necessary from time to time to retreat from the day’s news and to reflect on what has brought happiness, and to let humor and lightness have their play. In my case, what has brought happiness (and smiles) has been the family Caroline and I raised, and the families being raised by our three children. 

 

The photo was taken after our wedding ceremony and on the way to the reception.

 

...and, by the way, don’t forget that Daylight Savings starts tomorrow. Get to bed early!

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Marriage”

March 7, 2026

 

“A woman’s life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband.

Nor is a man’s life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.”

                                                                                                                                Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

                                                                                                                                Miss MacKenzie, 1865

 

On April 11 Caroline and I will celebrate our 62^nd wedding anniversary. We have been married longer than either of our parents or grandparents. 

 

The concept of marriage dates back four or five thousand years, but for most of that time it was a contract for managing property. Marriage for love only gained traction in the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries. Over time, attitudes changed. The courtships described by Jane Austen show partners standing in opposing lines. In 1828 Noah Webster wrote that marriage “was instituted by God himself.” In 1906 in The Devil’s Dictionary the satirist Ambrose Bierce defined the word marriage: “The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.” Our 1964 wedding vows were to last until death do us part. Marriage has always been considered the most stable environment in which to raise children. 

 

However, marriage is not a case of “one size fits all.” First, it is not for everyone, and second, not all marriages work. “Marriage,” the humorist Will Rogers once wrote, “is a habit. Divorce is a necessity.” It is impossible that two people can know all about one another after a few months or even after a couple of years. So luck plays a role. Nevertheless, when a marriage works angels sing.

 

Tens of thousands of books have been written, offering advice for a successful marriage – prioritizing your spouse, practicing forgiveness, maintaining a sense of humor, and committing to navigating both good and bad times together. While those words sound substantive, they sport an institutional tone; they could have been spit out by a ‘bot.’ When asked of lessons learned from our marriage, I demur. But love comes first.

 

“Vive La Différence,” sang Maurice Chevalier. And certainly Caroline and I are different. I am sensitive; she is empathetic. I am short-tempered, especially when interrupted while writing; Caroline is patient. However, like magnets we were attracted. P. G. Wodehouse had a sixty-one-year marriage to Ethyl Wayman. In 1932, eighteen years after he was married, he wrote Doctor Sally. The book includes humorous marital advice: “Chumps make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his head first and if it rings solid, don’t hesitate. All unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains.”

 

While I don’t think I am a chump – there, my sensitivity is showing! – Caroline and I have had a good marriage. Besides being lovers, we are good friends. There is no one with whom I would rather take a trip or share a meal. But the glue has been the children we produced, and the children they, with their chosen spouses, have produced. There is something magical in knowing that the genes we inherited from our forefathers and foremothers will live on in generations yet to come. While the future is unknowable, we pray that their lives will be happy ones. And all this because of a young woman my sister introduced me to at a small ski area in New Hampshire more than sixty-four years ago. Fortune has smiled upon us.

"Who Am I?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Who am I?”

June 3, 2025

 

“Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?”

                                                                                                                                Lear, speaking to the Fool

                                                                                                                                King Lear. Act I, Scene IV, 1606

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

Besides satisfying a personal curiosity, the study of one’s ancestry is fascinating in an intellectual sense: First, it personalizes history. How much more interesting it is to read about the American Revolution or the Civil War with knowledge of an ancestor then alive. Second, such a study considers a mathematical paradox –We know that about 75,000 years ago small groups of earliest humans began migrating out of Africa, traveling north, east and west. Those few humans have given us a global population today of over eight billion. But we also know that each of us descend from two parents, four grandparents, and eight great grandparents, a process that doubles with each generation going back. How could so many ancestors be reduced to so few that came out of Africa? How to reconcile that apparent contradiction? The answer – we are all related.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking. She was born in England, raised in France, and as a nine-year old crossed the Pyrenes in 1940 on foot with her family to avoid Nazi occupation. In our conversation, she referred to me as a “Real American.” I was prompted to see if I could name all of my four-greats grandparents, most of whom would have been born before the American Revolution, and to discover if all (or most) were born in North America.

 

Starting with the surnames of my four grandparents, I spent many hours researching, working backwards into the past.  I had the invaluable help of a sister who had done most of the preparatory work years ago, and was thankful for the internet, which is a plethora of information, though not always accurate. Ultimately, I was able to name, with relative certainty, sixty of the sixty-four. (I believe I know the names of the other four, but I am not certain.) Of course I also had to come up with names and dates of thirty-two three-greats grandparents, along with sixteen two-greats and eight great grandparents – 120 names in all. Of the sixty four-greats for whom I was able to name and find a birth date, fifty-eight were born before the American Revolution (between 1713 and 1770), one in 1777 and one for which I could find no date. All but two were born in Colonial America. Two were born and died in Ireland – Martha Jackson (1777-1808) and Col. Hugh Hanna (1770-1806). A brother of Martha, James Jackson (1782-1840), brought their orphaned daughter – my three-greats grandmother Mary Jackson Hanna (1801-1843) – to Alabama in 1818, where she married Joseph Lawrence Dawson Smith (1799-1837). More on James later.

