SIX "ON DEMOCRACY" FROM E.B. WHITE
Kids and parents know E.B. White for his classics Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. But for decades, White wrote for The New Yorker, mostly short, sweet pieces about the city or his life in Maine.
But when democracy was threatened, during World War II and later by McCarthyism, White defended the freedom of ideas that democracy demands. Now comes a collection of his essays on democracy. Here are six samples.
1. “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.”
2. “The elasticity of democracy is its strength — like the web of a spider, which bends but holds. The desire to give the whole thing greater rigidity and a more conventional set of fastenings is almost overwhelming in these times when the strain is great, and it makes professed lovers of liberty propose measures that show little faith in liberty.”
3. “Somehow the letters-to-the-editor page, strange and wonderful as it always is, is one of the chief adornments of the society we love and seek to clarify for the world. The privilege of writing to the editor is basic; the product is the hot dish of scrambled eggs that is America.”
4. “The Army fired a missile the other day and hit a target nine thousand miles away, but we’ve put very little time or money into launching our best missile — our ideas. We should flood the world with the good books that make men’s hearts catch fire.”
5. “Personal liberty really arises from men’s willingness to submit to restraints that protect the many from the whimsical conduct of the few. I watched ‘freedom of choice’ at work in the 1920s, when brokerage houses were free to operate as they saw fit. What resulted was a financial crash that left millions of Americans without any choice at all, except the choice of whether to jump or not. Nowadays, thanks to market controls, we have a stable economy that allows us to breathe free. Negroes came to this country because ship owners had ‘freedom of choice,’ and the owners chose to bring black men here in chains. . . ”
6. “As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness. . . Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out. Hang onto your hat. Hang onto your hope. And wind your clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely, E.B. White”
