From
the Editor (Spring
2020)
We will all, I imagine, be happy to
bid farewell to social distancing,
but like so many adverse
circumstances it has its own little
secret gift: more time to read. This
issue of The Torch, I hope, will
give you something interesting to
curl up with while you hunker down.
Peter Mellette of the Richmond club
gives us a rich blend of what both
great literature and modern
neuroscience have made of the
phenomenon of memory in "Thanks for
the Memories."
Under the attention-seizing title of
"Lincoln Did Not Free the Slaves,"
John Allen of the Kalamazoo club
provides a fascinating look at the
Emancipation Proclamation, the
Constitution, and the always
relevant question of what a
president of the United States can
and cannot do.
Always relevant too is the topic
taken up by Parker English of the
Portsmouth club. "An African
Hypothesis Regarding Fake News and
Monotheists" discusses a celebrated
African thinker's idea that
monotheists tend to think they are
right not just about their faith,
but about everything in general.
(Sound like anyone you know?)
The great Senator Robert M. La
Follette, Sr.—Wisconsin’s "Fighting
Bob"—may well have tended to think
he was right about everything, but
his record suggests he was at least
right more often than most of us.
His life and legacy are the subject
of Fox Valley club member Kristin
Stahl in "Robert M. La Follette,
Sr.: A Man Worth Remembering."
In "Foundations of Our Life
Together," Donald Hanway of the Tom
Carroll Lincoln club returns to our
pages with thoughts on those things
that, even in this era of sharp
divisions, hold us together as a
community.
Finally, in the second of our
classic reprints series, we have
Paxton winner Leanne Wade Boern's
"When 'Going Gentle Into That Good
Night' May Be the Right Decision:
The Case for Assisted Suicide," from
1997.
Stay well!