{"id":16345,"date":"2021-08-16T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T15:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=16345"},"modified":"2021-08-17T10:17:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T14:17:58","slug":"ambrose-bierces-pro-freedom-cynicism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/16\/ambrose-bierces-pro-freedom-cynicism\/","title":{"rendered":"Ambrose Bierce\u2019s Pro-Freedom Cynicism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ambrose Bierce\u2019s Pro-Freedom Cynicism<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

The friends of freedom must recognize the verbal charades that sway people to surrender their rights and liberties. The political establishment and its media allies are continually abusing the English language to lull people into submission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From pupils being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each school day to adults being endlessly hectored to vote, Americans are injected with demands for obedience almost from womb to tomb. It is not enough to obey: Americans are supposedly obliged to view the current regime as the incarnation of \u201cthe will of the people.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Journalist and author Ambrose Bierce offered a barrage of antidotes to this servile claptrap. Many people are familiar with Bierce\u2019s definition of cynic \u2014 \u201ca blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.\u201d But Bierce\u2019s writing had a much sharper political edge than is usually recognized nowadays.<\/p>\n

H.L. Mencken commented that Ambrose Bierce was the \u201cone genuine wit\u201d that America had produced as of the early 1900s. Mencken summarized Bierce\u2019s career: “Doomed to live in a country in which, by God\u2019s will, honesty is rare and courage is still rarer and honor is almost unknown\u2026. he fell upon the mountebanks, great and small, in a Berserker fury, thus to sooth and secure his own integrity. That integrity, as far as I can make out, was never betrayed by compromise. Right or wrong, he always stuck to the truth as he saw it.”<\/p>\n

A berserker of truth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Few American writers have punctured more political pretenses than Ambrose Bierce. Bierce was a Union officer in the Civil War and almost died from his wounds at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864. His short stories offered a joltingly realistic view of the pervasive death and folly in almost every battle.<\/p>\n

Bierce\u2019s biggest contribution to starkly perceiving political reality was The Devil\u2019s Dictionary<\/em>, first published in 1911. Mencken said that book contained \u201csome of the most devastating epigrams ever written.\u201d Bierce offered plenty of piercing insights that can be profitably studied by today\u2019s friends of freedom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ambrose Bierce, 1866, via Wikipedia<\/p><\/div>\n

Bierce defined \u201cpolitics\u201d as \u201ca strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.\u201d His definition of \u201cpolitician\u201d was more scathing: \u201cAn eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared\u2026. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.\u201d He defined \u201csorcery\u201d as \u201cthe ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence.\u201d Similarly, he defined \u201cdegradation\u201d as \u201cone of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce\u2019s definition of \u201cfreedom\u201d was sounder than that offered by most political philosophers: \u201cExemption from the stress of authority in a beggarly half dozen of restraint\u2019s infinite multitude of methods.\u201d Bierce followed that definition with a brief poem:<\/p>\n

Freedom screams whenever monarchs meet,
\nAnd parliaments as well,
\nTo bind the chains about her feet
\nAnd toll her knell.<\/p>\n

And when the sovereign people cast
\nThe votes they cannot spell,
\nUpon the pestilential blast
\nHer clamors swell.<\/p>\n

For all to whom the power\u2019s given
\nTo sway or to compel,
\nAmong themselves apportion Heaven
\nAnd give Freedom Hell.<\/p>\n

Bierce failed to swoon for the tub-thumping for democracy that was sweeping America in his time<\/strong>. See, for instance, his definition of \u201cvote\u201d: \u201cThe instrument and symbol of a freeman\u2019s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.\u201d Bierce defined \u201creferendum\u201d: \u201cA law for submission of proposed legislation to a popular vote to learn the nonsensus of public opinion.\u201d In his definition of \u201cmultitude,\u201d he commented, \u201cA multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.\u201d He defined \u201crabble\u201d: \u201cIn a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections.\u201d Luckily, we don\u2019t have to worry about that happening nowadays in the United States.<\/p>\n

