Political Philosophy and Ethics discussion

"[T]here are two separate and distinct kinds of Christian morals, so separate, so distinct, so unrelated that they are no more kin to each other than are archangels and politicians. The one kind is Christian private morals, the other is Christian public morals."

Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, vol. 1, ed. Harriett Elinor Smith et al. (Berkely: University of California Press, 2010), 306.

Last evening, my wife and I saw Hal Holbrook's famous live impersonation of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) at a theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Holbrook is ninety years old. The segment before the intermission was somewhat perplexing. He showed an aged Samuel Clemens, often pausing for extended periods of time and even falling asleep. One was left to wonder whether this was a portrayal of Mark Twain in his later years or Holbrook's own age-related infirmities. Since Twain was only seventy-four years old when he died, it is difficult to believe that he was that far advanced in senior difficulties. However, Holbrook knows much more about Twain than almost any of the rest of us, and I do not second-guess his portrayal.

Moreover, Holbrook's channeling of Mark Twain after the intermission was nothing short of breathtaking. The most moving part of the performance, for me, was Holbrook's rendition, by memory, of an extended section of Huckleberry Finn. I read this famous novel when I was very young. I have always intended to reread it but have never gotten back to it, in part because I have lost the ability to read and appreciate novels in recent decades. This work is, of course, Mark Twain's great indictment of slavery, expressed in the voice of a young white boy ("Huckleberry Finn") growing up in a culture, similar to Samuel Clemens's antebellum Missouri, that taught that slavery was not only right but approved by the Bible. In the excerpt enacted by Holbrook, Huck is also faced with the total insanity of an inter-family blood feud, originating several generations earlier. Nobody in the present generation really knows why or how it started, but the present generation is determined to kill the members of the other family just on general principles. Twain's devotion to peace, as well as racial justice, thus comes out in this extract from the novel.

Hal Halbrook has studied and portrayed Mark Twain again and again for many decades. I think Samuel Clemens would approve of the result. As I left the theatre, the words of Matthew 25:21 suddenly came to me, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (New King James Version). Although neither Mark Twain nor Hal Holbrook could be confused with a conventional Christian, this pronouncement applies to both of them.

Great summary. I would add that when Twain talked about the corrupt political scene in the Gilded Age, you would swear he was talking about the present. It's sad that we've returned to that situation. As Mark Shields quipped on the PBS NewsHour tonight, "They play according to the Golden Rule: He with the gold rules."