Cooper

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Hermetic America – Our Critical Heritage:
James Fenimore Cooper, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Adams, Mark Twain
Presentation 3 of 13

James Fenimore Cooper: The American Democrat.
Criticism of the Beginning Betrayal of Our Cherished Ideal.
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, April 18, 1985

Transcript:
The date is April the 18th, 1985. This is the third lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir on the, our critical heritage. Tonight's lecture is entitled Cooper, the American Democrat. Criticism of the beginning betrayal of our cherished ideal.
We come tonight to the third lecture on this series. And as I observed to you before, this is a very difficult series to appreciate and understand. This is indeed the blind spot. This is the blind spot of the world. What happened 150 years ago in this country is the least known, the least conscious, of all events in the world today. And consequently, it has shadowy implications for us today, which are very much to the point I think of individuation in our times.
It is difficult at first to think of why we should have lectures in the metaphysical society on a person like James Fenimore Cooper. But the fact is, is that Cooper is the only continuer that we have of the great vision of Franklin and Jefferson. And the fact that Cooper drew upon himself the consternation, the criticism, the invective of not only Europe, but of the United States is an interesting case in point. It is also of great significance that at the apex of the Cooper controversies that a term manifest destiny, with all of its religious implications, should be mooted first in the United States. And the term manifest destiny is an occult empowerment of the American people to redeem, not only the wilderness but the old world, which includes the entire world.
And so, this is the most precarious of all developments. This is the false flowering of the American spirit. That the message to redeem was seen in terms of wealth. In terms of power. Rather than in terms of right. In terms of wisdom. And it was due to this monumental flaw, an error, that Cooper detected and wrote publicly that he drew all of the injurious, psychic elements, all of the negativity to himself, and constellate it. Polarized it. Absorbed it.
And right at this time came that mythical American adventure called the Alamo. It is no small reason to identify and see these events as the constellation of the tremendous power that had been brought into being. One is almost tempted to use the words conjured. Not in the necromantic mode but conjured in the sense of certain ceremonies of the real, having been observed by Franklin and Jefferson through a lifetime had produced efficacy. And the country was enormously strong in its potential.
In the year 1845, the United States took a quantum jump in its power base. It added a million two hundred twelve thousand square miles to its territory. It pushed itself not only to the Pacific, but towards the South. And were it not for the observances of the treaty of Ghent of 1815, the United States would have taken all of the Canadas also at the same time.
Cooper is the key. He is the clue. He is the individual that we have to turn to, to understand that this latent sense of mission that all the groups brought to this country from the old world. All those credible excellent religious, occult, metaphysical desires to manifest the good, to bring into definite life and livelihood and structure and form, all of the powerful goods that could possibly be. This sense of mission was taken and skewed. And from that, the doctrine of manifest destiny took over. And for the last 150 years this country has striven mightily within itself to hold back from a chorus of empire.
It's curious. The originator of the term manifest destiny was an Irishman named John L. O'Sullivan. Julianne Hawthorne, the wonderful learned son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, once described John L. O'Sullivan is one of the most kindly interesting men in the world, but the sort of fellow who just couldn't make anything work. And because of this he had wild scheme after wild scheme, which he and great companionable lovability would tell to anyone who would sit down and and be with him. And he got together with a couple of friends and they published a magazine for a few issues, The Democratic Review. And it was there that the term manifest destiny was first used. And it plucked the chord that had been growing for all this time in the American psyche. That this was our mission. And that the world will be redeemed, dragging and kicking and screaming if need be, but it will be redeemed.
And this a tremendous insight of Cooper's at the time, if you recall, was made available to him because he had lived outside of the country for seven years. He had gained fame as a writer, as an individualist, as one of those great pioneer families who had gone back to the wilderness and built the dream house. Otsego hall at the foot of Lake Otsego, which today is Cooperstown where the baseball hall of fame is. And Cooper's sense of returning back to the wilderness as an American gentlemen. He always put great store in this idea of the gentlemen. The individual whose background allowed liberality and outlook in all the things. That carrying the gentleman code back to the wilderness alone gave the American the right to inherit and displace the lands of the Indian. That there was no quality of civilization that was an improvement upon the quote savage state. That primordial man, the red man, had achieved a harmony with nature, and all of his wants were supplied. His wants and the supply of them were in perfect equilibrium. Had gone on for untold tens of thousands of years and could have carried on indefinitely. The only distinguishing mark of civilization, Cooper was to say, is the development of wisdom above and beyond the natural ecology of life. The metaphysical insight, the philosophic depths this alone distinguished the civilized man from the savage. This alone was the hallmark of his right to inherit the Earth.
