A Word with You
Almost 10 years ago, William Kristol wrote: "[I]f, once upon a time, conservatives felt a Burkean responsibility to uphold sound social habits and traditional customs against liberal debunking, now it is liberalism that constitutes the old order, dictating 'correct' habits and permissible customs, while conservatives can become the exponents of light and air, of free and open debate, of demystification and even of political and intellectual liberation."
I'm perplexed what to call such people today, though. To call them "liberal" insults a noble old tradition, hopeful and innovative, that includes the Founders of the United States. The people I am thinking of today are neither hopeful nor innovative, and they tend to dismiss or loathe the Founders and scoff at their vision.
Many are Democrats, but not all that party has fallen into their mentality, thank the gods.
Some of them do call themselves "progressives," but that word's already been taken. It has a specific meaning in American history, and to associate it with this bunch creates confusion. Woodrow Wilson was a progressive; these modern voices have no Wilsonian tone in their register.
A few days ago, in this post, I printed a quote from Chesterton that seems to me to perfectly describe the state of mind of the New Old Order. He wasn't writing about them in exact terms, but they fit exactly into the spirit of what he wrote. And he calls them pessimists:
Henceforth, I intend to use that word to describe them. And for their creed, I offer a twisted form of the "my country right or wrong" toast that existed in many forms in the 19th century. It really has roots in British patriotic verse in the late 18th century: Cowper and Churchill the poet both have a form of it in their collected works. Stephen Decatur gave it an American form:
There were others over the years, but leave it to an immigrant, one who willfully apostatized from Europe and embraced the newfound faith of America, to give it the proper form, and place the speaker, the citizen, in the position of responsibility. The phrase had become a commonplace by 1872, when Carl Schurz said in Congress:
And the pessimists' version? How about, "Not our country, wrong or wrong; when wrong, to be urinated on; when thought right, to be reminded that that is impossible."
* * *
I have been writing and thinking about the role of historian in all this. Modern academic historians of America who fit into the pessimist school seem to relish the role of spoiler. They delight in tearing apart the old narratives of American progress or success, which they condemn under the slapped label "triumphalism."
Certainly part of the job of every college professor is to unpack the minds of his or her students and correct the over-simplistic notions and pictures that are brought forth from a, necessarily incomplete, high school education. But if all you know how to do is pull things apart, I say you don't know how to do much worth doing.
And if you only want to touch young minds to re-wire them into purely negative, pessimistic, contrarian-citizens who worship only dissent, then you're a nihilist. Your clone army of flag-burners will be as deadly to the republican ideals of America as the stunted minds of the blindly patriotic masses you claim control the nation now.
Teach that America is imperfect. Teach it over and over, if you must, to make the point clear. Its progress is a halting and stumbling affair, and the amount of violence done to the institutions and people of the land for the sake of it -- for the sake of ending slavery, say -- is immense and tragic. That the Civil War was an illegal and unjust aggression waged in the north by a mendacious and incompetent government, leading an unwilling and deeply racist army, for selfish motives, does not take the shine off the fact of the slave's liberty, no matter how imperfect that freedom was.
But for gods' sake don't teach that there's no such thing as an American ideal, no such thing as a better world to hold as a collective goal. When you re-pack the American Dream in the minds of your students, don't leave out the heart. Ideals are not realities. But they are as essential for national life.
Schurz knew this, too, of course: Every immigrant who embraces America feels it, I suspect. He told a crowd in Boston in 1859:
I'm perplexed what to call such people today, though. To call them "liberal" insults a noble old tradition, hopeful and innovative, that includes the Founders of the United States. The people I am thinking of today are neither hopeful nor innovative, and they tend to dismiss or loathe the Founders and scoff at their vision.
Many are Democrats, but not all that party has fallen into their mentality, thank the gods.
Some of them do call themselves "progressives," but that word's already been taken. It has a specific meaning in American history, and to associate it with this bunch creates confusion. Woodrow Wilson was a progressive; these modern voices have no Wilsonian tone in their register.
A few days ago, in this post, I printed a quote from Chesterton that seems to me to perfectly describe the state of mind of the New Old Order. He wasn't writing about them in exact terms, but they fit exactly into the spirit of what he wrote. And he calls them pessimists:
... the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.
The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things ...
Henceforth, I intend to use that word to describe them. And for their creed, I offer a twisted form of the "my country right or wrong" toast that existed in many forms in the 19th century. It really has roots in British patriotic verse in the late 18th century: Cowper and Churchill the poet both have a form of it in their collected works. Stephen Decatur gave it an American form:
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
There were others over the years, but leave it to an immigrant, one who willfully apostatized from Europe and embraced the newfound faith of America, to give it the proper form, and place the speaker, the citizen, in the position of responsibility. The phrase had become a commonplace by 1872, when Carl Schurz said in Congress:
Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.
And the pessimists' version? How about, "Not our country, wrong or wrong; when wrong, to be urinated on; when thought right, to be reminded that that is impossible."
* * *
I have been writing and thinking about the role of historian in all this. Modern academic historians of America who fit into the pessimist school seem to relish the role of spoiler. They delight in tearing apart the old narratives of American progress or success, which they condemn under the slapped label "triumphalism."
Certainly part of the job of every college professor is to unpack the minds of his or her students and correct the over-simplistic notions and pictures that are brought forth from a, necessarily incomplete, high school education. But if all you know how to do is pull things apart, I say you don't know how to do much worth doing.
And if you only want to touch young minds to re-wire them into purely negative, pessimistic, contrarian-citizens who worship only dissent, then you're a nihilist. Your clone army of flag-burners will be as deadly to the republican ideals of America as the stunted minds of the blindly patriotic masses you claim control the nation now.
Teach that America is imperfect. Teach it over and over, if you must, to make the point clear. Its progress is a halting and stumbling affair, and the amount of violence done to the institutions and people of the land for the sake of it -- for the sake of ending slavery, say -- is immense and tragic. That the Civil War was an illegal and unjust aggression waged in the north by a mendacious and incompetent government, leading an unwilling and deeply racist army, for selfish motives, does not take the shine off the fact of the slave's liberty, no matter how imperfect that freedom was.
But for gods' sake don't teach that there's no such thing as an American ideal, no such thing as a better world to hold as a collective goal. When you re-pack the American Dream in the minds of your students, don't leave out the heart. Ideals are not realities. But they are as essential for national life.
Schurz knew this, too, of course: Every immigrant who embraces America feels it, I suspect. He told a crowd in Boston in 1859:
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
Labels: patriotism
