Protecting the Unorthodox
Reading E. B. White's "Bedfellows" (1956) during another election year
One intention with The Library has always been to share what I consider to be good or important writing with subscribers. I hope to share my take on classics or introduce readers to someone they might not have encountered. This week, I turned my attention to one of my all-time favorite writers, E. B. White, who I consider to be one of the greatest American essayists.
Many of us know White’s children’s classics like Charlotte’s Web or Stuart Little, but White compiled an impressive collection of writing, often in the pages of the New Yorker. I picked up Essays of E. B. White this week intending to reread “Death of a Pig,” in line with my interest in farm life that often finds an outlet here. The essay “Bedfellows” from a section called The Planet beckoned instead. Read on!
Scene Setting
White was stuck in bed sick during February of an election year (1956). With him were two articles and a book written by prominent contemporary Democrats: Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, and Dean Acheson. Also: the ghost of his dead dachshund, Fred.
White’s mastery of these sort of juxtapositions is what makes him a pleasure to read.
(Although Fred is not incidental to the essay, I’m going to downplay him here in favor of the politically relevant points. One point about Fred matters, though. White considered Fred a “zealot.”)
The guiding spirit and foundation for White’s discussion came from a Louis Brandeis dissent included in the piece by Acheson (which reminded White of Fred):
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
Democrats’ Complaints
The Democrats that White brought to bed with him that election year shared some complaints and warnings.
Former president Truman complained that the press had it out for him in 1948. The media of the day, Truman groused, did not cover him or his positions, keeping the public from supporting him. The media of the day was Republican-dominated, and Truman felt it distorted everything. (Does any of this sound familiar?) But as White saw it, distortion is inherent in writing. “All writing slants the way a writer leans,” White wrote, “and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.” For White, the beauty was that the American press had so many slants that readers could “sift and sort and check and countercheck” to figure out a serviceable truth. Only by accepting a single source of information were Americans duped.
Stevenson, the Democrats’ unsuccessful nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, focused on “criticism.” Many Americans at the time, Stevenson thought, viewed criticism as radical, as tantamount to eroding the foundation of the nation. Criticism, “suggests nonconformity and nonconformity suggests disloyalty and disloyalty suggests treason, and before we know where we are, this process has all but identified the critic with the saboteur and turned political criticism into an un-American activity instead of democracy’s greatest safeguard.” White concurred with Stevenson’s conclusion.
This stepped naturally into White’s summary of Acheson’s case against the loyalty-security program that Truman introduced and that got goosed by Senator Joe McCarthy’s crusading anticommunism (and more). White was interested in this because both he and Acheson believed that as the security machinery in government expanded, security actually declined and would lead inevitably to secret police being used to root out the “disloyal” in government and then in business and then our neighborhoods. Soon the “disloyal” were merely “nonconformists.” As White put it, “A secret-police system first unsettles, then desiccates, then calcifies a free society.”
Through (and against) these Democrats, White confirmed the value of a free press and the freedom to criticize and not conform.
Republican Prayers
White then introduced President Dwight Eisenhower who had recently come out publicly in favor of prayer, arguing that religious faith was a condition for democracy.
“This is just wrong,” said White.
The writer believed presidents should pray however they would like to but not advertise it. Democracy demanded freedom of thought and faith.
Democracy, if I understand it at all, is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only half a dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy, their tranquility would be its proof.
White welcomed faithful presidents and hoped they lived by faith and demonstrated it in their actions. He just thought it wrong to advocate faith. He feared such a thing would make it mandatory, something antithetical to the American Constitution. “I hope my country will never become an uncomfortable place for the unbeliever, as it could easily become if prayer was made one of the requirements of the accredited citizen,” said White.
When White detected any sort of orthodoxy, he trembled and no longer recognized what he saw as the promise of the nation.
1962 Postscript
Six years after its initial publication White added a timely postscript.
The McCarthy hysteria had yielded to the more radical John Birch Society, which proposed a similar set of lists targeting the Americans the Birchers found insufficiently conformist. White was pleased that the Birchers seemed to be less powerful than the McCarthyites, but he remained watchful.
White was pleased with a recent Supreme Court decision, Engel v. Vitale(1962). In it, a 6-1 Court concluded that a short, required, non-denominational prayer violated the Constitution’s theme “that no one shall be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe because of nonconformity.” To White’s way of thinking, if “a moment of gentle orthodoxy” in public schools left a child feeling left out, stamped with a stigma, it was best to do away with the prayer.
It is this one child that our Constitution is concerned about—his tranquillity, his health, his safety, his conscience. What a kindly old document it is, and how brightly it shines, through interpretation after interpretation!
Conclusion
I find myself, not for the first time, aligned with White’s ethical and political stance and marveling at his expression.
I cannot decide if it is comforting that in 2024 we face similar questions: insistence on orthodoxy in belief and behavior lest we find ourselves labeled disloyal and un-American. Mostly, I am alarmed and dismayed that political actors still use their power to demonize and write people out of the nation and its promise.
Yet, remembering that this is not the first time we have faced this gives me pause, if not hope. These orthodox-enforcing tyrants have been defeated before. The harm they cause is inexcusable, of course, and they must be stopped. They look powerful, but as they gather their forces online, in meetings, in half of Congress, and on the campaign trails, one thing that is not on their side is the US Constitution.
This week White reminded me of the enduring power and duty of the Constitution to protect the unorthodox.
Closing Words
Relevant Reruns
This week’s topic is a bit afield from typical topics here, but one newsletter did look at a dissenting view. One of my earliest pieces of public writing was about another dissent, one by Justice Brandeis’s successor William O. Douglas. You can read about it and its call for the rights of nature here.
New Writing
This week, I published a local story about a new library that is being built, but it also is a story about how libraries are taking on new community rules. Check it out here. Also, I wrote a story about how local farmers are thinking about a potential drought, since our snowpack is well below average.
As always, you can find my books, and books where some of my work is included, at my Bookshop affiliate page (where, if you order, I get a small benefit).
Taking Bearings Next Week
Next week is The Wild Card. You never know what you’re going to get. Stay tuned!
Thanks, Adam, for highlighting the superb writing of E.B. White, which remains as relevant as ever. In rereading this essay after many years, I was once again struck by White's clever use of his departed dog, Fred, as a stand-in for nosy FBI agents snooping under the covers for subversives. A sublime form of ridicule, yet it is a terrifically serious subject--especially these days when authoritarian governments are on the resurgence.