Cooper had left the United States in 1826. He in fact, arrived and touched down at the first English port in the isle of Jersey on the 4th of July 1826. The same day that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson die. And within a couple of weeks he was in Paris. He has two older girls were going to a school there. And the first two floors of this building where the school and the third floor is where the Cooper family made their home. Four girls, a baby boy, and another child of a friend and Cooper and his wife. And they were to stay there for seven years. Making Paris their ostensible base. And if you recall, he developed a great friendship with Lafayette.
And it was through this personal contact with Lafayette that he began to realize the tremendous depth of Jefferson's being. The scope of Jefferson's mind. The incredible accuracy of Jefferson's vision of what it took to ensure the civilization of man through his acquiring of wisdom. That whole base had to be laid. And a whole structure and courage to grow. And a whole combination envisioned for the people. For the people. That the basis of development was a property sense. But that the property sense was being a trustee for the terrain, for the land, for the buildings, for the facilities. And that this alone was the real base for the development of individuality. And it was only in individuality that the wisdom of metaphysical background of civilization flamed into being. Without that there was no such occurrence.
And so, the importance of the person, the trusteeship of the land, the vision of the overall purposes were blended together in a conviction. And through long conversations over the seven years with Lafayette and others, Cooper honed his sense of what it meant to be an American. And with his own insight into the land, into the red man, into the white man that what, who could learn to live in the wilderness as a home. Into the American man who could live upon the wide oceans in a familiar way. To that individual who felt at home in his cosmic mobility.
And when Cooper came back to the United States it had totally changed. The revolution of Andrew Jackson had gathered steam. And the sense of democracy had become that of the rabble. Instead of being something as the sacred purpose of the development of the individual in order to share in a cosmic vision, it was a chance to get as much as you could from everybody else before they could get it from you. And Cooper coming back was appalled by this. He was affronted on every level, including the religious. He felt that there had been a massive betrayal of the trust given to the people. And that the crux of it was that the government had become a government of laws and lawlessness based on institutions rather than on rights and visions based upon individuals. And he took exception to this.
And after a year and a half of putting together his travel notes, he published in sequence five volumes of travels. The first two volumes were entitled Switzerland. The third volume was entitled England. The fourth France. And the fifth Italy. And as the volumes came out, month after month, the anger of the reading public and the critics rose to title wave proportions. They castigated Cooper as being a maniac. A mad man criticizing everyone on the wrong basis. Obviously for arrogant personal desires. And the man should be silenced. And Cooper, astounded by this absurdity, but forced to take action because it became vituperative, not only in the legal sense. Lawsuit after lawsuit was placed upon him. For liable, for slander, for whatever they could get. But they began to encroach upon Cooper's property. He caught someone who was the editor of one of the national magazines, stealing a pack of apples from him. Just to see if he could get Cooper's goat, which he did. And so, Cooper responded with liable suit after liable suit. Until his desk was piled high with hundreds of liable suits.
And in the midst of this Cooper decided to pull the plug on the whole development. And he wrote a poignant critique of democracy. And it's called The American Democrat. And when it was published in 1838 it did pull the plug. All of the anger with loosed upon Cooper. Everyone considered him a madman. An arrogant so-and-so. And it was many, many generations before the book was reprinted. And it's difficult to come across it today. I have a copy here published by the Liberty classics within introduction by HL Mencken, which has end papers of a Cuniform word, which means liberty. From about 3,500 BC. And it's pronunciation is Umagreet. And this is the way that Sargon the Great wrote liberty.
In The American Democrat, which we'll get to, Cooper focuses upon the actuality of the situation. And he says, we have to steer clear of that most important to us of all phenomenon, the demagogue. That the democratic base which we have is fertile ground for the demagogue. That he unfortunately is arising in his millions now, but there may come a time when he arises in his singular greatness. And this we should be on guard for. That instead of having a development of education, we have a climate of public opinion. Which likes some corrosive acid dissolves all integrity before it. And the mediocre line of believing what everyone else believes because everyone else believes it, becomes the final death mantle upon which not only individuality declines, but the whole fabric of the American experiment in spirituality goes astray. And when these powers of spirit that have been brought up, foraged, made to happen, sour, they do not just disappear, but they become negative. They become destructive. And there is not world enough in time to contain the savage hurricane of an America gone wild.
