(An online columnist inspired the piece below. He discussed the use of the word “and” in our debate over our past, our leaders, and our statues. I read or peruse a couple of dozen of columns every day, and to my chagrin cannot find the article to give the author the credit he deserves. So to him I can only say: Thank you.)
And.
But.
We rarely notice those two conjunctions while reading or writing. They are blips on the page, tiny words employed to link two thoughts, as common in sentences as dirt in a field of corn.
In truth, however, and and but are like C-4 explosive: they are packaged small and look innocent as Play Doh, but can produce a tremendous explosion.
And.
But.
We rarely notice those two conjunctions while reading or writing. They are blips on the page, tiny words employed to link two thoughts, as common in sentences as dirt in a field of corn.
In truth, however, and and but are like C-4 explosive: they are packaged small and look innocent as Play Doh, but can produce a tremendous explosion.
Let me explain by way of some examples.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee were great Americans and were slaveholders.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee were great Americans, but they were slaveholders.
Woodrow Wilson guided our country through World War I and advocated on behalf of the League of Nations, and was a racist.
Woodrow Wilson guided our country through World I and advocated on behalf the League of Nations, but he was a racist.
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton were influential presidents and were all adulterers.
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton were influential presidents, but they were all adulterers.
William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were three of the greatest American writers, and were all adulterers and alcoholics.
William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were three of the greatest American writers, but they were all adulterers and alcoholics.
All of the people mentioned above are renowned for their accomplishments, and were white males.
All of the people mentioned above are renowned for their accomplishments, but they were white males.
The use of and in these sentences implies an understanding of flaws and wrongs, an ability to recognize achievement while at the same time acknowledging certain moral failures. The use of but implies recrimination and condemnation, regardless of achievement.
Today in our country many people have become advocates of the conjunction but. They simplify our complicated American past, casting former heroes as villains, refusing to see human beings from the past as being caught up in a time and place different from our own. Some politicians and “social justice warriors” have changed the names of buildings, schools, and streets to satisfy the ever-ravenous maw of political correctness. Some have banned movies and books. Some are destroying or vandalizing statues of Confederate generals, Christopher Columbus, and even a Catholic saint because they believe the flaws of these men should eradicate their achievements. As I say, but is a powerful explosive.
A few questions are in order.
A man serves a term in prison for involuntary manslaughter and robbery, wins his release after a ten-year sentence, and looks for work. Do we take into account the whole man, a model prisoner who founded a reading program for inmates and showed remorse for his crimes, or do we label him forever an ex-con, a killer, and a thief?
A fourteen-year-old girl viciously bullies a classmate online. The classmate commits suicide. At the age of twenty-five, after spending years in juvenile detention, prison, and therapy, the bully writes a book expressing her deep regret for tormenting her classmate. She donates the proceeds from her book to a worthy charitable cause. Do we accept that woman’s repudiation of her past or do we bore in on her, declaring her anathema, fit only for exclusion and condemnation?
If we possess any degree of charity, we learn to forgive those who have made past mistakes and sought forgiveness.
The dead, however, can’t defend themselves or ask forgiveness for what we perceive as their crimes and sins. To do them justice, we must attempt to understand who they were and why they behaved as they did in the context of their time and place. Columbus, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and hundreds of other prominent Americans were all creatures of the world in which they lived. We may refuse them absolution, we may condemn them, but to judge them by our standards is ignorant, and for those who know better, out and out stupid.
Many of those who rant against these historical figures, who advocate for the conjunction but, strike the rest of us as puritanical peacocks. They believe themselves the sort of noble beings who would have spoken up for Jesus Christ during his trial, who would have protested the gladiator games and slavery of the Roman Empire, who in 1492 would have treated native Americans like their own family, who would have protested slavery in antebellum Mississippi, and who would have fought as citizens of Germany against Nazism to their dying breath.
Where does such moral pretension come from? And how much do those making such judgments from Mount Olympus really know about the past?
Try this test. Next time someone advocates knocking down a statue of Robert E. Lee, ask that person to give you five hard facts about the man. I predict nine of ten will be unable to do so.
Such moral preening brings up another question: How will our descendants regard our current age?
Won’t generations yet unborn ask why, in a world awash in prophylactics and contraceptives, millions of abortions occurred annually around the globe?
Will not those Americans who have yet to breathe the air of this planet wonder why our government left them as their birthright trillions of dollars of federal debt?
Might they not be curious as to why, with living standards higher than at any time in human history, so many Americans of our day cursed the society in which they lived?
Will our descendants not ask why, given our technology, our spending, and our resources, schools in cities like Detroit and Chicago produced armies of students who were barely literate?
Might they not be curious as to why the country that sent astronauts to the moon gave up its space program?
Might they not wonder why a country that once prided itself on its Constitution dismantled that document?
Might not our grandchildren and their children regard our current iconoclasm as puffed-up, egotistic buffoonery?
