Dear Friends,
I trust you have wonderful plans to celebrate the Fourth of July! It is a great day to enjoy and express gratitude for the abundant blessings we share as citizens of The United States of America (for my non-American readers, please indulge me because the following sentiments, believe it or not, do concern you). July 4th, 1776 marks a momentous day, the emergence of a remarkable experiment in social and political philosophy.
America would be a place that stands “in between” totalitarianism (whether by king or mob) and anarchy. Instead, power would be diffused and distributed among different branches of government (checks and balances); the integrity and agency of individuals would be recognized and not easily infringed by the State (the Bill of Rights), and yet collective cooperation would remain essential (representative government). It would be a nation of laws, not whims (Constitutional government); a nation of wholesale opportunity with no fixed classes or aristocracy; and, above all, a nation whose charter, signed on that day in July, affirmed that “[All] men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and that the purpose of government is to secure, not provide, these rights.
America has not always lived up to its ideals or promise. You have probably noticed that we are in the midst of a great societal upheaval—protesters and mobs are defacing and tearing down statues of our forebears—everything, it seems, is being deemed “problematic.” There are people who wish to see our legacy of slavery as the root and source of all evils, to believe (as the New York Times has argued) that the real beginning of America was 1619, when the first slave arrived on our shores. Some believe we are a nation built on racism and slavery—all of those benefits and blessings I mentioned in the paragraph above are simply the codification of white power. What is needed is not to live up to the ideals of our institutions, rather, what is needed is the demolition of our ideals and institutions because they are hopelessly corrupt. We cannot reform police departments, you see; we must abolish them.
What is amazing about this is that people who call themselves “progressives” in fact do not believe in progress. They believe that history is hopeless—it cannot be improved; rather, it must be reduced to rubble and something completely new, completely unheard of, must be created ex nihilo before our eyes. The past—our past—is wholly evil, and there is nothing in it that can be put to better use. This is a kind of gnostic philosophy, the Howard Zinn approach to American history—our sins are ever before us, always accusing and condemning us, never (as Jonah Goldberg likes to say) “receding into the rearview mirror.” There has been no progress because our hopelessly corrupt institutions are incapable of progress (in gnosticism the very fabric of creation is evil, irredeemable, and must be overcome). We cannot have, therefore, reformation; we must have revolution. This is an alarmingly viable point of view in our current situation.
And, I might point out, it is an absolute rejection of everything the Civil Rights Movement believed and fought for. Martin Luther King, Jr. won the day because he prophetically called America back to its ideals, institutions, and commitments. The Declaration of Independence was, he said, a “promissory note,” and under his leadership the descendants of slaves came to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to collect the rights and liberties guaranteed under America’s own (not at all hopeless!) charter. While there certainly remain great challenges—hundreds of years of chattel slavery will, in fact, have generational consequences—it takes willful blindness to not see progress. We elected Barack Obama President twice. A black boy born in a shanty town among illiterate people in the swamps of Georgia has become one of the most significant jurists in a generation. Not half a century ago, real racism was a casual and culturally acceptable thing in many parts of the country; today, real racists (outside of fringe alt-Right corners) are very reticent to “out” themselves in polite company. It isn’t socially acceptable at all. I call that, well, progress.
Here’s an example: the Minnesota Twins Baseball Club just removed a statue of Calvin Griffith (their former owner) from their ballpark. Why? Well, in the 1960s Griffith felt socially comfortable enough to tell a large room full of people that the reason he moved the team to Minnesota is that they “don’t have black people.” Can you imagine somebody today, even if they felt that way, saying it out loud? I can’t. Let’s stop pretending there’s not been any progress on race relations in this country.
I’ve often quoted this gem from Ronald Reagan, but I confess I’ve always viewed it as somewhat hyperbolic.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
I mean, is it really true? Can we lose it all—our ideals, our rights, our institutions—in one generation? Maybe it is a bit hyperbolic. I’m not a fan of apocalyptic political rhetoric generally, because things take a long time to fundamentally change in our country (one of the benefits of our system!). But I think these words are somewhere closer to the truth than the day on which President Reagan said it. There is a desperate need to fight for, protect, and hand down our precious inheritance of freedom, along with the ideals and institutions that enable that freedom to flourish.
That’s a lot of “Rah, rah, ‘Murica’” stuff, right? It is. I love my country and the benefits it affords, and I believe that its system of government stems from some deeply ingrained biblical truth about human dignity, the Lordship of God over civil government, and the dangers of concentrated power in the hands of sinners.
Now comes my substantially less popular opinion: almost none of our current crisis rides on who wins the upcoming November election. We have become addicted to the idea that national politics is the cure to what ails us or, alternatively, the poison that will kill us. But we have a cultural problem that manifests itself as a political problem, not the other way around. Vast numbers of people no longer believe in the promise of America, the equity of its laws, the opportunity of its enshrined freedoms, and that has little to do with who occupies the Oval Office.
Oh, sure, an administration can move the needle a bit on popular optimism and outlook, but the lived reality of America—the flesh and blood, living and breathing America—happens on the ground every day in thousands of small communities and neighborhoods. And the fabric of society is not provided by political leadership; it is provided by those who make up society itself, with a whole array of social interactions and institutions: churches and charities and commerce and businesses and schools and bowling leagues and Little League and chess clubs and a million other things. Our national character matters infinitely more than our national office-holders, and the latter are always a reflection of the former.
One of the things we’re having is what my friend David Bahnsen calls a Crisis of Responsibility. And that victimhood applies across the board. It is not just woke mobs demanding that politicians fix everything; what passes for “conservatism” these days does the same thing, as though a single executive has the power to wave a magic wand to “Make America Great Again.” Americans can either play the victim of nefarious forces and put their trust in politicians to make it right, or we can together, in our own spheres of influence, aspire again to the promise of our ideals.
So, by all means: host a barbecue tomorrow with your friends, family, and neighbors! But don’t just talk politics or about how “they” are out to destroy the country. Talk about our opportunities, the blessings of our liberties, and how we ourselves can strive to be a people of moral fiber truly progressing toward, as Lincoln put it, a “more perfect union.”
I’ll never forget something my friend Hadley Heath Manning pointed out to me. She said that what she loves about the Star-Spangled Banner is that it is framed as a question, not an answer:
O Say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave / oe’r the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The answer to that, whether we are indeed free and brave, does not ultimately rest with our elected leaders. That’s a question we must answer. By being free and brave.
Miscellany
The revolt against our ancestors, reflected in the demolition of statues, has a lot of naive arrogance involved. Here’s an exquisite thought experiment from Princeton professor Robby George, which we’d all do well to ponder.
1/ I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.2/ Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it.3/ So I respond by saying that I will credit their claims if they can show evidence of the following: that in leading their lives today they have stood up for the rights of unpopular victims of injustice whose very humanity is denied, and where they have done so knowing:
Lots of news from the Supreme Court this week! Some very disappointing decisions came down, along with a few heartening ones. A good reminder that our nation does not turn on a dime; it moves in fits and starts and is an altogether messy thing. No silver bullets or quick fixes. Just dedicated, long-term commitment to our system. Reformation, not revolution!
Just because I know you need this:
This week’s music video is my friend and super-talented songwriter Jerod Birchell beautifully capturing the mood of growing up brave and free out here in Big Sky Country. Enjoy “Before We Were Memories”!