So, Cooper becomes extraordinarily apt. He becomes in fact, the saving grace, the poignant critic before whose relentless insight this generation that has been raised on the cold war, finally can see it's way clear. That the cant of the cold war is the perfect demonic characterization of demagoguing polarities raised to a cosmic ultimate. In fact, Cooper said, if I could re-entitle my book, I would call it Empty Can't because it is con, can't that is destructive to us.
It has taken a long time for consciousness of these events to rise. They were not understood in his time by very many people. We will see in the next series one of the few people who really understood Cooper was Herman Melville, who finally appalled by the, the depths of the problem, the problem with man soul, lapsed into anonymity and silence. And became a customs inspector for the port of New York the last 30 years of his life. These are powerful realizations and it takes a great deal of integrity to face them. In fact, the characteristic is usually not to face them by blurring them over and saying, this is of no interest. This has to do with politics and not with our favorite metaphysical systems. This has to do with children's literature and not with any great occult thing. But it is precisely there where we least want to look that we should occasionally direct our insight.
If you recall last week, we brought the background into view by emphasizing the tremendous force, the movement of the frontier. And that this frontier rather like a shockwave traversing across the continent, traversing across time, creating in its wake an almost instant transformation. And those individuals who are on the moving side of this shockwave of the frontier were the most despicable of all people. They were the cutthroats. They were the gamblers. They were the gunfighters. They were the fugitive from justice. They were the flotsam of civilization. And quickly on their heels came the best people. Those who wanted new lives, new places to raise families, new grounds to cultivate. And so, you had the worst and the best of humanity following one upon each other.
And I read from your last week, some sections from Shane which is the archetypal Western showing the ultimate good, and the ultimate bad, always travel in couples. They're always on the scene together. There is always this showdown between the defender of right and between the, forces of evil.
And so, the frontier was this shockwave that went across the entire continent and produced in its wake, a series of disasters. For as the frontier moved on, the first generations very quickly assimilating the energy of those outside the law into their family ways and community ways, ,made up what were called compacts of community. They incorporated cities. They incorporated communities. States. And then they applied to the Congress to join the federal union. And in this way, overnight, within several years areas that were depopulated were suddenly populated with people who said that we are here to stay, and we would like to join the United States.
One of the first conspicuous failures at this was Texas. A man named James Long took a bunch of cutthroats into the Texas country. And as soon as they got there, they declared the Republic of Texas with a lone star flag and they applied to Congress. But the Mexican armies were able to put down this band. And the state of Texas in 1819 was forgotten. Not by all. And within 20 years, the Texas Republic would be well founded by a new generation of individuals.
The Alamo happened in 1835. And it's interesting because in the Alamo, we think of the tremendous disproportion of dead, Mexican dead to American dead. About ten to one. There were about 180 Americans killed. We call them Americans today. And about 1400 Mexicans. But it was not the Alamo that made the state of Texas, the Republic of Texas. It was the battle of San Jacinto outside of Houston, where the disproportion of the dead was a hundred Mexicans to every Texan. And the Mexican armies of Santa Ana were decimated.
All of this was happening at the time that Cooper's American Democrat was coming into the public view. Was making its way. And at the same time as writing The American Democrat Cooper was writing The Pathfinder. And so, The Pathfinder becomes a very interesting novel. A very interesting literary experience. It not only is one of the world's great novels because he was truly a very great writer, but it is the positive, happy expression in a symbolic mode of the right way, the right vision, that brought this country into being. That brought the whole occult traditions of the world together in one place to manifest that largest of all magics, the good life. T To bring into being not some charmed fairy circle to have three wishes, but to bring into being a historical presence of a free people in their tens of millions to live their lives. This was an objective well worth it.
But the perception of this from the 1840's on has been so elusive as to be considered by most people to be phantasmal. It's something that one would tell children so that they would sleep well at night. Or one would feed to young intellectual so that they would study harder. Or give to old people who are hoping to make their peace with life. But it's not anything that one would live with would we, day by day in our prime and our maturity. And it is this quality of dissembling that lurks like a briar wending its way through the American psyche. Through the whole contemporary world because we are not one tradition, we are all traditions. We are the multidimensionality tradition of the all. Of the unity. And this is an archetypal happening. This is the old fairy tale brought entirely into being.

