Citizen Smith Quotes

Maybe it’s not metaphysics. Maybe it’s existential. I’m talking about the individual US citizen’s deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it’s all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it’s not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than “die,” “pass away,” the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday—’ ‘And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have put in to make sure we’re remembered, these’ll last what—a hundred years? two hundred?—and they’ll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I’m cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and before maybe three or four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we’re all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that’s why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are.

Our creativity comes from our liberty. As long as individual citizens in the USA have liberty, we will be a creative nation. If our liberty is stolen or forfeited, we will stop creating.

To be a mother is the greatest vocation in the world. No being has a position of such great power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her is necessarily committed the making of the nation’s citizens.

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to the roof of that last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city. Its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down. That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York.

Being Bahamian, Panamanian and US American allows me to have a very unique perspective on the Americas, on the world, and on global commerce. I think big and I think holistically. And I've embedded that way of thinking into Mayflower-Plymouth.

A reality whereby all individuals live, work and play together in a system of harmony and continual reciprocity, and in the spirit of love and unanimity – is possible. And we living today are the ones to make it happen.

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

It’s very important that municipalities employ effective communication. Citizens deserve to be informed of the ROI they’re getting for their tax dollars.

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.

In this modern era, Panama should be considering new ways to invest in and profit from global commerce, logistics and supply chains. It's not just about widening the canal, but widening the ways in which the nation can add value to and extract value from the movement of products and services globally. I'm a citizen of Panama just like I am of The US and The Bahamas. So I'd like to see Panama's evolution with this.

When society as a whole begins to efficiently utilize all capital everywhere on a global scale and and make all capital everywhere maximally productive on a global scale — most if not all of our global scale social problems will be solved.

Going forward, Panama should expand on the canal business in new ways. That means not only widening the physical canal, but investing more broadly in global logistics and supply chains. So Panamanian leadership should ask, how can we extract more value from the canal by adding more value to it. Or how can we create or plug into new platforms which facilitate global trade. As a citizen of Panama, I'd like to see this happen.

The name Atlantis came from an old book Victoria had never read. A lifetime residency in the ASM paradise was rumored to cost anywhere from 15 to 20 million dollars. The rich and powerful lived under the dome because they considered themselves separate and superior. Few of them left the comfort and security of Atlantis. To them the outside world was weak. Second Sector citizens where miscreant dregs of a defunct society. In order to enter the Atlantian dome one first had to be cleared by a resident. Gate security personnel strictly enforced this rule, even when outsiders carried a badge and gun.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Globally, It's important that we embed artificial intelligence into our systems such that it functions in service to humanity, and not in competition with it.

I resumed the life of a citizen. It took me far from the world I had known, yet Robert was ever in my consciousness; the blue star in the constellation of my personal cosmology.

A Thriving Society Is Partly Dependent on Each Individual and Corporate Citizen Paying Their Fair Share in Taxes.

A nation can assume that the phrase “under God” in its Pledge of Allegiance shows that its citizens believe in God when all it really shows is that they believe in believing in God.

I hope with all my soul that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be loyal in their very hearts and souls, to the principles of the Constitution of our country. From them we have derived the liberty that we enjoy. They have been the means of guaranteeing to the foreigner that has come within our gates, and to the native born, and to all the citizens of this country, the freedom and liberty that we possess. We cannot go back upon such principles as these.

I don't subscribe to ideas of this nation versus that nation or this race versus that race, or one ethnicity versus the other ethnicity. We are one humanity; one Earth; one global society that hosts a multitude of beautifully diverse groups. We should cherish our diversity as we embrace our oneness.

If you punish somebody harshly, she said, then you are simply inflicting more pain on the world. You are also punishing not only that person, but his family and the people who love him. You are punishing yourself, really, because we are all brothers and sisters in this world, whether we know it or not; we are all citizens of the same village.

The citizens of Joplin were unwittingly being trained not to act when the sirens sounded.

As the army arrived in the region, the otherwise obedient West Prussian citizens stoned the troops, denouncing the men in spiked helmets as a “Jewish defense force.

Our citizens must act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualifications; not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, native Americans—but as Americans pure and simple.28

He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens.” That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire.

Who Protects the Consumer? "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens." —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. I, [>]

Our feet have been planted upon this sacred soil for a wise purpose. This land has been dedicated for the blessing of mankind. The Constitution and the laws that have been enacted under its provisions are calculated to insure liberty, not license, to all who dwell here. This church with which we are identified stands, if it stands for anything, for the perpetuation of the liberties of all mankind. We should not listen to those who find pleasure in teaching sedition. Neither should we follow those who claim to be citizens of this land, who go about violating the laws that govern it. There are many who are failing to do their duty as citizens who have the right of franchise, but who are unworthy of that blessing that has come to those who live in this wonderful country.

A society governed by consent does not necessarily issue from a social contract, whether actual or implied. It is a society in which dealings between citizens, and between citizens and those in authority, are consensual, in the manner of daily courtesies, games of football, theatrical events or family meals. As Adam Smith made clear, order may emerge from consensual dealings. But it emerges ‘by an invisible hand’, and not, as a rule, because someone has imposed it. In

Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down. That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York.

Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favour of those whose service it requires. A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilised society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion.

All the improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the inventions of those who had occasion to use the machines. Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects. In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other employment, the principal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of citizens. Like every other employment too, it is subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improves dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably increased by it.

Our society has come to adopt many of the draconian measures Orwell tried to warn us about. Cameras monitor citizens from nearly every street corner in the United Kingdom, and there are a steadily growing number of them mounted on traffic lights in America. The fact that Orwell’s 1984 remains a part of the required reading curriculum in many high schools across the country is laughably ironic. What is truly sad is how many readers acknowledge the brilliant foresight of Orwell yet fail to grasp how closely present-day America (and England) resemble Winston Smith’s Oceania.

Unfortunately, the mysterious gold does not come from the moon, but from the pocket of a blacksmith, or a nail-smith, or a cartwright, or a farrier, or a laborer, or a shipwright; in a word, from John Q. Citizen, who gives it now without receiving a grain more of iron than when he was paying ten francs. Thus, we can see at a glance that this very much alters the state of the case; for it is very evident that Mr. Protectionist’s profit is compensated by John Q. Citizen’s loss, and all that Mr. Protectionist can do with the pot of gold, for the encouragement of national labor, John Q. Citizen might have done himself. The stone has only been thrown upon one part of the lake, because the law has prevented it from being thrown upon another.

When we blame those who brought about the brutal murder of Emmett Till, we have to count President Eisenhower, who did not consider the national honor at stake when white Southerners prevented African Americans from voting; who would not enforce the edicts of the highest court in the land, telling Chief Justice Earl Warren, 'All [opponents of desegregation] are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in schools alongside some big, overgrown Negroes.' We must count Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., who demurred that the federal government had no jurisdiction in the political assassinations of George Lee and Lamar Smith that summer, thus not only preventing African Americans from voting but also enabling Milam and Bryant to feel confident that they could murder a fourteen-year-old boy with impunity. Brownell, a creature of politics, likewise refused to intervene in the Till case. We must count the politicians who ran for office in Mississippi thumping the podium for segregation and whipping crowds into a frenzy about the terrifying prospects of school desegregation and black voting. This goes double for the Citizens' Councils, which deliberately created an environment in which they knew white terrorism was inevitable. We must count the jurors and the editors who provided cover for Milam, Bryant, and the rest. Above all, we have to count the millions of citizens of all colors and in all regions who knew about the rampant racial injustice in America and did nothing to end it. The black novelist Chester Himes wrote a letter to the New York Post the day he heard the news of Milam's and Bryant's acquittals: 'The real horror comes when your dead brain must face the fact that we as a nation don't want it to stop. If we wanted to, we would.

People who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. 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.

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

When Hodges was presented to Harmon the next morning for a positive ID, Harmon reportedly couldn’t be sure he was her attacker. “I can’t tell,” she said. “I can’t say he is the negro, but I can’t say he is not the negro.” Unfortunately, many citizens of Tyler subscribed to the guilty until proven innocent philosophy where African Americans were concerned. At approximately 11:15 a.m., a white mob three to four thousand strong broke into the county jail and seized Hodges. The lynch mob transported Hodges to the site of the new Smith County Courthouse, which was then under construction. A few members threw a rope up over an enormous derrick—which was being utilized at the site for hoisting large stones for the new courthouse—and fashioned a noose on one end, placing it around Hodges’s neck. Several men then took hold of the other end and, with one simultaneous pull, jerked Hodges up into the sky. Hodges squirmed as he swung back and forth high above the mob, and then his movements dwindled to a twitch or two before he grew still. Within ten minutes, the construction site was empty, save the deceased, whose gruesome figure hung motionless in midair. No one involved in the crime even attempted to conceal his identity. As the May 7, 1909 edition of the Alto Herald put it, “Those who took part in the lynching went about it just as they went about their daily business.

The state's case against Smith, however, did claim to speak to his actual guilt or innocence, and it has to be considered carefully. The reason this is important has nothing to do with Roy Smith or Bessie Goldberg or even Al DeSalvo; they're all dead. In some ways there is nothing less relevant than an old murder case. The reason it is important is this: Here is a group of people who have gathered to judge--and possibly execute--a fellow citizen. It's the highest calling there is, the very thing that separates us from social anarchy, and it has to be done well. A trial, however, is just a microcosm of the entire political system. When a democratic government decides to raise taxes or wage war or write child safety laws, it is essentially saying to an enormous jury, "This is our theory of how the world works, and this is our proposal for dealing with it. If our theory makes sense to you, vote for us in the next election. If it doesn't, throw us out." The ability of citizens to scrutinize the theories insisted on by their government is their only protection against abuse of power and, ultimately, against tyranny. If ordinary citizens can't coolly and rationally evaluate a prosecutor's summation in a criminal trial, they won't have a chance at calling to task a deceitful government. And all governments are deceitful--they're deceitful because it's easier than being honest. Most of the time, it's no more sinister than that.

