Missouri wit and a side of cigar

Missouri wit and a side of cigar
Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, January 18, 2007 – Page 3

Correction: In my January 4 column, I stated that Former President Gerald Ford had served as “Minority Whip.” This was incorrect. Ford was the “Minority Leader” in the House of Representatives. The “Whip” is a position in the Senate.

Last week among all the buzz about the new Congress, the President’s new direction for Iraq, and all the new presidential candidates, I was feeling overwhelmed as a pundit, so I called up one of the pioneers in the field, hoping to glean some words of wisdom. What follows is my interview with the one and only Mark Twain.

TM: So Mark, how do YOU feel about our little war in Iraq?

MT: “A wanton waste of projectiles.”

TM: So, you think we should just bring our troops home and let the Shias and Sunnis sort it out for themselves?

MT: “An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war”

TM: But what about those people who say that not supporting the President is “unpatriotic?”

MT: “A patriot is the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”

TM: But he IS the President, after all-

MT: “History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn’t be wise.”

TM: There are those people who continue to support him because they think he’s a good man. “Born-again” and on the God’s side when it comes to moral issues and all that.

MT: “No matter how healthy a man’s morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pock-marked soul.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth less than a penny.

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”

TM: Yikes! So, you’re not convinced that God is on the side of one political party or another?

MT: “A man can be a Christian or a patriot, but he can’t legally be a Christian and a patriot--except in the usual way: one of the two with the mouth, the other with the heart. The spirit of Christianity proclaims the brotherhood of the race and the meaning of that strong word has not been left to guesswork, but made tremendously definite- the Christian must forgive his brother man all crimes he can imagine and commit, and all insults he can conceive and utter- forgive these injuries how many times?--seventy times seven--another way of saying there shall be no limit to this forgiveness. That is the spirit and the law of Christianity.
There has been only ONE Christian. They caught Him and crucified him--early.”

TM: Let’s switch gears for a minute. I won’t ask you if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but do you think it was healthy that with Republicans in the White house and on the Court, Congress recently went to the Democrats?

MT: “To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.”

TM: Are we in for a fall? Are we headed the way of ancient Rome?

MT: “Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.”

TM: How would you go about finally bringing peace?

MT: “This problem of universal peace used to be one of the uppermost things in my mind. I used to study over it. No, I will not say that I really studied; I thought about it--how to get universal peace. It bothered me, but I kept growing nearer and nearer to a solution, and at last I came to it.

But the very day I thought I had solved it I was summoned to the presence of an emperor. The first thing he asked me was what I was doing nowadays. I told him I had been working out a problem--the problem of universal peace--and that I had solved it, that I had found the only way--there was no other.

Then he wanted to know how I was going to bring it about, and I told him: ‘I am going to get a chemist--a real genius--and get him to extract all the oxygen out of the atmosphere for eight minutes. Then we will have universal peace, and it will be permanent.’”

---

‘Ted’s Column’ has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. Ted doesn’t really speak to dead people, but all of Mark Twain’s responses are his actual quotes- just not about current issues. Visit http://www.twainquotes.com, if you don't believe me. If you’d like to see any of Ted’s editorial cartoons bigger and brighter, you can visit http://tmal.multiply.com/photos/album/2