For those of us who have the good fortune to peruse the words and insights of New York Times columnist David Brooks, he recently posited what has seemed glaringly obvious to most people since the presidential campaign began inflicting itself on us all those eons ago. “We will have to revive the American identity,” he wrote, and “We will have to construct a new national idea that binds and embraces all our particular ideas.”
Well said, Mr. Brooks, now please do just that!
Clearly, articulating such creeds might seem like a feat of legerdemain, fiendishly complex, perhaps at this point impossible.
You’re spot on about what’s rending our country asunder, Mr. Brooks — race, politics, gender, religion, education; now give us a few hints on how to get us started back to where most of us could again say, “yes, that’s who we are.”
Perhaps we’ve reached the point of no return, but am I wrong in believing that establishing –– re-establishing? –– that “American identity” is actually something most of us crave, something that might dampen that ardor for so many of us to seek out Canadian citizenship?
Tom Brody Lebanon
Eliminate the Electoral College
Apologists for the long-inappropriate Electoral College are quick to appear following elections in which it appears to have served us ill (twice in the past five). Only because of the clause in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, a clause that James Hulme and Allen Guelzo omit from their selective quotation, do we have any popular vote at all in a presidential election (“Electoral College Binds a More Perfect Union,” Nov. 20).
The passage that Hulme and Guelzo cite reads, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature may direct, a Number of electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress,” but they omit the important words “in such manner as the Legislature may direct.” The prevailing founders were suspicious of a popular vote. Only two state legislatures, Pennsylvania and Maryland, allowed a popular vote in the first election in 1789; the rest chose electors.
Today, all but two states use winner-take-all popular votes to choose electors, and we see the eccentric results. Hulme and Guelzo believe that federalism would be threatened by the disappearance of the Electoral College and, even odder, that we might be in consequence inundated by a multitude of presidential candidates. The political parties do quite well protecting us from a multitude of candidates, and federalism and for that matter “factions” as the founders called interest groups, are more than well enough served in the Congress. The president was originally the president of the states, to be sure, but in modern times the president is the president of the people (as recent ones frequently remind us), and should be elected by them without interference.
Kenneth Rower Newbury
Here’s to You, Charlie
Having been swamped winding up a term with a heavy teaching load, I had missed a handful of issues of the Valley News. In getting caught up, I was stunned to see a Nov. 14 “A Life’’ story for someone whose presence — and friendship — in Hanover I had taken for granted: Charlie Conquest.
I met Charlie on the first day that I moved to Hanover, almost exactly 30 years ago. His Hanover Stringed Instruments store (then on the corner of Dorrance and Main) was my oasis. As an avid guitar player at that time, I spent many a Saturday with Charlie, just dropping by, hanging out, playing music or discussing the music of John McLaughlin. His knowledge and love of music was as prodigious as his ever-present, beaming smile. Although I bought my two Martins (that I still cherish) and many a piece of musical equipment there, I don’t recall that he once tried to sell me anything.
Time and life intervened, and we saw each other less and less. My last visit to his store (now across from the Canoe Club) was when I bought a guitar there for my son for his 12th birthday, five years ago. We would occasionally run into each other standing in line at the Co-op, and there was always that incredible smile, that outstretched hand, that hearty shout of “ANANT! My old friend!” I would marvel at the fact that, other than for a bit of gray in his hair, he didn’t look a day older than when I first met him.
The news of his sudden and untimely passing breaks my heart. Here’s to you making great music up there, Charlie!
Anant Sundaram Hanover