THE BAMBOOZLED FOOLS ABOUND IN OUR AMERICA TODAY
Verse of general impressions and excerpts from Charles Caleb Colton.
Charles Caleb Colton was very widely read in the 1800s. I was especially curious about what exactly he wrote, other than the occasional quote I might find. So I found his book Lacon online, and tried to find some of his work which might have relevance in 2024. Human nature being a relatively constant item over time, I have indeed gained some thoughts on our present in the age of Trump and MAGA. I’ve taken excerpts from this book to include today. You can agree or disagree with my conclusions, and I’ve concluded that indeed Colton was a very gifted thinker and writer worthy of the accolades allotted to him. I hope you might agree with my selection.
Lacon*: or, Many things in few words, addressed to those who think
by Colton, C. C. (Charles Caleb), 1780?-1832
*Lacon: It may allude to: Demetrius Lacon or Demetrius of Laconia fl. late 2nd century BC) was an Epicurean philosopher, and a disciple of Protarchus. He was an older contemporary of Zeno of Sidon and a teacher of Philodemus. Sextus Empiricus quotes part of a commentary by Demetrius on Epicurus, where Demetrius interprets Epicurus' statement that "time is an accident of accidents."
Papyrus scrolls containing portions of the works of Demetrius were discovered at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. The major works partially preserved are:
Quaestiones convivales (PHerc. 1006)
On the Puzzles of Polyaenus (PHerc. 1083, 1258, 1429, 1642, 1647, 1822)
On Geometry (PHerc. 1061)
On Poems (PHerc. 188, 1014)
two untitled works (PHerc. 1786, 124)
In addition, he is the probable author of the following works:
On the Size of the Sun (PHerc. 1013)
On Fickleness (PHerc. 831)
an untitled work on textual criticism of Epicurus' writings (PHerc. 1012)
an untitled theological work (PHerc. 1055)
an untitled rhetorical work (PHerc. 128)
On the fool, of the theme I’ve written on today:
If the weakness of the head, were an admissible excuse for the malevolence of the heart, the one half of mankind would be occupied in aggression, and the other half in forgiveness; but the interests of society peremptorily demand that things should not be so; for a fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.
Of the billionaire oligarch today:
Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality,* and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes, as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.
*Prodigality is excessive or extravagant spending.
Of Donald Trump’s life of grifting, this might be appropriate to:
There are some frauds so well conducted, that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them. A wise man, therefore, may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.
An interesting take on the free press, keeping the “king” informed:
A king of England has an interest in preserving the freedom of the press, because it is his interest to know the true state of the nation, which the courtiers would fain conceal, but of which a free press alone can inform him.
The following may be applicable to the most zealous MAGA who we might know. Perhaps if their opinions might be altered that that which might not be quite as extreme, if there is a possibility of such. This gave me some hope perhaps:
When, indeed, we dismiss our old opinions and embrace new ones, at the expense of worldly profit and advantage, there may be some who will doubt of our discernment, but there will be none who will impeach our sincerity. He that adopts new opinions at the expense of every worldly comfort, gives proof of an integrity, differing only in degree, from that of him, who clings to old ones at the hazard of every danger. This latter effort of integrity has been described by Butler,* in a manner which proves that sublimity and wit are not invariably disconnected : —
For loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon.
*Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903 with substantial revisions and published in its original form in 1964 as Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh). Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication.
On the topic of prejudice, not much has changed. I thought this to be quite succinctly written, succinctly expressed:
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them, because we hate them. The friendships that succeed to such aversions are usually firm, for those qualities must be sterling, that could not only gain our hearts but conquer our prejudices. But the misfortune is that we carry these prejudices into things far more serious than our friendships. Thus, there are truths, which some men despise, because they have not examined, and which they will not examine, because they despise. There is one single instance on record, where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; — but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.
The following writing has its applicability to today’s American struggle to continue with our democratic experiment:
Here again, we know not which most to despise, the monarch that could submit to such a sentence, or the proud priest that could pronounce it; and the most galling of all fetters, those riveted by superstition, well befitted that people, that could tamely behold such an insult offered to their king. This then seems to be the upshot of what has been advanced, that liberty is the highest blessing that a nation can enjoy; that it must be first deserved before it can be enjoyed, and that it is the truest interest of the prince, no less than of the people, to employ all just and honest means, that it may be both deserved and enjoyed. But as civil liberty is the greatest blessing, so civil discord is the greatest curse, that can befall a nation; and a people should be as cautious of straining their privilege, as a prince his prerogative*; for the true friend of both, knows that either, if they submit to encroachments to-day, are only preparing for themselves greater evils for tomorrow — humiliation or resistance. But as corruption cannot thrive where none will submit to be corrupted, so also oppression cannot prosper, where none will submit to be enslaved. Rome had ceased to be tenanted by Romans, or Nero would not have dared to amuse himself with his fiddle, nor Caligula with his horse.
