Jefferson didn't say it: update

This information is from a May 2, 2006 post by Jim Lindgren on the blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

Earliest attribution to Jefferson found so far - June 2, 1991 Boston Globe interview with Nadine Strossen: "And I do think that what Thomas Jefferson said is true, 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.' "

Abstract of a NY Times article from October 16, 1969: "[NY Mayor John] Lindsay calls demonstration highest form of patriotism".

An obituary of Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson in the Nov. 11, 1984 Philadelphia Inquirer:

An author, lecturer and world traveler, Mrs. Hutchinson marched in protests and demonstrations and spoke from pulpits whenever and wherever she could in the cause of peace. For her efforts, she was frequently criticized.

But none of her critics caused her to "budge one inch," she said. . . .

She dated much of her work by relating it to the growth of her children. As an example, she recalled to the day and hour when an anonymous note predicting that she would hang arrived early in World War II. It came, she said, while she was bathing her 3-month-old son.

But the note and other forms of criticism did not faze her. "Dissent from public policy can be the highest form of patriotism," she said in an interview in 1965. "I don't think democracy can survive without it, even though you may be crucified by it at times."

Mrs. Hutchinson noted that what critics said had little to do with what she did or thought.

"There's no misery in my life," she said. She wouldn't permit it. . . .

Mrs. Hutchinson took the plea for peace and freedom to the Kremlin, leading a 12-member delegation to Moscow and a tour of the Soviet Union in 1964. . . .

Mrs. Hutchinson led sit-ins and hunger strikes against the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; protests at the White House against the Vietnam War, and demonstrations on behalf of a nuclear freeze.

Lindgren comments: "Thus, it appears that these misguided politicians are quoting, not Jefferson, but Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson, a strict pacifist who opposed World War II as immoral and who ignored dissent when it was directed toward herself and her ideas."

Jefferson didn't say it

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

It appears it was that patriotic American, Howard Zinn, who was the first one who used that exact phrase in 2002.

From the discussion at urbanlegends.about.com

an editorial in the Nov/Dec 2001 issue of The New Crisis, the NAACP magazine, here contains this sentence: “Thoughtful dissent, particularly when the blood is running hot, is one of the highest orders of patriotism."

The discussion also gives a longer, vaguely similar quote by TJ:

The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off. —

TITLE: To Elbridge Gerry.
EDITION: Washington ed. iv, 188.
EDITION: Ford ed., vii, 151.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: June. 1797

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

G.K. Chesterton,The Napoleon of Notting Hill

“...I don’t try to get outside the man. I try to get inside the murderer. . . . Indeed it’s much more than that, don’t you see? I am inside a man. I am always inside a man, moving his arms and legs; but I wait till I know I am inside a murderer, thinking his thoughts, wrestling with his passions; till I have bent myself into the posture of his hunched and peering hatred; till I see the world with his bloodshot and squinting eyes, looking between the blinkers of his half-witted concentration; looking up the short and sharp perspective of a straight road to a pool of blood. Till I am really a murderer.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Chace, regarding him with a long, grim face, and added: “And that is what you call a religious exercise.”

“Yes,” said Father Brown; “that is what I call a religious exercise.”

After an instant’s silence he resumed: “It’s so real a religious exercise that I’d rather not have said anything about it. But I simply couldn’t have you going off and telling all your countrymen that I had a secret magic connected with Thought-Forms, could I? I’ve put it badly, but it’s true. No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”

G.K. Chesterton, The Secret of Father Brown

A Cold War moment

Sept. 22, 1959 - At about 10:30 PM, the White Sox won the American League pennant. In celebration, Chicago air raid sirens were sounded. I remember hearing the sirens, but not much else. My older brother later said he expected to see mushroom clouds over downtown.

From the Chicago Tribune, Sept. 24, 1959:

USE OF SIRENS TO HAIL SOX ANGERS MANY

Protests Pour in at City Hall

Mayor Daley and the Chicago civil defense corps received an avalanche of protests Wednesday over the sounding of city air raid warning sirens to celebrate the White Sox baseball pennant victory.

