From "The Federalist No. 1," by Alexander Hamilton

"It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that in the contemplation of a sound and well informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us, that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism, than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants."

From Bishop Tutu's 2000 Commencement Address at Brandeis University

Today I was going through some old papers and found a reference to this uplifting address of Bishop Tutu. An excerpt of the address is online. Here is a key passage:

And so, we are aware that this is a moral universe, that good and evil matter, that right and wrong matter, that life and truth matter. And, that, yes, there are frequently many, many times when we think that evil is on the rampage, that evil seems to be going to have the last word. It doesn't; it doesn't. Isn't that exhilarating? It isn't Hitler who has won; it is those he tried to destroy. They have survived and left the world an incredible legacy. It isn't Stalin who has won. Communism, fascism, Nazism have bitten the dust, have bitten the dust ignominiously. It isn't slavery that has won; slavery has been done away with and people are entering into what has been called the glorious liberty of the children of God. It isn't Apartheid that's won. No, no, no. It may take a long time, but goodness in the end is vindicated.

The excerpt, and presumably the address, ends with a story about an eagle that thought it was a chicken. I commend it to you.

Hope Amid Despair

Under the headline "On Optimism and Despair," the December 22nd issue of The New York Review of Books includes a talk given in Berlin on November 10th by novelist Zadie Smith upon receiving the 2016 Welt Literature Prize (and, if I recall my college German classes, the English translation of "Welt" is "World"). In the brief but poignant talk, Ms. Smith waxes both philosophical (largely about the recent American election) and autobiographical.  Though the piece is short, I could quote several passages from it, including a beautiful passage on incremental change, but I choose to quote from the final paragraph and its sobering but hopeful beckoning:

If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world--and most recently in America--the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.

A Seaward Metaphor

I have yet to read Proust (someday, perhaps), but tonight I read a fine essay about reading Proust by writer Sarah Boxer in The Atlantic.  She writes glowingly about reading In Search of Lost Time (a/k/a Remembrance of Things Past) on her cellphone at night.  Here is how she resolves the seeming incongruity of reading such a massive literary masterpiece on such a minuscule device:

Soon you will see that the smallness of your cellphone (my screen was about two by three inches) and the length of Proust's sentences are not the shocking mismatch you might think.  Your cellphone screen is like a tiny glass-bottomed boat moving slowly over a vast and glowing ocean of words in the night.  There is no shore.  There is nothing beyond the words in front of you.  It's a voyage for one in the nighttime.  Pure romance.

Terrific imagery and use of metaphor, although it can be appreciated best by those of us who have had the pleasure of riding in glass bottom boats.  That I have done, even if I haven't read Proust.

From "Zero K," by Don DeLillo

This is a beautifully written book exploring existential questions in an almost mystical, oblique and futuristic way.  The narrator, Jeffrey, witnesses his father's human cryogenics operation (if that's what it's called), while also reminiscing about his late mother and how the mundane things she did defined her.  He also has a tendency to want to attach names to people he doesn't know, and to define words. He concludes his memories of his mother in this lyrical passage:

Ordinary moments make the life.  This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together.  No leaps or falls.  I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am.  What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever.  I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat.  Define coat, I tell myself.  Define time, define space.

From "Trump's Credo: The Only Thing is Fear Itself" by Steve Almond

I saw this today on Boston public radio station WBUR's website for Cognoscenti:

As the nominee's speech made clear, the Republicans have become a party of terror, not of ideas.  Trump's ascent merely ratifies the notion that has long animated the conservative movement: that a population sufficiently engorged on imaginary fears will forfeit rational thought for the cleansing powers of wrath.

"Being Honest About Trump"

Elegant, piercing prose addressing an issue that should be of the utmost importance to all Americans, by Adam Gopnik in a July 14th New Yorker post:

What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history.  It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners.  That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true.  But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are.  Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history.  In every historical situation where a leader of Trump's kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse.  Ours are older and therefore stronger?  Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal.  Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.