*an exclusive privilege or right exercised by a person or group of people holding a particular office or hereditary rank.
Potentially some good advice in discussion of political differences with others. We need all the help which can be mustered in this day and age:
In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your words: consider in what points things that resemble, differ; and in what those things that differ, resemble; reply with wit to gravity, and with gravity to wit; make a full concession to your adversary, and give him every credit for those arguments you know you can answer, and slur over those you feel you cannot; but above all, if he have the privilege of making his reply, take especial care that the strongest thing you have to urge is the last. He must immediately get up and say something, and if he be not previously prepared with an answer to your last argument, he will infallibly be boggled, for very few possess that remarkable talent of Charles Fox*, who could talk on one thing, and at the same time think of another.
*Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled The Honourable from 1762, was a British Whig politician and statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-rival of the Tory politician William Pitt the Younger; his father Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland, a leading Whig of his day, had similarly been the great rival of Pitt's famous father, William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham ("Pitt the Elder"). Fox rose to prominence in the House of Commons as a forceful and eloquent speaker with a notorious and colorful private life, though at that time with rather conservative and conventional opinions. However, with the coming of the American War of Independence and the influence of the Whig Edmund Burke, Fox's opinions evolved into some of the most radical to be aired in the British Parliament of his era.
Perhaps the below is good advice among money-grubbers. We all realize how this might benefit many, who would never read it:
A noble income, nobly expended, is no common sight. It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman. If we exhaust our income in schemes of ambition, we shall purchase disappointment; if in law, vexation: if in luxury, disease. What we lend we shall most probably lose; what we spend rationally, we shall enjoy; what we distribute to the deserving, we shall enjoy and retain.*
* If there be any truth in the old epitaph :
— 1 ‘What we lent we lost;
What we spent we have;
What we gave, we had,'
I found this interesting, so I included it:
There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators,* the very worst their panegyrists.**
*make false and defamatory statements about.
**one who eulogizes.
Thinking in terms of the average MAGA who are just waiting for the chance to show violence as a mob once again. Indeed one can make policy which will benefit them, but it matters not to them:
It is an easy and a vulgar thing to please the mob, and a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them, is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.
They honestly in those times were a more enlightened society than America might claim in 2024. As to the wicked versus the non-wicked in this time inq America, the jury is still out.
In the present enlightened state of society, it is impossible for mankind to be thoroughly vicious; for wisdom and virtue are very often convertible terms, and they invariably assist and strengthen each other. A society composed of none but the wicked, could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity. The moral cement of all society, is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice, separates and destroys. The good may well be termed the salt of the earth. For where there is no integrity, there can be no confidence; and where there is no confidence, there can be no unanimity. The story of the three German robbers is applicable to our present purpose, from the pregnant brevity of its moral. Having acquired by various atrocities, what amounted to a very valuable booty, they agreed to divide the spoil, and to retire from so dangerous a vocation. When the day which they had appointed for this purpose, arrived, one of them was despatched to a neighbouring town, to purchase provisions for their last carousal. The other two secretly agreed to murder him on his return, that they might come in for one half of the plunder, instead of a third. They did so. But the murdered man was a closer calculater even than his assassins, for he had previously poisoned a part of the provisions, that he might appropriate unto himself the whole of the spoil. This precious triumvirate were found dead together— a signal instance that nothing is so blind and suicidal, as the selfishness of vice.
A paragraph for which we all realize now as to be so important. A very timely look at 2024 America where laws (if time allows for action) might directly counteract despotism.
England, with a criminal code the most bloody, and a civil code the most expensive in Europe, can, notwithstanding, boast of more happiness and freedom than any other country under heaven. The reason is, that despotism, and all its minor ramifications of discretionary power, lodged in the hands of individuals, is utterly unknown. The laws are supreme.
On modern Christian Nationalism:
There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the apostle! they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things, only to hold fast that which is bad.
Worshiping wealth, the idolatry of it:
Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in, have at least one thing to plead in defence of their idolatry — the power of their idol. It is true, that like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, or understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.
On our reputations, a certain percentage of Americans do not care in the age of Trump. Of the times of rogues in positions of power.
There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues*. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will be invariably accompanied by the latter. His calumniation**, is not only the greatest benefit a rogue can confer upon us, but it is also the only service he will perform for nothing.
*a dishonest or unprincipled person.
**make false and defamatory statements about.
On mobs, of which in this day and age we must continue to concern ourselves, two sayings:
The mob is a monster with the hands of Briareueus* but the head of Polyphemus**— strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
*monstrous giant, of enormous size and strength, with fifty heads and one hundred arms.
