most enviable of titles, the character of an honest man
In a letter to Alexander Hamilton dated 28 August 1788, George Washington wrote:
Still I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man, as well as prove (what I desire to be considered in reality) that I am …
The character of an honest man.
The headline comes to mind, “Channel 4 to mark Trump’s UK visit with ‘longest uninterrupted reel of untruths’”.
The occassion for the show was the current man in office and his visit tot he UK in Ocotber of 2025.
Another columnist for the Guardian wrote: “Channel 4 will be marking Donald Trump’s visit to the UK with what it describes as “the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths, falsehoods and distortions ever broadcast on television”. It will play more than 100 of Trump’s lies or misleading statements in a segment called Trump v The Truth. All his greatest hits, from false claims about the price of eggs to disgusting lies about the US spending millions on condoms for Hamas, packaged together.
Obviously we’ve got to be fair and balanced here, though, haven’t we? Gotta show both sides. So I think it’s only right that Channel 4 also broadcast a 10-second segment covering all of the truthful and astute things the president has said”
Still I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man, as well as prove (what I desire to be considered in reality) that I am …
The character of an honest man.
Washington’s letter came at the time when the new country was discussing the adoption the new Constitution that had been pulled together in 1787.
It was during the discussion about the Executive and its powers that Dr. Ben Franklin said:
“The first man put at the helm will be a good one.
No body knows what sort may come afterwards.“*
Just some thoughts for Presidents Day, 2026.
*Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention, Monday June 4, 1787 – The Question was resumed on motion of Mr. PINKNEY 2ded. by WILSON, “shall the blank for the number of the Executive be filled with a single person?”
worst of times, age of foolishness, the epoch of incredulity
La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way –
in short, the period was so far like the present period,
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.
The opening to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
Mr. Dickens was trying to portray life in the era of the French Revolution.
Something the Brits must have viewed with a bit of relief.
See the French had a law about leaving France to go to the new world.
You had support the government, had to support the King and you had to be a Catholic in good standing with the Church.
The Brits took the line of ‘if you don’t like it here, you can go to America and complain there.’
So those PROTESTing PROTESTants did and when the time came for a British revolution, it was far from home.
In France, they kept all the rabble rousers home and when they had their revolution it was in the front yard.
Mr. Dickens was writing a little more than 50 years after the events of revolution in France.
Here is almost 225 years later.
And it is the worst of times …
The age of foolishness …
The epoch of incredulity …
The season of Darkness …
The winter of despair …
Nothing before us …
We were all going direct not to Heaven, but the other way …
Still …
Remember, the barricade blocks the street but opens the way.
PS: By chance I put this haiku together from the book and was thinking about a picture to use and I checked my Thurber database to see that this drawing with the caption,See you at the barricades, Mr. Whitsonby! was first published in the New Yorker Magazine on February 15, 1936. 90 years ago today! And as we all remember, to the barricades is the motto of the French Revolution or as history has it, La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie! or The barricade blocks the street but opens the way.
way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – if followed God forever bless
According to Wikipedia, The 1862 State of the Union Address was written by the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and delivered to the 37th United States Congress, on Monday, December 1, 1862, amid the ongoing American Civil War.
This address was Lincoln’s longest State of the Union Address, consisting of 8,385 words.
In the closing paragraphs of this address, Lincoln penned words which have been remembered and quoted frequently by presidents and other American political figures. Lincoln’s concluding remarks were as follows:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history.
We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.
No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.
The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.
We say we are for the Union.
The world will not forget that we say this.
We know how to save the Union.
The world knows we do know how to save it.
We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.
In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.
Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just —a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.
Can’t pass by Mr. Lincoln on his birthday.
It used to be a big day.
Probably still should be.
More so not that other people have elevated the office of President of the United States.
But that other people have demonstrated the depths to which the office can sink.
I think of what Alistair Cooke wrote about Mr. Lincoln in his book, America:
“It is difficult, and in some quarters thought to be almost tasteless, to talk sense about Lincoln.
But we must try.
For the holy image and the living man were very far apart, and keeping them so does no service either to Lincoln or to the art of government.
Like all strong characters, he was well hated, and like most frontiersmen who have come to high office—like Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson—he was ridiculed for his directness and country manners.
The London Times called him “the Baboon.”
Lincoln had a gangling gait, a disturbing fondness for rough stories, and a maddening habit of being, in a kind of tooth-sucking way, wiser and sharper than you. (To make it worse, most of the time he was.)”
On the 100th anniversary of Mr. Lincoln’s birth, biographer Ida Tarbell spoke at the University of Michigan on the topic, “Abraham Lincoln : an address the Centennial anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.”
Ms. Tarbell’s address was part of 1908-1909 schedule of speakers arranged by the Students’ Lecture Association of the University of Michigan.
I was fascinated to see the Hon. W. Bourke Cockran also on the list.
He is the Bourke Cockran in this oft told story of Mr. Churchill … “Adlai Stevenson, himself a notable speaker, often reminisced about his last meeting with Churchill. I asked him on whom or what he had based his oratorical style. Churchill replied, “It was an American statesman who inspired me and taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ.” Winston then to my amazement started to quote long excerpts from Bourke Cockran’s speeches of 60 years before. “He was my model,” Churchill said. “I learned from him how to hold thousands in thrall.”
It must have been an interesting lecture to attend.
Ms. Tarbell spoke in University Hall, a hall that held 2500 people in a building that stood where Angell Hall now stands on the UofM campus.
