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Friday, April 30th, 2010

    Time Event
    2:44a
    Our system is educating them in barbarism and...
    Our system is educating them in barbarism and brutalityWe are breaking all humanizing ties, and making them brute beasts; and, if they get the upper hand, such we shall find them
    “They shall never get the upper hand!” said Alfred
    “That’s right,” said StClare; “put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see where you’ll land
    “Well,” said Alfred, “we will seeI’m not afraid to sit on the escape-valve, as long as the boilers are strong, and the machinery works well
    “The nobles in Louis XVIs time thought just so; and Austria and Pius IXthink so now; and, some pleasant morning, you may all be caught up to meet each other in the air, when the boilers burst
    “Dies declarabit,” said Alfred, laughing
    “I tell you,” said Augustine, “if there is anything that is revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses are to rise, and the under class become the upper one
    “That’s one of your red republican humbugs, Augustine! Why didn’t you ever take to the stump;—you’d make a famous stump orator! Well, I hope I shall be dead before this millennium of your greasy masses comes on
    “Greasy or not greasy, they will govern you, when their time comes,” said Augustine; “and they will be just such rulers as you make themThe French noblesse chose to have the people ‘sans culottes,’ and they had ‘sans culotte’ governors to their hearts’ contentThe people of Hayti—”
    “O, come, Augustine! as if we hadn’t had enough of that abominable, contemptible Hayti!1 The Haytiens were not Anglo Saxons; if they had been there would have been another storyThe Anglo Saxon is the dominant race of the world, and is to be so
    “Well, there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our slaves, now,” said Augustine“There are plenty among them who have only enough of the African to give a sort of tropical warmth and fervor to our calculating firmness and foresightIf ever the San Domingo hour comes, Anglo Saxon blood will lead on the daySons of white fathers, with all our haughty feelings burning in their veins, will not always be bought and sold and tradedThey will rise, and raise with them their mother’s race
    “Stuff!—nonsense!”
    “Well,” said Augustine, “there goes an old saying to this effect, ‘As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be;—they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, and knew not till the flood came and took them”
    “On the whole, Augustine, I think your talents might do for a circuit rider,” said Alfred, laughing“Never you fear for us; possession is our nine pointsThis subject race,” said he, stamping firmly, “is down and shall stay down! We have energy enough to manage our own powder
    “Sons trained like your Henrique will be grand guardians of your powder-magazines,” said Augustine,—“so cool and self-possessed! The proverb says, “‘They that cannot govern themselves cannot govern others”
    “There is a trouble there” said Alfred, thoughtfully; “there’s no doubt that our system is a difficult one to train children underIt gives too free scope to the passions, altogether, which, in our climate, are hot enoughI find trouble with HenriqueThe boy is generous and warm-hearted, but a perfect fire-cracker when excitedI believe I shall send him North for his education, where obedience is more fashionable, and where he will associate more with equals, and less with dependents
    “Since training children is the staple work of the human race,” said Augustine, “I should think it something of a consideration that our system does not work well there
    “It does not for some things,” said Alfred; “for others, again, it doesIt makes boys manly and courageous; and the very vices of an abject race tend to strengthen in them the opposite virtuesI think Henrique, now, has a keener sense of the beauty of truth, from seeing lying and deception the universal badge of slavery
    “A Christian-like view of the subject, certainly!” said Augustine
    “It’s true, Christian-like or not; and is about as Christian-like as most other things in the world,” said Alfred
    “That may be,” said St
    “Well, there’s no use in talking, shop Augustine
    8:43p
    He said I had always been saddened by the fact...
    He said I had always been saddened by the fact that I never knew my own father, that I really wanted to focus on being Chelseas father, except when something like the Cuban crisis tore me away, and that I just didnt have my heart in the campaign

    After I was out of office a few months, it became clear to me that all these explanations had some validityBy that time, more than a hundred people had come up to me and said theyd voted against me to send a message but wouldnt have done it if theyd known I was going to loseI thought of so many things I could have done if Id had my head on straightAnd it was painfully clear that thousands of people thought Id gotten too big for my britches, too obsessed with what I wanted to do and oblivious to what they wanted me to doThe protest vote was there, all right, but it didnt make the differenceThe post-election polls showed that 12 percent of the voters said theyd supported me in 1978 but voted the other way in 1980 because of the car tagsSix percent of my former supporters said it was because of the CubansWith all my other problems and mistakes, if I had been free of either of these two issues, I would have wonBut if I hadnt been defeated, I probably never would have become PresidentIt was a near-death experience, but an invaluable one, forcing me to be more sensitive to the political problems inherent in progressive politics: the system can absorb only so much change at once; no one can beat all the entrenched interests at the same time; and if people think youve stopped louis vuitton pochette listening, youre sunk

