In Impromptus today, I begin with the new Nobel peace laureate, and discuss some of the other new laureates as well. Eventually, I get to a strange topic — and an interesting one: U.S. presidents and blood.
The other day, Donald Trump talked about the problem of illegal immigration. “It’s poisoning the blood of our country,” he said. I immediately thought of Reagan — who pointed out, “The blood of each nation courses through the American vein.”
Rick Brookhiser pointed me to Lincoln — to the speech that Lincoln gave in Chicago in July 1858. Immigrants have no connection to the Founders “by blood,” he said. But they are connected to the principles and ideals of the Founding — and to the Declaration of Independence in particular.
Let me catch Lincoln in the midst of a long, winding, and wonderful sentence: “. . . they have a right to claim it as through they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that declaration.”
So, presidents — Republican presidents — and the national “blood.” Two of them are Illinoisians. I like them.
After I wrote my column, I thought of Mark Haidar, a tech entrepreneur in Dallas. I met him at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Mark grew up in Lebanon — “war-torn” Lebanon, to use the cliché. His experiences were very, very difficult.
Let me quote from something I wrote about him, two years ago:
One day, two employees of the United Nations came to Mark’s school. This was “the day that changed my life,” says Mark. They brought with them two computers — by which Mark was fascinated. . . .
He found something called “Encarta.” This was an early Microsoft encyclopedia. He began reading about the United States and discovered the Declaration of Independence — which excited him. He knew, in his core, it was true: Human beings have rights that no man or system can negate.
Thereafter, he had a tradition. Every time he got a new notebook in school — like a spiral notebook — he would write in it the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence has meant a lot to many people around the world — more than to us native-born types, possibly.
Let’s have some mail. In an Impromptus last week, I had occasion to write, “I remember when men routinely carried knives in their pockets. You no more went around without a pocketknife than without your keys or dough.”
A reader writes,
I always have a pocketknife with me, either my Swiss Army knife or a single lock blade that I can open one-handed (a gift from my Scout troop). My wife gave me the original Swiss Army knife when we were dating, having brought it back from her college semester in Ireland, so I had it many, many years. I accidentally left it in my backpack when we went to Germany a few years ago and it, of course, was confiscated. That was a long flight.
I love that last sentence.
Another reader writes,
I’m a pocketknife guy. . . . If I don’t have my knife it’s because I am traveling or inside a secured government area. This brings me to a memory that I enjoy.
Years ago I was working for a government board that had been sued. I was walking to the courthouse with several of the board members, people who had held elected offices and positions of trust and power, all dressed to proper U.S. Senate standards. As we walked into the courthouse we saw the metal detectors and all six of us simultaneously realized we were carrying pocketknives and hurried back outside.
What to do? There was not time to go back to the office and we could not throw the knives away. Ah, the concrete planters! Like squirrels with acorns, six men in suits and ties buried their knives under the ornamental junipers and returned to the courthouse to hear State Supreme Court oral arguments. Afterwards we all went and dug up the hidden treasure.
Magnificent. Thank you to one and all. Again, today’s Impromptus is here.