Louis Roney: Chatting with Machiavelli

Famous Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.”

Scientist Albert Einstein told us, in effect, that because the relative human mind is incapable of conceiving anything infinite, we necessarily live in a world where everything is relative. He added, “All I know about creation is that I did not make myself.”

Oddly, people who are our “blood relatives” are often people with whom we have little or nothing in common, and with whom we have little to do. It is not unusual for people to be quite distant from their nearest relative, and for brothers and sisters to get along hardly at all.

Think of the fifth or 10th cousins somewhere we have never heard of.

Aren’t all people in the world kin to each other somehow or other?

Kinship may often suggest friendship or amicability, but it doesn’t always work that way.

Where did the phrase “it’s too close for comfort” come from? People don’t usually want their closest relatives to know all their private business, do they? One is not supposed to marry a close relative — but how close is close? In the South, we speak of “kissin’ kin,” but I have rarely had any kin that I kissed with gusto — a peck on the cheek is about my limit.

In West Virginia the Hatfields and the McCoys have reputedly had an ongoing feud where legendary foes feasted on murderous hatred through the decades. How many on each side killed how many on the other, anyway?

Kinship can occur in various disguises. For example, I have always felt a kinship with the music of Giacomo Puccini as well as with a big bowl of turnip greens with vinegar. I must someday try eating turnip greens while listening to “Tosca!” Thinking further, these days I sense a feeling of disquietude abroad in the land. Concomitantly, my b.w. is a naturally happy person who is usually all smiles if our bankbook is balanced and our fenders have no dents. I must always be careful that my furrowed brows not ruin a merely cloudy day for b.w.

Where do I go from here? This is a tough question for a guy who has only recently been able to accept with grace the ethnological past from which scientists tell us we all sprang. Mankind itself has never quit searching for a lot of things that rankle me. Profound thinkers from Shakespeare to Einstein have stopped and thought plenty along the path I am now treading. In my life I have been a Democrat and a Republican and neither one has permanently satisfied my deep-down political insecurity. The guilt that some Americans may feel because of our having more material goods than we need doesn’t solve anything, and may even generate in some a conscience-free sense of self-satisfaction. I lived some years in Switzerland, where the citizenry has it pretty darn good without having to deal with any guilt complexes generated by a polyglot population. The Swiss enjoy a mostly homogenous citizenry with well-guarded borders.

I remember more than a half a century ago when presidential candidate Wendell Willkie published a book called, “One World”. From his vantage point Willkie saw all those unifying political trends in world evolution as terminating logically in “One World Government.” The small number of working civilizations around us in North America may have hindered the acceptance of Willkie’s “dream-concept.” Even in his day, many Americans saw Willkie as an idealist dreamer. Up to now, today’s United Nations has shown itself to be unworkable, even risible, in solving any real problems.

Where, in what country could any American find a feasible, much less desirable, model to exchange for the U.S., or even for us to emulate, in small part?

Nowhere!