“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.”
I’ve been seeing a few blogs posting quotes or parts of speeches lately, usually with little or no accompanying explanation. This is a powerful rhetorical trick, because it combines an appeal to authority with allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions while offering no disagreeable context or interpretation.
Here’s a piece I’d like to submit, then, “Corn-Pone Opinions” by Mark Twain. It’s short, well worth reading (as is everything by Twain in This Author’s Humble Opinion) but let me offer just two choice bits for those who just can’t bother:
The black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions–at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.
[...]
A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties–the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety–the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, “He‘s on the right track!” Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his lifelong principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.
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