Another short post today as I prepare for a grinding second day of depositions.
Thinking of two of my favorite essayists this morning, Cicero and Montaigne. I included a quote from Cicero about the delights of farm life when I set up this page. Politician, philosopher, orator, and perhaps the greatest and most prolific essayist of all time, Cicero elected to leave public life at the peak of his powers and retire to his farm. That decision came in the midst of the decades of tumult that heralded the transition from republic to empire, and he found himself drawn back into the political arena to denounce the Dear Leader of the moment, Marc Antony, and to call for a return to republican values.
The decision to speak out for virtue and against demagoguery earned him the attention of Marc Antony's goons, who unceremoniously arrested him, cut off his head and hands, and nailed them to a wall in Rome for all the world to see. And Cicero's principled stand (although there was a healthy dose of ambition in the mix) ultimately did nothing to prevent the rise of the Caesars, and the devolution of Rome into an authoritarian state in all but name.
One of Cicero's greatest admirers, some 1500 years later, was Michel de Montaigne.
Born into the French nobility, Montaigne was one of the leading figures in rediscovering and reviving Cicero's tradition of the personal essay, and Montaigne's writings on topics ranging from friendship to the fleeting nature of fame were one of the finest expressions of the humanist tradition that was the great contribution of his age. To this day, a dog-eared copy sits on the shelf of my office at Wyldswood.
Unlike Cicero, Montaigne chose to stay on the farm when the crisis of his era, France's religious wars, began to consume his nation in horrifying destruction and brutality. In 1571 he retired to the library located in a turret of his chateau, and stayed there for ten years writing and reflecting on what was happening around him. He eschewed calls for him to return to public life, by both Protestants and Catholics, and died at home rather than at the hands of political or religious adversaries.
I think of both this morning as I consider the tension between our delightful life on the farm and the duties that perhaps arise out of the collapse of our nation's political life right outside the gate. I have intentionally avoided any discussion of politics here, figuring no one needs more of that or cares what I think. But my heart is heavy this morning with the spectacle of the last four days in politics, and the shocking events in Kenosha that included taxpayer-funded law enforcement officers thanking white militia thugs for showing up to assist with crowd control, then letting a young man carrying an assault rifle walk through their cordon after he had just finished murdering two unarmed protesters. Do we have a duty to speak out? If so, how?
With every fiber of my being, I'd rather sit in my truck bed pool with Peg and a Jameson's listening to the Braves, but I also feel like that decision is giving aid and comfort to those promoting a malignancy in our national character. My heart is with Montaigne in the tower; my conscience is with Cicero speaking truth to power.
I'd just prefer not to have my hands and head nailed to a wall somewhere, or the farm torched by an increasingly bold and bellicose segment of our population.
And so it goes.
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