E Pluribus Unum

The other day, I received the November [2005] edition of the Claremont Institute's publication, The Proposition. The lead essay titled "The Crisis if American National Identity" was written by Professor Charles R. Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books -- which is nothing less than the antithesis of the New York Review of Books.

Professor Kesler's essay (which was adapted from a lecture given at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC) is excellent. Here is just the opening paragraph:

About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite--and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and figured he'd suffered enough, perhaps because they admired the remark's impudence. Though literally a mistake, politically the comment expressed and honored the multicultural imperative, then so prominent in the minds of American liberals: "from one," or to exaggerate slightly, "instead of one culture, many." As such it was a rather candid example of the literary method known as deconstruction: torture a text until it confesses the exact opposite of what it says in plain English or, in this case, Latin.

It's an excellent essay. If you are interestecd in reading Professor Kesler's essay in its entirety, or subscribing to the Claremont Review of Books, contact the Claremont Institute by calling 909-621-6825.