 

One of the fun things about studying one’s ancestry is coming across colorful characters; for most of my ancestors, to quote Henry David Thoreau, had to have led lives “of quiet desperation,” in an unsettled country, alive with danger. To name a few of the more interesting ones: James Williams (1741-1826) was a four-greats grandfather who married Susanna Shaw (1744-?). He was captain of a militia unit that marched to  Roxbury, Massachusetts on April 20, 1775 where they met no resistance. While he was not at either Lexington or Concord, he was still considered a “Minute Man.” Asa Messer, senior (1739-1806) and Abiah Whipple (1746-1809) gave birth to Asa Messer, junior (1769-1836) who married Deborah Angell (1776-1862). The younger Asa, a three-greats grandfather, became the third president of Brown College, then known as Rhode Island College. Noah Webster (1758-1843), the lexicographer, and his wife Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) were four-greats grandparents. A seven-greats grandfather was Richard Hunnewell (c.1645-1703) of Scarborough, Maine. He was known as the “Indian killer.” Fittingly, he was killed by Indians, at what is now known as Massacre Pond near Prout’s Neck, on October 6, 1703. 

 

There is a connection to T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) on both my father’s and mother’s side. My grandfather Sydney M. Williams (1873-1963) was a second cousin of the poet, as they shared great grandparents: Thomas Heywood Blood (1775-1848) and Mary Sawyer (c.1775-1850). My grandfather once told me that the only time he met the poet, who was fifteen years younger than he was, Eliot was wearing a sailor’s suit. On my mother’s side, her father Henry Stuart Hotchkiss (1878-1947) descended from his three-greats grandparents, William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and Mary Brown (1728-1807). Those two were one set of T.S. Eliot’s two-greats grandparents. There is also a distant connection to Gideon Welles who was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. He and my two-greats grandmother Isabella Welles Hunnewell were third cousins, sharing a common ancestor in Samuel Welles (1660-1731) who lived in Glastonbury, CT, which was home to Gideon Welles.

 

As for the southern branch of my family, the James Jackson mentioned above emigrated to Tennessee and then to Alabama, where he owned a large cotton farm, “Forks of Cypress.” He was a two-greats grandfather of Alex Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and Queen: The Story of an American Family. James and Martha Jackson (a four-greats grandmother of mine) were children of Hugh Jackson (1709-1777) and Elinor Gault (c.1710-1791), both of whom lived and died in Ireland. Thus Alex Haley and I – he as the three-greats grandson of Hugh and Elinor, and I as the five-greats grandson of the same couple – are cousins. James Jackson was also the owner of “Peytona,” considered the greatest race horse of the time. His race against the mare “Fashion” on May 13, 1845 at Union Course on Long Island – a race between the north and the south (as well as mare versus stallion) – was the subject of a Currier & Ives print. “Peytona,” who had traveled 1,500 miles, won the race.

 

The most colorful connection, however, is Edward Augustus Silsbee. He was the youngest of eleven children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. My paternal grandmothers’ maternal grandmother (in other words, a two-greats grandmother) was the third oldest, Sarah Ann Silsbee. She was born June 18, 1814 in Salem, MA. He was born on February 19, 1826 in the same town and died on April 5, 1900 in Boston. At age 24 Silsbee commanded the clipper ship Columbia on an 18^th month voyage from Salem to San Francisco, the East Indies, Calcutta and back home. The Log of the voyage is now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. A copy of it is at the home of our son who was named for Edward Silsbee. Following his career at sea, Silsbee, a life-long bachelor, became, as described in 2017 by Dr. Tim Sommer, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Houghton Library, “a Shelley enthusiast and ardent collector in pursuit of literary relics.” Silsbee lived in Florence between 1872 and 1879. There, he ingratiated himself with Claire Clairmont and her niece Paulina. Claire had been an intimate companion of Percy Bysshe Shelley who had died in 1822. The story of Silsbee, Clair Clairmont and her niece inspired Henry James’ novella, The Aspern Papers. Ultimately, Silsbee acquired Shelly’s notebooks and donated them to the Houghton Library at Harvard. A charcoal sketch of Edward Silsbee by John Singer Sargent (photo attached) is now at the Bodleian Library at Oxford (donated by him in 1899), with other Shelly artifacts Silsbee had collected. In the portrait, Silsbee’s craggy face is discernable behind his flowing white beard.

 

On my desk I have a photograph of my only great-grandparent who lived to see me born. In the photo, she holds me – at a slight distance, as though I had soiled my clothes. I look happy (see attached photo). Sadly, I do not remember her. She was born Mary Bolling Kemp in Petersburg, VA on January 15, 1861. Her mother died young, in 1867, likely from the effects of the siege of the city, which lasted from June 9, 1864 until March 25, 1865.

