I was struck by this simple, short saying today as we toured the Iowan Capitol building. It is inscribed above the entrance to the legislative law library and set me thinking. How relevant it is to our days, as we debate and wrestle with the issue of containing various groups of people who do not believe in secular law, and who appear to wish to tyrannise us with their ideas about religious law. And how do we protect ordinary men, women and children from violently-inclined individuals, without compromising fundamental rights and laws - we are all confident that torture and violence to individuals is wrong (and the discussion about whether to try and punish officials in the US who seemed to have been complicit in such violations is going on right now here), but we waiver and wonder about how long to detain people without trial, the issue of whether ID cards are a good or a bad idea and so on. My ex-colleague Javed Iqbal has been commenting on the round up of some students from Pakistan in the UK (http://www.chaudhryjavediqbal.net/2009/04/might-is-not-always-right-apologise-and.html). So a visit to the State legislature provided a moment for reflection, and to be honest, a moment to admire the commitment there is in the USA to their democratic institutions. I never feel this in the UK.
Des Moines is a city of bricks and civic blossom. Even the rather amazing ornate Capitol building which is faced with sandstone, granite and limstone, is actually constructed of bricks underneath! LP probably has it about right: Bill Bryson's home town doesn't have that much to offer in the way of excitement. It's a quiet, plain sort of place and not much seems to be going on, except eager bus loads of Iowan schoolkids visiting their state's seat of government. The Capitol building, with its gold leaf covered dome, is a grand late 19th Century building (built between 1871 and 1884). Various decorative impulses have been given full rein, for example: a big mural commemorating the arrival of pioneers to Iowa (no sign of previous indigenous Iowan dwellers, though) statues representing disciplines such as History, Science, Law and qualities such as Fame, Truth and Progress, ornamental tiles, a neoclassical frieze above the entrance, mogul type turrets, and so it goes on. The library is a sumptuous example of late Victorian craft and industry, with a lot of iron grill work, including two spiral staircases at either end to connect the four tiers of the library together. A strange, eerie exhibit is a glass case full of dolls with identical faces, but variously coloured hair, each wearing a replica of a state first lady's outfit: the current first lady doll stands out front, and the rest are arranged in date order from 1846 onwards.
After this tour, we ventured back into town, taking the sky walk which seems to connect downtown together in wide, grey-carpeted glass corridors punctuated every now and then by automatic doors as you go from one section of the corridor to another. The sky walk explains why few people are seen at street level, although even at sky walk level, there aren't exactly crowds of people. As we walked along looking for somewhere to eat lunch, we variously expected to see Crichton from Red Dwarf, or to espy the characters of Metropolis. It was all rather strange. To complete our visit to Des Moines, we visited the Des Moines Art Center Downtown branch, where there was an interesting exhibit by three Iowan artists, including Peter Chen and Timothy Wehrle (http://www.desmoinesartcenter.org/exhibitions/ex_downtown.html)
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