Self-evident truths?

This nation may have been founded on a false assumption. Namely that certain truths are self-evident.

Recently a friend asserted that no truths are self-evident. My jury is out on that one, but I did counter that Jefferson and the founders begged to differ. Of course they famously proclaimed that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are “inalienable rights” and are clearly “self-evident” truths.

Could Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues have been wrong?

Frankly, it would seem so.

One of the problems with sanctifying historical text is that we stop reading it critically. When the body rests on its knees, the mind turns to mush.

Consider, Mitt Romney, hardly an equal creation. Mr. Romney was created unequal. Consider his “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” It would seem that one's creation is how one get a clear shot two Harvard degrees, how one’s spouse gets not one but two Cadillacs and one’s garage houses so many vehicles they are stacked in tiers by car elevators.

And just how many houses does Mr. Romney own in this time of rampant homelessness and foreclosures? The last Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, had so many houses he literally lost count.

Inequality is how a Mr. Romney and a Senator McCain (and, to be bi-partisan, a John Kerry and a JFK) have  excellent shots at becoming president in post-revolutionary America.

Indeed the “self-evident” truth we live with today is that all of us are NOT created equal and we are NOT endowed by our Creator (or by anyone else) with certain inalienable rights...among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

All you need to do is compare infant mortality in Sweden to infant mortality in Zimbabwe. Or compare the same statistics in Darien, Connecticut, with those in Yazoo City, Mississippi. And how does skin color correlate with imprisonment and the death penalty? How is the equality of genders doing in Saudi Arabia or dozens of other countries? It took nearly 150 years after Jefferson penned his words for women to win their struggle for the right to vote in this country.

Perhaps the founders, many of whom owned slaves, were being aspirational. If so, we have a long, long way to go to fulfill their aspirations. The government they instituted hardly treated slaves and Native-Americans as if they were “created equal.”

If you take a longer view, I suppose you could argue that we have made some progress, but of late our government has been backsliding badly. If you want to be created equally, try not to be created under the flight path of a US drone in Afghanistan, Somalia or Pakistan.

And, closer to home, the Supreme Court isn’t exactly treating us as equals under its Citizens’ United decision. Money, not people, rules our democracy.

So we need to turn to a real self-evident truth proclaimed by Mr. Jefferson and his revolutionary cohorts.

...whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

It’s time, folks.

On starting the day: Good faith or a dancer's lost limb?

I’ve often wondered about how I start my days. Today was pretty typical.

I put the water on for the coffee then retrieved the newspapers from the stoop. I’m an old-fashioned guy, but I could have easily clicked in to the computer. Later I did just that.

As usual, the headlines set the tone for my Wheaties and Grapenuts.

“Employers’ health care maze” read the Oregonian’s main headline.

Another read, ambiguously, “Vatican reveals its procedures for abuse.”

The front of the New York Times offered:

“Civilians Killed as U.S. Troops Hit Afghan Bus”

“Leg Lost, Dancer Is Caught Between Caregivers.”

All this before my first cup of coffee. Bitter stuff.

It took Thomas Jefferson to bring me around.

Today is Jefferson’s birthday, a matter of singular note in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. The Almanac’s extended entry quoted Jefferson, writing John Adams, on the very topic of how to start my day.

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus (“A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man”) and Thucydides (“Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured”), for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier."

As substitutes for The Times and The Oregonian, I’ve considered Marcus Aurelius and Lao Tzu, among others.

Imagine starting the day with one of these:

Here’s Aurelius: “Whenever you notice someone else going astray, immediately turn and examine how you yourself have gone astray” or “For each thing you do, stop and ask yourself if death is to be feared because it deprives you of this.”

Try Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: “Those who are of good faith I have faith in. Those who are lacking in good faith I also have faith in. In so doing I gain in good faith.” Or “Much speech leads inevitably to silence. Better to hold fast to the void.”

We can be grateful that Jefferson, born on this day in 1743, chose to live at great distance from “Leg Lost, Dancer Is Caught Between Caregivers.”

We should be equally grateful for following his path.

The Truest Story

In the silence of this morning’s Quaker meeting, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t be sitting in this spartan sanctuary if it weren’t for the literal version of the New Testament story.

I’ve always tried to see through that over-the-top story to the historical Jesus. The Jesus who didn’t walk on water and feed the multitude. The Jesus who wasn’t resurrected. (Thomas Jefferson set out to tell the unadorned story in his “Jefferson’s Bible,” which I highly recommend.)