And so, it was appropriate that a great writer of fairy tale literature, romantic, heroic literature, should have the vision to be able to see clearly. It was in fact, not until the 1890's that there was any kind of an intuition on the part of other persons. The first person to have a glimmer of this was the great Harvard professor, Frederick Jackson Turner, who wrote about the development of the American frontier. But it wasn't until 70 years later that one of his inheritors at Harvard, a man named Frederick Merck wrote Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History. And he finished this in 1962. And it was published in 1963. He finished it just before the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

It is incredible the irons of history. The fact that everything really is so recent after all. That in fact, the development of these patterns has it's character, almost a geometric like character, that the flow of history, And we'll see this when we get to Henry Adams, has a phase form flow. And that there is a development that seems to last for about 150 years. And after the maturity of an idea, which at its beginning was in the mind of a single individual and at the flush of its application, is in the air. Everyone knows it. It takes about 150 years for the life growth of the maturity of an idea.

And that somehow Cooper's idea of the spiritual reality of the individual has finally come home. Has finally come here to see that it is the only basis upon which union can be had. Union not Confederation. For Cooper is extremely insightful. In fact, he is the first critic to understand that the tensions developed were going to lead to a civil war. And this was 25 years before the event happened. And it's in Cooper's American Democrat that we find the first indications that this polarity is going to electrocute the body politic

Merck's book on Manifest Destiny and Mission has an interesting statement in towards the beginning. He writes,
In the late 1820's and 1830's relative quiet fill on the whole Western expansionist front. There was, this was the era of absorption of the energies and emotions of the restless on the Northeastern front in Maine. In Oregon the fur trade of Americans went into a decline. It almost disappeared as a result of depletion of the furs and cutthroat competition by the Hudson's Bay company for what remained. Whalers lost interest in the Northwest coast as their fleet made its base in far off Hawaii. Gallatin's writings of the consequences of an American and military adventure in Oregon had a sobering effect. As for Texas, the Mexican Republic opened the province to peaceful occupation. Land fabulously rich was offered to Americans cost free. A surge of Americans flowed there accelerated by Mexican colonizers, the so-called empresarios, who had contracts to fulfill.

And so, the late 1820's and the early 1830's are a period of quiescence that reoccur again and again in American history. We're in one now. And it is right after that period of quiescence that a tremendous surge coming seemingly out of nowhere rises with almost asymptotic vigor and a new day has dawned. And this sense of elan is grabbed and garnered by the demagogues. And they coded with the public opinion propaganda that they promote for themselves. And so, the raw energy, the flow of the phase of archetypal development, is diverted. One might almost say perverted. And channeled into areas that produce more problems in the future.

It is this quality of Cooper's writing that we have to turn to now. Because only in The American Democrat do, we have a chance to see at the end of the lull before the great grab for land, power and wealth, somebody from the old guard, somebody from the old tradition born in 1789, who still remembered all the continuities and still understood what they were for. And it had that visionary experience with the wilderness, with the red man, to purify his insight. For it was with the red man that Cooper's insight was purified. This is why his greatest of all creations, the protagonists who becomes Hawkeye. Is a white man with a red man's life flow. Who will base those, those laws.