    On my last day in the governors office, after taking a picture of ten-month-old Chelsea sitting in my chair holding the telephone, I went up to the legislature to give my farewell addressI recounted the progress wed made, thanked the legislators for their support, and pointed out that we still had Americas second-lowest tax burden and that, sooner or later, we would have to find a politically acceptable way to broaden our revenue base to make the most of our potentialThen I walked out of the Capitol and into private life, a fish out of water

    W right, Lindsey Jennings was, by Arkansas standards, a large firm with a fine reputation and a varied practiceThe support staff were able and friendly and went out of their way to help settle me in and make me feel at homeThe firm also allowed me to bring my secretary, Barbara Kerns, who had been with me for four years by then and knew all my family, friends, and supportersIt even provided Betsey Wright office space so that she could keep working on my files and, as it turned out, plan the next campaignI did some legal work and brought in a couple of modest clients, but Im sure the lifeline the firm threw me didnt make it any moneyAll the firm really got out of it was my everlasting gratitude and some legal business defending me when I became President

    Though I missed being governor and the excitement of politics, I enjoyed the more normal pace of my life, coming home at a reasonable hour, being with Hillary as we watched Chelsea grow into her life, going out chanel leather shopping bag to dinner with friends, and getting to know our neighbors, especially the older couple who lived directly across the street, Sarge and Louise LozanoThey adored Chelsea and were always there to help out

    I resolved to stay away from public speaking for several months, with one exceptionIn February, I drove to Brinkley, about an hour east of Little Rock on the interstate, to speak at the Lions Club banquetThe area had voted for me in 1980, and my strongest supporters there all urged me to comeThey said it would lift my spirits to be with folks who were still supporters, and it didAfter the dinner, I went to a reception at the home of my county leaders, Don and Betty Fuller, where I was gratified and a little surprised to meet people who actually wanted me to be governor againBack in Little Rock, most people were still trying to get on good terms with the new governorOne man whom Id appointed to a position in state government and who wanted to stay on under Governor White actually crossed the street in downtown Little Rock one day when he saw me walking toward himHe was afraid to be seen shaking hands with me in broad daylight

    While I was grateful for the kindness of my friends in Brinkley, I didnt go out speaking again in Arkansas for several monthsFrank White was beginning to make mistakes and lose some legislative battles, and I didnt want to get in his wayHe kept his campaign pledge to pass bills changing the name of the Economic Development Department back to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission and ladies cartier watch sales abolishing the Department of EnergyBut when he tried to abolish the rural health clinics Hillary and I had established, large numbers of people who depended on them showed up to protestHis bill was defeated, and he had to be content with stopping the building of more clinics that would have served others who really needed them

    When the governor introduced a bill to roll back the car-tag increase, the director of the Highway Department, Henry Gray, the highway commissioners, and the road builders put up strong resistanceThey were building and repairing roads and making moneyA lot of legislators listened to them, because their constituents liked the roadwork even if they had resisted paying for itIn the end, White got a modest rollback in the fees, but most of the money stayed in the program

    The governors biggest legislative problem arose, ironically, out of a bill he passedThe so-called creation science bill required that every Arkansas school that taught the theory of evolution had to spend an equal amount of time teaching a theory of creation consistent with the Bible: that humans did not evolve out of other species around one hundred thousand years ago, but instead were created by God as a separate species a few thousand years ago

    For much of the twentieth century, fundamentalists had opposed evolution as being inconsistent with a literal reading of the biblical account of human creation, and in the early 1900s, several states, including Arkansas, outlawed the teaching of evolutionEven after the Supreme Court struck pink chanel bag replicas down such bans, most science texts didnt discuss evolution until the 1960sBy the late sixties, a new generation of fundamentalists were at it again, this time arguing that there was scientific evidence to support the Bibles creation story, and evidence that cast doubt on the theory of evolutionEventually, they came up with the idea of requiring that schools that taught evolution had to give comparable attention to creation science

    Because of intense lobbying efforts by fundamentalist groups like FLAG (Family, Life, America under God) and the governors support, Arkansas was the first state to legally embrace the creation science notionThe bill passed without much difficulty: we didnt have many scientists in the legislature, and many politicians were afraid to offend the conservative Christian groups, who were riding high after electing a President and a governorAfter Governor White signed the bill, there was a storm of protest from educators who didnt want to be forced to teach religion as science, from religious leaders who wanted to preserve the constitutional separation of church and state, and from ordinary citizens who didnt want Arkansas to become the laughingstock of the nation

    Frank White became an object of ridicule for the opponents of the creation science lawGeorge Fisher, the Arkansas Gazette cartoonist who drew me on a tricycle, began presenting the governor with a half-peeled banana in his hand, implying that he hadnt fully evolved and was perhaps the proverbial missing link between humans and louis vuitton bag chimpanzee

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