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91c8f3c
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I see plainly that America can defend herself if proper measures are taken," he wrote, adding ominously, "and now I begin to fear she should be lost by herself and her own sons." The"
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Sarah Vowell |
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473d229
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Lafayette, "I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence." Spoken like every only child ever. Lafayette"
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Sarah Vowell |
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2250c5b
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Sir," I said, "except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between." --
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Sarah Vowell |
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62328c2
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In other words, the most ardent republicans since the fall of Rome were asking their king to help them prevail over the representative legislature of the world's oldest constitutional monarchy, the great symbol and protector of British freedom. From
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Sarah Vowell |
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8ecc978
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Another reason I'm intrigued with the hanged of Salem, especially the women, is that a number of them aroused suspicion in the first place because they were financially independent, or sharp-tongued, or kept to themselves. In other words, they were killed off for living the same sort of life I live right now but with longer skirts and fewer cable channels.
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Sarah Vowell |
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f72b3f0
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Jefferson's pretty phrases were incomplete without the punctuation of French gunpowder. That
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Sarah Vowell |
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077146c
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Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's kIng. This is the root of self..
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know-nothings
sola-fide
protestantism
anti-intellectualism
democracy
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Sarah Vowell |
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83f5594
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The English Puritans were obsessed with the idea of providence, and that word is more ominous to them than it sounds to us. It means care, but it also means control. It does not just mean that God will provide. It means that God will provide whatever the hell God wants and the Puritans will thank him for it even if He provides them with nothing more than a slow death in a long winter. It means that if they're scared and small and lowly enou..
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calvinism
authoritarianism
providence
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Sarah Vowell |
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94f1606
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To me, the highlight of the event is watching a reenactor in a long striped dress sitting alone on a blanket, winding yarn. Absorbed in the task of wrapping strands of wool around her hand, she never looks up. Watching her is so mesmerizing and oddly sacred that it never occurs to me to interrupt her and ask her name or how she got into the yarn-winding reenactment biz, maybe because she isn't recreating; she is creating.
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Sarah Vowell |
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b6eb0d2
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The words Lafayette used to describe that triumph--"I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence"--applied to getting his way regarding America as well. Perhaps the most emblematic anecdote foretelling Lafayette's stubborn refusal to give up his American dream was the boyhood story about how one day, one of his Parisian schoolteachers was talking up the virtues of an obedient horse. According to Lafayette, "I described ..
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Sarah Vowell |
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faf12c2
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In other words, ideas, when implemented, turn into precedents with unpredictable and potentially disturbing consequences. As the British historian and politician Lord Acton described the effect that our Revolutionary War had on our French allies, "What the French took from the Americans was their theory of revolution, not their theory of government--their cutting, not their sewing."
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Sarah Vowell |
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cd2139b
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The First Amendment, he explained, exposed tolerance as a sham, because tolerance implies one superior group of people deigning to put up with their inferiors. "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights," Washington wrote. "For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecu..
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Sarah Vowell |
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cb2ac64
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Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship. So when my friends Joel and Stephen and I play hooky from our jobs in the middle of the afternoon to play Pop-A-Shot in a room full of children, I like to think we are not procrastinators; we are patriots pursuing happiness.
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humor
goofing-off
patriotism
procrastination
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Sarah Vowell |
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e0485b5
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It is unfair of me to say so, but the slogan Booth shouted from the stage of Ford's Theatre, the over-blown, self-important, pseudo-Shakespearean blather, being etched on the sign marking his death feels like the stamp of approval.
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Sarah Vowell |
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a7cae88
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Never have I enjoyed such swearing, before or since. Sir, on that memorable day, he swore like an angel from Heaven.
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Sarah Vowell |
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8a728be
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disunity is the through line in the national plot--not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washington's army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizen's pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbors, getting on each other's nerves is our right.
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Sarah Vowell |
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d5abddc
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Americans' "fatal tendency of disunion."
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Sarah Vowell |
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7424c79
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The historical periods I like to learn about aren't so much costume dramas as slasher flicks. The French Revolution is a favorite because it features the beloved plot of carnage in service of democracy, but I prefer American history. And if I had to pick my pet domestic bloodbaths, nothing beats Salem or Gettysburg. I'm a sucker for Puritan New England and the Civil War. Because those two subjects feature the central tension of American lif..
