Peroration - A Definition

The peroration is the bellow of the mediocre actor upon the last verse of the tirade.

Francisque Sarcey, Recollections of Middle Life (1892)[1]

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[1] Francisque Sarcey, Recollections of Middle Life, tr. Elisabeth Luther Cary (London: William Heinemann [Scholar Select Reprint], 1893), p. 162.  Originally published in 1892 as Souvenirs d’âge mûr. Sarcey was France's most prominent drama critic over four decades in the last half of the nineteenth century.  

Incompetence as a Contagion

I have already compared this, our desire to worship incompetence, to an infectious disease.  It has attacked the State at the very core, in its constitution, and it is not surprising that it is spreading rapidly to the customs and to the morals of the country.[1]

Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incompetence (1910)

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[1] Émile Faguet, The Cult of Incompetence, tr. Beatrice Barstow (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1916), p. 123 [Bibliolife Reprint].   Originally published as Le Culte de l’Incompétence in 1910. 

De Tocqueville’s anticipations of a polarized planet – in 1835

Today, two great nations of the earth seem to be advancing toward the same destination from different starting points: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.

Both have grown unobserved and, while men’s attention has been preoccupied elsewhere, they have climbed up into the leading rank of nations and the world has learned of both their birth and their greatness at almost the same moment. …

Americans struggle against obstacles placed there by nature; Russians are in conflict with men.  The former fight the wilderness and barbarity; the latter, civilization with all its weaponry: thus, America’s victories are achieved with the plowshare, Russia’s with the soldier’s sword.

To achieve their aim, the former rely on self-interest and allow free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.

The latter focus the whole power of society upon a single man.

The former deploy freedom as their main mode of action; the latter, slavish obedience.

The point of departure is different, their paths are diverse but each of them seems destined by some secret provisional design to hold in their hands the fate of half the world at some date in the future.[1]

De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol 1 (1835)

 

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[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, tr. Gerald E. Bevan (Toronto: Penguin, 2003), pp. 484, 485. See the final remarks to the Conclusion of Democracy in America, Volume 1.  Thanks also to David Runciman for his Talking Politics: History of Ideas podcast for the London Review of Books, “Tocqueville on Democracy”.

"Patriotism" and the U.S. Election

Was Hillary Clinton considered not “patriotic” enough by some? Patriot derives from the ancient Greek meaning “of one’s fathers”, or originally “father”, hence the familial word “Pa”.[1] Greek citizens were first termed patres and this is carried on by Romans whose senators were considered the “fathers” of the city.[2]  In other words Hillary Clinton was not considered a viable Presidential “patriot” by enough male voters simply because she is not a father.  Similarly the ‘birther’ movement triumphed by Trump targeted President Obama because his father was Muslim.

Our police are here to serve and protect, another masculine role in the binary world, and the FBI Director James Comey’s interference in the American election just 10 days before the vote, skewed the vote in Donald Trump’s favour, despite Secretary Clinton being ‘cleared’ a mere two days before November 8.  Similarly in Canada the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, unknown to many, tilted the federal election in favour of a Harper Conservative minority government in 2006, after Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Finance Minister Ralph Goodale was investigated – and later exonerated, but following the vote.

Sadly, Hillary Clinton lost to the Pa’s and Grandpa’s of the United States, whose “patriotism” was rooted in an ancient – and stubborn - image of themselves as “fathers of the land.”

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[1] Oxford Canadian Dictionary (2001).  See also Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2015), p. 24.

[2] Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual, p., 27.