Within the West, the big social inventions have always been happy to define the individual. At various times and to various degrees, social programming has had a ready answer to the question of what the good life meant: being a good Christian, a good citizen, rich, an A student, or a good manager or employee. Imagine defining yourself instead as someone who defines institutions rather than being defined by them. Then imagine what sort of social invention you would have to engage in to create something akin to a school, a church, a government, or a business that would facilitate the person you aspire to be. No Lutheran will ever be as fully expressed as Martin Luther. No Mormon will ever realize her potential the way that Joseph Smith did. No Muslim will ever be more righteous than Mohammed. No Christian will ever be more perfect than Christ, no Jew more law abiding than Moses. Millions – even billions – of people do honor these amazing men by following their example, trying to emulate them. Yet what is interesting is that if a person were really intent on following their example they would refuse to be constrained by their example. That is, if you really want to imitate Joseph Smith or Mohammed or Martin Luther you would never become a Mormon or Muslim or Lutheran. You would, instead, start your own religion in which you subordinate tradition to your own convictions and revelations. You would trust in yourself enough to create rather than imitate. If that sounds irreligious to you, you are wrong. No follower of these men is more religious than they were. (And of course at the time, most people thought of these men as heretics, not true prophets.) Progress is the product of invention. Specifically, progress depends on social invention that subordinates the past to the future, that changes what has been created by past generations in order to realize what is possible for future generations.

If we consider this official or elite multiculturalism as an ideological state apparatus we can see it as a device for constructing and ascribing political subjectivities and agencies for those who are seen as legitimate and full citizens and others who are peripheral to this in many senses. There is in this process an element of racialized ethnicization, which whitens North Americans of European origins and blackens or darkens their 'others' by the same stroke. This is integral to Canadian class and cultural formation and distribution of political entitlement. The old and established colonial/racist discourses of tradition and modernity, civilization and savagery, are the conceptual devices of the construction and ascription of these racialized ethnicities. It is through these 'conceptual practices of power' (Smith, 1990) that South Asians living in Canada, for example, can be reified as hindu or muslim, in short as religious identities.....We need to repeat that there is nothing natural or primordial about cultural identities - religious or otherwise - and their projection as political agencies. In this multiculturalism serves as a collection of cultural categories for ruling or administering, claiming their representational status as direct emanations of social ontologies. This allows multiculturalism to serve as an ideology, both in the sense of a body of content, claiming that 'we' or 'they' are this or that kind of cultural identities, as well as an epistemological device for occluding the organization of the social....an interpellating device which segments the nation's cultural and political space as well as its labour market into ethnic communities....Defined thus, third world or non-white peoples living in Canada become organized into competitive entities with respect to each other. They are perceived to have no commonality, except that they are seen as, or self-appellate as, being essentially religious, traditional or pre-modern, and thus civilizationally backward. This type of conceptualization of political and social subjectivity or agency allows for no cross-border affiliation or formation, as for example does the concept of class.

And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground. That was the rash gift of Alfred W. Smith to the citizens of New York.

Justice Scalia in Smith, citing Reynolds: If the law’s authority were to vary based on the diverse moral and religious commitments of citizens, then all persons could become a law unto themselves.

Do not under estimate the power of their programmes. They serve to numb the minds of their citizens. It is not mere entertainment: it is a key weapon in maintaining their authority. the citizens of this country are given idiotic escapism in order to prevent them asking deeper questions.

Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports, or equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Szabó The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami

Education experts emphasise the importance of PISA scores; of reading and mathematics. It is also important how a nation educates its children to become good citizens. There is no measure for this, despite its immense value to a well-functioning democracy. For centuries great thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith have argued that greed and self-interest drive economic progress. But new evidence show that citizens of smaller nations place less value on money for its own sake than their counterparts in larger nations.

a country that wants to increase its wealth and enable its citizens to prosper must enact policies that enable the division of labor, the increase of production, the decrease of prices, and the resulting increase in standards of living. His larger political-economic argument then proceeds on the basis of three linked arguments, which we might call the Economizer Argument, the Local Knowledge Argument, and the Invisible Hand Argument.

Such an immigration to a new kingdom isn’t just a matter of being teleported to a different realm; we need to be acclimated to a new way of life, learn a new language, acquire new habits—and unlearn the habits of that rival dominion. Christian worship is our enculturation as citizens of heaven, subjects of kingdom come (Phil. 3:20).

Reading The Wealth of Nations as an attack against lobbying from special interest groups and cronyism suggests that for Smith the violence and inefficiencies of rent seeking mercantilist policies cause harm and are unjust. For Smith, rent seeking and state capture by special interest groups is not only inefficient, but uses the (actual) "blood and treasure" of fellow citizens to enrich a few merchants under the false pretence of enriching the country. The Wealth of Nations can therefore be read as a moral condemnation of mercantilist policies: unjust policies are also inefficient policies.