Bierce had as much if not more contempt for monarchy. \u201cPrerogative\u201d was merely \u201ca sovereign\u2019s right to do wrong.\u201d In his definition of \u201cabsolute,\u201d he observed, \u201cAn absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.\u201d That parallels his definition of \u201cabdication\u201d: \u201cAn act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, during Bierce\u2019s heyday as a journalist, protectionism was ascendant, and politicians perpetually lied about the benefits of closing America off from the world with high tariffs. Bierce provided one of the best definitions of a \u201ctariff\u201d: \u201cA scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.\u201d He complimented that with an apt definition of \u201charbor\u201d: \u201cA place where ships taking shelter from storms are exposed to the fury of the customs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having almost died in a war spurred by the secession of southern states, Bierce had a jaded view of the animosity spurred by artificial demarcations. He defined \u201cboundary\u201d: \u201cIn political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.\u201d To comprehend the potential mischief of such lines, check his definition of \u201ccannon\u201d: \u201cAn instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce saw many fellow soldiers perish pointlessly due to the follies of ambitious or half-witted generals. Perhaps that spurred his definition of \u201cpatriotism\u201d: \u201cCombustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.\u201d That was on par with his definition of \u201cflag\u201d: \u201cA colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London \u2014 \u2018Rubbish may be shot here.\u2019\u201d The same sentiment echoes in his definition of \u201chistory\u201d: \u201cAn account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce recognized the arbitrariness of political legitimacy. He defined \u201crebel\u201d: \u201cA proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.\u201d That echoes the judgment of Napoleon, who declared, \u201cTreason is a matter of dates.\u201d
\nBierce recognized the arbitrariness of political legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Bierce saw through the sentimental claptrap that afflicts many commentators on public affairs. He defined \u201clawful\u201d: \u201cCompatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.\u201d And then there was his definition of \u201clawyer\u201d: \u201cOne skilled in circumvention of the law.\u201d Close by was his definition of \u201cliar\u201d: \u201ca lawyer with a roving commission.\u201d Perhaps even better was his definition of \u201ctrial\u201d: \u201cA formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.\u201d His skepticism extended to policemen\u2019s nightsticks, as he defined \u201carrest\u201d: \u201cformally to detain one accused of unusualness.\u201d But he had no blind faith in some of the usual remedies, defining \u201chabeas corpus\u201d as \u201ca right by which a man may be taken out of jail when confined for the wrong crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce penetrated the prevailing bosh on foreign relations with his definition of \u201cultimatum\u201d: \u201cIn diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.\u201d He nailed \u201calliance\u201d: \u201cIn international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other\u2019s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.\u201d His definition of \u201cconsul\u201d reverberates in our time with all the ambassadors who have bought their posts with lavish campaign contributions: \u201cIn American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce lived at a time when governments were beginning to demand that people \u201cshow their papers.\u201d He defined \u201cpassport\u201d: \u201cA document treacherously inflicted upon a citizen going abroad, exposing him as an alien and pointing him out for special reprobation and outrage.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a surefire gauge to understand foreign conflicts, see Bierce\u2019s definition of \u201cpeace\u201d: \u201cIn international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.\u201d Bierce died before the First World War, but his epigram could have provided a lodestar for the villainy of that era.<\/p>\n

Bierce disdained most political activists. He defined \u201cconservative\u201d as \u201ca statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.\u201d Bierce did vehemently attack the robber barons who were afflicting the nation with crony capitalism in his time.<\/p>\n

As excellent profile by journalist Andrew Ferguson noted that Bierce\u2019s \u201cone abiding principle was a horror of socialism. Capitalism alone could accommodate human striving and ambition.\u201d Bierce defined \u201cgrapeshot\u201d as \u201can argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.\u201d In his 1910 pamphlet, \u201cThe Socialist \u2014 What He Is, and Why,\u201d Bierce declared, \u201cthe [socialist] \u2018movement\u2019 as a social and political force is, in this country, born of envy, the true purpose of its activities, revenge. In the shadow of our national prosperity it whets its knife for the throats of the prosperous. It unleashes the hounds of hate upon the track of success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce saved some of his tartest comments for his own profession. He defined \u201creporter\u201d: \u201cA writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.\u201d Bierce spent many years as a newspaper editor in San Francisco, spurring this definition of \u201ceditor\u201d: \u201cA person who is a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog.\u201d His definition of \u201cproof-reader\u201d will warm the heart of many writers whose copy has been mangled beyond recognition: \u201cA malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bierce offered many superb one liners on other topics. Here are a few of his best:<\/p>\n

\u201cPositive, adj. Mistaken at the top of one\u2019s voice.
\n\u201cHurry, n. The dispatch of bunglers.
\n\u201cImpiety, n. Your irreverence to my deity.
\n\u201cZeal, n. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
\n\u201cTruthful, adj. Dumb and illiterate.
\n\u201cRum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
\n\u201cGhost, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
\n\u201cProphecy, n. The art and practice of selling one\u2019s credibility for future delivery.
\n\u201cPatience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
\n\u201cSaint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
\n\u201cSelf-evident, adj. Evident to one\u2019s self and to nobody else.
\n\u201cUrbanity, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York.<\/p>\n

Apparently, New Yorkers had a dubious reputation even a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n

Freedom fighters need all the comic relief they can find. The laughs that Bierce delivers are combined with lines that pierce perpetual political frauds now more than ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Note: Bierce\u2019s Devil\u2019s Dictionary is available for free here<\/strong><\/a> – and\u00a0 at https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/972\/972-h\/972-h.htm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ambrose Bierce\u2019s Pro-Freedom Cynicism by James Bovard The friends of freedom must recognize the verbal charades that sway people to surrender their rights and liberties. The political establishment and its media allies are continually abusing the English language to lull people into submission. From pupils being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2970,247,327,591,648,419,1495],"class_list":["post-16345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ambrose-bierce","tag-civil-war","tag-cynicism","tag-devils-dictionary","tag-mencken","tag-politicians","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\nAmbrose Bierce\u2019s Pro-Freedom Cynicism - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ambrose Bierce was America's most eloquent cynic. 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