{"id":2366105,"date":"2024-11-08T11:44:01","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T16:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/harris-quoted-one-of-hitlers-favorite-writers-during-concession\/"},"modified":"2024-11-08T11:46:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T16:46:14","slug":"harris-quoted-one-of-hitlers-favorite-writers-during-concession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/harris-quoted-one-of-hitlers-favorite-writers-during-concession\/","title":{"rendered":"Harris Quoted One Of Hitler&#8217;s Favorite Writers During Concession"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fharris-quoted-one-of-hitlers-favorite-writers-during-concession%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2366105&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The\u200c passage discusses Kamala Harris&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ohio-dems-reject-bernie-acolyte-in-heated-primary\/\" title=\"Ohio Dems Reject Bernie Acolyte in Heated Primary\">concession speech<\/a> after an election, highlighting the incongruity of her gracefully conceding to a man she had\u2063 recently labeled as a potential fascist. The\u2064 author found\u200d the speech largely unremarkable until Harris concluded with a metaphor about stars, which the author critiques for poor writing and lack of grammatical clarity. \u200dThe phrase \u201conly when it\u2062 is dark enough\u2063 can you see the stars\u201d caught \u200cthe author&#8217;s attention and\u2062 led to questions about its origins.\u2062 It \u2063was pointed \u200dout\u200c that the line closely resembles a quote \u2064by Martin Luther King Jr. from his &#8220;I&#8217;ve been to \u200dthe\u200c mountaintop&#8221; speech. The analysis further reveals that\u200d while MLK didn\u2019t necessarily\u200c attribute the idea correctly, he borrowed from earlier sources, notably Charles Beard, who cited a\u2062 similar \u200bnotion in political \u200caphorisms. Ultimately, it was identified that the original phrase could be traced back to\u200d Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, who stated: \u201cThe eternal stars shine out \u2063again, as soon as it is \u200ddark enough.\u201d The\u200b author emphasizes the importance of accurately attributing quotes, especially in political discourse.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Like lots of Americans, I tuned in Wednesday afternoon to hear Kamala Harris&rsquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">belated concession speech<\/a>. I had low expectations for what she was going to say, but the spectacle of Harris graciously conceding to a man she had very recently warned was an incipient fascist was too jarring not to witness.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I found the speech pretty innocuous and unmemorable right up until the very end when, rallying the crowd for something resembling a rousing conclusion, she said this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There&rsquo;s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/no-spike-in-florida-coronavirus-cases-despite-no-mask-mandate\/\" title=\"No Spike in Florida Coronavirus Cases Despite No Mask Mandate\">people feel<\/a> like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here&rsquo;s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Initially what gave me pause was that, while the rest of the speech had been inoffensive pablum, this was just terrible writing. Even by the standards of speechwriting in modern politics, this jumps out as uniquely bad. Why would this trite metaphor about stars be a &ldquo;law of history&rdquo;? And man, I hope &ldquo;the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars&rdquo; wasn&rsquo;t the actual text of the speech, because that&rsquo;s not even grammatical. It was so bad that I wonder if she wrote it herself. <\/p>\n<p>But one of the main things that bothered me was the provenance of the supposed quote from a &ldquo;historian.&rdquo; When I griped about this passage on X, an <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/krempasky\/status\/1854277366731964888\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">old friend immediately wondered<\/a> whether this was a misattribution of a well known Martin Luther King, Jr. quote. In his famous <a href=\"https:\/\/speakola.com\/ideas\/martin-luther-king-jr-ive-been-to-the-mountaintop-1968\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been to the mountaintop&rdquo; speech<\/a>, MLK did say something almost verbatim: &ldquo;But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But if the first black woman to run for president wanted to quote MLK, why not just say it was MLK? Further, MLK is a lot of things, but I&rsquo;ve never heard him called a &ldquo;historian&rdquo; &mdash; to refer to him that way would just honestly be confusing, especially to an audience of faithful Democrats, at Howard University no less, who are probably very familiar with well-known MLK sayings.