Apologists for modernity and capitalism within the Catholic Church insist that capitalism is compatible with defined dogmas declared by the magisterium, with the tenets of natural law, and with the incontrovertible truths expressed in the divine positive law. Catholics such as this writer are insulted with the epithets of "socialists" or "unpatriotic" or "ignorant" for failing to see the good brought by modern democracy, for calling into question the nature of the supposed freedoms granted by governments elected through popular sovereignty without reference to Christ the King and His Vicar the Pope, and for insisting on a return to an understanding of human life predicated on the essential nature of human family and divine worship to the happiness of man on earth and his beatitude in Heaven. This writer is waiting for an explanation of how the separation of the state from the Church has lent support to the absolute sanctity of life from conception to natural death. He desires to see proof that democratically elected governments and their citizens are committed to prohibiting divorce and the destruction of the family as mandated by God when He physically walked the earth two thousand years ago . . . If indeed there is a difference on the moral plane between capitalist consumption of goods and communist redistribution of goods, it is high time that man be given evidence of the existence of this singular truth which heretofore has been an amazingly well kept secret. Other than the fact that both communists and capitalists seek to produce as many material things as possible with the capitalists having far more success thereat, none has convincingly demonstrated that aught else separates the two systems in their impact on the understanding of the sanctity of human life, the controls placed on the conduct of human life, and the ultimate end of human life. (pages 171-172)

Ayn Rand, “We are fast approaching the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.

There is no obligation for the faithful of the Church or citizens of a state to obey anything that is not consonant with the traditions handed down by the will of God. Subjects need not justify disobeying novelties, rather it is the innovators who must demonstrate that they are not introducing contradictions to tradition, either secular or ecclesial. It is not necessary for something to be innovation to be foreign to tradition and alien to the revealed Word and will of God. One would have an extraordinarily difficult time explaining how anything describable as an "innovation", "novelty", or "change" can be consonant with immemorial, unchanging, divine Truth. Obedience binds only to tradition in scripture, doctrine, and practice. If the faithful are presented with teachings, examples, or documents that do not reflect fidelity to God through the unchanging patrimony of the Church then they are free to ignore the innovations. This holds whether the context of the innovations is in man's secular relations or within the workings of Holy Mother Church. Those who are so gifted may be obligated to present questions for clarification to those in authority. Any who are confused should not suffer any qualms about doing what the Church has always done, in all places, by all the faithful, of all times. What has always saved, will always save. Doubts arise only when deviations are offered in the place of definitions. When the shifting sands of time encroach, the faithful are always safe in planting their feet firmly on the solid rock of the timeless Faith. (page 398)

The study of political philosophy has always revolved around such questions as “Why should I obey the law?” “What is a citizen and how should he or she be educated?” “Who is a lawgiver?” “What is the relation between freedom and authority?” “How should politics and theology be related?” and perhaps a few of others.

As Smith studied “wealthy” societies, he learned they all had certain elements in common: citizens possessed individual liberties, limited government, open markets, and swift judicial systems.

The citizens of this country are given idiotic escapism in order to prevent them asking deeper questions.

The continuous transformation of a school into an elite Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) institution prepares students to become 21st century-ready. STEM embeds college-, career-, and citizen-ready skills into the curriculum. For our nation, we must succeed. Yet we cannot step into this new world without inspiration and commitment. So we cobble together ideas and actions to create our own recipe for success.

Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who’d had a hand in this tragic event. We had put on the armour of God, and there was no undoing what we had done. My faith, my belief in myself as a good citizen, everything I had thought was truth was scattered to the wind, and no one on this earth could put that to rights. Things weren’t as simple as living and dying. I understood that now.

We said earlier that what Westerners call corruption was to ordinary Burundians normal. True, but there are borders – lines that can be redrawn, but which denote real differences most everyone recognizes.5 Increasingly, the types of abuse of power that many politicians and administrators engaged in went beyond what could be justified or recognized by ordinary Burundians: ‘people perceive that forms of corruption no longer rooted in a moral economy of kinship are on the rise’ (Smith 2007). Showing great deference to people of authority is a traditional norm, indeed, and it is not difficult for a Burundian farmer to enact these behaviors – the shuffling, the downcast eyes, the left hand on top of the right arm – when asking for services she would legally deserve to access as a citizen, but when that same administrator abuses his power to capture lands of her family, he has gone beyond what is mutually legitimate, and they both know it. When teachers require sex with female students to let them pass, or when employers do the same to hire, this not only runs counter to the modesty Burundians pride themselves on; it is also perceived as a clear abuse of power.