 

Marriage among cousins was not unusual at the time. Four sets of three-greats grandparents married cousins: Benjamin Williams (1757-1830) married Lydia Williams (1774-1845) on November 28, 1793. She was his first cousin once removed. John Welles (1764-1855) married his first cousin Abigail Welles (1776-1844) on April 28, 1795. Justus Hotchkiss (1772-1812) married his third cousin Susanna Hotchkiss (1775-1825) on April 27, 1800. And on March 12, 1812 Joseph Washington (1770-1848) married his second cousin once removed, Mary Cheatham (1796-1865).         

 

History comes alive when personalized. We know these people lived. They laughed and they cried; they loved and they argued; most important, they bred and produced descendants. Their lives cause us to behold the miracle of our own birth. It is difficult, with our conveniences, to imagine the lives they led – no paved roads or even trains; no telephone, telegraph, or flush toilets. Leaving home, many expected to never return. Most of my four-greats grandparents lived to see the United States gain its freedom from Britain, yet they all died before slavery ended. Most of their grandchildren (my great grandparents) died before women gained the vote. 

 

Like us, they grew to adulthood. As the 1950s were my generation’s time to grow from child to adult, and the 1920s the decade for my parents and the 1890s for my grandparents, my four-greats grandparents came of age in the years just before, during, or just after the American Revolution. It is sobering to think of the challenges they faced, and one is reminded of these lines from Kipling: “Beyond all outer charting/We sailed where none have sailed.”[1]

 

Yet their values were the ones we espouse: humility, justice, diligence, dignity, responsibility and kindness. “We are,” former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-MA) is quoted, “a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and grandchildren.” When asked why spend so much time looking back to those long dead, I am reminded of Edmund Burke’s quote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790: “People will not look forward to posterity who never looked backward to their ancestors.” Can we derive wisdom from the past? Perhaps. Though Canadian comedian Norm MacDonald once wrote: “The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast.” That it does.

 

I think of the question that titles this essay: Who am I? Unlike Lear’s relationship with Goneril, my daughter loves me. While I have genes from all my ancestors, I am not them. I am my own self, an individual who has tried to do the best he could with the talents he inherited and with the knowledge he acquired. I love my wife and the children we raised together, and the children they, with their chosen spouses, have raised. One’s personal history does provide a sense of belonging, but we are a consequence, not the cause. As for who we are, Dr. Seuss put it well in Happy Birthday to You: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” So, yes, even though not all of my four-greats grandparents were born in North America, I proudly accept the moniker of “Real American.” 

 

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[1] Rudyard Kipling, “The merchantmen,” first published in Pall Mall Budget, May 15, 1893.

"A Valentine's Day Message"

With Valentine’s Day appearing Friday, this essay is a little early, but love knows no calendar.

A beautiful wintery morning has arrived here in Connecticut. It reminds me of February days of yore.

 

The photo (“When Cupid’s Arrow Struck”) was taken on Friday March 9, 1962, the day Caroline agreed to be my Valentine for life. With her roommate and fiancé, Caroline and I were driving from Boston to New Hampshire for a weekend skiing at Wildcat Mountain. The photo was taken somewhere along New Hampshire’s coast.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“A Valentine’s Day Message”

February 9, 2025

 

“The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”

                                                                                                Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

                                                                                                Interview, U.S. News & World Report, October 27, 1986

 

Love is a unique sensation. Your definition of the word may differ from mine. It is ubiquitous in that every child born is embraced with the instinctual, maternal love of its mother. Love allows a child to understand they are integral to their family. Love is all around us, yet also singular. When missing, its absence is felt. It can arrive quickly, as did my love for Caroline not long after we met (and which has persisted for sixty-three years), or it may germinate for several months, even years, before blossoming. And, sadly, it sometimes dies.

 

We mostly think of love in terms of the one we marry, the individual we have chosen to share our life. But love assumes different forms. Love for one’s parents and one’s children are not the same. The former rests on the appreciation for one’s conception, while the latter is based on the knowledge that one’s children are the creation of you and your spouse, and that all one’s descendants, carry one’s genes into the future, making life eternal. It is spiritual, as in love for God. It can be generic, as in love for one’s country or for one’s fellow man. Love for one’s pets is not the same as love for one’s spouse, but it is nonetheless real. Love demands involvement, as Elie Wiesel suggested. It may be blind, however, as when passion, compassion, or admiration are mistaken for love. In such cases, it may be unrequited, for love is not always equally shared. 

 

Two hundred years ago Noah Webster defined the word as an “affection of the mind,” feelings of “esteem and benevolence” “animal desires between the sexes.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word: characterized “by strong feelings of affection for another, arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence;” it is “an individual emotion.” It has been used, the dictionary says, “to refer to sexual attraction or erotic desire.”