The 5 minute wail of more than 100 sirens at 10:30 p. m. Tuesday sent thousands rushing into the streets and caused near panic in almost every section of the city and Evanston, which is tied into the Chicago warning system.

Irate citizens telephoned to the City hall at the rate of 1,100 an hour Wednesday to protest the action, for which Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn, acting defense corps director, assumed full responsibility.

Daley Explains It

Mayor Daley, reached in Troy, N.Y., where he flew to speak at a Democratic political meeting, said the sirens were sounded "in the hilarity and exuberance of the evening."

"I regret if anyone was inconvenienced," he said, "but after 40 years of waiting for a pennant in the American league I assume that everyone who was watching the telecast was happy about the White Sox victory."

Robert M. Woodward, Illinois civil defense director, asked the federal office of civil defense mobilization to investigate the siren scare. Robert Tieken, United States attorney, announced his office also would determine if Chicago authorities had violated any federal law.

"Just a Tribute"

"This was intended as just a tribute to a great little team that brought Chicago a pennant," said Quinn, "and there was certainly no intention to frighten the people.

"I feel bad about this. If it inconvenienced any people or upset them, then I am sorry."

Quinn said he failed to reach Mayor Daley before giving the order to sound the sirens, but that later the mayor gave his approval, citing a city council resolution as authority. The resolution urged that "bells ring, whistles blow, and bands play" when the White Sox clinched victory but made no mention of air raid sirens.

Calls It "Shocking"

Quinn added that the siren alarm clearly demonstrated that people did not know their civil defense instructions. If they did, he said, they would have tuned into the civil defense frequencies on their radios [640 and 1240 kilocycles] and learned there was no cause for alarm.

Woodward termed the use of the sirens "shocking." Federal regulations, signed by the city when the sirens were purchased with 50 per cent federal matching funds, clearly state, he said, they may be sounded only in case of an enemy attack, for test purposes, or in case of a natural disaster in order to "save life or property."

Unaware of Intention

Division Marshal Gerald Slattery, C.G.D.C. coordinator, said he understood the sirens were to be sounded only in case of enemy attack, and added he had been unaware of any intention to use the warning system.

In Evanston, City Manager Bert W. Johnson said its 80,000 citizens were shocked and dismayed that public officials would use so important a warning device to celebrate a ball game. Evanston, he added, may seek a way of unhooking its own sirens from the Chicago system.

The sirens' blast, which awakened thousands, brought the Illinois Bell Telephone company its greatest overload since the ending of World War II. Newspapers, radio, and television stations were swamped with calls from people asking if the Russians were attacking.

Rush Into Streets

Men and women rushed into the street in residential neighborhoods. Many told of herding hysterical children into basements as shelter from an expected bombing. Almost everyone directed his ire against Mayor Daley "or whoever is responsible."

Ald. John J. Hoellen [47th] said that at the next city council meeting Oct. 2 he would demand an official investigation by the council and censure of whoever ordered the sirens sounded.

"The whole neighborhood was panic stricken," Mrs. Frances Sarafin, of 207 N. Kolin av.[sic], told THE TRIBUNE. "It's a horrible thing that Chicagoans should be subjected to this."

Calls it Disgraceful

"Using those sirens as a toy is disgraceful," said Mrs. Kenneth Morgan, 201 E. Walton St. "You wonder about teen-agers doing wrong and then find public officials using such poor judgment."

"Responsible officials should not be permitted to shift the blame," Mrs. Norma Bufhord [sic], 7216 N. Ozman [sic] Ave., said.

"It was childish regression on the part of the mayor to resort to sirens that should be used for national defense," said Mrs. Eleanor Johnson, 2452 N. Harding Ave. "The mayor should be impeached."