But when it is presented as the foundation on which civil government reposes, though it may satisfy a citizen, it ought not at all to satisfy a Christian. The truth is, there is no such "social compact." The idea is only a fancy. Human government is not founded on any such "social compact" at all. It either exists by force, or it is founded on the will of God, in every case. Its just foundation is the will of God. And when men are submitting to human government, they are not to consider themselves as merely carrying out the implied conditions of a "social compact;" but their duty is, to consider themselves as submitting to an ordinance of their God and Maker. Human

Swallows   The peppered sky chimes in the key of swallows. Arcing northward from Central America, dual citizens of the torn world, though native to the unity, wonderful yet I find myself dispossessed of wonder. Like the birds, we all sleep under bridges of one kind or another. When the core competency of a culture is strategic judgmentalism many things go rancid into the mean and meaningless. The routines set in, the procedures, the long, slow death-drone of sameness. The occasional lone hawk feathers up a bit of mild novelty here and there, then gets wing-clipped by celebritism, homeless in a cage. If my faith was real, I would abandon my luxurious pursuit of a mythopoetic identity and go fetch water for the dying. We are each and all the dispossessed if one child stands at our gates unwelcome.

In 1900, imperial Germany safeguarded the rule of law and ensured the protection of its citizens, including Jews. Four decades later, the Third Reich attempted to annihilate the Jews and, as an occupying power in the Polish village of Jedwabne, encouraged violence. In this Hobbesian perspective, the state remains the only barrier between us and the hatchets of our neighbors, and, as a corollary, in 1900 only the Prussian army saved the Jews of Konitz from the clubs and axes of “ordinary Germans.

The disposition of universal discussion—the unending, discursive process of public altercation which was so admired, and so execrated, for much of the eighteenth century—was concerned, often, with economic policy. “From the scholastic disputes of theologians to matters of trade,” d’Alembert wrote, “everything has been discussed and analyzed, or at least mentioned.”55 For Edmund Burke, “it has been the misfortune (not as these gentlemen think it, the glory) of this age, that everything is to be discussed”; the age was one of “oeconomists, and calculators.”56 Taxes and regulations, guilds and excise inspections, were a principal preoccupation, together with religion, of enlightened opinion. Adam Smith’s most serious offense, for his Edinburgh contemporary the Reverend Alexander Carlyle, consisted in “introducing that unrestrained and universal commerce, which propagates opinions as well as commodities.”57 The commerce in opinions was itself, in large part, a commerce in opinions about commerce, or about commercial policy. The “focal point of enlightenment,” Kant says in What is Enlightenment?—the subject to be disputed, in the imperative to “argue as much as you like and about whatever you like”—consists in matters of religion. But economic matters are also a subject of enlightened discussion in Kant’s description; the tax official says, “‘Don’t argue, pay!’” and the cosmopolitan citizen “publicly voices his thoughts on the impropriety or even injustice of such fiscal measures.”58

place-based education requires potentially all mature citizens to take responsibility for inducting children and youth into the obligations and possibilities of adulthood.

Called the Academy for Citizens of Tomorrow (ACT) Program, it focuses on giving young people the opportunity to become leaders both in their school and in the broader community.

There was a reason for Atlanta. While people were dying by the hundreds, the federal government forced these brave rescuers to take a course in sexual harassment prior to being deployed. There is no question the out-of-town rescuers’ work environment in New Orleans was hostile. But it had nothing to do with sexual harassment. The hostile environment was due to flood, fire, sewage, snakes, lack of electricity, armed looters (which included a few members of the New Orleans police department), and dozens of other problems and challenges. The pathetic requirement to sit through a sexual harassment course was an insult to the brave men and women who volunteered to help their fellow citizens in need.

Meanwhile, the residents of the 138,000 damaged buildings continued to swelter and suffer. Local Miamians, as well as citizens from Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, attempted to drive bottled water, food, clothes, and other supplies into the stricken area. They were successful during the first few hours; but they were shut down by the end of the first day. The same bureaucrats who were giving mixed signals to Washington seemed to prefer organized suffering to disorganized relief.

The next few days live in infamy as every level of government screwed up beyond belief. The city of New Orleans filled with water. Citizens who survived the hurricane died, by the hundreds, in the post-storm flood. People were stranded at the Superdome and convention center, the latter of which wasn’t even supposed to be a shelter.

the Apology and the Crito represent a tension—in fact a conflict—between two more or less permanent and irreconcilable moral codes. The one represented by Socrates regards reason—the sovereign reason of the individual—as the highest authority. It is precisely the philosopher’s reliance on his or her own reason that frees him or her from the dangerous authority of the state and safeguards the individual from complicity in the injustice and evil that are a necessary part of political life. The other moral code is represented by the speech of the Laws in the Crito, where it is the law or nomos of the community—its oldest and deepest customs and institutions—that are obligatory. The one point of view takes the philosophic life, the examined life, to be the life most worth living; the other takes the political life, the life of the citizen engaged in the business of deliberating, legislating, making war and peace as the highest calling. These two constitute fundamentally irreconcilable alternatives, two different callings, and any attempt to reconcile or synthesize the two can only lead to doing an injustice to each.