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Sarah Vowell |
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87a12db
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The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories. Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire o..
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Sarah Vowell |
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20b5062
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the amateur historian's next stop after Boy, people used to be so stupid is People: still stupid.
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Sarah Vowell |
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f632b91
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joie de vivre.
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Sarah Vowell |
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0e05366
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the cheapest, most pleasurable way for a country of strangers to get to know each other and the rest of the world is through reading.
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Sarah Vowell |
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79066a1
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David, you don't want to get rid of the cracks and the crevices in the building because that's where the ghosts hide. And if you get rid of the ghosts, the Chelsea will just be any other building.
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Sarah Vowell |
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c0c1e8f
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For the better part of the 1990s, it seemed like the only Americans who publicly described themselves as patriots were scary militia types hiding out in the backwoods of Michigan and Montana, cleaning their guns.
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Sarah Vowell |
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e8b9ff7
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I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary."
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Sarah Vowell |
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947e335
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I don't have a driver's license (phobia).
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Sarah Vowell |
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19225ff
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In the gravedigger scene in act V, Hamlet looks upon an anonymous skull and jokes that even Alexander the Great decomposed into dust that could have been used to plug a beer barrel. But when Hamlet is shown this skull of his old friend Yorick, the prince becomes unspeakably sentimental and sad because he knew him.
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Sarah Vowell |
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d278611
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But the first thing a present-day visitor notices is that it's exceedingly gay. A life-size, fully dressed Garfield stands on top of a giant shaft.
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Sarah Vowell |
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bc1d0c2
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Lincoln, of course, was giggling at the moment of impact; Booth knowing the play Lincoln was watching by heart, chose a laugh Lin on purpose to dampen the noise of his Derringer's report.
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Sarah Vowell |
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beefe6d
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Congress was soon neck-deep in arrogant boobs whom Beaumarchais or Deane had promised high ranks and higher salaries. "Men cannot be engaged to quit their native country . . . in a cause which is not their own" is how Deane rationalized the incentives to Congress." --
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Sarah Vowell |
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19358d0
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Ah, spring. May 1778, specifically. Coming up on cannon weather. But then who needs to pay for gunpowder when heatstroke kills for free?
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Sarah Vowell |
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32a8512
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Earlier yet, in 1917, an amateur geologist named Albert E. Knapp claimed to have found a fossilized human footprint from the Triassic period--the imprint of a shoe made of stitched dinosaur hide. This led him to believe that humans and dinosaurs had coexisted in Nevada's Great Basin 200 million years ago. The New York Times took Knapp's finding somewhat seriously, as did Nobel Prize-winning Oxford scientist Frederick Soddy, who used it to s..
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Sarah Vowell |
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ec5e94a
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To establish such a forthright dream of decency, who wouldn't sign up to shoot at a few thousand Englishmen, just as long as Mr. Bean wasn't among them?
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Sarah Vowell |
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1906205
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Enter Henry Knox. The twenty-five-year-old bookworm approached Washington and volunteered to go to Fort Ticonderoga to fetch the equipment. Washington approved the cockamamie mission. And so, that November Knox and his brother set off for New York. Who knew they would return in January with forty-three cannons, fourteen mortars, and two howitzers dragged across frozen rivers and over the snowy Berkshire Mountains on custom sleds. The is the..
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Sarah Vowell |
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fd7e38b
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Between the Stamp Act of 1765 and Lexington a decade later, one of the colonists' most widespread tools of resistance against arbitrary taxation without representation was boycotting British imports, particularly luxury items. While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it's worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped ba..
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Sarah Vowell |
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3715b51
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Has our enslavement to dopamine--to the instant hits of validation that come with a well-crafted tweet or Snapchat streak--made us happier? I suspect it has simply made us less unhappy, or rather less aware of our unhappiness, and that our phones are merely new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety
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Sarah Vowell |
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8bd9d15
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If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation.
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Sarah Vowell |