She was introduced by the President of the University, James Angell and gave a lecture that, as stated in The Michigan Daily account, was made by the “probably the best informed person living in regard to Lincoln.”
Her final words on the subject?
It is doubtful if this country, if any country, has produced a man so worthy of our study and our following as is Abraham Lincoln.
Who indeed is there so fit to guide us in that highest of tasks – the giving of service?
Whoever saturated himself so with his subject?
Whoever trusted more utterly to the integrity of his logic, and to the appeal for the sense of human justice?
Whoever put aside with more contempt all the tricks of his trade – appeals to emotion simply to stir emotion, wit simply to arouse a laugh, subterfuges and evasion to escape valid objection?
Whoever handled with more honesty and respect his tasks?
Whoever struggled harder to understand not only with his head but with his heart and understanding, wrestled more to make others understand?
Whoever looked more deeply, more gently, into the hearts of men, and having looked, put into more moving words what he had seen? He has no parallel.
He stands in a towering lonely figure – a man who, by the persistent and reverential following of his own highest instincts, unaided, raised himself from the soil to place of the First American.
Now, 217 years after Mr. Lincoln’s birth … well, its beyond belief isn’t it.
game of consequences to which we all sit down, the … hanger-back not least
Books were the proper remedy:
books of vivid human import,
forcing upon their minds the issues,
pleasures,
business,
importance
and immediacy of that life in which they stand;
books of smiling or heroic temper,
to excite or to console;
books of a large design,
shadowing the complexity of that game of consequences to which we all sit down,
the hanger-back not least.
From the article. Old Mortality by Robert Louis Stevenson in Longman’s Magazine,1884 May.
Longman’s Magazine was first published in November 1882 by C. J. Longman, publisher of Longmans, Green & Co. of London. It superseded Fraser’s Magazine (published 1830 to 1882). A total of 276 monthly issues had been published when the last number came out in October 1905.
Longman’s focused on fiction, debuting work by James Payn, Margaret Oliphant, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Edith Nesbit, Frank Anstey, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Besant, and others.
According to the Quote Investigator, Robert Louis Stevenson (of Treasure Island fame) did say, books of a large design, shadowing the complexity of that game of consequences to which we all sit down.
Mr. Stevenson DID NOT SAY “Sooner or Later We All Sit Down To the Banquet of Consequences“.
While I like the warning of Sooner or Later We All Sit Down To the Banquet of Consequences, I really like that the original quote, books of a large design, shadowing the complexity of that game of consequences to which we all sit down includes that final bit of the hanger-back not least.
When Mr. Lincoln talked in this vein, he wrote in his 1862 message to Congress, We … will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.
I thought of the column Republicans, you own Trump’s racist video about the Obamas where Rex Hupke said: You don’t get to express allegiance to Trump and then casually step aside when something like this happens. You own it. It is what you are supporting.
To recap:
You don’t get to express allegiance to Trump and then casually step aside when something like this happens.
You own it. It is what you are supporting.
We will be remembered in spite of ourselves.
No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.
Sooner or later we all sit down to the banquet of consequences
That game of consequences to which we all sit down.
treat with the fairness and respect that we deserve self-defeating move
Amid a trade war and a deepening rift between the United States and its northern neighbor, Mr. Trump said that he would “not allow” the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, scheduled to open early this year for traffic between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, denounced the president’s threat in a statement, writing that “whether this proves real or simply threatened to keep uncertainty high — blocking or barricading bridges is a self-defeating move.”
It was not immediately clear how Mr. Trump would block the opening of the bridge. Its construction was paid for by Canada, and a public-private arrangement , under which Canada and Michigan would jointly operate the crossing, gives Michigan part ownership.
I first heard the story on the drive into work while listening to NPR’s Morning Edition.
The story quoted the above quote, “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.” and added … it is not immediately clear what that means.
I could focus this essay on the old saying about getting what you ask for and couple that with the admonition, … treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve but that would be too obvious.
What we deserve in the way of fairness and respect when we are shooting our own citizens, blowing up speedboats in international waters and imposing huge tariffs … but I digress.
If you have never seen it, the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a nice escape for a couple of hours.
The story opens with the British Prime Minister needing a feel good story to splash on the current news cycle.
The Press Secretary gets her orders to come up with a story and she goes back to her office and walks into a room of staffers and computers and announces “We need a good news story” and the staffers dive into their computers and start searching.
For the sake of the story, the best they can come up with is that an rich Sheik from Yemen would like to fund an effort to introduce salmon fishing on a river in Yemen.
Even tho the Press Secretray says, Is that the best you puffed-up Oxbridge-educated moronic buffoons can come up with?
They say yes and off the movie goes.
HERE IS THE POINT.
At the white house is there a room of people, sitting at computers, searching for the next story for that guy in office to make an issue of?
Is someone yelling, come on, come on, find something.
And with a news cycle filled with protentional land mines did one of those people notice that the new bridge in Detroit was nearing completetion.
And for that person did the dots connect in their brain that the bridge in Detroit went to Canada and that Canada was currently on the naughty list, (bad people in Canada, bad, very bad, Gordie Howe was not an American) and presto-chango, there it was.
Did the staffer yell, I GOT I GOT!
And someone calls out TELL US TELL US.
BLOCK THE NEW BRIDGE TO CANADA THAT IS ABOUT TO OPEN IN DETROIT! the staffer yells.
LOVE IT LOVE IT the room cheeers.
AND, contributes another, WE KEEP IT CLOSED UNTIL THOSE CANADIANS TREAT US WTIH THE FAIRNESS AND RESPECT WE DESERVE.
No Haiku For You 