The smuggler; a person who, though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so. —Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

A "right" to false worship is as nonsensical as asserting a "right" to theft. In the moral law, freedom and license are distinct. In the usage of English, "may" and "can" are distinct. In conscience, grace received and grace refused are distinct. No one is "free" to reject God anymore than one is "free" to commit grand theft auto - ask souls in hell or prisoners in the penitentiary if their acts manifest freedom. The power to do is not the same as permission to do - Satan rebelled in fact and, by definition, in disobedience; he did not assert his freedom, but reduced his freedom to nothing. The citizen committing a crime, the soul committing a sin, the angels committing rebellion, forfeit their freedom. (page 396)

He could not do everything, he decided, and take all the troubles of the world on his shoulders. Who could? It was not that he was an uninvolved and irresponsible citizen, one of those who do not care about plastic bags. He was as careful as anyone to keep his ecological footprint as small as possible—apart from the Saab, of course, which ran on fossil fuel rather than electricity. If you took the Saab out of the equation, though, Ulf could hold his head high in the company of conservationists,

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami

I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs… In this world there is only incremental progress… It might look small to those with apocalyptic perspectives, but to she who not so long ago could not vote, or drink from the same water fountain as her fellow citizens, or marry the person she chose, or live in a certain neighborhood, such incremental change feels enormous… We will never be perfect: that is our limitation. But we can have, and have had, moments in which we can take genuine pride… Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.

I thought about how Juneteenth is a holiday that inspires so much celebration, born from circumstances imbued with so much tragedy. Enslavers in Texas, and across the South, attempted to keep Black people in bondage for months, and theoretically years, after their freedom had been granted. Juneteenth, then, is both a day to solemnly remember what this country has done to Black Americans and a day to celebrate all that Black Americans have overcome. It is a reminder that each day this country must consciously make a decision to move toward freedom for all of its citizens, and that this is something that must be done proactively; it will not happen on its own. The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting.

If the school represents the free competition of all producers as the most effectual means for promoting the prosperity of the human race, it is quite right from the point of view which it assumes. On the hypothesis of a universal union, every restriction on the honest exchange of goods between various countries seems unreasonable and injurious. But so long as other nations subordinate the interests of the human race as a whole to their national interests, it is folly to speak of free competition among the individuals of various nations! The arguments of the school in favour of free competition are thus only applicable to the exchange between those who belong to one and the same nation. Every great nation, therefore, must endeavour to form an aggregate within itself, which will enter into commercial intercourse with other similar ageregates so far only as that intercourse is suitable to the interests of its own special community. These interests of the community are, however, infinitely different from the private interests of all the separate individuals of the nation, if each individual is to be regarded as existing for himself alone and not in the character of a member of the national community, if we regard (as Smith and Say do) individuals as mere producers and consumers, not citizens of states or members of nations; for as such, mere individuals do not concern themselves for the prosperity of future generations — they deem it foolish to make certain and present sacrifices in order to endeavour to obtain a benefit which is as yet uncertain and lying in the vast field of the future (if even it possess any value at all); they care but little for the continuance of the nation — they would expose the ships of their merchants to become the prey of every bold pirate — they trouble themselves but little about the power, the honour, or the glory of the nation, at the most they can persuade themselves io make some material sacrifices for the education of their children, and to give them the opportunity of learning a trade, provided always that after the lapse of a few years the learners are placed in a position to earn to earn their own bread.

Antidemocratic and xenophobic movements have flourished in America since the Native American party of 1845 and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s. In the crisis-ridden 1930s, as in other democracies, derivative fascist movements were conspicuous in the United States: the Protestant evangelist Gerald B. Winrod’s openly pro-Hitler Defenders of the Christian Faith with their Black Legion; William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (the initials “SS” were intentional); the veteran-based Khaki Shirts (whose leader, one Art J. Smith, vanished after a heckler was killed at one of his rallies); and a host of others. Movements with an exotic foreign look won few followers, however. George Lincoln Rockwell, flamboyant head of the American Nazi Party from 1959 until his assassination by a disgruntled follower in 1967, seemed even more “un-American” after the great anti-Nazi war. Much more dangerous are movements that employ authentically American themes in ways that resemble fascism functionally. The Klan revived in the 1920s, took on virulent anti-Semitism, and spread to cities and the Middle West. In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin gathered a radio audience estimated at forty million around an anticommunist, anti–Wall Street, pro–soft money, and—after 1938—anti-Semitic message broadcast from his church in the outskirts of Detroit. For a moment in early 1936 it looked as if his Union Party and its presidential candidate, North Dakota congressman William Lemke, might overwhelm Roosevelt. Today a “politics of resentment” rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same “internal enemies” once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights. Of course the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream. I half expected to see emerge after 1968 a movement of national reunification, regeneration, and purification directed against hirsute antiwar protesters, black radicals, and “degenerate” artists. I thought that some of the Vietnam veterans might form analogs to the Freikorps of 1919 Germany or the Italian Arditi, and attack the youths whose demonstrations on the steps of the Pentagon had “stabbed them in the back.” Fortunately I was wrong (so far). Since September 11, 2001, however, civil liberties have been curtailed to popular acclaim in a patriotic war upon terrorists. The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy. Around such reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.

But in this era of concentrated wealth, severe inequality, and rigged rules we have a master narrative that power is inherently evil. That’s why the civic myths of this age are dark political melodramas like House of Cards and grim fantasies like Game of Thrones in which nice guys finish headless and the only winners are those who lie, cheat, and kill. We’re not in The West Wing anymore, folks. Mr. Smith died in Washington.

