Remarks by the Hon. Edwin Edwards, Honorary Chair Eighteenth-Century Louisiana Session of the Conference Revolutions in Eighteenth-Century Sociability 15-18 October, 2014, Montréal, Canada Thank you for the opportunity for these brief remarks. I only wish I could join you in person in one of the most beautiful cities in North America, and the world, that so many have fought to claim as theirs—the English, the French, several of the First Nations, and the unfortunate and unsuccessful attempts by my own country. To the true winners of the War of 1812, as Louisiana celebrates the Bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans, I salute the people of Montréal, Québec, Canada, and our shared victories! I am in the closing days of my political campaign to carry the Enlightenment values to Washington. I served as Governor of Louisiana for a record four terms. That does not qualify me as an Enlightenment scholar. But I have earned some experience, both from governing and as a recipient of the unwanted and some say, unwarranted, attention of a central government which chose to ignore both those values and principles. Governance is the art of fairly distributing the rights and obligations which we, in our social agreement, have chosen to recognize. Our judicial system operates along lines similar to yours in Canada. We respect the rule of law. We often get it right--with notable exceptions. Contributors to the Enlightenment, whether they were followers of Islam who kept the lamp of learning lit while Europe’s was extinguished during its Dark Ages, or the Chinese who influenced the Jesuits and thus the French, or the English, the Scots, the Spanish, the Germans, the Italians, the Swiss---each offered a voice of distributive—not retributive—justice. 1 I have dedicated my career to its goals, whether for unfettered, free discussion of ideas, freedom from arbitrary centralized government surveillance and misuse of the judicial process, for access to health care, education and employment, or the right, as a former Supreme Court justice has said, simply to be left alone. Your Conference of shared scholarship, studies and robust disagreement, forms the basis from which we members of society choose the best offerings to show the way forward. The scholar’s task is rigorous research, and the accompanying scrutiny and testing of ideas. Government’s task is to implement those choices. Yes, we hear continued calls for the “STEM” curriculum, of science, technology, engineering and math. They are important. But without the humanities to teach us how history has succeeded or failed in directing the fruits of technology and science to the betterment of our tribe of homo sapiens, without the humanities to teach us how to frame the discussion and to properly debate the uses-and the costsof technology, without the humanities to teach us how to safely debate how to create a more just society with our fellow man and woman, technology and science would eventually default to the ownership of-and misuse by-the most influential, the most powerful, the most feared among us. I recognize my debt to—and indeed am proud to champion the contributions of---my French ancestors, and in particular, the three-hundred year history of French intellectual thought in Louisiana. May 7, 1718, when Bienville founded the City of New Orleans, Voltaire had only been released from the Bastille three weeks earlier, his first of several imprisonments, exiles, banishments and book burnings. Fifty years later, in 1768—five years before the Boston Tea Party--French intellectuals in New Orleans wrote their Manifesto against arbitrary Spanish rule, followed by brutal repression. The next generation penned its own Enlightenment-inspired Memorial to Congress in 1804, 2 taking aim at arbitrary military occupation and despotic governance set in motion, ironically, by another Enlightenment scholar, Thomas Jefferson. Yes, the French got it right, in demanding the right to self-government, the right of representation, and the rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Cession between Jefferson and Napoléon. But it must be said: my French ancestors—even with benefit of the Enlightenment-got it terribly wrong in insisting—in that same Memorial--on the continued and expanded enslavement of persons, largely from Africa and the Caribbean, as well as Native Americans, to provide the energy which created untold wealth in which those enslaved persons would not share. A lesson to be learned from that bittersweet success and failure is that we must be vigilant that we not let others, and not let ourselves, hold out the lamp of the Enlightenment to justify unjustifiable choices and conduct. We must not use it to shine on our pride, while we allow ourselves to be blinded to our prejudice. At the Eighteenth Century drew to a tumultuous close in French Louisiana, Jefferson, along with a host of powerful Washington and East Coast elite, had tried to extinguish French culture, language, religion, law and customs in their new possession. Enlightenment ideas, skillfully wielded by the French inhabitants, and not military force, carried the day. Louisiana achieved statehood in record time, keeping its French language, culture, customs, law and religion intact. Writing years later, De Tocqueville warned against the “tyranny of the majority,” a concern which resonates today. A government which loses sight of the social compact which gives it validity, is capable of doing, and has done, great harm, by abusing the power entrusted to it. This I know from personal experience. But so did David Hume, denied a university position 3 for holding unpopular views. So did John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, each having to flee England to avoid arrest. Rousseau fled France to avoid arrest. But I digress. One of the legacies of which I am most proud is Louisiana’s 1974 Constitution and its provision that the “right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic linguistic and cultural origins is recognized.” With that in place, the tide had turned. The “English only” of prior constitutions, practices and prejudices, particularly against Acadians, had ended, yielding a shared cultural renaissance and economic bounty including arts, music, dance, literature, cuisine, historic preservation, new construction and resource exploration and conservation for years ahead. I wish the Conference every success. Let these days serve to remind us of the need to remain vigilant and not to take our freedoms--or the Enlightenment--for granted. There’s work to do. 4