He writes in The American Democrat that,
Republics have been as liable to frauds and to departures from their professions as any other politics. Though no government can properly be termed a Republic at all in which the predominant authority of a single hereditary ruler is acknowledged. In all republics there must be more or less direct representation, however much its influence is lessened by the duration and by the magnitude of the trusts.

And so, the first quality that is there is not representation so much but direct representation. Remember now that the arcane seed of this whole structure is the person. The ability to be a person. A someone. Individuation the achievement of form as an autonomous self being who then can commit that achievement, that autonomy, by bridges of right to join with other individuals, other persons like this. And this creates the spiritual reality of the politic, the body politic. This is the first quality.

Cooper writes, "The polity of the United States is that of a Confederated Republic. But the power of the federal government acting in most instances on the body of the community, without the intervention of the several States, it has been better styled a union." Do you remember the phrase, all of this to form a more perfect union? Cooper is seeing this now. This is almost alchemical in form. A union.

"This word, which is original is applied to a political system, was first given to this form of Confederation. And as intended that the relations of the parties, then those of all previous examples." In other words, the American experiment was an experiment to see whether or not could be on a grand scale a union of individuals in the light of their spiritual integrity as individuals, could they make a political form consonant with that truth? A life lived in a structure consonant with that capacity. Yes, there can be good individuals. We know that from all history. We know that there can be small communities of perfecting. There can be small communities on a religious basis, even for long durations. But there seems never to have been a large communal structure, like a nation, that has lasted built on this basis. Ever. And this was the experiment. Let's see if we can do this, said Franklin. It's time, man has grown up. And Jefferson understanding that this took constant vigilance and hard work. Because it has never been done before. This is unknown terrain. We're going to make mistakes because we don't know, we don't have a plan that works. We don't have a template from the past anywhere that works. All we have is that visionary capacity to hold the people together through patience. And hope that we get through the fault trial and error period. It's this community, which in its most visionary capacity is styled a union.

And it is this vision incidentally that next week. We'll see that Lincoln in his desperate dark days throws he has prayer out to the divine, what shall I do? And the answer will come to him, preserve the union. For that is the real purpose of it all after all.

Cooper says, what gets in the way of the union is that we think that it is a union of the people. When in fact there is a median ground in between the people and that union, which are the institutions. Which in terms of the federal government are the States. But in terms of the individual is the constitution. And that the constitution is a barrier ground. It could be an, but it acts as a barrier ground because it is not made up by people. It is made up by States. It is made up by surrogate, institutional forms. And that the representatives who made the constitution were representatives, delegates of the States, and not of the people. And this becomes a very great problem.

And of course, Cooper here is verging on the kinds of perceptions that Jefferson Davis and others would observe in the 1860's. That this is a very rational critique. If the Confederation is built upon the basis of States, the sovereignty, the individuality belongs to the States. And they may withdraw from. Because the union is not a perfected magic circle, but merely an aggregate.
A conglomerate. And it will be this central issue that Lincoln will have to see through. That it is not in an agglomerate, it is a union of the whole. And that it is polarity that dissembles the unity. And the polarity is engendered by opposition. And the opposition by falling prey to all of the neurotic tensions and forms that come out of illusion and delusion. So that the preservation of the union on the basis of the people will be a religious vision. And one of the greatest that there is in fact.

"The notion of the people of the United States," writes Cooper,
In the popular signification of the word frame the government is contrary to fact. And leads to a wrong interpretation of many of the distinctive features of the system. The constitution of the United States was formed by a convention composed of delegates elected by the different States in modes prescribed by their several laws and usages. These delegates voted by States and not as individuals. And the instrument was referred back to conventions and the respect of States for approval or ratification. It is a governing principle of political maxims that the power to ratify is the power that possesses the authority and the last resort. Thus, treaties between independent sovereign entities are never valid until ratified by the high treaty making powers of the respective countries. As the several States of this union first acted through delegates of their own appointing and then ratified their acts and conventions also chosen by constituencies of their own selection. It is not easy to establish anything more plainly than the fact that the constitution of the United States was framed by the States, then in existence, as community and not by the body of the people of the union.