Thus he recognizes the limits of Christian enthusiasm for nationalist idolatry, including the habit of referring to soldiers’ deaths as “the ultimate sacrifice.” And he notes that “when nations and governments have exceeded their God-ordained boundaries by asking citizens for their ultimate loyalties, they have often borrowed religious language.

In this respect, I think it is important to own up to the fact that perhaps some of our worship habits are a missed opportunity; that we fail to draw on the formative riches of the tradition and thereby shut down channels for the Spirit’s work. I think we need to be honest that Christians in North America (and elsewhere) have perhaps developed some bad habits in this regard. We may have construed worship as a primarily didactic, cognitive affair and thus organized it around a message that fails to reach our embodied hearts, and thus fails to touch our desire. Or we may have construed worship as a refueling event—a chance primarily to get what I “need” to make it through the week (perhaps with a top-up on Wednesday night), with the result that worship is more about me than about God, more about individual fulfillment than about the constitution of a people. Or we may have reduced gathered worship to evangelism and outreach, pushing us to drop some of the stranger elements of liturgy in order to be relevant and accessible. In all these cases, we’ll notice that some key elements of the church’s liturgical tradition drop out. Key historical practices are left behind. While we might be inclined to think of this as a way to update worship and make it contemporary, my concern is that in the process we lose key aspects of formation and discipleship. In particular, we lose precisely those worship practices that function as counter-formations to the liturgies of the mall, the stadium, and the frat house. We also lose a sense that worship is the “work of the people”—that the “work of praise” is something we can only do as a people who are an eschatological foretaste of the coming kingdom of God. In short, we lose the sense in which Christian worship is also political: it marks us out as and trains us to be a peculiar people who are citizens of another city and subjects of a coming King.

Pledging allegiance in the Creed is a political act—a reminder that we are citizens of a coming kingdom, curtailing our temptations to overidentify with any configuration of the earthly city.

Andrea Smith explains that “the pro-life versus pro-choice paradigm reifies and masks the structures of white supremacy and capitalism that undergird the reproductive choices that women make.” As Smith and other activists and scholars detail, the language of choice presents women more as consumers than citizens, opening the door for some women to be cast as bad decision makers and for some choices to be deemed bad or inappropriate. Moreover, the language of choice fails to take into account how different women have different access to different choices; it removes from analysis the conditions under which women and families make decisions about reproduction.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-- The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as "Communists" or "Fascists" by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.

Surely it is clear that this nation will continue to suffer so long as it is governed by the present ineffective Democratic administration. "THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF CALUMNY" Yet to displace it with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation. The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny--Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. I doubt if the Republican party could do so, simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory. I do not want to see the Republican party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system. As members of the minority party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

The ‘nanny state’ is a phrase now used exclusively to describe mostly good and important attempts to prioritise citizen welfare over corporate greed; and ‘classical liberal’ now has nothing to do with Thomas Hobbes or Adam Smith. It’s just a fancy phrase that kids who grew up without ever learning how to share use to describe themselves.

heifer for a joke. The heifer bucked and Autie was thrown to the ground, receiving a bad cut on his forehead.) Lydia wanted Autie to come to Monroe to live with her, help David in his draying business and on the farm, and attend school. Maria agreed—she had more than enough children to look after and Monroe’s schools were thought to be superior to those of New Rumley.16 So Autie left home. Monroe had a population of 3,500 in 1849, equal parts French, English, and German. The second oldest town in southern Michigan, it had pretensions of sophistication. There was an established class, a group of leading citizens who owned or controlled the community’s economic life and liked to think of itself as composing an elect society. In Monroe, in short, Autie encountered snobbery for the first time. He saw it from the underside, too, for the Reeds were not members of the better classes. A retired Army officer with aristocratic pretensions, Major Joseph R. Smith, dismissed the Reeds with a

I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs.

Worship isn’t political only to the extent that it can be marshaled and invoked in contemporary partisan debates; it is always already political insofar as liturgy is the rite of citizens of the heavenly city.

As the departing president well understood, in this world there is only incremental progress. Only the willfully blind can ignore that the history of human existence is simultaneously the history of pain: of brutality, murder, mass extinction, every form of venality and cyclical horror. No land is free of it; no people are without their bloodstain; no tribe entirely innocent. But there is still this redeeming matter of incremental progress. It might look small to those with apocalyptic perspectives, but to she who not so long ago could not vote, or drink from the same water fountain as her fellow citizens, or marry the person she chose, or live in a certain neighborhood, such incremental change feels enormous.

Just as functions within computer science, ecosystems must become first-class citizens in biology. First-class functions are not merely sequences of steps, but genuine entities, which can be passed as arguments to and from other functions in the same manner as other data types. Languages that support this concept have a fundamentally greater expressive power than those that relegate functions to the status of 'second-class citizens' relative to first-class 'data' objects. Biology needs an analogous expressive power in order to refer properly to the role of ecosystems as carriers of fundamental patterns, and as entities parallel to and in some ways superseding organisms.

