Tag Archives: American values

First Principle

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If we are to rebuild the foundations of this nation in a manner consistent with principle, it will be wise to employ means that lead effectively to the ends we seek. Let us proceed with wisdom and foresight rather than emotion and ego.

Nothing will cause greater destruction to our purpose than a combative attitude that alienates the very people we need to win over.

If we avoid allowing our differences to tear us apart, we can choose to cooperate in addressing the structural problems that threaten the safety and security of our communities. And, it is only in the context of personal relationships tasked with essential responsibilities that we can come to understand and influence one another.

As long-time readers know, I have urged that we turn away from the dysfunction, dishonesty, and deceit of national politics to the extent possible, and join with one another to rebuild America in our local communities.

I have described three essential elements – trust, dependability, and constructive action – which will be necessary to regain stability and to move us forward. These elements will only be found in communities where neighbors rise above their differences to serve a higher purpose.

I have chosen the term “constructive action” to describe the means by which we can realistically progress. And I have explained in recent posts why a shared sense of purpose will be required to guide constructive action.

Shared purpose, I wrote, is a lens through which the challenges of necessity can be brought into focus. The efforts of diverse personalities can be coordinated. Purpose provides a standard by which to determine priorities and judge progress. In short, forward motion is essential; yet it is impossible without unity of purpose.

So, how can we understand constructive action?

Constructive action is action based on the refusal to do harm. It is action taken in a spirit of respectful kindness, a spirit founded upon the refusal to fight, to kill, or to damage. The principle here is the refusal to hurt – by impatience, dishonesty, hatred, or wishing ill of anybody.

I submit to you that this is the first principle upon which all other values, principles, and purposes depend.

Please do not misinterpret constructive action as merely a negative state of harmlessness. Quite the contrary, while constructive action in its purest form attempts to treat even the evil-doer with good-will, it by no means assists the evil-doer in doing wrong or tolerates wrong-doing in any way.

The state of constructive action requires that we resist what is wrong and disassociate ourselves from it even if doing so antagonizes the wrong-doer.

There is a close relationship between the positive spirit of kindness, respect, and trustworthiness that characterizes constructive action and the moral integrity of the free society we wish to build. The two are inseparable.

Constructive action is the means. Unity of purpose, grounded in the truthfulness of moral integrity, is the end.

Western political thinking has always considered means to be either an abstraction of tactics or simply the character of social and political machinery. In both cases means are considered only in their service to the desired ends, or goals, of particular political interests. We will approach our understanding of means in quite a different way, replacing an end-serving with an end-creating function.

Such an approach to means is necessary if we seek to apply traditional American values to rapidly changing circumstances.

This is the reason for my insistence on the meaningful engagement of all Americans in this endeavor, despite our vast diversity. A genuinely American future can only be realized in the context of our differences.

I believe this is what America has always been about. Is it what we want now, or not?

We have a clear choice to make. Either we choose to recover and reconstruct the fundamental meaning of the American Idea, or we can walk away forever from the safety, stability, and meaning of an America we can trust and believe in.

Tom

A note to readers: The next several posts will explore the meaning and implications of this “first principle.” I will take a breather for the holidays, so please look for the next post on January 2-4: “The Second Amendment, Then and Now”.

A Shattered World

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Tree 6

“Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”

–Helen Keller

A Severe Choice

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The confluence of crises confronting the American people in this new century represents a profound turning point in the nation’s history, and for each of us personally.

In the turbulence of multiple crises it can be easy to forget the unique stature of the United States and the role it has played and will continue to play in the progress of an ever-advancing civilization.

The American Idea has been a beacon of hope for the world, however imperfect the reality might be. America has been an intense source of intellectual and creative vibrancy, and has served as a model of political freedom, social diversity, and economic vitality.

Ω

Many new readers have started following this blog, particularly on the Facebook page. So, I will pause this week to clarify my purpose.

I have been presenting ideas concerning the motives and principles and discipline I believe we will need to successfully rebuild the foundation of the United States as a free and democratic republic. During the holiday period I will be focused on the importance of ensuring that our means are consistent with the ends we desire.

Some of you will find these ideas familiar, especially those who are rooted in a religious tradition. However, I will propose thinking that I hope will be meaningful to everyone, religious and non-religious alike.

The opening words of this post were lifted from the first chapter of the book I am working on, and I offer more of the same passage below.

Ω

The United States has entered the fiery test of a crucible in which the forces of crisis will burn away the self-centeredness and sloppy thinking of the past to forge an American identity we can feel good about.

Or, if we fail to rise to our calling, the social violence arising from failing institutions and human suffering will incinerate our children’s future and turn a great vision to hopelessness and anguish.