 

Today, we use the word liberally. “love you,” we say or write to our children and grandchildren when departing, ending a phone call or completing a text message. We hug one another and say how much we love them. Is the word over-used? I think not, for expressions of love make us considerate and respectful. On my shaving mirror is a saying, attributed to the University of Notre Dame’s longest serving president, Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917-2015): “The most important thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Like many of my generation, I was born into a family who loved me but who were not demonstrative of love, or, in fact, of most emotions. Saying “I love you,” and hugging were not common forms of expression. While I knew I was loved, the word ‘love’ was used only when signing letters. The last time I saw my father, in late November 1968 as he was dying of cancer, I told him I loved him, and I remember the awkwardness I felt when I said the words. Less than a year later – the evening before he died – I stopped to see my father-in-law in New York before heading back to Connecticut. I told him my wife loved him. I recall my words seemed forced, even as I knew Caroline loved him deeply.

 

As a college freshman in an introductory class in psychology, we were asked to define love. I demurred, unable to define a sensation I barely understood. Perhaps I was wrong for not attempting, as today I suspect the professor was not looking for a precise definition but to initiate a discussion.

 

A fun story: In the early 2000s, I was in Louisiana on a business trip. Two of us had been visiting a client in Baton Rouge, before driving to New Orleans to fly back to New York the next day. That evening we had dinner at Galatoire’s, a century-old restaurant on Bourbon Street. By chance, we were seated at a table next to Leon Galatoire and a lady friend. Mr. Galatoire had had a few drinks, and we started chatting and soon joined the two tables. My friend bought two copies of Leon Galatoire’s cookbook. Asked to sign them, Mr. Galatoire complied. My copy – today one of my treasures – shows three attempts to sign it, the last reading: “For Sydney, Love you so much! Bon appétit, Leon Galatoire.”

 

To love and to be loved are among the greatest sensations available to us as humans. As one of life’s eternal mysteries, it is too big a subject to be covered in this short essay. It has been written about by poets and portrayed by artists, far more articulate than I am. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to write something as we approach Valentine’s Day. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,” is a quote attributed to Aristotle, signifying the deep connection felt between two people in love.  When Justice Stewart Potter was asked to describe his test for obscenity, he replied, “I know it when I see it.” Today my answer to my psychology professor would be, I know love when I feel it. And I have been fortunate in being loved, especially by my wife Caroline, and by my children and grandchildren, but also by a large extended family and by numerous friends.

 

In Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady there is a scene in which the dying Ralph Touchett, speaks to his cousin Isabel Archer; he contrasts physical pain and love: “It’s (the pain) very deep, but…it passes; it’s passing now. But love remains.” It does, but to receive and experience it, we must be open to it and generous with it.

 

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

"A Common Culture?"

 We are less than two weeks from the Inauguration. Like some of you, I look forward to a change in leadership, not only because I am conservative, but, more important, because we will know who is in the driver’s seat. I should not be surprised – though I will not be around to witness their assessments – that when historians consider the last four years from the vantage of a few decades the focus will be, who was in charge? President Biden’s sad cognitive decline was obvious from the beginning. But what was really wrong was that his advisors and the press did their best to keep the public ignorant of his deteriorating condition. Living with an Administration with which we disagree is part of democracy. But having a government run by those we don’t know violates the very essence of a democracy.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Common Culture?”

January 8, 2025

 

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

                                                                                                                                The Declaration of Independence

                                                                                                                                July 4, 1776

 

Many Americans bemoan a decline in culture. But what do we mean by culture? Are we speaking of the arts, religion, traditions, or a shared history? Are we referring to behavior? In a review of Eliot Stein’s Custodians of Wonder, Brandy Schillace wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Our lives are connected to the land and the animals. Yet we are also threads in the tapestry that stretches back into prehistory, a part of a superorganism that is culture itself.”

 

So, what is culture? Definitions have changed. Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary, defined the word according to its etymological roots: “The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops.” Forty-three years later, Edward Burnett Tyler, in Primitive Culture, defined the term in words we better understand today: “Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” From the Oxford English Dictionary: “Culture –The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In 1952, U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, cited 164 definitions of culture. I think of culture, first as a system of shared beliefs, values, behavior and practices – based on our Judeo-Christian heritage and embedded in our founding documents – and second as works of art, literature and music. 

