OLD CLICHES IN NEW BOTTLES
Serwer, Arnold
Old Cliches in N ew Bottles by ARNOLD SERWER TT'requently the utterances of our American leaders seem to echo the sound of ages gone by. Their cliches have been around so long that they are almost...
...I am sending twelve more legions across the Channel in the morning in the hope that this will bring the Gaels to the peace table...
...These northern aggressors must be taught to leave their neighbors alone...
...Since Nixon himself is as elusive as twenty cats turned loose in the woods, the task of finding his antique equivalent is likely to occupy me for some time...
...There are still a lot of us good moderates around...
...to protect the liberties of the freedom-loving Britons from attack by the northern Gaels...
...But I am completely confident that the Roman people will insist—and I will insist that they insist—that we carry out their mandate to honor Caesar's pledge and press on with the noble task of punishing aggression and freeing Britain...
...points to a new danger in Britain: "The Picts have been invading Britain in great numbers...
...That's unconstitutional...
...We Romans have been committed, since the days of Caesar and Claudius, to uphold the right of the people of Britain to choose their own color...
...What if it arouses the South and those fellows start fighting harder...
...Their cliches have been around so long that they are almost in a class with Etruscan urns and Ming vases...
...But this time I think he has gone too far too fast...
...Maybe it would be alright to free the slaves some day, but I'm against doing it now...
...We must see to it that the Gaels stop using force to impose their anti-blue laws upon the Britons...
...Some other voices here in Rome have been heard to claim that we 'are in Britain only to expand the Roman Empire but I assure you we are on that island solely to keep the Picts from forcing their way of life upon the Britons...
...I'm just a country boy but I'll bet the lawyers, and many Republicans, agree with me...
...Captain Kidd...
...If you turn loose a man's property—his Negro— you're violating his property rights...
...Machiavelli...
...No Briton should be compelled by any Pict to surrender his true blue for a tattoo...
...Turning the clock back over the centuries, and risking a few anachronisms, I came up with the concepts that follow: Lyndon Johnson, as Emperor Claudius in the year 43 A.D., explains why the Roman legions invaded Britain: "We intend to keep the commitments made by Julius Caesar...
...For example, right now I am trying to find the historic counterpart, or doppelganger, of the living Richard Nixon...
...Barry Goldwater, as Emperor Napoleon, asks a funny question as he marches upon Moscow with an army of 600,000 men: "Why not victory...
...Senator in 1863, bemoans the fact that President Lincoln has just signed the Emancipation Proclamation: "I have always tried, every way I could, to cooperate with Mr...
...Romans will recall that he entered the country in 55 B.C...
...I have found this pastime of times past to be an absorbing but often arduous game...
...The Picts adorn themselves with tattoos and pictures whereas the Britons paint themselves blue...
...Lincoln that we pretty nearly have this thing licked...
...The Rebs know they are licked...
...The Gaels still threaten the right of the Britons to paint themselves blue with something called woad...
...It's against due process...
...Louis XI...
...Robert S. McNamara, as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, shortly before the First Battle of Bull Run in July, 1861, anticipates good news for the Union cause: "I've told Mr...
...Everett Dirksen, as a U.S...
...If she is not a card-carrying witch ripe for burning, she is certainly a witch-sympathizer...
...Well, to play it safe, I told him we'll win the war in time for our boys to get home for Christmas...
...The other day, after pondering the venerable magnificence behind their words, I began to imagine what the same men might have said if they had played certain roles in history...
...Joan, alias Jeanne D'Arc, alias the Maid of Orleans, is the principal figure in a French conspiracy to make trouble for the English in France...
...Maybe they will admit it by next Christmas...
...The next time one of our statesmen says something that strikes you as hauntingly familiar, see if you can find a reasonable facsimile in history...
...She dresses in men's clothing, a mark of radicalism, and probably takes drugs since she claims to see visions...
...We must reinforce our Roman troops with more legions to keep the Picts from picking on the Britons...
...Dean Rusk, a Roman orator, in 279 A.D...
...Lincoln...
...J. Edgar Hoover, as the English Duke of Bedford who instigated the church trial in 1431 of Joan of Arc for heresy and sorcery, has a few words to say about the Maid of Orleans: "She has been the ringleader in a great deal of un-British agitation at Orleans, Paris, and a few other cities...
...And after Shiloh, won by the Union in April, 1862, McNamara speaks with chronic optimism: "We have definitely reached a turning point and it seems clear that we are over the hump...
...Any suggestions will be welcomed...
...And some Druid priests at Stonehenge are trying to promote anti-Roman feeling among the Britons...
...Some of my critics1 in Rome, including a certain Senator Nervus Nellius, question what we are doing in Britain...
Vol. 30 • September 1966 • No. 9