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, a lot of MLK&rsquo;s better known lines didn&rsquo;t necessarily originate with him. MLK didn&rsquo;t exactly attribute these lines the way he should have, but he didn&rsquo;t hide the fact he was borrowing, either. And it&rsquo;s pretty well known that MLK was fond of quoting Charles Beard, a well-known historian in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/california-introduces-bill-to-decriminalize-psychedelic-drugs\/\" title=\"California Introduces Bill To Decriminalize Psychedelic Drugs\">early <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/prager-trip-to-vietnam-reconfirmed-my-hatred-of-communism\/\" title=\"PRAGER: Trip To Vietnam Reconfirmed My Hatred Of Communism\">20th century<\/a><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s hard to get much context on this, because Beard has slipped mostly into obscurity and the references here mostly survive in <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/sim_forum-and-century_1932-02_87_2\/page\/88\/mode\/2up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">old journals<\/a> and academic papers, but Charles Beard was known for a handful of aphorisms he called the &ldquo;Four Laws of Political Science&rdquo;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ol>\n<li>The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. <\/li>\n<li>Those whom the gods are about to destroy they first make mad. <\/li>\n<li>When it gets dark enough you can see the stars. <\/li>\n<li>The bee fertilizes the flower that it robs.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Not exactly &ldquo;laws of history,&rdquo; but close enough. Case closed, right? Well, no. While I&rsquo;ve spent some time reverse engineering this, I have to credit L0m3z for pointing out the quote really originates with Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<div lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Very interesting tidbit a friend pointed out to me from Kamala Harris&rsquo; concession speech. She quotes a &ldquo;historian&rdquo; in the key line at the close: &ldquo;Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That unnamed historian? Thomas Carlyle. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/UOJYNAHcKp\">pic.twitter.com\/UOJYNAHcKp<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&mdash; Lomez (@L0m3z) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/L0m3z\/status\/1854745386801602812?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 8, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Carlyle&rsquo;s original quote was less exact: &ldquo;The eternal stars shine out again, as soon as it is dark enough.&rdquo; Regardless, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2015\/01\/19\/stars-shine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">website Quote Investigator<\/a>, in a published paper Beard himself attributed his own take on the aphorism directly to Carlyle: &ldquo;In conclusion we may say, with Carlyle,&nbsp;when it grows dark enough we can see stars.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Why does this matter? Well, if you poke around you&rsquo;ll see that Carlyle was reviled for much of the 20th century as the illiberal &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1871955\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">prophet of fascism<\/a>.&rdquo; Oh and then <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/the-founding-father-of-fascism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">there&rsquo;s this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In his waning days, defeated and surrounded only by loyalists in his bunker, Hitler sought consolation from the literature he admired the most. According to many biographers, the following scene took place. Hitler turned to Goebbels, his trusted assistant, and asked for a final reading. The words he chose to hear before his death were from Thomas Carlyle&rsquo;s biography of Frederick the Great. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Now to be fair to Carlyle, like a lot of influential intellectuals, he was a lot more complex and nuanced than his critics make him out to be. He&rsquo;s probably better known as the originator of the &ldquo;great man of history&rdquo; theory than for his supposed fascism, though a lot of people contentiously argue that the former leads to the latter. His reputation has been rehabbed somewhat since the mid-20th century when he was more reviled, but he&rsquo;s exactly the kind of figure that woke academics extend almost no grace toward. (And that&rsquo;s without even getting into his 19th century views on race.) <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the long and short of it is that, while Kamala Harris was graciously conceding her electoral loss to a man she had insincerely warned was dangerous fascist, she tried to soothe her supporter&rsquo;s souls by, however inadvertently, quoting one of Hitler&rsquo;s favorite historians. Absolute perfection.  <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/heminator\">@heminator<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched Kamala Harris&#8217; concession speech with low expectations, but it was striking to see her concede to someone she had recently labeled a potential fascist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":2366106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Harris-concession.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[12887,4021,16215,5244,16657],"class_list":["post-2366105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-concession","tag-harris","tag-hitler","tag-quotes","tag-writers"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Harris-concession.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2366105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366109,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366105\/revisions\/2366109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2366106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2366105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2366105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2366105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}