 

For most of our nation’s history differences ruled. Rural and immigrant communities were often distinct entities. Until the mid-19^th Century, most Americans never ventured far from their homes. But from the mid 19^th Century on, technological advances unified us in a way unknown to earlier Americans. First we had steam ships, trains and then, later, the automobile, which allowed people to experience the size of our country. Radio then television brought other parts of the country and the world into our lives. The number of newspapers began to shrink. So that by my generation, people read the same news, listened to the same music, watched the same TV shows, saw the same movies, and heard the same nightly newscasts. In 1956 (in a country half the size it is today), Elvis Presley sold 10 million copies of a single song, “Hound Dog.” According to Pew Research, every evening during the 1960s between 27 and 29 million people listened to Walter Cronkite’s news on CBS, an audience greater than today’s combined daily audiences for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

 

While we had differences back then – the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early ‘60s and the anti-War protests of the late 1960s and early ‘70s – the country was, generally, unified, at least in terms of what we read, listened to, and watched. That has changed. The expansion of social media posts, podcasts, YouTube and other platforms have meant we listen to and watch entertainment and news that fits our biases.  A Pew research study from last September suggests 91% of Americans aged 18-49 get their news, “at least some of the time,” from digital devices.

 

While it is estimated that more than 350 languages are spoken in the U.S. today, English is our common language. To be successful, one must adopt it. Even in colonial America a variety of languages and dialects were spoken, including German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Irish and Welch, along with myriad variations. The roughly 450,000 African slaves then in America spoke numerous languages. As well, the estimated 250,000 Native Americans spoke approximately 300 different languages. Because of an anti-British sense, a few founding fathers preferred adopting German as the new nation’s language. But English prevailed and Webster’s Speller was published in 1783. In The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall quoted Noah Webster: “Our political harmony is therefore concerned in the uniformity of language.”

 

We will not return to a time when we all listened to the same music, read the same newspapers, and watched the same television programs. As Americans we are not hindered by a class system that is integral to Europe’s and many other societies’ history and traditions. We are a nation of immigrants, born of multicultural parents. We are beneficiaries of a unique government and society, birthed during the Enlightenment, one that cares more about the individual than who her or his parents were. In his 1931 history, The Epic of America, historian James Truslow Adams wrote of what we all yearn: “The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In August 1790 President George Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island. Afterwards he wrote a letter to Newport’s Hebrew Congregation, founded in 1763: “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean[1] themselves as good citizens.” 

 

In my opinion, the answer to the question posed in the title is yes, the United States does have a common culture. Besides our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have a common language, rooted in the words so eloquently expressed in The Declaration of Independence; it is fostered by a government elected by the people, which secures those rights, and operates under the rule of law. It is reflected in a society that promotes tolerance and respect for others, and that allows for the accommodation of differences. It is a culture that depends on personal responsibility and accountability, a culture built on individual freedom.

 

Our culture requires we be governed by our peers, with a government, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, of, by and for the people. Our culture does not shy from dissent but reflects an undefinable something that draws us together in time of strife when commonalities rise above differences. It is a culture that is, however, always at risk of being lost; so it cannot be abandoned to self-serving, ephemeral policies like DEI, identity politics, or promoting a lifestyle that permits men to compete against women in sports or encourages gender alteration among prepubescent children and teenagers.

 

In 1919, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote President Woodrow Wilson words that echo today: “I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first…I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it.” Does anyone believe that if China were to become the global hegemon the world would be better off? We cherish this unique culture that is ours. It is not transient. It is embedded in our unique origins. It is our culture that draws to these shores the industrious and aspirant, because they know that it offers an environment in which they will be free to thrive. 

 

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[1] The word demean was defined then as “to behave; to carry, to conduct.”

"Freedom"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Freedom”

August 28, 2024

 

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person

who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

                                                                                                Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                You learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life, 1960

 

The word freedom is inherent to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is ingrained in what it means to be an American: “And so let freedom ring,” spoke Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963, “from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire…” The Oxford English Dictionarydefines the word: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” which is not too different from the definition Noah Webster assigned the word in his 1828 Webster’s Dictionary: “A state of exemption from the power or control of another.” Freedom from fear and freedom from want (two of FDR’s “Four Freedoms”) are offerings of the state, but they do not meet the classical definition of freedom.

 

Democrats see the state as providing the conditions, through rules, laws, and regulations, that allow individuals opportunities – what are now called “positive” freedoms. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that men are born free but “everywhere he is in chains.” So the state exists to guarantee his liberty and freedom from the restraints of society. Without the state, he believed, there is no freedom. Voltaire disagreed. The state can be a trap: “It is difficult to free fools from chains they revere.” 

 

Republicans define freedom, in accordance with John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, as natural rights, characterized by the absence of external (the state) constraints on individual freedoms. These freedoms are now referred to as “negative” freedoms. Locke, two generations earlier than Rousseau, had argued that people are naturally free and equal, and have a right to life, liberty and property that are independent of society’s laws, ideas borrowed by Thomas Jefferson in 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Bill of Rights, adopted in December 1791, exemplified individual freedom. The colonists had lived under a tyrannical king. Fearful of autocracy that could stem from a strong central government, they desired a limited, federalist government, one composed, as Lincoln later said, “of, by and for the people.”  In a September 25^th, 1961 address to the United Nations’ General Assembly, President Kennedy warned: “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” 

 