**is the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa in Greek mythology.
The mob, like the ocean, is very seldom agitated without some cause superior and exterior to itself; but (to continue the simile) both are capable of doing the greatest mischief after the cause which first set them in motion, has ceased to act.
This paragraph on Russia of the early nineteenth century. I found it interesting. Perhaps the nation is still “rather unwieldy in attacking others?”
Russia, like the elephant, is rather unwieldy in attacking others, but most formidable in defending herself. She proposes this dilemma to all invaders— a dilemma that Napoleon discovered too late. The horns of it are short and simple, but strong. Come unto me with few, and I will overwhelm you; home to me with many, and you shall overwhelm yourselves.
Thinking of Donald Trump with this one:
There are some men, whose enemies are to be pitied much, and their friends more.
“quackery of eloquence” - Could this be describing Trump?
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; the passions are powerful pleaders, and their very silence, like that of Garrick*, goes directly to the soul; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least, will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums**,not in cures.
*David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in several amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.
**a medicine, especially one that is not considered effective, prepared by an unqualified person.
Perhaps the following is some kind of a guide to follow in relating with our opposition. I’m not entirely certain that it is.
We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree. The reason perhaps is this: when we find others that agree with us, we seldom trouble ourselves to confirm that agreement; but when we chance on those that differ with us, we are zealous both to convince, and to convert them. Our pride is hurt by the failure, and disappointed pride engenders hatred. This reflection is strengthened by two circumstances observable in man; first, that the most zealous converters are always the most rancorous, when they fail of producing conviction; but when they succeed, they love their new disciples far better than those whose establishment in the faith neither excited their zeal to the combat, nor rewarded their prowess with a victory. Priestley* owed much of the virulence with which he was attacked, to the circumstance of his agreeing partly with everybody, but entirely with nobody. In politics, as in philosophy; in literature, as in religion; below the surface in hydrostatics, or above it in pneumatics; his track might still be traced by the host of assailants that pursued it; and, like the flying-fish, he had no sooner escaped one enemy in the water, than he had to encounter another in the air.
*Joseph Priestley FRS (24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science.
Finally looking at the overall picture of our nation, some cautionary advice perhaps to digest. Plunder by leaders is utmost on my mind in these times. Intuitively we know that such will not work out for the better good of a country. Seems as though we are devolving in this nation so that writing from another time seems much too familiar to us for our comfort.
Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty ; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. That nation cannot be free, where reform is a common hack, that is dismissed with a kick the moment it has brought the rider to his place. That nation cannot be free, where parties are but different roads, leading to one common destination, plunder. That nation cannot be free, where the rulers will not feel for the people, until they are obliged to feel with the people, and then it is too late. That nation cannot be free, that is bought by its own consent, and sold against it; where the rogue that is in rags is kept in countenance by the rogue that is in ruffles, and where, from high to low, from the lord to the lackey, there is nothing radical but corruption, and nothing contemptible but poverty; when both patriot and placeman, perceiving that money can do everything, are prepared to do everything for money. That nation cannot be free, where religion is, with the higher orders, a matter of indifference; with the middle, of acquiescence; and with the lower, of fanaticism. That nation cannot be free, where the leprosy of selfishness sticks to it as close as the curse of Elisha* to his servant Gehiza**: where the rulers ask not what recommends a man, but who; and where those who want a rogue, have no occasion to make, but to choose. I hope there is no nation like this under heaven; but if there were, these are the things that, however great she might be, would keep such a nation from liberty, and liberty from her. These are the things that would force upon such a nation — :first a government of expedients***, secondly, of difficulties; and lastly, of danger. Such a nation could begin to feel, only by fearing all that she deserved, and finish by suffering all that she feared.
*In the biblical narrative, he is a disciple and protégé of Elijah, and after Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind, Elisha received a double portion of his power and he was accepted as the leader of the sons of the prophets. Elisha then went on to perform twice as many miracles as Elijah.
**Elisha cured the Syrian military commander Naaman of leprosy but punished his own servant Gehazi, who took money from Naaman. Naaman, at first reluctant, obeyed Elisha, and washed seven times in the River Jordan. Finding his flesh "restored like the flesh of a little child", the general was so impressed by this evidence of God's power, and by the disinterestedness of his prophet, as to express his deep conviction that "there is no other God in all the earth, but only in Israel."
***a means of attaining an end, especially one that is convenient but considered improper or immoral.
That concludes my venture into the writings of Charles Caleb Colton. As to if his writings are all applicable to 2024 America I guess I’m still a little uncertain. Things are expressed differently now, and no one attempts a book like this now for the most part. Specialization has greatly killed off such books in these times. But I learned quite a lot today, if nothing else and perhaps this kept your interest.
170th Posting, February 13, 2024.