Used in Weekly Test

The rising and falling warble of the sirens is the normal civil defense post-attack signal. It is used in the weekly siren test at 10:30 A.M. Tuesdays. The "take cover" signal is a steady 1-minute blast.

A city ordinance provides a fine of $200 and six months in jail for any use of the sirens not authorized by the mayor. The mayor, in a companion ordinance, is authorized to sound the sirens for testing purpose or when an enemy attack warning is received from military authorities.

Any warning of impending air attack would come over a "hot" wire, direct from the air defense command headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. Chicago is one of nine key alarm centers in the state.

Bob Secter, "The 1959 'Go-Go' White Sox and the air-raid sirens" (excerpt from Chicago Days: 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great City, edited by Stevenson Swanson, Contemporary Books):

Fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn ordered a celebratory five-minute sounding of the city's air-raid sirens. The late-night wail, at a time when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's threat to bury America was still fresh, frightened tens of thousands of area residents. Many rushed to the streets. Others herded hysterical children to shelter. "We had seven children under 9 and woke them all up when the sirens screamed," said Mrs. Earl Gough of the South Side. "We said Hail Marys together in the basement."

Quinn apologized but also argued that the incident provided "a very good test" of the area's readiness, which he found wanting. Mayor Richard J. Daley claimed Quinn acted in accordance with a City Council proclamation that "there shall be whistles and sirens blowing and there shall be great happiness when the White Sox win the pennant."

1959: A great year -- even for Sox turncoat, Tome McNamee, Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 3, 2005:

The Sox won the pennant on Sept. 22 in 1959, clinching it with a 4-2 win over the Indians in Cleveland, and it was like a gift.

All over the South Side, we jumped up in front of our TVs and stumbled out onto our front stoops -- moms and dads and kids -- and laughed and smiled in the night like rich people, as if nobody had to get up before dawn to go to work.

I, of course, recall almost none of this. I was 5 years old and no doubt sound asleep at that very moment when the Sox got the final out against the Indians and the goofy fire commissioner, Bob Quinn, whooped it up by sounding the city's air raid sirens, which scared half the town.

But real Sox fans, not pathetic future turncoats like me, remember it like yesterday, even if they weren't born yet.

"I'm sitting in the front room with my dad and the sirens went off," says Ed Mucha, who was 25 and living at home with his folks in Gage Park. "My dad had fallen asleep in his chair and now he wakes up and starts shutting off the lights. I say, 'Hey Dad, the Sox won the American League pennant and they're going to the World Series.' He says, 'Oh, I thought we were being attacked.'"

From Disaster Study Number 12, Disaster Research Group, Division of Anthropology and Psychology: Symposium on HUMAN PROBLEMS IN The Utilization of Fallout Shelters, Held at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D. C., 11 and 12 February 1960 (archive.org link)

JOY IN MUDVILLE

The Incident

After forty futile attempts in forty successive years, the Chicago White Sox finally won an American League baseball title in 1959. The pennant was clinched when the White Sox won a night game from the Cleveland Indians on September 22, 1959. The game was broadcast and telecast from Cleveland.

Just a few days earlier, the Chicago City Council had "... resolved that bells ring, whistles blow, bands play and general joy be unconfined when the coveted pennant has been won by the heroes of 35th Street." The evening of the ball game, the fire commissioner (also acting director of the city's civil defense corps) decided to sound the civil defense sirens to add to the spirit of the city council's proclamation.

The baseball game ended at 9:50 P.M. Chicago time. Live telecasts and broadcasts from the dressing room of the victorious team were received for about 15 to 20 minutes immediately afterward. Then at 10:30, some forty minutes after the game had ended, the air raid alert signal went off. A steady blast for a full five minutes sounded, a signal which means that an air attack is possible but is not expected for at least 31 minutes.

Prior to his sounding of the siren, the commissioner properly notified the police and fire departments, the public utilities, and all radio and television stations and newspapers. But only a very few minutes elapsed between the arrival of this notice and the sounding of the siren. Thus, the public had no warning of the event. ...