Nowadays, we issue judgments against our ancestors not in a courtroom set in that past, but from a post-modern kangaroo court in which we declare ourselves ever so superior to all who have gone before us. We regard ourselves, as a recent campaign slogan had it, as "the ones we’ve been waiting for", demigods in comparison to those morally stunted scoundrels of yesteryear.
Pride, the Old Book says, cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
I predict a rough landing.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee were great Americans and were slaveholders.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee were great Americans, but they were slaveholders.
Woodrow Wilson guided our country through World War I and advocated on behalf of the League of Nations, and was a racist.
Woodrow Wilson guided our country through World I and advocated on behalf the League of Nations, but he was a racist.
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton were influential presidents and were all adulterers.
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Bill Clinton were influential presidents, but they were all adulterers.
William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were three of the greatest American writers, and were all adulterers and alcoholics.
William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald were three of the greatest American writers, but they were all adulterers and alcoholics.
All of the people mentioned above are renowned for their accomplishments, and were white males.
All of the people mentioned above are renowned for their accomplishments, but they were white males.
The use of and in these sentences implies an understanding of flaws and wrongs, an ability to recognize achievement while at the same time acknowledging certain moral failures. The use of but implies recrimination and condemnation, regardless of achievement.
Today in our country many people have become advocates of the conjunction but. They simplify our complicated American past, casting former heroes as villains, refusing to see human beings from the past as being caught up in a time and place different from our own. Some politicians and “social justice warriors” have changed the names of buildings, schools, and streets to satisfy the ever-ravenous maw of political correctness. Some have banned movies and books. Some are destroying or vandalizing statues of Confederate generals, Christopher Columbus, and even a Catholic saint because they believe the flaws of these men should eradicate their achievements. As I say, but is a powerful explosive.
A few questions are in order.
A man serves a term in prison for involuntary manslaughter and robbery, wins his release after a ten-year sentence, and looks for work. Do we take into account the whole man, a model prisoner who founded a reading program for inmates and showed remorse for his crimes, or do we label him forever an ex-con, a killer, and a thief?
A fourteen-year-old girl viciously bullies a classmate online. The classmate commits suicide. At the age of twenty-five, after spending years in juvenile detention, prison, and therapy, the bully writes a book expressing her deep regret for tormenting her classmate. She donates the proceeds from her book to a worthy charitable cause. Do we accept that woman’s repudiation of her past or do we bore in on her, declaring her anathema, fit only for exclusion and condemnation?
If we possess any degree of charity, we learn to forgive those who have made past mistakes and sought forgiveness.
The dead, however, can’t defend themselves or ask forgiveness for what we perceive as their crimes and sins. To do them justice, we must attempt to understand who they were and why they behaved as they did in the context of their time and place. Columbus, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, and hundreds of other prominent Americans were all creatures of the world in which they lived. We may refuse them absolution, we may condemn them, but to judge them by our standards is ignorant, and for those who know better, out and out stupid.
Many of those who rant against these historical figures, who advocate for the conjunction but, strike the rest of us as puritanical peacocks. They believe themselves the sort of noble beings who would have spoken up for Jesus Christ during his trial, who would have protested the gladiator games and slavery of the Roman Empire, who in 1492 would have treated native Americans like their own family, who would have protested slavery in antebellum Mississippi, and who would have fought as citizens of Germany against Nazism to their dying breath.
Where does such moral pretension come from? And how much do those making such judgments from Mount Olympus really know about the past?
Try this test. Next time someone advocates knocking down a statue of Robert E. Lee, ask that person to give you five hard facts about the man. I predict nine of ten will be unable to do so.
Such moral preening brings up another question: How will our descendants regard our current age?
Won’t generations yet unborn ask why, in a world awash in prophylactics and contraceptives, millions of abortions occurred annually around the globe?
Will not those Americans who have yet to breathe the air of this planet wonder why our government left them as their birthright trillions of dollars of federal debt?
Might they not be curious as to why, with living standards higher than at any time in human history, so many Americans of our day cursed the society in which they lived?
Will our descendants not ask why, given our technology, our spending, and our resources, schools in cities like Detroit and Chicago produced armies of students who were barely literate?
Might they not be curious as to why the country that sent astronauts to the moon gave up its space program?
Might they not wonder why a country that once prided itself on its Constitution dismantled that document?
Might not our grandchildren and their children regard our current iconoclasm as puffed-up, egotistic buffoonery?
Nowadays, we issue judgments against our ancestors not in a courtroom set in that past, but from a post-modern kangaroo court in which we declare ourselves ever so superior to all who have gone before us. We regard ourselves, as a recent campaign slogan had it, as "the ones we’ve been waiting for", demigods in comparison to those morally stunted scoundrels of yesteryear.
Pride, the Old Book says, cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
I predict a rough landing.