essays

June 10, 2010
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AN UNDIPLOMATIC EXCHANGE
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To emphasize his humble origins, Nixon once said to Khrushchev that his father had a grocery store in which he and his brothers had worked. Khrushchev's comment: “All shopkeepers are thieves.”
For more hilarious exchanges, see K BLOWS TOP: A COLD WAR COMIC INTERLUDE STARRING NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV, AMERICA'S MOST UNLIKELY TOURIST by Peter Carlson (New York, 2009).
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ANOTHER FIRST
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Yesterday on the evening news on TV we were informed that a 5000-year old shoe had been discovered in Armenia. The leather shoe looked like a comfortable moccasin in excellent condition.
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FREUD ON SHAKESPEARE
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Freud thought Shakespeare was French and his real name was Jacques Pierre. And I think Cyrano de Bergerac was Armenian and his real name was Giragos. But that's only one proof of his Armenian identity, the other being the length of his nose.
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DEFINITION (I)
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I have read several definition of courage. To insult someone anonymously and from a safe distance is not one of them.
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DEFINITION (II)
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Cicero defined freedom as “participation in power.” As far as I know, no one has ever defined freedom as saying “Yes, sir!” to idiots.
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ON ISLAM
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John Selden (1650): “The Turks tell their People of a Heaven where there is a sensible Pleasure, but of a Hell where they shall suffer they don’t know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a Hell where we shall feel sensible Pain, but of a Heaven where we shall enjoy we can’t tell what.”
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DEFINITION (III)
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My definition of bliss: The awareness that one is no longer dependent on the charity of swine and on the approval of morons.
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June 11, 2010
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KHRUSHCHEV AND THE KGB
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After he was ousted from office and acquired the status of a non-person, Khrushchev was ordered by the KGB not to write his memoir. “I refuse to obey you,” he told them. The order was unconstitutional, he said; so were the bugs placed in his home. “You stuck listening devices all over the dacha,” he told them, “even in the bathroom. You spend the people's money to eavesdrop on my farts.”
Eventually his memoir was smuggled to the West by his son. Translated and published in many countries, it became a best-seller. His son is now an American citizen.
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READING CHAMFORT
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Nicolas de Chamfort (1740-1794), French writer who was arrested under the Revolution and committed suicide. He is the author of THOUGHTS, MAXIMS, AND ANECDOTES, published posthumously.
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“One is happier when one is alone because in solitude one thinks of things, but in the company of others one is forced to think of men.”
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“Women are made to deal with our weaknesses and our foolishness, not with our reason. There exists between them and men epidermic sympathies but very few of intellect, soul, and character.”
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“There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.”
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“Nature never said 'Be thou not poor,' much less 'Be thou rich'; but she cries, 'Be thou independent!'”
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ON MY CRITICS
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When my critics (if you will forgive the overstatement) hurl insults at me (and anonymous insults at that) it means only one thing: they have run out of arguments, assuming of course they had them to begin with -- and that's assuming a great deal.
To insult is not to criticize. And to insult anonymously is to compound stupidity with cowardice. Why would anyone be afraid of a minor scribbler who writes today and will be forgotten tomorrow? And to think that these are the offspring of men who a hundred years ago challenged the might of an empire.
A far better man than myself once said: “Once upon a time we shed our blood for freedom. We are now afraid of free speech."
I repeat: why would anyone be afraid of someone like me whose most formidable weapon is his common sense – which, it has been said, is the least common of all faculties.
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June 12, 2010
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ON CERTAINTIES
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The closer I get to a certainty
the more I am haunted by its contradiction.
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I have been wrong so often that
I never know when I am right – if I am ever right.
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I am here to assert not certainties
but to expose lies.
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God may know
but those who speak in His name do not.
It would be more accurate to say,
it's because they don't know
that they feel the need to speak in His name.
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There is a type of patriotism
that is reserved only for those who agree with us.
I suggest that's less patriotism and more dogmatism.
Whenever our enemies want to divide us
they rely on our dogmatism
and they are never disappointed.
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Those who understand the past
have a better chance to predict the future.
A prophet is first and foremost a historian.
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Both Ottomanism and Sovietism are based on the proposition
that the man at the top is always right
and to even suggest he may be wrong is treason.
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At the root of all wars and massacres
there stands a man who says
“We are right and they are wrong.”
All crimes against humanity are consequences of that lie.
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To adopt a propaganda line and to be wrong
might as well be synonymous.
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I don't ask my readers to believe in what I say.
All I ask is that they learn to think for themselves – but perhaps
that's asking too much.
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The Tree in the Garden was not of Knowledge but of Ignorance.
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