UNIVERSITIES, INDEPENDENCE AND LIBERTY

Today the 28^th of October is a foundation day for a couple of Universities.

On the 28^th October 1538, during the reign of Charles I of Spain, the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino, located in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was established. It was created by the Papal Bull In Apostolatus St Thomas Aquinas Culminates with the name of University. With this act by Pope Paul III it became the first university in the Western Hemisphere.

Prior to its conversion into a full university, the institution had been a Studium Generate (seminary), founded in 1518 and operated by the Dominican Order.

Just two years short of a century later, on the 28^th October 1636, a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first college in what would become the United States. That college is known today as Harvard University. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The amended flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand, 

New Zealand’s first flag, gazetted in 1835 

and based on the design selected in 1834.

Yet another declaration of independence. The United Tribes of New Zealand was a loose confederation of Māori tribes based in the north of the North Island. The confederation was convened in 1834 by British Resident James Busby. Busby was sent to New Zealand in 1833 by the Colonial Office to serve as the official British Resident, and was anxious to set up a framework for trade between Māori and Europeans, the Māori chiefs of northern part of the North Island agreed to meet with him in March 1834. Rumors began spreading that the Frenchman, Baron Charles de Thierry, was going to set up an independent state at Hokianga. The United Tribes declared their independence on 28 October 1835 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbour, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on 28^th of October, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an icon of freedom and of the United States.

It also has a plaque on it honouring the poet Emma Lazarus, with the text of her poem “The New Colossus”, part of which reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,


The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.


Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,


I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Is that performance writing or what?

CONSTATIVES, CONSTANTINE AND PERFORMATIVES.

J.L.Austin

I have been reading How To Do Things With Words, The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University by John Langshaw Austin in 1955 and published in book form in 1962. In it, I have been perusing Austin’s concepts of performatives and constatives with a view to preparing a class presentation about Austin’s work.

Whilst researching todays events I thought I came upon a usage of Constative dating back to the 4^th Century, 312 AD. I thought I was having a vision. In turned out not to be Constative but Constantine.  Apparently Constantine the Great received his Vision of the Cross. It is, I am told, commonly stated that on the evening of 27 October, 312, with the armies preparing for battle, Constantine had a vision which led him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. The details of that vision, however, differ between the sources reporting it.

Lactantius states that, in the night before the battle Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine was commanded in a dream to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers" (On the Deaths of the Persecutors 44.5). He followed the commands of his dream and marked the shields with a sign "denoting Christ". Lactantius describes that sign as a "staurogram", or a Latin Cross with its upper end rounded in a P-like fashion. There is no certain evidence that Constantine ever used that sign, opposed to the better known Chi Rho sign described by Eusebius.

How’s that for reacting to a performative command. “Thou shall delineate the heavenly sign…” The power of words is great.

There was however, another speech delivered on the 27^th October, not in a vision, but at a Republican Rally during the United States Presidential Election of 1964, between Lyndon B. Johnson (incumbent President, having been sworn into office on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 22^nd November 1963) and the than Senator from Arizona, Barry M Goldwater.  The speech was entitled A Time for Choosing, it became known as The Speech. It was presented by future president Ronald Reagan on behalf of the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater..

Many versions of the speech exist, since it was altered over many weeks. Contrary to popular belief, however, the speech was not given at the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, California as a nomination speech for Goldwater. Richard Nixon gave that nomination speech. Reagan, though he campaigned for Goldwater, did not use "A Time for Choosing" until the 27^th October, 1964, when it was part of a pre-recorded television program, Rendezvous with Destiny. In his autobiography Reagan recalled going to bed that night "hoping I hadn't let Barry down." But "A Time for Choosing," replayed throughout the final week of the campaign, raised $8 million for Goldwater and launched Reagan's political career.

Here is part of that speech. I still find him a worry.