END OF SIDE ONE
When they come after you and you want them to come after you for the right reason. And they do.
And so, he concludes, "The United States was framed as an entity by the States that were in existence then in the past. As communities, as institutions and not by the body of the people of the union. Or by the body of the people of the States as has sometimes been contended."
And so, Cooper goes back, and he says, we have a problem here. We have The Declaration of Independence, which is a declaration of independence based upon the sovereignty of the spiritual individual who is able somehow hopefully to come together enmass in a union. Then we have a different document, years later, controlled by powerful groups, power mongering groups, who devise a different structure based upon the power of States. And this becomes a very, very difficult thing.

Cooper writes,
The term people like most other substantives has its general and specific significations. In its general signification the people of a country means the population of a country. As the population of a country includes the women and children, nothing, nothing can be clearer than that the people in this signification did not form the American constitution. The specific signification of this word are numerous as rich, poor, wise, silly, good, bad people. In the political sense, the people means those bested with political rights. And in this particular instance, the people vested with the political rights were the constituencies of the several States. Under various laws, modifications, constitutions, but which is another name for the governments of the States themselves. We, the people is used in the constitution. Preamble means we, the constituencies of the several States.

And so, Cooper firmly puts into words for the first time in the flaw, the error. That the United States has become a structure of based upon state's rights and not upon individual attainments. That it is not a union of all for the people by the people and of the people but is a shared power base up for grabs for those who can command best. So, this becomes for Cooper, an intolerable situation. Something that he could not stand by. Because he rated as one of the highest commitments of a citizen, of an individual who was individuated, who had arrived into maturity, that he has a, an obligation of candor toward others. Toward his fellow citizens. To tell them exactly what the situation is as best he can in his own, by according to his own lights. And that it was this candor that was imperative upon the individual in the United States as the Republic of Liberty. And so, Cooper is writing The American Democrat in this total candor. And it was for this candor that he was castigated. That he was torn apart in the press. Snubbed by his friends. Sued by thousands of people. And shelved and forgot as some sort of sophomore children's writer who turned nasty in his old age and was really kind of arrogant after all.

Well, let's take a little break and then we'll, we'll have a little more.

