A House Divided against itself cannot Stand

        Another interesting bit of insight from the Hillsdale College Constitution class:  I never understood the full implications of President Lincolns famous comment in the Lincoln./Douglas debate: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  I always thought he was simply referring to the fact that the United States was a divided country, part slave holding and part free.  In fact he was referring to the logic of Douglas’ whole argument for slavery.

             The quote, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” alludes to the story in the book of Matthew.  Christ has cast out demons.  The Pharisees accuse him of doing the work of the devil.   “It is by the prince of demons that he drives out demons.”  When Jesus says “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he shows how illogical the Pharisees’ accusations is.  Satan’s demons cannot be expelled with Satan’s aid unless Satan is willing to undermine his own empire. 

          The use of the quote suggests that Lincoln thought Douglas’ arguments equally illogical.  Douglas was arguing for the right of territories to decide to be slave or free, basing his argument of the principle self-government, “the birthright of free men resting upon free thought and action.”  Establishing a state that allows the citizens to vote for tyranny, for aristocracy, for the rule of one class over the other is absurd.  It cannot stand. There are no foundational supports. Voting for tyranny on the pretense of loving liberty is the height of hypocrisy.

           The Hillsdale class is a real adventure.  The most important thing I learned is that the founders had the wisdom of humility.  They knew they were fallible and that all of us share the same propensity for evil, so they struggled mightily to create a government that would protect the rights of every man.

           In his farewell address Washington said, “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Get a Job

          A passerby asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the convention had created.  He responded, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.   Two interesting tidbits popped up this week giving evidence to the truth that we have not kept it very well.

        I like Mr. Biden because he so often tells the unvarnished truth.  At a fundraiser in Chicago he praised the accomplishments of Richard Daley admitting that Biden himself had never been interested in being a mayor “cause that’s a real job.  You have to produce….That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years.”  And then he was able to become vice-president, and he’s managed to live most of his adult life without doing “a real job.” 

             Then there is Orrin Hatch of Utah lambasting the Tea Party for their disrespect.  "These people are not conservatives. They're not Republicans," Hatch angrily responds. "They're radical libertarians and I'm doggone offended by it….I despise these people.”    Well, Mr. Hatch, we don’t despise you, but we are much offended by you.  For 36 years you have bent your spine into a pretzel allowing the federal government to become a bureaucratic behemoth with an insatiable appetite for money and power.

The founders expected that we would all be career politicians, deeply immersed in public service. They knew they had embarked on a great experiment and to make it work required an informed a vigilant populace.  We have not been vigilant.

              We have allowed politicians to create a climate that enabled them to make careers out of “public service.”  Our founders intended a citizen legislature where representatives would receive little pay, complete their constitutionally designated duties, and then go home and get a “real job.”

              Tea Party members simply want to bless their grandchildren with the great nation they were blessed with.  They too were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and deserve a government that respects “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.”

North Dakota Memories

          Our house on the Miller place was a good old house.  At the entry was a big porch that held, for one thing, the cream separator.  That was my job, running the separator.  There was a big kitchen-dining room, a living room and master bedroom on the ground floor, two more bedrooms and a large unfinished storage room on the second floor.  Mom was proud of her house, loved to polish the hardwood floors.  Everything always smelled fresh and clean, especially on Saturday night, because we’d all had our baths and crawled into freshly laundered bedding.  We all still remember how the house smelled when Mom took the frozen bedding from the line and hung them on the indoor clothesline to dry.  It’s one of the sweetest smells you can imagine. 

               In winter the house was a snug refuge, blanketed in deep drifts of snow.  In the summer it was surrounded by an ocean of wheat fields that undulated rhythmically in the wind.  But in the spring it stood bleak and forlorn, surrounded by a sea of mud.  And North Dakota mud is different, not the mud typical of the southwest, 50 per cent sand, but the alluvial mud of the prairie, 50 per cent glue; and when it’s as deep as it was in the spring, the slimy, shiny goop would ooze up around your boots creating suction around your foot making walking across the field a tedious chore.

               I had been playing with Ben Guessner one  day and shortly before sundown I struck out across the field toward home.  As I extracted each foot out of the ooze, twisting it just a little to release the suction, I thought of a silly thing my brother had done the winter before.  He would poke a stick a few inches into the snow and then pretend that a “Chinaman” was trying to pull it through the earth and pantomime a struggle to get it back.  He was cute, but I wasn’t convinced.

               Not then.  Now in the gathering dusk I thought of the slant-eyed Chinaman pulling at my feet and before long my imagination got away from me.  Finally, my terror complete, I stepped out of my boots and scrambled stumbling across the field, praying for Solveig.

               Now Solveig was a full year older than I and, it seemed, twenty years wiser.  She always rescued me, but when we returned to the field, we couldn’t find my boots and we lost one of hers in the bargain.  Now we had to face the music with Mamma, and that was especially difficult that night.  Dad hadn’t been home since early the day before and Mamma, Mamma was tense.  She didn’t need one more burden. 

When we told her about the boots her shoulders sagged a little more.  The muscles around her jaw tensed and she sighed as she reached for her coat and her boots and a lantern, and the three of us struck out across the field.  Before long we had located the boots, but while Mom was trying to extract one from the mud, a frog jumped out.  Surprised, Mom squealed, lost her balance and fell into the mud, laughing, lying in the mud, laughing, her bright eyes shining in the reflected moonlight.

I think that was the night we carried a bunch of frogs home and learned how when you lay them on the dining room table and tickle their bellies they croak every time. 

My mother made everything fun. She’d often say, as we were starting out on an adventure, “It’ll either be a time we’ll never forget, or a time we’ll always remember.”  We knew that we were in charge of our own happiness.  In every picture of her she’s always laughing and fooling around.   She turned every trial into possibilities.