40 Mules for Sister Sarah
... men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdraw his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouths of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake... John Winthrop [ This is only a portion of a single sentence. ]
City upon a Hill - Wikipedia
One thing stuck with me from Thursday's debate among all the blithe folksiness, the Reagan-conservative blinkered-ness and Biden's straightjacketed, but sucessful study in carefulness. Which was like watching an Olympic gymnast while commentators inform you that on all previous occasions that this gymnast has tried this routine they fell on their ass. That was Palin's invoking of a passage from Governor Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity at the end. Not only for its curious placement in the debate, but for her misattribution of it to Ronald Reagan. She used Reagan's formulation of it and truly seemed unaware it extended three centuries beyond that.
What does it take to get a 'first' around here these days? My Massachusetts roots caused me to recall that phrase coming from one of the early New England Colonists, my paper bound old-school approach to thinking caused me to go looking for a text book I knew I had that had that sermon in it
A More perfect union : documents in U.S. history [WorldCat.org]. I still value the dead weight of paper over perky electrons. By the time I went to the web about a half hour later to tried to find some additional context the Wikipeida entry on this had already been edited to show Palin's use, and her non-cognizance of it's provenence by the next morning.
The City on a Hill phrase is caught up in the meaning of American Exceptionalism. Here the notion that we are special. That we are doing something different, new, radical, something better. What we bring about, our principles, our behavior, is being watched and noted and will be a permanent lesson and judgement good or ill. Such notions were a common trope of the day among the emigrating (or is that immigrating) puritans. They are still true in thier own way today. The phrase comes down from Matthew 5:14. Here it originates as a sermon Winthrop gave aboard the ship Arbella before the colonists disembarked to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. It plainly is a caution as much as an exhortation or affirmation. It has become popular with conservatives with whom much nuance in it vanished (it was used by JFK also). Wikipedia indicates this sermon apparently only circulated in manuscript until the 19th century
John Winthrop - Wikipedia. Until such time as our actions increasing took us beyond our own borders and our own affairs only. Winthrop himself is a symbol of American imperfections (I note my family had roots within the slightly different 'Plymouth' colony). Winthrop's dealings with internal dissenters is the first evidence. He is the man who expelled and damned as harlot and Jezebel Anne Hutchinson for the high crime of having her own voice and opinion. He also was willing to execute adulterers, a way of proceeding which can only ever involve a high degree of hypocrisy - human nature. Winthrop's dealings with native americans were similarly abrupt and self serving. They hadn't improved the land in the sense we now call Lockeian, entirely bound up in European history land use and population pressures, therefore he didn't consider the land theirs. Their decimation due to smallpox was the receiving of Gods verdict in his view. History inclines more towards near genocide.
Watching the debate I didn't think there was any question that the strategies of the Palin camp leading up to the debate were lowering the bar as far as it could go. The Couric interviews were theater. Couric was played: played and owned, but they knew that fewer would be watching those interviews. Most would hear only about them, where many would be watching the debate. It was a smart play all around. In the debate itself the strategy consisted of talking past the question. Saying so much, covering so many topics that responding to her was nearly impossible. A shotgun repetition of memorized facts. Cynical but effective in an informal debate. In a real debate she would be informed she had scored nothing for not responding on-topic. In real life as an elected official answering for real events and real people demanding answers, she would not have had the derelict luxury of talking past the question at hand.
A last minor thought I have about this involves Michele Malkin and other's call for Gwen Ifil's removal as moderator on a question of partisan bias. Again a calculated gaming that injected a far far greater measure of partisanism into the matter than Ifil has ever demonstrated or is likely capable of. Let that be their final legacy. Oh the title of this piece was supposed to be "40 acres and a mule for Sister Carrie." I think the spell checker must have changed it.
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