At a time of extraordinary existential threat we are confronted with a severe choice.

Will we return to the founding principles of these United States as the bedrock on which to build a free, ethical, and comfortable future? Will we defend and protect two hundred years of commitment, hard work, and sacrifice by generations of Americans who have given their lives to this unprecedented vision?

Or, will we give way to the emotions of uncompromising partisanship – and allow a great trust to shatter and vanish?

Infrastructure, systems, and services we have long depended upon are going to fail in the coming years. Problems will have to be solved without many of the tools and supports to which we are accustomed.

So, let us set aside partisanship and sectarian differences when necessary, in the interest of stabilizing and rebuilding the nation. Panic neither serves nor becomes us.

This nation has progressed gradually toward maturity, dedicated to the cause of liberty built upon the foundation of unity within diversity – diversity of nationality, religion, ethnicity, and, most of all, political philosophy.

We possess wide ranging distinctions and differences, but together we share an essential inviolable common ground.

Let us pull together, reorient ourselves to the originating principles upon which this country was built, and step forward to reassert the vision and secure our communities.

I submit to you that something far better, far nobler, something perhaps beyond our present capacity to imagine, will emerge from the present turmoil.

If, however, we cannot work effectively to build safe communities with people we are not in complete agreement with, then we will be condemned to the only possible alternative: a collapsing civilization characterized by fear and violence, a nightmare for our children, and a land where no principles, no values, no stable order can be realized.

Tom

Next week: First Principles

Trust

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People 13

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”

–Stephen Covey

Doing What’s Necessary

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Farm 10

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

–Francis of Assisi

Morally Responsible

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Coast 10

“I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”

–Robert A. Heinlein

To Strengthen the Soul

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Storm

“Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.”
— Billy Graham

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
— Helen Keller

“Nothing will work unless you do.”
— Maya Angelou

Renewing Core American Values

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Answering questions about what has gone wrong is never comfortable. Some truths are not pretty. But, the renewal of core American values and restoration of the vibrant civic spirit we have had in the past will require recognition of what has been lost, and why.

After an honest appraisal, we are called to affirm the values and principles we have understood, but abandoned.

The present difficulties have developed largely unnoticed over a long period of time. A gradual loss of vision has left us without a collective sense of purpose or the strength of interconnected community relationships. It has left us vulnerable to materialism and the domination of an institutional culture.

Most significantly we have become obsessed with immediacy. We want what we want and we want it now. The weakness of indebtedness seems to be of no concern. And so, we have discovered reality the hard way, neglecting reason and foresight. We have abandoned the future.

We acquired an undisciplined attitude toward almost everything, from parenting to fiscal responsibility. And our attitude infected our government and many institutions.

Our insistence on freedom from institutional and cultural restraints has led to contradictions. For example, our respect for the individual requires that we honor the independent integrity and privacy of each citizen, and yet we have readily abandoned this principle out of fear for our own safety. Similarly, we have failed to see that our very own privacy has been sacrificed to the obscenity and titillation in mass media, lost in a fascination with “the raw stuff of life.” In the words of the iconic conservative philosopher Richard Weaver:

“The extremes of passion and suffering are served up to enliven the breakfast table or to lighten the boredom of an evening at home. The area of privacy has been abandoned because the definition of person has been lost; there is no longer a standard by which to judge what belongs to the individual man. Behind the offense lies the repudiation of sentiment in favor of immediacy.”  (1948)

Richard Weaver actually wrote these words before the advent of television. And he was not the first to observe this propensity. A quarter century earlier George Bernard Shaw was quoted as saying: “An American has no sense of privacy. He does not know what it means. There is no such thing in the country.”  (1933)

Is it any wonder today that we have sought to indulge our appetites for immediate gratification without consideration of the consequences?

Professor Weaver warned of a self-destructive trend that would ultimately lead to a crisis. He pointed out our fascination with specialization and with the parts of things at the expense of understanding and respecting the whole. He argued that an obsession with fragmentary parts without regard for their function necessarily leads to instability. Such instability is insidious, penetrating all relationships and institutions. In his words, “It is not to be anticipated that rational self-control will flourish in the presence of fixation upon parts.”

This is not the fault of government — except to the extent that government, managed by people like ourselves, has joined wholeheartedly in the party. In a democracy it is tragically easy for government policy to degenerate until it serves the worst inclinations of a self-interested electorate.

And so we have descended steadily into the financial profligacy of the last fifty years, and are now the most indebted nation in history by a wide margin. Ours has been a twisted path but with a clearly visible end. Yet, the outcome was foreseen only by a few who were regarded as crackpots.