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being an adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay--and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

We simply cannot afford to gamble...by ignoring it. We cannot risk inaction. Those scientists who say we are merely entering a period of climatic instability are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored.

Lowell Ponte, The Cooling, 1978, p. 237

michaelchrichton.com

I found in traveling around the world that a great many people believed the most arrant nonsense about the United States. In particular, a great many people, apparently well educated and sophisticated, were convinced that the people of the United States were in the grip of terror and that free speech and free press no longer existed here. They believed that the United States was fomenting a third world war and would presently start it, with Armageddon consequences for everyone else, and that the government of the United States smashed without mercy anyone who dared to oppose even by oral protest this headlong rush toward disaster.

These people could "prove" their opinions by quoting any number of Americans and American newspapers and magazines. That they were able to quote such American sources proved just the opposite, namely that we do continue to enjoy free speech even to express arrant nonsense and unpopular opinions, escaped them completely.

The extremely wide scope of free speech and free press in the United States, much wider than that enjoyed anywhere else in the world including all of the British Commonwealth, is not understood elsewhere.

(More free speech and press than in the British Commonwealth? Surely not! Ah, but we do have: our radio is not government owned, we do not place severe restrictions on the importation of printed matter from outside our borders, our libel laws and our limitations on reporting of court procedures are as nothing compared with theirs, our news reporting is the most aggressive in the world.)

The real restrictions against what we can say or print are very nearly limited to only the most blatant of pornography and to classified military secrets. But citizens of other countries neither understand nor believe this; it is too foreign to their own experience. I said to a man in South Africa: "You insist that anyone in the United States who expresses an opinion favorable to Russia or to communism is immediately thrown in jail. How do you reconcile that with the fact that the communist Daily Worker is still published in New York?"

He simply called me a liar.

Robert Anson Heinlein (circa 1953/54), Tramp Royale, p. 61-62

Woman...naturally bigoted and relentless

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be... woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power.

Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 3rd rev. ed., ch. 9 (1917).

"The rich woman who has a maid to raise her child can't expect to get the right viewpoint of life," she wrote in Miners Magazine. "If they would raise their own babies, their hearts would open and their feelings would become human. And the effect on the child is just as bad. A nurse can't give her mother's love to somebody else's child."

Mother Jones detested the middle-class reformers who sought to transfer household functions to the market or the state. She suspected that capitalists were scheming to force women into the paid labor force and children into daycare; the prospect did not please her: "The human being is the only animal which is neglected in its babyhood. The brute mother suckles and preserves her young at the cost of her own life, if need be. The human mother hires another, poorer woman for the job."

Mother Jones, anti-feminist

Do SAT Scores Really Predict Success?

Most studies find that the correlation between SAT scores and first-year college grades is not overwhelming, and that only 10 percent to 20 percent of the variation in first-year GPA is explained by SAT scores.

This association appears weaker than it is, however, for an interesting, but seldom noted statistical reason: Colleges usually accept students from a fairly narrow swath of the SAT spectrum.

The SAT scores of students at elite schools, say, are considerably higher, on average, than those of students at community colleges, yet both sets of students probably have similar college grade distributions at their respective institutions.

If both sets of students were admitted to elite schools or both sets attended community colleges, there would be a considerably stronger correlation between SATs and college grades at these schools.

Those schools that attract students with a wide range of SAT scores generally have higher correlations between the scores and first-year grades.

This is a general phenomenon; the degree of correlation between two variables depends on the range of the variables considered.

John Allen Paulos, Who's Counting?

Mark Twain, Darwin, and the French

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals...

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor -- some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance -- insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirchless innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development -- namable as the Human Being. Below us -- nothing. Nothing but the Frenchman.

There is only one possible stage below the Moral Sense; that is the Immoral Sense. The Frenchman has it. Man is but little lower than the angels. This definitely locates him. He is between the angels and the French.

