This is, unfortunately, as much a scholarly point, as a political one that'll no doubt be lost on liberals, as well as perhaps the mass of us today. Still ... we should try to get things close to right instead of always dumbing conversation down. I'll keep it as concise as I can. Liberals too often are allowed to turn our intellectual history on end to make a point. That's precisely what Scozzafava did here, without even knowing it, I suspect.
I checked to see if any one followed up on this. It doesn't seem so, my apologies if I missed any one. I noticed a referral from American Catholic with video of Scozzafava accepting the Margaret Sanger Award, which Michelle and others did cover well. But there are significant academic, intellectual and political problems with what Scozzafava said that leave her looking incredibly dumb, or totally mis-, or uninformed.
She read it twice and called it her favorite quote. For starters, as a quotation, it's a cheap derivative from a Goldsmith play. An Ecuadorian feminist also invoked it for an interesting use! See below. After more research, that could well be her source, given the context. At least Johnson's contemporary kept its meaning in tact, I believe.
Very little that human hearts endure, can laws, legislation or kings ever truly cure.
Perhaps she should have gone to the original source and grabbed something up straight from him. Ya think?
Samuel Johnson thought the decline in the use of the cane would harm educational attainment. It wasn’t just that he was opposed to women having jobs. He thought it was a bit off for them even to paint or draw. “Public practice of any art, and staring in men’s faces, is very indelicate in a female,” he said; and as for a woman preaching, it “was like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
Here is what Dr. Samuel Johnson actually said and he was saying something Planned Parenthood would never embrace, as it's meaning is totally opposite the purpose for which Scozzafava invoked it. It's a religious quote dealing with suffering and not looking to the government to relieve it. Suddenly, it's about human rights, abortion in this case, to be guaranteed by law? No, in a very real sense, it's meaning is precisely the opposite.
“How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consigned, Our own felicity we make or find. With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.” - Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Here it was used to take an Ecuadorian feminist to task - from a National Review sampling via the Free Library with the same quote from the play. Also, here's it's attributed to Julia Child. Point being, it's true meaning is used and taken for granted.
"How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure." So wrote Samuel Johnson, but his words do not seem to have penetrated Ecuador, where a hot-blooded named Maria Soledad proposes to insert in that nation's constitution a provision guaranteeing a woman's right to "el disfrute sexual"--sexual pleasure. A noble goal, to be sure, but what are the chances of obtaining it from a clause in the constitution? No worse than the chances of obtaining it from a man, perhaps; still, after some prodding, Ms. Soledad Vela explained that what she had in mind was overcoming a "masculine society" in which the woman is considered merely a "reproductive apparatus" while the man hogs all the fun. Again, while this concept is admirable, it seems out of place in a nation's fundamental law. Consider what a broad-constructionist judge might make of such a clause!
It's also used to suggest why Johnson could be seen by some as a conservative, of all things, given Scozzafava's views above:
Reasons for seeing him as a conservative include: Government can only do so much. Johnson supplied Goldsmith with four lines for The Traveller, two of which went "How small, of all that human hearts endure,/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!" He also once said to Boswell, "Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things."
And if you want to get seriously scholarly, you can see page 137 from an English book of synonyms from 1887 using it to elaborate on the term bear, as in to bear. I hardly think that's what Dede and Margaret Sanger had in mind. But why let facts and history get in the way of a good sounding speech, however dumb it truly is?
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