If we are to restructure our civil order and economic life following the destruction and confusion of our recent past, it is essential that we recognize the wrong-headed thinking that got us here. Values and principle are not in questioned; only wisdom. The United States Constitution provides a firm foundation. What we are challenged to do now is to reconsider the way we think.

Citizen Initiative, Civil Society

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Whatever happened to the creative power of American civil society? What is the consequence of this loss?

Tocqueville reported in 1840 that Americans overcame constraints on their freedom through their own initiative and sense of community. But, 174 years later, action has been replaced by inaction. A once spirited culture of engagement, built on committed interpersonal relationships, has been replaced by an increasingly self-centered attitude, the loss of community, and the isolating influences of the automobile, television, and the digital age.

Is it these technologies that have isolated us from one another? Niall Ferguson argues no. Rather he suggests that it is “not technology, but the state – with its seductive promise of ‘security from the cradle to the grave’ – [which is] the real enemy of civil society.” And he cites the astonishingly prophetic vision of Tocqueville, who imagined a future America in which the spirit of community has been co-opted and neutered by government:

“I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone….

“Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood….

“Thus, …the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

Elsewhere Tocqueville added an explicit warning:

“But what political power would ever be in a state to suffice for the innumerable multitude of small undertakings that American citizens execute every day with the aid of association?…

“The morality and intelligence of a democratic people would risk no fewer dangers than its business and industry if government came to take the place of associations everywhere.

“Sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another.”

I agree that government has had a part in the demise of the American soul. But, I do not think we can attribute the present condition solely to government. I believe the degeneration of attitudes and behavior cannot be divorced from the isolating influences of corporate culture, the dispersion of communities by the automobile, or the superficiality of a digital society.

Telecommunications and travel by air brought the world together on a macro level, but they also disinclined us to engage with our neighbors. I believe the long slide to isolation is the consequence of social forces that have tracked the trajectory of human progress since the founding of the Republic, and which we can only fault ourselves for accepting without question.

Our government is, after all, a creature of our own invention, served by people who have been subject to the same deterioration of values and responsibility as the nation as a whole.

Tom

The Creative Power of American Civil Society

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We face a turning point as a nation that is quite challenging. Yet, it is also an opportunity; a rare moment in history that calls us to clarify our purpose and correct the manner of thinking that brought us to this place. It will require that we keep our minds open and remain objective as we address some tough questions. The effort may not be comfortable, but it is essential if we are to regain our balance and rebuild our resolve.

In his recent book, The Great Degeneration, economic historian Niall Ferguson has provided us with a compelling review of what has come to pass. He considers four areas in which the degeneration of values and social stability in the United States has had devastating consequences. These are, to use my own words, 1) the role of responsibility in the structure of the social order, 2) the disintegration of the market economy, 3) the fundamental role of the rule of law, and 4) the essential qualities of civil society.

Looking back, Dr. Ferguson reminds us of the vigorous civil and cultural life of nineteenth century America: “I want to ask,” he writes, “how far it is possible for a truly free nation to flourish in the absence of the kind of vibrant civil society we used to take for granted? I want to suggest that the opposite of civil society is uncivil society, where even the problem of anti-social behavior becomes a problem for the state.” (2013)

He goes on to cite Alexis de Tocqueville from the first volume of his famous commentary, Democracy in America, which was published in 1840:

“America is, among the countries of the world, the one where they have taken most advantage of association and where they have applied that powerful mode of action to a greater diversity of objects.

“Independent of the permanent associations created by law under the names of townships, cities and counties, there is a multitude of others that owe their birth and development only to the individual will.

“The inhabitant of the United States learns from birth that he must rely on himself to struggle against the evils and obstacles of life; he has only a defiant and restive regard for social authority and he appeals to its authority only when he cannot do without it…. In the United States, they associate for the goals of public security, of commerce and industry, of morality and religion. There is nothing the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals.”

Dr. Ferguson writes that “Tocqueville saw America’s political associations as an indispensable counterweight to the tyranny of the majority in modern democracy. But it was the non-political associations that really fascinated him”:

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books…; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of great example, they associate.”

What happened to the creative power of American civil society? And, what is the consequence of this loss? As Tocqueville reports so well, Americans succeeded in overcoming constraints on their freedom through their own initiative and sense of community.

Unfortunately, action has been replaced by inaction. A once spirited culture of engagement, based on committed interpersonal relationships, has been replaced by a self-centered attitude, the loss of community, and the isolating influences of the automobile, television, and the digital age.

Surely it is time to restore what we once did so well, and then, with renewed strength, to address the great challenges ahead.