Ltr2M.Dowd-NYT-“Utopia OT Hudson” 3July11

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/opinion/29dowd.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=dowd%20utopia&st=cse

Funny thing happened on the way to the Parliament--Utopia On The Hudson/Mohawk/Erie Canal:

Maureen Dowd did a Sunday op-ed piece on Andy Cuomo’s support of the NY unmixed marriages law, and showed her eye for art, recollection and art collections. It just so happened that I was ploughing through the very book she and the gov. referred to. Excerpts from the column:

“I have a portrait of Saint Thomas More in my office,” the governor said, calling from the statehouse in Albany. It is a picture Mario Cuomo once kept in his office. He gave it to Andrew as a present when he graduated from Albany Law School, and the younger Cuomo has kept it with him for 30 years as he moved from job to job and city to city. “It’s not the first time there is a tension between the teachings of the church and the administration of the law, for my father and for myself.” Dryly, he adds: “I haven’t lost my head yet.”

{“Hey, I’ve just about reached the end of More’s Utopia my darned self,” I said. “What a curious happenstance.”}

For the moment, and it may only be a moment given all the thorny issues he has coming up, he is in that imaginary place his idol Sir Thomas More invented: [U]topia. [Or Nowhere--which of course is Erewhon spelt (mostly) backwards.]
He wanted to prove government could work and the two parties could trust each other, and he has — avoiding his father’s mistake of being too highhanded with lawmakers. He wanted to transform a dysfunctional Albany from a joke, after the shenanigans of Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson, to a respected place where young people once more aspired to work, and he has.

“For a moment in time, you had people in this state capital who really heard their better angels and responded,” he said. “Government here has a renewed bounce in its step.”

The governor says he sold the marriage-equality bill as a matter of conscience and didn’t try to buy off any recalcitrant lawmakers with promises about roads or bridges.

What I find curious about the More thing (I’d formerly thought he spelt his name Moore, but, now purged of that error, I can see that less is More) is what a Lord Chancellor had to say in 1516 about the society in which he found himself. (As I don’t do Latin all that well, I have a 1551 translation by Ralph Robynson, with some modernizing orthographical tweaks by Emile van Vliet for Heritage Club’s 1935 edition. But the phrasing & words are pretty much intact, which you’ll perhaps find contribute to heavy slogging.)

So, to Sir/St. Thomas More’s Utopia (pp. 153-156) (And I must admit that Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon and the rest of the Wall Street Casino banksters came immediately to mind):

Here now would I see if any man dare be so bold as to compare with this equity [(i.e., the fairness of a commonweal where all things are indeed owned in common)] the justice of other nations, among whom I forsake God if I can find any sign or token of equity and justice.

For what justice is this that a rich goldsmith or an usurer or, to be short, any of them which either do nothing at all, or else that which they do is such that it is not very necessary to the commonwealth, should have a pleasant and a wealthy living, either by idleness or by unnecessary business? when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters, and plowmen, by so great and continual toil as drawing and bearing beasts be scant able to sustain, and again so necessary toil that without it no commonwealth were able to continue and endure one year, do yet get so hard a poor a living and live so wretched and miserable life that the state and condition of the laboring beasts may seems much better and wealthier; for they be not put soot so continual labor, nor their living is not much worse; yea, to them much pleasanter, taking no thought in the mean season for the time to come. But these silly poor wretches be presently tormented with barren and unfruitful labor; and the remembrance of their poor, indigent, and beggarly old age killeth them up; for their daily wages is so little that it will not suffice for the same day, much less it yieldeth any overplus that may daily be laid up for the relief of old age. Is not this an unjust and an unkind public weal, which giveth great fees and rewards to gentlemen, as they call them, and to goldsmiths, and to such other, which be either idle persons or else only flatterers and devisers of vain pleasures; and, of the contrary part, maketh no gentle provision for poor plowmen, colliers, laborers, carters, ironsmiths, and carpenters, without whom no commonwealth can continue?

But when it hath abused the labors of their lusty and flowering age, at the last, when they be oppressed with old age and sickness, being needy, poor, and indigent of all things; then, forgetting their so many painful watchings, not remembering their so many and so great benefits, recompenseth and quitteth them most unkindly with miserable death.

And yet besides this the rich men not only by private fraud but also by common laws do every day pluck and snatch away from the poor some part of their daily living; so, whereas it seemed before unjust to recompense with unkindness their pains that have been beneficial to the public weal, now they have to this their wrong and unjust dealing (which is yet a much worse point) given the name of justice; yea, and that by force of law.

Therefore when I consider and weigh in my own mind all these commonwealths which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men, procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely without fear of losing what they have unjustly gathered together; and next how to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little money as may be.

These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say, for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws. But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their unsatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? out of the which in that all the desire of money with the use thereof is utterly secluded and banished, ho great a heap of cares is cut away? how great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots?

For who knoweth not that fraud, theft, ravin, brawling, quarreling, brabbling, strife, chiding, contention, murder, treason, poisoning, which by daily punishments are rather revenged than refrained, do die when money dieth? And also that fear, grief, care, labors, and watchings do perish even the very same moment that money perisheth? Yea, poverty itself, which only seemed to lack money, if money were gone, it also would decrease and vanish away.

One of the features of More's Utopia was that it fashioned the chains and shackles of its prisoners* and “bondsmen” out of gold; also all the chamberpots.

Which reminded me of one of my late dad’s sillier puns: “Couple checks into what they’ve been told is a genuine colonial B&B for a restful, historical visit. Man notices the 4-poster doesn't have any covering and asks the bellman, ‘Where’s the canopy?’ Bellman answers, ‘Oh, that’s under the bed, sir.’”) I think he got them from the sci-fi magazine fillers.

Another, Merlin discovers jet propulsion, sends Sir Galahad off to investigate the cosmos. He crash lands in a verdant field, sees a farmhouse in the distance. Torrential rain begins. He's clanking in his armor. Reaches house, asks if he can ride the horse he sees in the barn back to the wreck to salvage it. Farmer says that's a dog, not a horse. 'And I wouldn't send a knight out on a dog like this,' he says.

Or: Fra. Squegg runs a little theater group in the progressive monastery in which he serves. They're doing Uncle Tom's Cabin. But the trained dog slips his leash, and the father must make other arrangements. Next morrow's review is headlined, "Père Squegg Fits Hound Role." Worse befalls: Small plane loses its way in storm, decides to land on expansive lawn of monastery, but doesn't see Fra. Squegg hauling in gardening tools. Headline: "Out of the Flying Plan and Into the Friar." (For those in durance vile, the time-saving numbers are 112, 281, 18 and 19, respectively. But of course it's all in how you tell them.)

-----------------------

* While having slaves/prisoners doesn't seem to fit with the idea of a Utopia, recall that the example most frequently trotted out as the "poster city" of a working democracy was Athens, way back before the common era, and that only something like 10-15% of the population formed the "demos" — the people. Excluded were children, women, slaves and males whose parents (one or both) were not native Athenians.

—30—