The Privilege of the Grave - Mark Twain

This is an excellent essay that explains a universal phenomena.  It was written in 1905, but only published for the first time in 2008 by "The New Yorker".  I saved it and rediscovered it January 31, 2013 as I was housecleaning my files on a blustery January day.   I am now inspired to do some creative writing of my own.

The Privilege of the Grave

Mark Twain

  

Its occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege – strictly speaking – but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden both in form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact.

By the common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished, free speech always – when committed. Which is seldom. There are not fewer than five thousand murders to one (unpopular) free utterance. There is justification for this reluctance to utter unpopular opinions: the cost of utterance is too heavy; it can ruin a man in his business, it can lose him his friends, it can subject him to public insult and abuse, it can ostracize his unoffending family, and make his house a despised and unvisited solitude. An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only one sample, but several. The more intelligent the man, the larger the freightage of this kind of opinions he carries, and keeps to himself. There is not one individual – including the reader and myself – who is not the possessor of dear and cherished unpopular convictions which common wisdom forbids him to utter. Sometimes we suppress an opinion for reasons that are a credit to us, not a discredit, but oftenest we suppress an unpopular opinion because we cannot afford the bitter cost of putting it forth. None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned.

A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound. This custom naturally produces another result: public opinion being born and reared on this plan, it is not opinion at all, it is merely policy; there is no reflection back of it, no principle, and it is entitled to no respect.

When an entirely new and untried political project is sprung upon the people, they are startled, anxious, timid, and for a time they are mute, reserved, non-committal. The great majority of them are not studying the new doctrine and making up their minds about it, they are waiting to see which is going to be the popular side. In the beginning of the anti-slavery agitation three-quarters of a century ago, in the North, it found no sympathy there. Press, pulpit and nearly everybody blew cold upon it. This was from timidity, the fear of speaking out and becoming obnoxious, not from approval of slavery or lack of pity for the slave; for all nations like the State of Virginia and myself are not exceptions to this rule; we joined the Confederate cause not because we wanted to, for we did not, but we wanted to be in the swim. It is plainly a law of nature, and we obeyed it.

It is desire to be in the swim that makes successful political parties. There is no higher motive involved – with the majority – unless membership in a party because one’s father was a member of it is one. The average citizen is not a student of party doctrines, and quite right: neither he nor I would ever be able to understand them. If you should ask him to explain – in intelligible detail – why he preferred one of the coin-standards to the other, his attempt to do it would be disgraceful. The same with the tariff. The same with any other large political doctrine; for all large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems – problems that are quite above the average citizen’s reach. And that is not strange, since they are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be the right one and the best.

When a man has joined a party, he is likely to stay in it. If he changes his opinion – his feeling, I mean, his sentiment – he is likely to stay, anyway; his friends are of that party, and he will keep his altered sentiment to himself, and talk the privately discarded one. On those terms he can exercise his American privilege of free speech, but not on any others. These unfortunates are in both parties, but in what proportions we cannot guess. Therefore we never know which party was really in the majority at an election.

Free speech is the privilege of the dead, the monopoly of the dead. They can speak their honest minds without offending. We have charity for what the dead say. We may disapprove of what they say, but we do not insult them, we do not revile them, as knowing they cannot now defend themselves. If they should speak, what revelations there would be! For it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life; that out of fear, or out of calculated wisdom, or out of reluctance to wound friends, he had long kept to himself certain views not suspected by his little world, and had carried them unuttered to the grave. And then the living would be brought by this to a poignant and reproachful realization of the fact that they, too, were tarred by that same brush. They would realize, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be – and never can be.

Now there is hardly one of us but would dearly like to reveal these secrets of ours; we know we cannot do it in life, then why not do it from the grave, and have the satisfaction of it? Why not put those things into our diaries, instead of so discreetly leaving them out? Why not put them in, and leave the diaries behind, for our friends to read? Or free speech is a desirable thing. I felt it in London, five years ago, when Boer sympathizers – respectable men, taxpayers, good citizens, and as much entitled to their opinions as were any other citizens – were mobbed at their meetings, and their speakers maltreated and driven from the platform by other citizens who differed from them in opinion. I have felt it in America when we have mobbed meetings and battered the speakers. And most particularly I feel it every week or two when I want to print something that a fine discretion tells me I mustn’t. Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take to the pen and pour them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are wasted, because I can’t print the result. I have just finished an article of this kind, and it satisfies me entirely. It does my weather-beaten soul good to read it, and admire the trouble it would make for me and the family. I will leave it behind, and utter it from the grave. There is free speech there, and no harm to the family.

Ode to Mitt Romney

Generations to come will find a good summary here of why Mitt Romney lost:

On this day of celebration when Barack Obama takes the oath of office, I offer to Mitt Romney, who must be having a very bad day – a little salt in the wound. 

You pursued a cutthroat game plan,
In your brutal Primary fight.
Wherever your opponent stood,
You scurried to his right.
You thought you’d shake the Etch- a-Sketch,
And start again anew.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

When a soldier in Afghanistan,
Asked if you had your say,
Would you reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?
And told you he was gay.
You stood there without speaking,
When the crowd began to boo.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

You didn’t speak when Sandra Fluke,
Was called a “slut” by Rush.
You were silent when your party,
Tried to take our votes from us.
You said nothing when Todd Akin,
Claimed that not all rapes are true.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

When asked if you would sign,
A woman’s Right to Choose away,
You’d answer women only cared,
How much was in their pay.
You made Ann your link to women,
When she never had a clue.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

You embarrassed us in Europe,
Wherever you would go.
Ann’s horse made the Olympics,
But you didn’t even show.
You’d have let Michigan go bankrupt,
From Detroit to Kalamazoo.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

You thought, like you, that everyone,
Loved nothing more than money.
And shaving off a classmates hair,
Was your idea of funny.
You like your women bound in binders,
Unless they’re pregnant in a shoe.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

You gave millions to the Mormons,
To Fund Proposition Eight.
You may have called that charity,
Gay couples call it “hate”.
You threatened to kill Big Bird,
And you’re married to a shrew.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

There are forty-seven percent of us,
For whom you had no care.
You claimed it wasn’t our concern,
If you were taxed your share.
In your heart, you didn’t love us,
And we didn’t love you too.
And that’s why we’re not inaugurating you.

by JEAN ANN ESSELINK 

Election 2012 and poem

Yesterday Barack Obama was given a second term in office.  I watched the coverage in its entirety and wish Annette could have been here to see it.  He is an amazing person and I predict will go down in history as one of our greatest presidents.  He has tolerated so much opposition from the Republicans and finally today in his address he laid out an agenda that Fox News  called "take no prisoners".  In my opinion Fox News is the culprit behind much of the division in our country.  Fortunately, the American people could not be fooled and voted Obama back in office with an overwhelming majority.  Our country is at last safe from the Koch Brothers, and assaults on our civil rights.

Here is a poem written by a Cuban American the expresses why we need to come back together:

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper -
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives-
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind - our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across cafe tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos dias
in the language my mother taught me - in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn't give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always - home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country - all of us -
facing the stars
hope - a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it - together.

Definition of a Liberal

Mother Sandy Nature

Hurricane Sandy

Mother Sandy Nature

Grew tired of old farts

Messing with Lady Parts.

She threw down her cool

Just to show the old Fools

Proof of Global Warming

MVW Election 2012