Manhood

Some are great men. Many are average Joes. I'm about the size of half a man, a physical and moral midget. It's a valuable perspective, because the scale and scope of greatness are easily discerned, just as country folk behold an amazingly tall skyscraper and say oooo! As long as I live, I will always marvel at the Bank of China Tower, elegant glass shapes rising like a frozen pillar of crystal, a work of genius. The London Gherkin not so much. In fact there's not a single decent structure anywhere in Blighty. They have a hard time doing hotel rooms, too. The Brits are a benighted race. Generous, cheerful, industrious, honest, and talented, but no sense of design. Same thing on the Continent. Comfortable and utilitarian, never stupendous, always a headache trying to get from point A to point B.

America is the only place with good transportation, Australia first runner up, but it's unfair to compare them. There's nowhere to go in Oz. I like the Lucky Country, but they have no great men. They have folklore about highwaymen versus nitwits with a Royal license to govern.

So ... what is a great man?

Raw courage certainly seems fundamental, but many have been courageous. Clever is good, but cleverness is desirable to all men, a way to earn their way in life. Writers have a lot of trouble doing that. The courageous and clever seldom read. Horrible to consider, but radio and television supply what most men enjoy, football and cricket in particular. I find both of them to be intensely boring. Greatness has to be something bigger than golf or tennis.

A great man must hold the gift of life in his hands. He could be a neurosurgeon, a commando, the commander-in-chief of a great enterprise. Every waking moment is an urgent problem in prospect, another struggle to attack the impossible and chip away at it until it's tamed. On the radio just now, Mark Steyn said that Rush Limbaugh was "the indispensible man." Nope.  He's a talented clown, maybe a clever guy with the common touch, a postmodern Thomas Paine.

Popularlity cannot be measure of a great man. Jesus is popular, a free Get Out of Sin card, no thought necessary. Negro athletes are popular, no thought possible. Politicians are popular enough to win election with swing votes and massive media buys, one slogan per cycle. Hope and change. Make America great.

Hmm. It occurs to me that the measure of greatness is how much sorrow a man can carry, how great a burden his life becomes, embracing it as a challenge to his character. That was Lincoln in a nutshell. Davy Crockett at the Alamo. One of the most misunderstood men in American history was Jay Gould. He started with nothing, taught himself to be a road surveyor. At the end of his life he was feared, hated, sick, and friendless. Gould's crimes? -- the Union Pacific combine that stretched in all directions, Western Union, the first transatlantic cable, arbiter of a Wall Street panic. Many great men in the Gilded Age -- Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Firestone, Westinghouse, Edison. Their lives were difficult. They stood strong. Even the politicians had character, Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Leland Stanford.

Most of the Civil War generals were great men, Union and Confederate. Most of the men who served in World War II were called to greatness and answered to the limit of their endurance. Admiral Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. William Wallace.

Oooo, wait a minute. Stop the presses. There was an American hero who inspired me more than all the others combined. An utterly tragic life, but pivotal in American political history, First Father of American Independence. His name is lost, no longer mentioned. A lawyer. Who cares about colonial lawyers? Did he say something important in a Crown court and be beaten so severely by tax bailiffs that he never recovered mentally, had to be replaced by Sam Adams?

"An act against natural equity is void." (James Otis)

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