No matter one’s definition, we should all agree that the freedoms to think, to pray, to write and to speak as one chooses are natural rights – gifts to us from God, inherent to us as Americans. We should also all agree that living in a community means that we must respect the rights and freedoms of others, that one person’s freedom to walk where he pleases may violate another’s right to privacy, so that government is necessary to adjudicate differences. The Constitution may give a person the right “to bear arms,” but that does not give that individual the right to kill his neighbor. Some freedoms, such as the right to abortion, are complex, as it contradicts the right to life. The decision to have an abortion, in my opinion, is best decided between the mother, the father, her doctor, her parents and perhaps a spiritual advisor. President Clinton came closest to my own belief: abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” While we all know that government is necessary for society to function, we should also realize that rules, regulations and taxes, while imperative to civil society, are inhibitors to free expression. Arriving at a consensus means that, individually, we forego some freedoms in the interest of the greater good. We are fortunate to live in a country in which our democratic form of government allows for differences to be debated so as to find common solutions. Even so, as government swells in size, individual freedoms shrink.

 

There will always be areas of conflict between your freedom and mine. Taxpayers pay the salaries of public-school teachers. Teachers should have the freedom to unionize, but that should not prevent parent’s from having the freedom to choose which education system best fits their children – traditional schools, vouchers, or non-unionized charter schools. University professors and high school teachers have the freedom to think and speak as they wish, but they also have a responsibility to instruct students to think independently, to perhaps come to conclusions different from their own. Censorship, “harmful words” and “safe places” are antithetical to the concept of free expression. In a March 15, 1783 address to the officers of the Continental Army, George Washington spoke: “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to slaughter.”

 

Democrats, at their Chicago convention, adopted freedom (along with “joy”) as their theme. According to a New York Times word-count, the word “freedom” was used 227 times in speeches over their four-day convention. I was happy that they did. But there is irony, hypocrisy and perhaps a touch of deviousness in a Party that talks up freedom but which defenestrated its sitting President, nominated Vice President Harris without a single primary delegate vote, wants to mandate EVs, prohibit gas stoves, limit school choice, and that weaponized federal agencies. This is the Party that uses the excuse of “disinformation” to censor political speech, that has done away with the concept of separation of powers by embracing the administrative state; it is the Party which would like to have the Supreme Court come under the purview of Congress. Yet they waved a banner of freedom at their convention. As a skeptic one is forced to ask: What freedom do they mean? Freedom for the state to do as it pleases? Freedom for me, or freedom for thou?

 

As the United States’ government grows larger and more complex, individual freedom, definitionally, lessens. According to the Office of the Federal Register, the number of final rules published each year ranges between 3,000 and 4,500. Wikipedia claims that approximately 200 new federal statutes are enacted each year. Most of these rules and laws are designed to benefit the people. But we should never ignore the fact that every new law and each new regulation has an impact – perhaps minor – on individual freedoms. Freedom is more than a slogan for conventioneers. It is why migrants come to these shores, even as most of us take freedom for granted. Freedom is not dependent on forgiveness of student debt, or dollars spent on entitlements. It comes with responsibilities, as Eleanor Roosevelt reminded us sixty-four years ago. It is an attitude, a belief. It is a gift from God. “Freedom isn’t free,” as the song goes.  It is rare, must be defended and should be treated as endangered. Fifty-seven years ago, in his first inaugural address as California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the blood stream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Amen.

"Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?"

Memorial Day was first celebrated as Decoration Day on May 30, 1868. It was celebrated as a day of remembrance for those who died in the Civil War. On that first day 20,000 graves in Arlington Cemetery were decorated with flowers. Over the years the day came to be celebrated as one of remembrance for all those who fell, defending our liberties, in all the Nation’s wars. 

In 1971, Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday of the month. Growing up in Peterborough, New Hampshire, I remember the parade in which marched veterans of both world wars, with most from the Second World War still in their 20s. On our bikes we followed the parade to Pine Hill Cemetery where wreaths were laid on the graves of veterans, a three-volley salute was fired, and Taps were played, with its haunting echo wafting through the White Pines. Pine Hill Cemetery is where my parents – my father a veteran of World War II – now lie, along with my brother Stuart.

 

Today, we watch the parade in Old Lyme where we lived for a quarter of a century. It is a parade with far fewer soldiers, but one that embodies the community’s patriotic spirit. As in my childhood, we follow the marchers, now to the Duck River Cemetery, where we listen to the three-volley salute to the fallen, then doff our hats and place our hands over our hearts as Taps reverberates across the graves, marshes and out to the Connecticut River.

 

Memorial Day is a reminder that we are all Americans, no matter our ethnic and racial heritage, and of how lucky we are to be here, to be living in this great nation at this time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?”

May 24, 2024

 

“One of the things I admire most about America is they have created a

genuine melting pot society, a country of opportunity; you can be of any

religion, colour, ethnicity, persuasion and make it to the top of your chosen

field. And that’s something I admire about America and hope they continue with.”