Soon afterward, Reagan was asked to run for governor of California. To this day, this speech is considered, by some Reagan fans and Republicans, to have been one of the most effective ever made on behalf of a candidate. Nevertheless, Barry Goldwater lost the election by one of the largest margins in history. Reagan was later called the "Great Communicator" in recognition of his effective speech-making skills.

But clearly, in the light of Goldwater’s very serious defeat, Reagan’s speech lacked vision and no heavenly sign was delineated.  Hardly performative then.

I actually voted in that election. The first and last time in an American election.

UNFORTUNATE TREATIES, SEXY REFERENDA AND TEN LETTER ACRONYMS

In keeping with a review of written agreements and legislation, three such documents feature on the 26^th October.

I do not pretend to be an historian, and I know very little about the so called Bishops’ Wars which were both military and political conflicts which took place in 1639 1nd 1640, centring around the nature of the governance of the Church of Scotland, and the rights and powers of the Crown. They constitute part of a larger political conflict across Scotland, England and Ireland, and are often considered a prelude to the English Civil Wars. They were so named due to the central conflict between Charles I, who favoured an Episcopalian system of church government for Scotland (with bishops), and the desire of much of the polity of Scotland for a Presbyterian system of governance (without bishops).

Charles I

The Treaty of Ripon was an agreement signed by Charles I, and the Scottish Covenanters on 26 October 1640, in the aftermath of the Bishops’ Wars. The Covenanters were associated with the promotion and development of Presbyterianism as a form of church government, as opposed to Episcopacy, favoured by the crown.

Replica Covenanter Flag

John Campbell, 1st Earl of Loudoun

 leading spokesman for the

 Covenanter movement

Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston

Scottish judge and statesman.

He assisted in negotiating the treaty in 1640.

The treaty was a major setback for Charles, and its terms were humiliating. It stipulated that Northumberland and County Durham were to be ceded to the Scots as an interim measure, that Newcastle was to be left in the hands of the Scots, and that Charles was to pay them £850 a day to maintain their armies there. Detailed negotiations between the two sides in London dragged well on into 1641. This treaty was a factor leading to the calling of a session of Parliament, which is now known as the Long Parliament; this session was one of the major stepping stones to the outbreak of the First English Civil War, and we all know what that unfortunate movement led to.

In Canada, The Charlottetown Accord (French: Accord de Charlottetown) was a package of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada, proposed by the Canadian federal and provincial governments in 1992.  It was submitted to a public referendum on the 26^th October 1992 and was defeated. The proposals were supported initially; the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals, and the New Democratic Party supported the accord. First Nations groups endorsed it, as did some women's groups and business leaders. All ten provincial premiers supported it. In the English media, almost all opinion pieces were in favour. The campaign began with the accord popular across English Canada, with a statistical dead heat in Quebec. All three major party leaders travelled the country supporting the accord while large amounts of money were spent on pro-accord advertising. While many advocates of the accord acknowledged that it was a compromise and had many flaws, they also felt that without it the country would break apart. Canada is still with us. Why it failed is bizarre, considering it had some pretty good measures ensuring minority rights. However here is one of the Vote Yes commercials at the time; Go Canada. Remember all this is to do with performance writing and performative words.

The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the "Patriot Act") is an Act of the United States Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on the 26^th October, 2001. The title of the act is a ten letter acronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for: Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Isn't that just wonderful.

The act, a response to the terrorist acts of the 11^th September, dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eased restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expanded the Sewcretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and broadened the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.

On May 26, 2011, President Barak Obama signed a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act: roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the “library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups.

Here is a sample wording from quite early on in the legislation. This is performance writing gone mad.

SEC. 2. CONSTRUCTION; SEVERABILITY.

Any provision of this Act held to be invalid or unenforceable by its terms, or as applied to any person or circumstance, shall be construed so as to give it the maximum effect permitted by law, unless such holding shall be one of utter invalidity or unenforceability, in which event such provision shall be deemed severable from this Act and shall not affect the remainder thereof or the application of such provision to other persons not similarly situated or to other, dissimilar circumstances.