The people who ask me about the “failure of multiculturalism” mean to suggest that not only has a political ideology failed but that human beings themselves have changed and are now fundamentally incapable of living peacefully together despite their many differences. In this argument it is the writer who is meant to be the naive child, but I maintain that people who believe in fundamental and irreversible changes in human nature are themselves ahistorical and naive. 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.

We recall that for Hutcheson, human happiness had been about personal liberty, the capacity to live one’s life as one saw fit without harming others. For Kames, it had been about owning property, which gave us our sense of “propriety” and identity as human beings. Now Smith put the two together. By entering and competing in the great interactive dynamic network of modern society, at once impersonal but also indispensable to happiness, we become fully free and human. Independence in this sense becomes the hallmark of modern society, just as dependence on others or “servility” becomes the hallmark of primitive societies and institutions. “Nobody but a beggar,” Smith admonished, “chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.” Yet this has been the essential fate of the vast majority of humankind through most of history, as slaves toiling for their masters, as peasants handing over the harvest to their feudal lords, or as members of the tribe or clan dependent on their chieftains’ command for life or death—hapless creatures whose quality of life rests entirely on whether their chief is “gentle Lochiel” or a brute like Coll MacDonnell. Capitalism breaks that cycle, and offers the conditions under which we forge our own happiness: independence, material affluence, and cooperation with others. Today, more than two hundred years later, three great myths still surround Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations.

Through capitalism we gain, but we also lose. The loss, Smith felt, was felt most among the lowest classes—his particular example was employees in a pin factory—whose cramped place in the chain of production leaves no room for the enlargement of the mind and spirit, which the freedom of commercial society should open up. Smith in fact defined the problem of the “assembly line” mentality of factory workers almost two decades before the Industrial Revolution got fully under way—the problem that Karl Marx and his followers would call alienation. It was especially worrisome to Smith, because “in free countries, where the safety of government depends very much upon the favourable judgement which the people may form of its conduct,” a mass of ignorant, culturally degraded citizens easily becomes an immense drag on the system. They become easy prey to demagogues and applaud every attempt to undermine the foundations of that “natural liberty” which they have enjoyed in the first place.

Our citizens must act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualifications; not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, native Americans—but as Americans pure and simple.28 We must have only one language here, he said, “the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and Second Inaugural, and of Washington’s farewell address.

The reason it looked simple,” Smith later boasted, “was that professionals were doing it.” 2 TRAITOR’S HOUSE Seoul Twenty miles to the northeast, the citizens of Seoul waited anxiously, bracing themselves for the coming Americans.

Here is where Taylor locates the most significant shift in the post-’60s West: while ideals of tolerance have always been present in the modern social imaginary, in earlier forms (Locke, the early American republic, etc.) this value was contained and surrounded by other values that were a scaffolding of formation (e.g., the citizen ethic; p. 484). What erodes in the last half century is precisely these limits on individual fulfillment (p. 485). The Place of the Sacred in Our Secular Age What is the “imagined place of the sacred” in a society governed by expressivist individualism (p. 486)? Taylor has already hinted that such a society seems to forge its own “festive” rendition of the sacred — “moments of fusion in a common action/feeling, which both wrench us out of the everyday, and seem to put us in touch with something exceptional, beyond ourselves.

AS A CITIZEN. [1 Pet. 2:13–17] Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

Mythomania—or plain old lying—infiltrated churches, schools, hair salons, corporate boardrooms, courtrooms, and nightclubs. Smith & Wesson received seven hundred write-in votes in Topeka’s mayoral race. The Library of Congress was under pressure to ban its copy of the Gutenberg Bible for flaunting the word fornicate and the first two syllables of the word sodomy. Speechwriters jumped aboard. Nannies and city councilmen in Prescott, Arizona, denounced the devil’s codex implanted in the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution; NASA was burning down forests in Idaho; the Census Bureau was refusing to count people with blue eyes; Grover Cleveland’s skull was buried under the Watergate complex; vigilantes roamed the nighttime streets of Fargo in search of Democrats and Kenyans; Columbine was a CIA operation; Pearl Harbor never happened; corporations were people; Amazon was a distinguished citizen. In Fulda, where the Truth Tellers were led by Dink O’Neill, his brother Chub, and Chamber of Commerce President Earl Fenstermacher, the burdens of seeding fake unfake news kept them hopping through the hot days of September 2019. Boyd Halverson’s contributions were sorely missed. “Boyd had a knack for it,” Chub told Earl after their bimonthly Kiwanis brunch. “I don’t know how we’ll replace him.

This was not just any murder trial. It had all the elements of a crime novel—a high-society killing, a former college football star accused of murdering one of Nashville’s most prominent citizens, and a multi-million- dollar business hanging in the balance. Depending on the outcome of the trial, one of two families would own Capitol Chevrolet Company. The other would lose it forever. The stakes couldn’t have been higher.