Isaac Laquedem

Isaac's reading for Labor Day 2012

Carrying on our tradition of remembering Grandmother Laquedem, whose lifelong democratic socialist (sometimes lower case, sometimes with capitals) support of the working classes ended only with her death on Labor Day itself many years ago, we commemorate the day with a suitable reading.  Today's reading comes from the Labor Day speech of Woodrow Wilson, then the Governor of New Jersey and a candidate for the presidency, on September 2, 1912.

Very well then, when I speak to you today, I want you to regard me as a man who is talking business. I want in the first place to say that I shall be scrupulous to be fair to those with whom I am in opposition. Because there is a great deal to be said for the programs of hopeful men who intend to do things even if they haven’t struck upon the right way to do them. And we ought not to divorce ourselves in sympathy with men who want the right thing because we do not think they have found the way to do them.

I want to speak upon this occasion, of course, on the interests of the workingman, of the wage earner, not because I regard the wage earners of this country as a special class, for they are not. After you have made a catalogue of the wage earners of this country, how many of us are left? The wage earners of this country, in the broad sense, constitute the country. And the most fatal thing that we can do in politics is to imagine that we belong to a special class, and that we have an interest which isn’t the interest of the whole community. Half of the difficulties, half of the injustices of our politics have been due to the fact that men regarded themselves as having separate interests which they must serve even though other men were done a great disservice by their promoting them.

We are not afraid of those who pursue legitimate pursuits provided they link those pursuits in at every turn with the interest of the community as a whole; and no man can conduct a legitimate business, if he conducts it in the interest of a single class.

Our usual jovial support of management and the capitalist classes will return tomorrow.

Millard Fillmore on foreign policy

To mark the 212th anniversary of the birth of Millard Fillmore, what better than to revisit his policies?  Here is a bit from his second State of the Union address, in which President Fillmore describes his view of American foreign policy:

Our true mission is not to propagate our opinions or impose upon other countries our form of government by artifice or force, but to teach by example and show by our success, moderation, and justice the blessings of self-government and the advantages of free institutions. Let every people choose for itself and make and alter its political institutions to suit its own condition and convenience.

Our addiction to changing the forms of government of other nations hasn't, on the whole, worked out very well.  We've provided some excellent training to our military, but we haven't been exemplifying "success, moderation, and justice."

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

The defining question for the current generation

Where were you when you heard that he had died?

In my case, I had just returned to work from making some purchases at the Apple store.

The Supreme Court misjudged Richard Inukai (1943-2011) before he was born

Richard Inukai didn't talk much about his experiences in the two years he spent in a federal prison, mainly because he didn't remember much about those two years, for they started in 1943 when he was born in Minidoka, Idaho.  Tule Lake, California.  His parents, residents of Hood River, were among the tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese descent uprooted when they were ordered by the federal government in 1942 to leave their homes in Washington, Oregon, and California and spend the rest of World War II in confinement.  Tule Lake was not called a prison, of course; its official name was the unassuming "Tule Lake War Relocation Center," a pleasant euphemism that made no difference to the men, women, and children confined there.  The Supreme Court, in the Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases, had held that the constitution did not prohibit imposing special curfews on, and then relocating and imprisoning, United States citizens in wartime, including Richard Inukai and other newborns, strictly because of their race.

After the war his parents made their way back to Oregon, and then to Portland, where his father, Tom Inukai, operated a service station.  Richard Inukai, who died the morning of July 3, absorbed his father's work ethic -- Tom Inukai often worked seven days a week -- but after serving four years in the Marine Corps Reserve he went into a different part of the car business, first in the Ron Tonkin organization, where he rose to be the manager of Ron Tonkin Gran Turismo, then in the early 1970s as the operator of a used-car lot on 82nd Avenue, and later in that decade as the owner of Dick's Country Dodge in Hillsboro.  Over the years he added Ford, Chrysler, and Jeep franchises, also in Hillsboro, operating under the common name of Dick's Auto Group.

On the rare occasions that Mr. Inukai talked about the war years, he sometimes showed his anger, not for himself but for the other children locked in the camps.  That anger may have led him to become a generous contributor to the Boys and Girls Clubs, and to lead the funding of the near-tripling of the Hillsboro club, now named the Inukai Family Club.  It's not named after him, at least not exactly; and I suspect that in his own mind he thought of it as being named after his parents, so that they could, by proxy, give to the children of Hillsboro something that the United States government kept them from giving to their own.

