Wednesday, April 05, 2006
This just in: Huck Finn pro-Palestinian Terrorist!
Religion Trumps Real Estate Laws
"...[You can't] try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!".
---Tom Sawyer
Tom: "A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."
Huck: "Which Holy Land?"
Tom: Why, the Holy Land -- there ain't but one."
Huck: "What do we want of it?"
Tom: "Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."
Huck: "How did we come to let them git hold of it?"
Tom: "Why we didn't let them git hold of it. They always had it."
Huck: "Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"
Tom: "Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"
Huck (narrating): I studied it over, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:
Huck: "It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"
Tom (interrupting): "Oh, shucks! You don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them".
Huck: Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now if I had a farm and another person--"
Tom (interrupting again): "Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it, but this is highter, this is religious, and totally different".
Huck: "Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"
Tom: "Certainly: it's always been considered so."
Huck (narrating): "I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.
"Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was always reading. And it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it."
--Dialogue from Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad, NY, 1894. Published a full three years before Herzl's First Zionist Congress in Basle. ¶ 3:41 AM
"...[You can't] try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!".
---Tom Sawyer
Tom: "A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."
Huck: "Which Holy Land?"
Tom: Why, the Holy Land -- there ain't but one."
Huck: "What do we want of it?"
Tom: "Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."
Huck: "How did we come to let them git hold of it?"
Tom: "Why we didn't let them git hold of it. They always had it."
Huck: "Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"
Tom: "Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"
Huck (narrating): I studied it over, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:
Huck: "It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"
Tom (interrupting): "Oh, shucks! You don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them".
Huck: Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now if I had a farm and another person--"
Tom (interrupting again): "Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it, but this is highter, this is religious, and totally different".
Huck: "Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"
Tom: "Certainly: it's always been considered so."
Huck (narrating): "I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.
"Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was always reading. And it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it."
--Dialogue from Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad, NY, 1894. Published a full three years before Herzl's First Zionist Congress in Basle. ¶ 3:41 AM
