I have resisted commenting heavily on the current presidential campaign for many reasons. And when it came down to the final two left standing in the democratic camp, I felt I was back in my usual position: Holding my nose to vote for a "not them" candidate.
Happily, a lot has happened in the last month that has caused my hand to drop from my nose. I do support one candidate more than the other now and, if you have not read or seen it *in full* (where are you living?), Barak Hussein Obama's speech on race helped me to feel a spark of hope for my country for the first time since Lyndon Johnson's push for his Great Society program. (A president who would probably be one of our greatest ever, had it not been for Vietnam. Ahem.)
Another love that remains basically unremarked by me is theater in pretty much any form. However, given my renewed spark of hope for the future of my country, and a remarkable lack of buzz for this, I want to talk a bit about "John Adams," starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It is running on HBO right now.
Based on the highly readable and well-researched book by David McCullough, this series (to date, I've watched the first two episodes) is a griping rendition of a man almost forgotten but who was the backbone of our entire governmental system. John Adams, a farmer and lawyer, by his unwaivering New Englander code of ethics in the rightness of equality for all men, forced the words we all say so lightly today to come to life. We the people. To form a more perfect union. Certain inalienable rights. By the people, of the people, and for the people.
These are John Adams's ideas. This was his stand and his hand in the molding of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He was an Englishman, as were all the American revolutionaries. But this honorable man defended the English army men who fired on the colonials at Bunker Hill. He lost most of his practice when he won the case (murder). He sacrificed his own career to do what he knew was the moral, legal, and right thing to do. He was almost lynched for it. But he put the ideals of liberty ahead of his own good.
He was a cautious man. He railed against the idea of a war until the British (in no particular order and not everything by a long-shot) blockaded Boston Harbor, invoked the Stamp Act, instituted the quartering of their army in any colonials' home.
Adams was a considered man. He came to his own conclusion about what had to be done only after the British attacked Concord and Lexington, not five miles from his home and family. Then he hacked together a coalition among the 13 colonies that included the necessary Virginia and Pennsylvania votes to arm the men fighting in Massachusetts and place Colonel George Washington as Commander in General of the Continental Army.
No matter what you may know about the American Revolution, I doubt today that many of us (well, certainly anyone in my cultural sliver of the world) can truly grasp what it took, what it meant, to take up arms against a King in 1775; what it meant to be a traitor in your own home; what it meant to give up everything... everything... for liberty.
Liberty. The right to speak. The right to meet publicly. The right to resist authority. The right to question. The right to think. The right to be in the minority. The right to be different.
That's what I want my country to be again.
Happily, a lot has happened in the last month that has caused my hand to drop from my nose. I do support one candidate more than the other now and, if you have not read or seen it *in full* (where are you living?), Barak Hussein Obama's speech on race helped me to feel a spark of hope for my country for the first time since Lyndon Johnson's push for his Great Society program. (A president who would probably be one of our greatest ever, had it not been for Vietnam. Ahem.)
Another love that remains basically unremarked by me is theater in pretty much any form. However, given my renewed spark of hope for the future of my country, and a remarkable lack of buzz for this, I want to talk a bit about "John Adams," starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. It is running on HBO right now. Based on the highly readable and well-researched book by David McCullough, this series (to date, I've watched the first two episodes) is a griping rendition of a man almost forgotten but who was the backbone of our entire governmental system. John Adams, a farmer and lawyer, by his unwaivering New Englander code of ethics in the rightness of equality for all men, forced the words we all say so lightly today to come to life. We the people. To form a more perfect union. Certain inalienable rights. By the people, of the people, and for the people.
These are John Adams's ideas. This was his stand and his hand in the molding of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He was an Englishman, as were all the American revolutionaries. But this honorable man defended the English army men who fired on the colonials at Bunker Hill. He lost most of his practice when he won the case (murder). He sacrificed his own career to do what he knew was the moral, legal, and right thing to do. He was almost lynched for it. But he put the ideals of liberty ahead of his own good.
He was a cautious man. He railed against the idea of a war until the British (in no particular order and not everything by a long-shot) blockaded Boston Harbor, invoked the Stamp Act, instituted the quartering of their army in any colonials' home.
Adams was a considered man. He came to his own conclusion about what had to be done only after the British attacked Concord and Lexington, not five miles from his home and family. Then he hacked together a coalition among the 13 colonies that included the necessary Virginia and Pennsylvania votes to arm the men fighting in Massachusetts and place Colonel George Washington as Commander in General of the Continental Army.
No matter what you may know about the American Revolution, I doubt today that many of us (well, certainly anyone in my cultural sliver of the world) can truly grasp what it took, what it meant, to take up arms against a King in 1775; what it meant to be a traitor in your own home; what it meant to give up everything... everything... for liberty.
Liberty. The right to speak. The right to meet publicly. The right to resist authority. The right to question. The right to think. The right to be in the minority. The right to be different.
That's what I want my country to be again.
Would love to know