Whitman and Robinson - Timely

Walt Whitman -- Democratic Vistas (1867) 


"America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for I see clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat her down.  But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me.  Owning no law but their own will, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood......It is the fashion of dilettants [sic] and fops (perhaps I myself am not guiltless) to decry the whole formulation of the active politics of America, as beyond redemption, and to be carefully kept away from.  See that you do not fall into this error.  America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these half-brained nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers."

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Marilynne Robinson (who cites the Whitman quote in the preface to When I Was A Child, I Read Books, 2012) --

"It was Whitman's faith that a great presiding spirit of Democracy would check, or correct for, the worst deficiencies of the civilization.  It may indeed have been that ideal that kept us on course, or allowed us finally to find our way back to a better and healthier national life, then and in all the other periods in our history when our politics have seemed to be beyond redemption."