A day to celebrate and revive Liberty

A.P. Herbert, whose works adorn our more-or-less annual celebration of Income Tax Day, provides a reading for our friends in the District to consider as they take on their legislative duties.  This is a portion of one of Herbert's aptly-titled "Misleading Cases in the Common Law," headed "In Re MacAlister," and subtitled "What is the Liberal Party?"   An elderly woman has died and left one million pounds to "the Liberal Party," and thirteen different political parties each assert that they are the one true Liberal Party.  The judge's efforts to forge a compromise fail, and, as he says, "it says much for the sincerity with which these colleagues detest each other that, rather than share a common bank-balance, they would cheerfully continue with thirteen independent overdrafts."  So Mr. Justice Tooth must decide which one of the thirteen Liberal Parties is the Liberal Party, which he does by looking at the principles for which they stand.  The rest is quoted from the story, with some light abridgment:

I have therefore turned my attention in another direction, which was suggested by one of the plaintiffs, a Mr. Haddock of Hammersmith, who confesses frankly that the Liberal Party which he represents is a party of one, but insists nevertheless that it is the only Liberal Party.  It has struck me as odd that no one of the distinguished Liberals concerned in this case has used the word Liberty, and had it not been for the obscure Mr. Haddock the subject might never have entered my head.  But Mr. Haddock has argued with some force that there must at one time have been some shadowy connexion between the Liberal Party and the idea of Liberty.  Now in cross-examination, the witnesses Asquith, George, Grey, Simon, Runciman, and indeed nearly all the plaintiffs, have confessed that they have been guilty from time to time of legislation, or proposals for legislation, of which the main purpose was to make people do something which they did not wish to do, or prevent people from doing something which they did wish to do.  Few of them could point to an item in their legislative programmes which had any other purpose, and, with the single exception of Mr. Haddock, they have no legislation to suggest of which the purpose is to allow people to do something which they cannot do already.  On the contrary, it appears, they are as anxious as any other party in Parliament to make rules and regulations for the eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing of the British citizen.  On these grounds, therefore, Mr. Haddock has argued that these plaintiffs have not the idea of liberty in the forefront of their political equipment, and do not therefore deserve the name of Liberal.  Mr. Haddock's own programme is simple: (a) to propose no legislation unless its purpose is to allow people to do what they like, and (b) to support no legislation whose purpose is to stop people from doing what they like.

Here and there, he admitted, good cause being shown, he is prepared to compromise; but that, prima facie, is his foundation and beginning.  For example, the first measures which he intends to introduce are a Bill to repeal the Marriage Act of 1886, by which a wedding may not take place after three o'clock in the afternoon, a Bill to allow the sale of Bodily Refreshments at any Hour at which Any One is Willing to Sell Them; a Bill for the Institution of the Death Penalty for Police Officers who Enter Respectable Clubs Disguised in Evening Dress, Bills to amend the laws relating to Divorce, Lotteries and Gaming, Sunday Toil and Entertainment, and other beneficent measures whose purpose is neither to improve, uplift, enrich, nor reform the British subject, but to increase, by however little, his liberty and contentment.

Millard Fillmore offers some advice on foreign policy

Today's revelry at Laquedem Manor celebrates in part the accession of Millard Fillmore to the presidency, which occurred 160 years ago to the day when Zachary Taylor died suddenly.  Like the other presidents of his time, Fillmore temporized on the slavery question, advocating the Compromise of 1850 but enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law.  In other respects he was an able administrator and a careful steward.

The constitution assigns the president the task of reporting to Congress, from time to time, on the state of the union.  This has developed into an annual event at which the press focuses less on what the president says and more on whom he invites to attend and introduce.  Not so in the 1850s.  Fillmore's speeches to Congress on the state of the union are filled with facts, data, and recommendations.  For example, in his first state-of-the-union speech, President Fillmore described the nation's negotiations with Great Britain, Mexico, Chile, Hawaii, Peru, Mexico, and Portugal.  He then reported on the paydown of the national debt, the budget surplus, postage rates, revenues from tariffs on imports, the census, and land titles in the west, recommended that Congress establish the Department of Agriculture and build a home for disabled veterans, and advocated making improvements to navigation on rivers and lakes as well as at the ocean.

Fillmore elegantly expressed his views on foreign wars:

Hence it becomes an imperative duty not to interfere in the government or internal policy of other nations; and although we may sympathize with the unfortunate or the oppressed everywhere in their struggles for freedom, our principles forbid us from taking any part in such foreign contests. We make no wars to promote or to prevent successions to thrones, to maintain any theory of a balance of power, or to suppress the actual government which any country chooses to establish for itself. We instigate no revolutions * * *. We should act toward other nations as we wish them to act toward us, and justice and conscience should form the rule of conduct between governments, instead of mere power, self interest, or the desire of aggrandizement. To maintain a strict neutrality in foreign wars, to cultivate friendly relations, to reciprocate every noble and generous act, and to perform punctually and scrupulously every treaty obligation--these are the duties which we owe to other states, and by the performance of which we best entitle ourselves to like treatment from them; or, if that, in any case, be refused, we can enforce our own rights with justice and a clear conscience. 

It was a good policy then.  It's a good policy now.

Three songs of America, part 3: Lift Every Voice and Sing

I ended Wednesday's post with a teaser: other than its treacherous melody, what is the fault or omission in The Star-Spangled Banner?  It's this.  Although we did not adopt it as our national anthem until 1931, Francis Scott Key wrote his stirring words about "the land of the free" in 1814, when slavery was yet part of our nation.  Key owned slaves himself, black people who were in the land of the free but not free themselves.  Key even alluded to slaves, without irony, in the third verse, which I'll quote in its entirety:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Who are the "hirelings and slaves" of Key's verse?  According to Robin Blackburn, a British socialist historian, the British army included American ex-slaves whom the British had freed, and who wanted to do battle with the nation that had enslaved them.  Key's verses about "the land of the free" ignored the unfree in America, and mocked those that sought the same freedoms that Key himself enjoyed.

