But I am running ahead; my political education did not proceed so logically. At first I simply soaked myself in Bonforte’s public utterances. True, I had done that on the trip out, but then I was studying how he spoke; now I was studying what he said.
Bonforte was an orator in the grand tradition but he could be vitriolic in debate, e.g; a speech he made in New Paris during the ruckus over the treaty with the Martian nests, the Concord of Tycho. It was this treaty which had knocked him out of office before; he had pushed it through but the strain on the coalition had lost him the next vote of confidence. Nevertheless, Quiroga had not dared denounce the treaty. I listened to this speech with special interest since I had not liked the treaty myself; the idea that Martians must be granted the same privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars had been abhorrent to me-until I visited the Kkkah nest.
“My opponent,” Bonforte had said with a rasp in his voice, “would have you believe that the motto of the so-called Humanity Party, ‘Government of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings,’ is no more than an updating of the immortal words of Lincoln. But while the voice is the voice of Abraham, the hand is the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. The true meaning of that innocent-seeming motto is ‘Government of all races everywhere, by human beings alone, for the profit of a privileged few.’
“But, my opponent protests, we have a God-given mandate to spread enlightenment through the stan, dispensing our own brand of Civilization to the savages. This is the Uncle Remus school of sociology-the good dahides singin’ spirituals and Ole Massa lubbin’ every one of dem! It is a beautiful picture but the frame is too small; it fails to show the whip, the slave block-and the counting house!”
I found myself becoming, if not an Expansionist, then at least a Bonfortite. I am not sure that I was convinced by the logic of his words-indeed, I am not sure that they were logical. But I was in a receptive frame of mind. I wanted to understand what he said so thoroughly that I could rephrase it and say it in his place, if need be.
Nevertheless, here was a man who knew what he wanted and (much rarer!) why he wanted it. I could not help but be impressed, and it forced me to examine my own beliefs. What did I live by?
My profession, surely! I had been brought up in it, I liked it, I had a deep though unlogical conviction that art was worth the effort-and, besides, it was the only way I knew to make a living. But what else?
I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them-public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash-but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law’s kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to mast children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a “good” child is one who does not disturb mother’s nap and a “good” man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!
But even a dog has rules of conduct. What were mine? How did I behave-or, at least, how did I like to think I behaved?
“The show must go on.” I had always believed that and lived by it. But why must the show go on?-seeing that some shows are pretty terrible. Well, because you agreed to do it, because there is an audience out there; they have paid and each one of them is entitled to the best you can give. You owe it to them. You owe it also to stagehands and manager and producer and other members of the company-and to those who taught you your trade, and to others stretching back in history to open-air theaters and stone seats and even to storytellers squatting in a market place. Noblesse oblige.