Your Morning Morris
For Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024
Week 66 of our regular morning feature here at Friedman of the Plains Worldwide in which we highlight the great words and works of great men and women, as well as those who are insufferable, delusional, and even fictional.
This week Gouverneur Morris
“They (the French) have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light. It is impossible to imagine a more disorderly Assembly. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve and hiss those whom they disapprove. . . .
Everything almost is elective, and consequently no one obeys. It is an anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to take back their chains for some time to come at least. And so much for that licentious spirit which they dignify with the name of "Love of Liberty." Their Literati, whose heads are turned by romantic notions picked up in books, and who are too lofty to look down upon that kind of man which really exists, and too wise to heed the dictates of common-sense and experience, have turned the heads of their countrymen, and they have run-a-muck at a Don Quixote constitution such as you are blessed with in Pennsylvania. I need say no more. You will judge of the effects of such a constitution upon people supremely depraved.”
I just found an approving discussion of Morris in The Daily Caller, for whom every Democrat is a Fifth Column Communist. It's important to note that he wrote these words in 1792, which was during the turbulent days that led to those who led the Revolution to turn on each other and eventually prepare the way for a dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1799. So, the end was approaching rapidly, but I think that Morris mistook an honest revulsion for rule by purse and pulpit for a less productive anarchy. "Since I have been in this Country, I have seen the Worship of many Idols and but little of the true God." With that statement he identified with every revanchist jerk in history who knew down deep that what he believed in was horse waste and would kill rather than be reminded of that fact.
“Don Quixote” as an adjective... I’m unsure what the meaning of it is, whether ‘crazy’ or ‘ideal’ or something else!