This background brings me to the third patriotic song that every American should know.  It's called Lift Every Voice and Sing.  James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) wrote the words in 1899 and his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954) set it to music in 1905.  It begins with these three lines:

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Unlike the invocation of immediate peril in La Marseillaise, or the florid description of the battle in The Star-Spangled Banner, James Johnson's verse alludes only subtly to the slavery era:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

The college classmate from whom I first heard the song many years ago said it was the black national anthem, and in fact the NAACP had so designated it in 1919.  As an anthem it's a remarkable statement of hope.  It's nearly as remarkable for what it doesn't say: it doesn't wish destruction on anyone, and it doesn't, unlike Key's song, celebrate freedoms that more than half of Key's compatriots couldn't enjoy.

Three songs of America, part 2: The Star-Spangled Banner

Despite its other fine musical and lyrical qualities, Yankee Doodle, about which I wrote on Monday, didn't have the dignity of a national anthem.  This is not to say that the anthems of other nations are uniformly fine pieces of work; for example, Great Britain's anthem, God Save the King (or Queen), started life in 1745 as a tribute to King George II.  Its first verse began "God save great George, our King / Long live our noble king / God save the King."

The song got more lively in the second verse:

O Lord our God, arise
Scatter his enemies
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On him our hope we fix,
O save us all.

The British were less sanguinary than the French, who in 1795 adopted La Marseillaise as their anthem.  It includes this fierce bit:

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces feroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Egorger vos fils, vos compagnes!

Which translates approximately to this:

Do you hear these ferocious soldiers
Roaring in the forests?
They're coming almost up to arms' reach
To cut the throats of your sons and wives!

Americans didn't go in for singing pious hopes for our leaders, nor (most of the time) for singing about how fierce and deadly the enemy was.  In fact, our country didn't adopt a national anthem until 1931, when Congress selected The Star-Spangled Banner over the other contenders.  Francis Scott Key had written it in 1814 while watching the British attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812.  The song's first verse doesn't express pious hopes for the president, nor does it threaten citizens with slaughter, nor does it boast about America.  Rather, and very unusually for national anthems, it simply asks a question: "Last night at sunset, our flag was flying over the ramparts [of Fort McHenry in Baltimore].  The sun is about to rise.  Can you see it flying yet?"   The second verse says "yes, it is still flying."

Key's third verse is a little more in the French model, beginning with these lines:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

He returns to modest Anglophilia in the fourth and final verse, which says approximately, "Praise God for making us a nation and saving us this time; we will conquer when our cause is just. Let us hope it is always so as long as our flag shall fly."  All four verses end with the anthem's most famous line, "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."  Again, it's an unusual anthem, because it mostly doesn't brag, exhort, pray, or threaten, but rather asks if our flag is still flying and rejoices that it is.

Where Key slipped up was in his choice of music.  He wrote the verses to be sung to the tune of a British song called To Anacreon in Heaven, the club song of the Anacreontic Society.  It's replete with classical references and double entendres.  It's also nearly unsingable: it stretches over an octave-and-a-half and has one leap of more than an octave.  It has another fault, or perhaps an omission, which later writers have tried to solve, as I'll discuss in my third and concluding post on this subject.

Three songs of America, part 1: Yankee Doodle

Independence Day brings to mind three songs of American history, first and most prominently Yankee Doodle of the Revolutionary War.  The song itself, or at least snippets of it, date back (Wikipedia tells us) to 20 or more years before the Revolution.  The term "Yankee doodle" came into the song during the war itself, first as a pejorative from the British -- "doodle" is said to come from the German word "dudel," meaning "fool" or "simpleton" -- and so a "Yankee doodle" was a foolish colonist.  Shortly into the war itself, the American soldiers took the British insult and reveled in it, proudly singing about the Yankee doodles who did not have the fine uniforms and muskets of their opponents, but were still going to win their independence. 

Like God Save the King (the British anthem that it displaced), Yankee Doodle is easy to sing, with a melody that spans less than an octave and has no big leaps up in pitch.  Unlike the British anthem, Yankee Doodle has no pretensions to dignity.  It's very much a song of the people, without any fixed order to the verses after the first.

I learned three verses of Yankee Doodle as a child, the ones beginning "Yankee Doodle came to town," "Father and I went down to camp," and "There was Captain Washington."  Then a few years ago, the Laquedemitasse and his classmates sang three more verses I'd never heard.  This one delighted me:

There I saw a thousand men
As rich as Squire David
And what they wasted every day
I wish it could be save-ed.

As with the other verses, the "there" is the camp of the Revolutionary Army.  Who Squire David was, I do not know, but his name lives on in what I think is the first bit of American song to protest waste in government spending.