Maybe to bring us back from our beautiful break. I'll give you an indication of the scope of Cooper. At the same time that he was writing on The American Democrat and that level. Here's an example of the opening of The Pathfinder, which was published the next year after The American Democrat. Same man. Same time period.
The sublimity connected with vastness is familiar to every eye. The most abstruse, the most far reaching, perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination, as he gazes into the depths of the emlatable void. The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen in the obscurity of night. Finds a parallel to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images that the senses cannot compass. With feelings akin to this admiration and awe. The offspring of sublimity, where the different characters with which the action of this tale must open. Gazing on the scene before them. Four persons in all. Two of each sex,
See the archetypical structure.
"They had managed to ascend a pile of trees," what an image.
That had been uptorn by a tempest to catch a view of the objects that surrounded them. It is still the practice of the country to call these spots wind rows. By letting the light of heaven upon the dark and damp recesses of the wood they form a sort of oases in the solemn obscurity of the virgin forests of America. The particular wind row of which we are writing lay on the brow of a gentle acclivity. And it had opened the way for an extensive view to those who might occupy its upper margin. A rare occurrence to the traveler in the woods. As usual the spot was small. But owing to the circumstances of its lying on the low acclivity mentioned, and that of the openings extending downwards, it offered more than common advantages to the eye. Philosophy has not yet determined the nature of the power that so often lays desolate spots of this description. Some ascribing it to the whirlwinds that produce waterspouts on the ocean. While others, again, impute it to sudden and violent passages of streams of the electric fluid. But the effects in the woods are familiar to all. On the upper margin of the opening, to which there is illusion, the viewless influence had piled tree on tree in such a manner as had not only enabled the two males of the party to ascend to an elevation of some 30 feet above the level of the earth. But with a little care and encouragement to induce their more timid companions to accompany them.
They're all lifted up. Tree by tree.
The vast trunks that had been broken and driven by the forest of the goss lay blended like Jack straws. While their branches still exhaling the fragrance of wilted leaves were interlaced in a manner to afford sufficient support to the hands. One tree had been completely uprooted and its lower end filled with Earth had been cast upper most in a way to supply a sort of staging for the four adventurers when they had gained the desire distance from the ground.
And when they looked out, what did they see? Unbroken wilderness as far as the eye could see in every direction. That was the character of the American religious psyche in its spiritual vision. That was this primordial structure. It was like reentering Eden. But Eden on a scale that had never been dreamed of before. An Eden 3000 miles across. A second creation was possible. A new Genesis of man. A revivifying of the human nature was given to man. It was a second chance. This is how they looked upon it. These individuals. Franklin and Jefferson and Cooper. This is how they looked upon it. And to see the developers and the demagogues destroying it all through pettiness yet, was intolerable. Intolerable. And so, Cooper hint you're write. He to lash out. He had to have his say.
Incidentally, just give you a vignette of this. I was for four years, the head porter at Sequoia National Park, giant forest lodge. And I was usually the last person to go to bed. And at midnight I would make the rounds and make sure that the whole encampment was together. And one time in 1961, just as I was locking up the lodge door, there was a tremendous crack. A report of sound that just went through your bone. And the ground shook. And I thought, my God is it an earthquake? Just across the way through a parking lot and across the general's highway, one of these giant Sequoia trees had fallen. It'd been there for thousands of years and had fallen. And when it fell because of the brittleness of Redwood, when it had hit a rock about 150 feet up the slope, the trunk had broke and it was that snap of 15 feet of tree trunk. And that was the first one over there. And you know, it was curious, the smell of Redwood was so strong. It was almost inebriating. And there was so much dust in the air. It was like a mystical vision. And one other person rushed there. And I murmured under my breath. There were probably a skeleton of some shaman under this tree. And do you know the next morning at breakfast at six o'clock, everyone was talking about how the Rangers had taken the skeleton away and taken it down to Fresno. We know what's true. We know that it is true. It is all true.
We have what the Europeans called gullibility and what we call viability. What the Tibetans say of us is that we have the raw energy. It's still undefiled. It is just simply not tamed. Not civilized, not disciplined. That's all.
He writes in here about, and I've gone into this about property. And about American principles. And that we have to understand that the political structure being based as it is on States, that state's rights are not like individual rights. There are power oriented. They're institutional bureaucracies. They're not human beings. They do not have the capacity to envision reality to have occur the actual feel of life. So, this surrogate patterning in its place tends to displace us more and more. And is this that must become **inaudible word**. It is for this Jefferson said we should every 19 years dissolve the entire government and constitute a new government on the basis of the experience that we have then. The people that we have then. Not to let the rigor mortis of the dead hand of the past clip the wings of those just coming into life. They should have this possibility of, of liberty.
And Cooper goes into the advantages of a democracy. And he says, "The principle advantage of a democracy is a general elevation in the character of the people. If you are raised to a very great height, few are depressed very low. And as a consequence, the average of society is much more respectable than under any other form of golf government." He says, "the vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling." Meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest. And he says,
This is singularly untrue. It's real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood. In the absence of privileged orders, entails and distinctions devise permanently to separate men in the social classes. It is true, none are great. But those who become so by their actions but confirming the remark to the upper classes of society, it confining the remark to the upper classes of society. It would be much more true to say that democracy refuses to lend itself, to unnatural and arbitrary distinctions than to accuse it of a tendency to level those who have just claim to be elevated. A denial of a favor is not an invasion of a right.
On the disadvantages of a democracy.
Democracies are liable to popular impulses, which necessarily arising from imperfect information often work in justice from good motives. Tumults of the people are less apt to occur in democracies then under any form of government. But for this we need to have accurate information. The public needs to be informed.
This is very dangerous because Cooper says that the ca, the public in the United States in his time chooses as its source of information, more than anything else, the newspaper. And then he says it's the American press that has the culprit in the works. He writes, "The newspaper press of this country is distinguished from that of Europe and several essential particulars. While there are more prints," that is more newspapers,
They are generally of a lower character. It follows that in all, in all in which they are useful, their utility is more diffused through society and did all in which they are hurtful. The injury they inflict is more widespread and corrupting. The great number of newspapers in America is a cause of there being so little capital and consequently, so little intelligence employed in their management. It is also a reason of the exactitude, the inexactitude of much of the news they circulate.
He goes on to say, that it's not falsehood. Everybody can see through falsehood, but it's the mixture. It's the mixture of opinion that is widespread thousand times over. And it's this atmosphere that produces the perfect context for the demagogue. And in tandem the press and public opinion and the demagogues ability to slyly turn things around. He says he is for the people, but he is for the power which the people will give him. And that is what he is for.
And Cooper writes in here on demagogues. He says,
A demagogue in the strict signification of the word is a leader of the rabble. It is a great compound that conveys this meaning. In these later times however, the significance has been extended to suit the circumstances of this age. Thus, before the art of printing became known or cheap publications were placed within the reach of the majority, the mass of all nations might properly be termed a rabble when assembled into bodies.
But now it's changed. Now you don't have to have a crowd of people. You can have individuals in their own homes. But the press and the climate of public opinion has made a rabble out of the minds of men. And they don't that they are part of a rabble because they think they individually are responding to the news today.
And so, the compounding of this illusory state is producing, he says,
A peculiar offense of a demagogue as to advance his own interests by effecting a deep devotion to the interest to the people affecting it. Sometimes the object is to indulge malignancy. Unprincipled and selfish men submitting but to two governing motives that of doing good to themselves and that of doing harm to others. The true theatre of a demagogue is a democracy. For the body of the community possessing the power, the master he present, pretends to serve is best able to reward his efforts. As it is all important to distinguish between those who labor in behalf of the people on the general account and those who labor in behalf of the people on their own account. Some of the rules by which each may be known shall be pointed out. The motive of the demagogue may usually be detected in his conduct. The man who is constantly telling the people that they are unerring in judgment and that they have all power is a demigod. Bodies of men being composed of individuals can no more be raised above the commission of error than individuals themselves.

