This edition of the Lightning/Bug seeks to restore famously mangled sayings to their original grandeur. It’s sad how some of the wisest words of our heritage have gotten sliced, diced, and twisted to mean something entirely different, sometimes diametrically opposite, to what they originally meant. Our literary heroes deserve respect, doggone it! Have a care for accuracy and context when quoting them.

Misbiblifying: “The flesh is weak,” people ruefully say of that third slice of chocolate cake or the misbehavior they’re admitting to. The use of the phrase to describe an inability to refrain from naughtiness is perfectly logical, but sadly out of context in light of the original sermon:

And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.(Matt. 26:40-41)

As Fred Clark of the Slacktivist blog wryly points out, the new emphasis actually means that the flesh is strong–that fleshly cravings are often too strong to resist. “I guess that’s how it looks if you think of faith as being mainly about Stuff You Shouldn’t Do,” Clark says. His blog often takes the Church to task for such thinking; he believes that faith is about Stuff You Should do… stuff the spirit righteously intends but sometimes the flesh is too weak to follow through with.

Small-minded inconsistency: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,” a high school teacher once smugly quipped when accused of grading our tests unfairly (i.e. inconsistently). The phrase is often used to defend logical contradictions that would disqualify a debate team, or unfair dealings that indicate shameful favoritism. But the most shameful inconsistency of all is how inconsistent the culprits are to the intentions of the quote’s originator. Ralph Waldo Emerson actually said,

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

In other words, consistency for the sake of consistency, a hidebound insistence on doing things the way we’ve always done it because that’s how we’ve always done it. There is nothing foolish about, say, an internally consistent logical argument. Internal consistency is a virtue in fantasy or science fiction world-building. And consistency in judgment is only fair to those being judged. Sometimes extraordinary circumstances call for irregular proceedings, and the little minds Emerson condemned would probably not see that, it’s true. But to twist Emerson’s words to defend an indefensible inconsistency, that takes a little mind too.

Define patriotism: “My country, right or wrong!” That’s the cry of the self-described patriot who doesn’t want to hear your criticism of Federal policy or wartime crimes. And each repetition probably has Carl Schurz rolling over in his grave. A true patriot by any definition, his famous saying in full is,

“Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.“

Schurz was responding to, or rather clarifying and amplifying, an earlier quote by Stephen Decatur: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.” This quote, too, is subject to varying interpretation. The jingos may see “but our country, right or wrong” as dismissing the need to “always be in the right,” or even as an obligation to insist on calling the nation’s every action “right.” I prefer to read Decatur’s 1816 toast as a reminder that we must take responsibility for our nation’s actions, whether they are right or wrong–and that right is preferred to wrong.

The jingoistic twist was already in place during Mark Twain’s time, and to that, as to all things reprehensible, he had a cutting response:

I pray you to pause and consider. Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object–robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician’s trick–a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor–none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our Country, right or wrong,” and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?