But the historical Jesus, the mere human being, wouldn’t have had anywhere near the same impact as the mythological Christ. He would have been, well, just another historical figure, or, worse, he might have been utterly forgotten.

In short, the story as it has come to be told (for whatever reasons) — not the historical events — had delivered me to a Quaker Meeting House, just as it has shaped the actions of millions of others, Christian and non-Christian alike. One of those Christians was George Fox, the most influential and fervent of the early Quakers. Without his responding to the story, there would be no Quakers, no meeting house in Portland Oregon.

And without those, I would be home nursing my third cup of coffee and reading the Sunday New York Times.

Such is the power of one story among billions of stories.

All events become some kind of story, be it gossip or gospel. Because of the distortions of perspective, time and memory, those narratives become half truths and — should they survive — myth.

We are guided by distorted narratives of events — large and small.

That may sound like a bad thing. In many cases it is. But in many instances, the truth may simply be too hard to take. Think of the Jesus on the cross who is not resurrected. The tragedy cries out for Christ's resurrection. The story tellers provided it as a triumph and a powerful story that survived.

Limited human perception and self-serving selection are filters for a reason. Without our ability to exclude we would suffer overload and even tragedy. Today we might call it post-traumatic stress.

So our stories are heavily edited. And, like the Biblical story, they are blatantly embellished.

For that reason, our "back story" should be one of caution, even scepticism.

Still, stories, for all their fabrication, undeniably motivate us, set our course and deliver us to our destinations.

Today, as I thought of the compelling Biblical story, I was reminded of dozens of other stories (about confusion, war, excess, greed, isolation, love, charity, joy and fulfillment) that had lead me to the silence at our meeting house.

Silence, I decided, tells the truest story.

Views of the News: Jefferson, Thoreau and Liebling

I gave a talk today about the future of newspapers and journalism. I introduced it with three quotations. Taken as a whole, they are rife with contradictions and questions.

Start with two questions: Can the role of newspapers as described below by Jefferson, be filled by the “New Media” of the Internet? Or are the young demonstrators in Iran proving that New Media are far more potent in checking government abuse than newspapers have ever been?

The basis of our government’s being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington, 1787.

Are the news media superficial? Or does the vastness of Internet allow us to “soar above or dive below” the thinness of “Old media” as described by Thoreau?

I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire — thinner than the paper on which it is printed —then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. Henry David Thoreau, 1853

Finally, what is the news? Does it rely on “news media”? For many, the real news might be that they have been sleepwalking through life. The real news awakens them. That is what Thoreau was telling us when he famously wrote in “Walden”: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

We need to find, and make, our own news. We are our own news medium.

Which brings us to Liebling, author of “The Wayward Press.”

“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” A.J. Liebling 1904-1963

As you can imagine, the words of Jefferson, Thoreau and Liebling gave us a few things to talk about. . . .

Call of Nature leads to Jefferson biographer

I just finished reading R.B. Bernstein’s short (198 pages), excellent biography of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford:2003).

I wouldn’t have discovered Bernstein’s book if my wife hadn’t needed a toilet in Brooklyn on a sunny Friday late last month.

Perhaps I should explain.

We were wandering around Brooklyn on Spring Street when nature called. The nearest door open to the public was a bookstore, Heights Books, Inc.

“May I use your toilet?” my wife asked the friendly clerk, who looked like he might own the place, but, as it turned out, didn't.

“We only let employees use it,” he said followed — by a dramatic pause. “But in your case, go ahead.”

I nosed around the small but carefully stocked store and immediately spied James Walvin’s “The Quakers: Money & Morals.”

Looked interesting.

My choice drew praise from the clerk. “Walvin is an excellent historian,” he pronounced.

His certainty prompted a discussion about Quaker history. The clerk shared that he was an historian. He pointed to a wall poster advertising a biography of Jefferson. “I wrote that one,” he said. He didn't tell me that it had been nominated for a Pulitzer.

Our conversation immediately shifted from Quaker history to Jefferson — the “Jefferson Bible,” the founding of the University of Virginia, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's inscription for his grave marker (which purposely neglects to mention his presidency).

The clerk, Richard B. Bernstein, said that unfortunately he had no copies of his book in stock, but once back in Portland I miraculously found a copy at our Hillsdale Branch Library.

I Googled Bernstein and discovered that he is much more than a biographer and bookstore sales clerk.

See for yourself.

As I say, I recommend the book.

My wife says that the toilet could use some work.