A journalism professor once turned me on to the writings of E.B. White—the adult stuff, not Charlotte's Web; I'd already been through that phase but hadn't known White was not only a children's book author. The gateway drug for my mature addiction to E.B. White was a short essay published in the New Yorker in 1944.
I think about his 12-sentence essay on democracy every election day, and I thought about it after 9/11. It gets me every time I read it; somehow, it never grows stale although it is a bit outdated in its references (the high hat, the stuffed shirt). I've used it to teach extended definition (it's a cogent definition of democracy); I've mass-emailed it to friends. Maybe I'm just a closet patriot or a sucker for sharp writing, but this essay works on me every time.
I must not be the only one. The essay is to be found in its entirety on White's Wikipedia page and fronting a PowerPoint presentation by a somewhat sanctimonious instructor at Macon State University. The powerpoint is titled "Democracy: Do They Get It?" The instructions for the students: "Make sure you understand every word of this text before you come to class." Maybe she was worried about the high hat reference.
Pieces of the essay can be found at www.quotationspage.com, www.wisdomquotes.com, and www.brainyquote.com, among numerous others. Someone calling him- or herself Recovering Catholic uses the line, "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time" as a tagline for posts on AtheistParents.org. In a Google search, an all-too-promising but alas, dead link asks the question, "Can writing be too clear?" and begins with this: "I have no idea how E.B. White might react to the current debate about how much…Here, for example, is a definition of 'democracy' that will survive long…" Long after what? Long into what? I am left wondering about a debate that may provoke reactions from the great E.B. White, albeit from the grave, and I am ready to argue, for White was always just clear enough. Anyone in doubt should re-read The Elements of Style, better known simply as "Strunk and White," after its two authors.
Today I walked down to Northminster Presbyterian to drop off my absentee ballot, my compromised nod to the old way of doing things. Only two people occupied the line of voting booths, but there was a feeling of privacy in them nonetheless.
Democracy, like White's definition of you, may you survive long.
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