                                                                                                                                David Cameron (1966-)

Speech at Foreign Policy Centre, London

August 24, 2005 

 

In The Forgotten Founding Father Joshua Kendall wrote: “Recognizing [Noah] Webster’s knack for getting Americans to think of themselves as Americans, [George] Washington relied time and time again on his trusted policy advisor.” We tend to think of colonial Americans as being solely of British heritage, and certainly they dominated. But languages spoken in the American colonies in 1775 included German, Dutch, French, Swedish, Polish and Hebrew, along with numerous dialects and myriad languages of indigenous Americans. From its beginning America was diverse, unlike the more homogenous countries from which immigrants had come. The Founding Fathers wanted the people to become a melting pot.

 

Noah Webster[1] understood the value of developing the unique character of an American. His spelling books were designed to help people read, write and speak a common language. In the June 29, 2019 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Richard Lederer noted that Webster’s dictionaries had “an array of shiny new American words, among them bullfrog, chowder, handy, hickory, succotash, tomahawk…” Today, in this English-speaking country, those not fluent are disadvantaged, yet not all are encouraged to learn English.

 

Integration, in this nation of immigrants, was slow, as could be seen in many New York City neighborhoods that remained distinctive into the 20^th Century: Little Italy; China Town; Yorkville (for Germans); Spanish Harlem; Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Manhattan’s Harlem, home for black Americans, and Lapskaus Boulevard in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn where many Norwegians settled. But assimilation became increasingly common in the first and second halves of the 20^thCentury, first through inter-ethnic marriages and later through interracial marriages.

 

Change is always slower than we would like. For example, until the 1967 unanimous Supreme Court decision of Loving versus Virginia, interracial marriages were forbidden by law in thirty-one states. According to Pew Research, in 1960 only 3% of marriages in the U.S. were between persons of different races. Yet by 2022, such unions represented 19% of all marriages. Public approval of interracial marriages, according to Wikipedia, was 5% in 1950, but had risen to 94% in 2021.  Ancestry.com and 23andMe have increased people’s interest in their ancestry, and many are amazed at the diversity of their heritage – something more common in the United States than in other parts of the world.

 

 

The melting pot ideal remains the preferred metaphor for most Americans. We recognize the uniqueness of this country, that it values individual freedom, yet with a government that operates under the rule of law, not men. It stands, most of us believe, as “a shining city on a hill,” as a beacon to the rest of the world. But not all Americans see us that way, including many who consider themselves part of “the elite.” In a recent essay in National Review, British historian Andrew Roberts wrote about D-Day, and its 80^th Anniversary to be celebrated in a couple of weeks. He wrote of how yesterday’s heroes might not meet the tests of “today’s masters of inclusivity and sensitivity.” He suggested that there is not today, among the nation’s elites, a sense of “…the superiority of democracy and liberty and the benefits of Western civilization…” He asks if those ideals, “something noble,” are something we now choose to discard? Roberts concludes: Eighty years ago “they knew what was worth fighting and dying for, whereas today we seem to be unsure of everything, even down to the pronouns we should use for one another.”

 

Washington politicians and their supporters in the media today find it easier to compartmentalize people by identity, including gender, sexual preference, race and ethnicity, rather than embrace the compromises that come from opposing ideas. They divide people into victims and oppressors – if you are of the former you can never succeed without help, and if you are one of the latter you will always have an unfair advantage. For those who practice identity politics, initiative does not count; merit is out, and personal responsibility plays no role. For example, Title IX has been re-written, so that preference is given to all women, transwomen as well as biological women. The consequences, including use of bathrooms and sports competition, cannot be what the authors of the original Title IX intended.

 

Dividing people into identifiable groups is destructive to the concept of a unified people, as Roberts noted. It breeds distrust and hatred. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) – the Austrian free-market economist, born of Jewish parents and who left Vienna in 1934 to avoid Nazi influence (and who well understood the risk of identity politics) – called out in his Theory and History what he termed “the pernicious doctrine of polylogism,” the belief that different groups of people reason in fundamentally different ways – the path down which identity politics leads. Such beliefs result in anarchy, a society with no moral code, no rules as to right or wrong – that there is no one logic or one truth. A society of such “unconstrained imagination[2]” would not have been able to have written our Constitution in 1787.

 

Of course, a “melting pot” achieved through coercion is antidemocratic, as is one that denies people the right to stay in touch with their heritage. As well, a “melting pot” should never be confused with unity of opinions. Diversity of ideas is essential to democracy. It is why independent thought should be encouraged. It is why we debate issues – to find a consensus. On the other hand, a preference for the “salad bowl” approach where the radishes clash with the tomatoes and the peppers stand aloof of the cucumbers, ignores the need for the people of this nation to discover that consensus and to think of themselves as Americans. 