And he goes on in like vein describing the kinds of conditions which arise. And out of this comes an incredible duality and polarity enough to baffle any individual without a background. Without having known how all this came about. Without understanding basic structures of reality. For the basic duality that sets in is that you have a political structure run by institutional bureaucratic powers, which are not personable. And you have a people's power commandeered by demagogues to correct that institutional confusion. And in between that conflict, in between that polarity, all the reality of unity is sapped. All the possibility of individuality is taken away and we are left in the lurch. Well, that was 150 years ago. This children's story writer talking about.

I'll give you one more little section and then we'll close with this. On candor,
Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind and have a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentlemen. To the first is doing to others as we let ourselves be done by. To the last as indispensable to the liberality of the character. By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth, but a sentiment that proves the conviction of the necessity of speaking truth when speaking at all. A contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions. And a deep conviction that he who deceives by necessary implication deceives willfully. In all the general concerns the public has a right to be treated with candor. Without this manly and truly Republican quality. Republican because no power exists in the country to intimidate any from its exhibition, the institutions are converted into a stupendous fraud.

And of course, he goes on. He says, the fraud aspect increases, and the people want to do something about it. And the demagogue comes in and promises that we'll do something together. Give me the power and we'll take over those institutions. And Cooper says it doesn't take a genius to see that the United States will have its problems.
Well we will see you next week with Abraham Lincoln that curiously by the late 1850's the problem had become so endemic that almost nobody in the centers of power, nobody in the centers of population had a clear view of what to do and how to do it. And how to get out of the mess. Of how to size up the mess accurately. And they had to call on somebody who was raised outside of the system. Somebody raised in those wilds of Kentucky and Indiana and Illinois, who still had the old American, by then forgotten American sense, of seeing things for what they were. And of standing up for them and doing something with them. And that's why Lincoln is great. Because he was like in the fairy tale, when everything was lost beyond hope the real King came. And we'll see in the next two lectures that wonderful quality of Lincoln to manifest the divine kingship in the midst of the decimation of the spiritual experiment of the United States. And it'll be a pleasure to give you two lectures on honest Abe. Honest Abe.

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