{"id":54970,"date":"2017-04-30T19:12:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T19:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=54970"},"modified":"2017-04-30T19:12:32","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T19:12:32","slug":"the-executive-and-the-unacknowledged-legislator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=54970","title":{"rendered":"The Executive and the [unacknowledged] Legislator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; &#8220;poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world&#8221; &#8212; PB Shelley ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p><strong>President Trump<\/strong> reads the lyrics of a song about a snake:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V-NaN1ujo_0?ecver=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Trump is arguing the dangers of immigration and the necessity of a wall&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>My response:<\/p>\n<p>Poet <strong>Robert Frost<\/strong> reads a poem about a wall:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NfN05JNhi3k?ecver=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s irony aplenty in the Frost poem, and the voice of the narrator is generally not taken to be that of Frost himself. Worth pondering, thugh, are these lines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Before I built a wall I\u2019d ask to know<br \/>\nWhat I was walling in or walling out,<br \/>\nAnd to whom I was like to give offense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Frost&#8217;s poem, though, is contrapuntal, with its two key statements clashing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Something there is that doesn&#8217;t love a wall,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Good fences make good neighbours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Frost, it seems, leans more to the latter position &#8212; and Trump might have done himself a different favor, and quoted Frost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; &#8220;poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world&#8221; &#8212; PB Shelley ] . President Trump reads the lyrics of a song about a snake: Trump is arguing the dangers of immigration and the necessity of a wall&#8230; My response: Poet Robert Frost reads a poem about a wall: ** There&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,645,1314,573,741,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-counterpoint","category-donald-trump","category-mexico","category-poetry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54970"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54977,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54970\/revisions\/54977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}