The Transcendentalists were Flip-Floppers

So, I was flipping through some of Ralph Waldo's Essays the other day, and while perusing "Self-Reliance," I ran across these famous lines:

• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Maybe this is "too liberal," or perhaps "too intellectual," but for my money, Emerson hits it right on the money.

• The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions.

It's always better to have sincere taste than good taste; I have the convictions of my own bad taste. I thought "Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp" was a brilliant parody, and I sincerely enjoy watching "Cannonball Run" when the mood strikes. I don't know about you, but if I could never go back and make amends for any possible mistakes I may have made, I don't think I could even act in the first place. That I might be wrong cannot keep me from doing what I believe to be right.

Are you listening, John Kerry? So what if you're called a flip-flopper, as if Bush himself isn't a flip-flopper? How about that "America is not in the business of nation-building" crap that he flung all over Gore? How about that "No Child Left Behind" crap? Seems to me, lowly teacher that I am, that if you truly don't want to leave any kids behind, you might want to continue funding schools.

Jesus H. Monahan, I'd vote for a dung-flinging monkey sooner than I'd vote for W!

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Are you listening, Kerry? Damn it all, is it because Ralph Waldo's a Harvard man? Fuck Yale, fuck Skull and Bones, listen to the wisdom that you know inside to be true! Are you afraid to upset the apple cart? Well how about this little tidbit from another cart tipper:

• ...and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to foment open rebellion like my man Tommy Jeff, but don't let us suffer under this petty tyrant, King George, any longer! ATTACK! ATTACK! Lay on, Macduff, And damn'd be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. Maybe I shouldn't post this....