"fox, I appoint you to guard hen-house"

Jeff Sessions Is Forced Out as Attorney General as Trump Installs Loyalist

November 7 headline, The New York Times

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     Exploring through Hunter Thompson's book about the 1972 presidential campaign, I came across people who I had not thought of in a while:  Mayor Daley, George Meany, Frank Rizzo...

     Two nights ago I listened to "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on You Tube (it was probably the Monday installment), and Mr. Matthews mentioned Frank Rizzo.  (I thought, "OK, you again?")

     Chris Matthews has a rat-a-tat energy and almost frantic intensity when he discusses current events.

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     Studying about AFL-CIO leader George Meany this week, I Googled George Meany quotes, and this is what surfaced -- more like a speech than a quote....


---------------------- "When we think of the historic struggles and conflicts of the current and past century, we naturally think of famous leaders:  men who governed nations, commanded armies, and inspired movements in the defense of liberty, or in the service of ideologies which have obliterated liberty.

     Yet today, in this hour of human history, when the forces arrayed against the free spirit of man are more powerful, more brutal, and potentially more deadly than ever before, the single figure who has raised the highest flame of liberty heads no state, commands no army, and leads no movement that our eyes can see.

     But there is a movement -- a hidden movement of human beings who have no offices and no headquarters, who are not represented in the great halls where nations meet, who every day risk or suffer more for the right to speak, to think, and to be true to themselves than any of us here are likely to risk in our lifetime.

     We heed this voice, not because it speaks for the left or the right or for any faction, but because it hurls truth and courage into the teeth of total power when it would be so much easier and more comfortable to submit to and embrace the lies by which that power lives.

     What is the strength of this voice?  How has it broken through to us when others have been silenced?  Its strength is art.

     Art illuminates the truth.  It is, in a sense subversive:  subversive of hypocrisy, subversive of delusion, subversive of untruth.

     Few combinations in all of history have demonstrated the power of the pen coupled with the courage of free men's minds.


     We need that power desperately today.  We need it to teach the new and forgetful generations in our midst what it means to be free.  Freedom is not an abstraction, neither is the absence of freedom.

Art is a unique gift.  It cannot be transmuted to another.  But let us pray that this courage is contagious.

     We need echoes of this voice.  We need to hear echoes in the White House.  We need to hear the echoes in Congress and in the State Department and in the universities and media.


     The American ethos, from its conception to the contemporary, has been dedicated to the firm, unyielding belief in freedom.  Freedom for all mankind, as well as for ourselves.  It is in this spirit that we live our lives."

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