Mark Twain, Man's Place in the Animal World (a.k.a. The Lowest Animal) (1896)

Then it came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave. So I bid him forbear to talk, for I would not come near the door of his house. Then he reviled me, and told me that he would send such a one after me that should make my way bitter to my soul.

Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

Robert A. Heinlein, "excerpts from the notebooks of Lazarus Long", Time Enough for Love

from Wikiquote:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

* Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.

* Another possible source for the quote was proposed by Norbert Guterman, editor of "A Book of French Quotations," who noted a letter to M. le Riche (February 6, 1770) in which Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." This remark, however, does not appear in the letter.

UN spin

The UN Dispatch blog does exactly what it accuses another blogger of doing.

From Roger L. Simon: UN-Balanced Blogging on the UN Dispatch blog:

0% of Roger L. Simon's blog entries during April make reference to the following UN-related issues:[followed by self-promotion of good works of which the US is the major funder]

0% of posts on the UN Dispatch make reference to the following UN-related issues:

UN sex scandals in various African countries
UN failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda
UN oil-for-food scandal

Is Simon's hyper-focus on a single UN-related issue based on deep convictions?

Does the UN Dispatch have any justification for using the term "hyper-focus"? Could it be that they consider any attention afforded that issue to be too much? Is UN Dispatch ignoring any of the other above issues an oversight? Maybe. Or is it indicative that they just don't give a damn?

From Roger L. Simon: UN-Balanced Blogging, Part II

1. UN Dispatch is the UN's blog, and the post in question represents the UN's displeasure with Roger Simon.

False. Here's a brief quote from the 'About' section of this blog: "UN Dispatch is sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, though the views expressed herein do not represent the official views of the United Nations Foundation, or the UN."

You use the UN name, you're paid by them, they own you.

And not unexpectedly, the responses were largely dismissive, derisive, and betrayed a shallow reading of the original post.

And not unexpectedly, the responses posted on the UN Dispatch were dismissive and betrayed a desire to sweep problems under the rug.

an unfortunate reaction from some bloggers is their willingness to simply shrug off the examples of UN-related issues listed in the original post. It's clear that many of these bloggers have become accustomed to knee-jerk attacks and are unwilling (or unable) to engage in a reasoned debate.

An unfortunate reaction from UN Dispatch is their willingness to simply shrug off the examples of UN problems referred to by anyone. It's clear that the UN has become accustomed to simply talk about fixing these problems and to resort to a knee-jerk attack on the messenger because its bureaucrats are too cowardly and lazy to address the problems and actually fix them.

Europe's opposition to the USA

The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The democratic republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her union should be broken, her future cut off, and that she should be compell’d to descend to the level of kingdoms and empires ordinarily great.

There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the United States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember’d by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared...

We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the old world.

Walt Whitman, 1864

Credulity

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, May 1945

cf. Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development

Who says the left doesn't have a sense of humor?

from "The Ward Churchill Notoriety Tour", The Weekly Standard, April 25, 2005:

A woman with a foamy cow-head on her hand steps forward. She introduces herself to Churchill as a "video activist and puppeteer." Her little friend is "Barbara Bovine, a reporter for NO-BS news." She asks him for an interview, and he motions to me with some relief, telling her he's busy. But I refuse to let him off the hook. "It's all right, have at it," I say, "Don't want to miss this." Churchill looks pained, but consents to the cow interview.

Barbara Bovine starts in, saying she's a mad cow, not because she's diseased, but "pissed at how my species has been treated." When she questions him on the morality of paying taxes on things you don't want to support, such as food, he responds, "I'm going to have to eat you, aren't I?" Barbara looks perplexed, as much as she can for an inanimate object. "Are you not a vegetarian?" she asks. "Of course not!" he thunders. "I'm of the planet of the carrot. Why would I eat my relatives?"

indecision

Indecision is a terrible thing.