Deja Vu

The Usual Strain

Tags:

elections,

John McCain,

Moliere,

pedagogy,

Sarah Palin,

Tartuffe

“It's Time for Sarah Palin, John McCain, and the GOP to Abstain From Abstinence-Only Education—It Doesn't Work,” by Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 2, 2008.

Sen. Barack Obama took the high road in refusing to answer reporters' questions about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pregnant 17-year-old daughter Bristol and the girl's decision to marry the father and have the baby.

He also drew a distinct boundary line between legitimate topics for policy discussions by politicians and urged the media to leave politicians' families alone.

I respect his wishes, but Gov. Palin's family situation and how she was chosen by Sen. John McCain to join the Republican ticket still present issues worthy of debate among pundits if not politicians.

The first and most obvious is her support for abstinence-only education in public schools and how well it seems to have worked within her own family.

As a clarion-clear advocate of abstinence-only education, Palin explained on an Eagle Forum (ultraconservative women's group) questionnaire during her 2006 gubernatorial run: "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."

Tartuffe, or The Hypocrite, by Molière (trans. Curtis Hidden Page), 1664.

Cleante
That is the usual strain of all your kind;
They must have every one as blind as they.
They call you atheist if you have good eyes;
And if you don’t adore their vain grimaces,
You’ve neither faith nor care for sacred things.
No, no; such talk can’t frighten me; I know
What I’m saying; heaven sees my heart.
We’re not the dupes of all your canting mummers;
There are false heroes—and false devotees;
And as true heroes never are the ones
Who make much noise about their deeds of honor,
Just so true devotees, whom we should follow,
Are not the ones who make so much vain show.
What! Will you find no difference between
Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness?
And will you treat them both alike, and pay
The self-same honor both to masks and faces,
Set artifice beside sincerity,
Confuse the semblance with reality,
Esteem a phantom like a living person,
And counterfeit as good as honest coin?
Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly!
You never find them keep the golden mean;
The limits of good sense, too narrow for them,
Must always be passed by, in each direction;
They often spoil the noblest things, because
They go too far, and push them to extremes.
I merely say this by the way, good brother.

Orgon
You are the sole expounder of the doctrine;
Wisdom shall die with you, no doubt, good brother,
You are the only wise, the sole enlightened,
The oracle, the Cato, of our age.
All men, compared to you, are downright fools.

Cleante
I’m not the sole expounder of the doctrine,
And wisdom shall not die with me, good brother.
But this I know, though it be all my knowledge,
That there’s a difference 'twixt false and true.
And as I find no kind of hero more
To be admired than men of true religion,
Nothing more noble or more beautiful
Than is the holy zeal of true devoutness;
Just so I think there’s naught more odious
Than whited sepulchers of outward unction,
Those bare-faced charlatans, those hireling zealots,
Whose sacrilegious, treacherous pretense
Deceives at will, and with impunity
Makes mockery of all that men hold sacred;
Men who, enslaved to selfish interests,
Make trade and merchandise of godliness,
And try to purchase influence and office
With false eye-rollings and affected raptures;
Those men, I say, who with uncommon zeal
Seek their own fortunes on the road to heaven;
Who, skilled in prayer, have always much to ask,
And live at court to preach retirement;
Who reconcile religion with their vices,
Are quick to anger, vengeful, faithless, tricky,
And, to destroy a man, will have the boldness
To call their private grudge the cause of heaven;
All the more dangerous, since in their anger
They use against us weapons men revere,
And since they make the world applaud their passion,
And seek to stab us with a sacred sword.
There are too many of this canting kind.
Still, the sincere are easy to distinguish;
And many splendid patterns may be found,
In our own time, before our very eyes.
Look at Ariston, Périandre, Oronte,
Alcidamas, Clitandre, and Polydore;
No one denies their claim to true religion;
Yet they’re no braggadocios of virtue,
They do not make insufferable display,
And their religion’s human, tractable;
They are not always judging our actions,
They’d think such judgment savored of presumption;
And, leaving pride of words to other men,
'T is by their deeds alone they censure ours.
Evil appearances find little credit
With them; they even incline to think the best
Of others. No caballers, no intriguers,
They mind the business of their own right living.
They don’t attack a sinner tooth and nail,
For sin’s the only object of their hatred;
Nor are they over-zealous to attempt
Far more in heaven’s behalf than heaven would have 'em.
That is my kind of man, that is true living,
That is the pattern we should set ourselves.
Your fellow was not fashioned on this model;
You’re quite sincere in boasting of his zeal;
But you’re deceived, I think, by false pretenses.

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