A posthumous critique for liberals

Barney Frank, the irascible but indispensable liberal lawmaker from Massachusetts who died this spring, was never known as a man of few words. Yet the opening of his book, issued posthumously just the other day, is worthy of the conservative Massachusetts president Calvin Coolidge, who gave new meaning to the term “taciturn.” The entire text of Mr. Frank’s first paragraph is: “Mea culpa.” Those two words are proxy for perhaps the most famous opening of a book since “In the beginning ...” Another famous opening was written by Charles Dickens and has been beloved, and quoted, by millions since it was written in 1859, especially resonant since it speaks to our time, too: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”