 

The metaphor of the melting pot best reflects the natural course of a free and open society. It suggests that there are things more important than race or ethnicity. It suggests that opportunity, as David Cameron implied, is available to all, and that individual success is dependent on individual initiative, aspiration and ability. The beauty and uniqueness of America is that the opinions of its citizens – people of all races and nationalities – are reflected in the voting booths. According to the website PoliEngine there are more than 100,000 governments in the United States, employing 519,682 politicians – 96% of those governments are local.  So long as Washington’s efforts to divide us fail, those myriad ideas and decisions will reflect the diversity of an increasingly complex melting pot, where the ingredients become inseparable. Let the pot grow in size. But as for diversity of ideas, let the salad bowl flourish.

 

                                                                                

 

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[1] Noah Webster was one of my 32 four-great grandfathers. His wisdom, though, has been diluted by my 31 less illustrious male ancestors; though buttressed by my 32 four-great grandmothers.

[2] Jeffrey Tucker’s term in the May 15-21, 2024 issue of The Epoch Times.

"The Second Debate - Where Was Reagan's Optimism and Humor?"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Second Debate – Where was Reagan’s Optimism and Humor?”

October 5, 2023

 

“Debate: A discussion for elucidating truth.”

                                                                                                An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

                                                                                                Noah Webster, LL.D. (1758-1843)

 

Like most Republicans, I watched Wednesday’s debate hoping for a Reagan-like figure to emerge. The venue was the library of a President who had vision, radiated confidence, optimism, humor, and compassion. Like many, I was disappointed. Haley exhibited confidence and vision but without compassion that endears politicians to voters. DeSantis had the confidence of a governor who has done well but appeared humorless. Scott exuded optimism and compassion, but without vision.  

 

Like today, in 1980 Americans did not believe in themselves. We were in a funk. A President had been assassinated seventeen years earlier; a second resigned ten years later. The Vietnam War, which bled and divided the country for ten years, ignobly ended in 1975; inflation was rampant, with high interest rates and falling real incomes. Culturally, the country was a mess. The optimism of the post-War years was gone. Early in his presidency, Reagan remarked: “What I’d really like to do is go down as the President who made Americans believe in themselves again.” That he did, and the Country, through three presidents, experienced almost twenty years of economic growth and prosperity.

 

We are living through another fallow period. The twenty-year War against Islamic Terrorism ended disastrously in Afghanistan two years ago. China is on the rise. Inflation is destroying incomes. Parents are excluded from decisions regarding their school-age children. Borders are non-existent. We are told we are a racist society, that our country was built on the backs of slaves. We are divided into oppressors and victims; and that it is okay, if one is a victim, to rampage through streets and destroy private property. Conservative speakers are not allowed on campuses. Public figures cannot define a woman, yet transwomen are allowed to compete against biological women in sports. In his farewell address to the nation, on January 11, 1989, President Reagan said, “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.” Now, the nuclear family is considered passé by many. 

 

But instead of Reagan, the elephant in the room last Wednesday was Donald Trump. In 2016, Trump recognized that elitists had captured both parties, and that large swaths of the electorate felt ignored, especially working-and-middle class Americans. Ignoring a warning from Senator Schumer, he promised to drain Washington’s swamp, where politicians and bureaucrats live and thrive. As President, he was harassed by untrue allegations and unfair investigations, which impacted his administration. He accomplished a lot, but, thin-skinned and humorless, his misbehavior after his loss in 2020 gave strength to the opposition. The country, divided by the War in Iraq, the response to the credit crisis, and by Barack Obama (a man many hoped would unite us), has been riven further apart by the antics of Mr. Trump.

 

Today, driven by a desire for personal resurrection, Trump is but a sliver of what he had been eight years ago. Yet, if he succeeds in winning the Republican nomination, as now seems possible, he will, in my opinion and barring third party entrants, lead the Party to catastrophic losses next November.

 

But back to what was termed a debate: In contrast to Webster’s definition, no truths were elucidated. Nevertheless, I preferred this to the first, as there was less in-fighting and more attacks on Biden and his policies. But like the first, what we witnessed was not a debate. Dozens of questions – some good but others snide and irrelevant – were asked, each of a particular individual who was given sixty seconds to respond. Rebuttals were allowed thirty seconds. Perfect for soundbites but not for learning. Candidates spoke over one another. The result was entertaining but hardly illuminating. And it ended with a childish, game-show-like question from Dana Perino: “Which one of you, tonight, should be voted off the island?” That question elicited the evening’s best response. Ron DeSantis: “I think that is disrespectful to my fellow contenders.”

 

In 1960, two years before her death, Eleanor Roosevelt published You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life. In it she wrote: “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”  That is true, but for the person who cherishes freedom, the responsibility to carry one’s own weight is no burden; it is a welcome obligation and opportunity. Most people prefer a person with confidence, vision, and humor, someone who looks forward optimistically. We yearn for a leader who will give us free rein, to let us succeed based on merit. Perhaps in the next debate such a candidate will emerge?