Category: CULTURE

Thomas Paine in 1776 did in 1776 what Thomas Paine in 1774 was incapable of.  In an extended treatise called Common Sense, he laid out the logic of why even soft despotism was an unnatural condition for an enlightened time, and why it was a act of common sense to remove oneself from monarchial oversight and govern oneself.  The singular change that had transformed this Englishman  was his move from Thetford, England to America in 1774.  Having placed his very existence at risk to come to America, in a few short months, the profound energy that new found freedom injects turned an English corsetmaker and excise officer into the clarion for a revolution.

In his new book Inventing Freedom, excerpted in the  New Criterion,  Daniel Hannan reflects on the uniquely ‘Anglo-Saxon’ nature of what we characterize as civilized governance, and how it is under constant attack from within by those purporting to be ‘western’ in their outlook. Hannan, an English member of the European Parliament and Ramparts of Civilization’s #9 on People We Should Know has long been a vocal defender of the hard earned rights of the individual against the ever more burdensome state.  From Hannan’s perspective, Paine’s very Englishness positioned him to recognize how individual freedom provides the final crucial patina to English common law and how the American experience offered an improvement, not a rejection of the English tradition of governance.  Hannan draws the wonderful quote from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America regarding the roots of  this evolutionary process:

“The American, is the Englishman left to himself.”

Hannan posits three fundamental features of governance in  anglosphere civilization that sets it apart from its other cultural inhabitants of the western world, and is leading to a progressive clash across the western world.

First, the rule of law. The government of the day doesn’t get to set the rules. Those rules exist on a higher plane, and are interpreted by independent magistrates. The law, in other words, is not an instrument of state control, but a mechanism open to any individual seeking redress.

Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish of your assets, to work for whom you please and, conversely, to hire and fire as you will.

Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us.

Its no small thing to suggest that the growing trends in both European and American governance are in progressive conflict with this definition of ‘western’ civilization.  Hannan attacks the current tendency of each to rule by regulation, not the concept of debate, passage and then living under the law. He is particularly harsh on European bureaucrats that see laws as superficial instruments meant to be observed by the public when it serves the dictate of the state, or ignored by the state when it does not fit the ruling class’s  long term goal of progressive state control.  He reflects on this as not particularly surprising, given that the tradition of individual freedom and governments as servants of the people is not a long cherished value of the non-English speaking world.  For the Frenchman, Spaniard, German, or Russian the history of governance has been more one of top down rule then a reflection of the various peoples.  By this argument western civilization is more than a commonality of love of individual expression in art, music, literature, and science.

The current American experience with the recent perversion of time tested principles of anglosphere governance becomes ever more clear when viewed under this particular view of civilizational clash.  The Obama administration views the principles of governance laid out by the country’s founders as dated, obstructionist, and faintly racist. The administration is in love with the European bureaucrats’ view of the populous.  The citizens of the country are backward and corrupted, self absorbed, and needing to be managed. This leads to laws to govern each individual’s very existence, like Obamacare, with the provisions of the law less important then the power it gives the state to manage. Thus, the components mandated by the law can be arbitrarily delayed when it exposes the  government’s failures, enforced when allows the increasing hold over the population.  The very passage of the law itself required a tortuous bending of the rules of debate, and once in place, a complete removal of the legislative process from any role in its application.  It is the age of the top down bureaucrat and the soft despot like Obama, who suggests that opponents to the ‘law’ are terrorists, extremists, and reactionaries. This is the language of despots, who suggest that the overarching ‘good’ occasioned by their actions takes precedence over any ill placed upon the individual.

Daniel Hannan is another one of those voices who need to be read if our society is  to be more than an expression of celebrity, sport, and political horse races.  There are hundreds of years of evolved thought under attack in this clash of forces as to who owns our civilization, and we would do well as the defenders of the Ramparts to expand our reading lists to people like Daniel Hannan and measured important venders of ideas like the New Criterion. It will be worth your time and investment.

“Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong.  But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer in the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different.  That is what makes us exceptional.”                                                  President Barack Obama  September 10, 2013

“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.  There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.  Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget God created us equal.”                                                                      President Vladimir Putin   September 11, 2013

What is this exceptionalism that draws leaders of two great powers to engage in verbal combat and frame the possibility of going to war over that word?  Exceptionalism as a noun has connotations that suggests a righteousness that many like President Obama express and President Putin distain. It has led to more than one misunderstanding and misstep by America in the last several decades, and depressingly is misinterpreted by both leaders in an age that is proving increasingly unexceptional for leaders that can grasp the essential truths of ideas.

To be exceptional implies a unique set of circumstances.  The exceptionalism that Putin derides is not essence of the argument of American exceptionalism. Putin selects the portion of the idea that implies universality, not uniqueness.  Thomas Jefferson in his declaration of independence  framed the birth of an American nation on what he implied were self evident, universal truths that applied to all men, regardless of nationality:

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

These are clearly expressed as not unique to America, but rather an innate constituent of the makeup of each human being regardless of nationality.  This is not the exceptional argument of Jefferson to which Putin inadvertently subscribes.  Jefferson’s argument of exceptionalism comes in his next sentence in the declaration, in which Jefferson relays how Americans would form a unique governance that exists to secure those rights:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

There is clearly no descriptor in Jefferson’s immortal words that unique abilities and talents, intelligence, clarity of philosophy, national achievement, and charity toward others are isolated to the American character.  But the concept of governance he spoke to, limited and responsive to the securing of an individuals rights, are unique, and as history continues to unfold, clearly exceptional.

President Obama, who is progressively becoming renowned for his superficial grasp of historical concepts, equally misses Jefferson’s point. His declarative final paragraphs of his speech on Syria imply the exceptional characteristic of America is the ability to see wrong in the world and have the fortitude to right it.  This would suggest a righteousness of action that he himself decries in  his proceeding sentences, declaring “we should not be the world’s policeman“.  Excepting the vacuous logic of declaring contradicting statements as both inherent truths of American perspective, the reality of the existence of tragedy in this world has no correlation to America’s character.  Syria is not remotely the first time children have been viciously treated under Obama’s watch.  Child rape in Africa’s civil wars, Child slavery in south Asia’s darker corners, forced child marriage in multiple Islamic societies, and child drive by murders in many of America’s cities have not stimulated Obama’s righteous indignation.  Nor is America’s indignation or charitable involvement unique among nations.  In this particular point, Putin is correct.  America has no exceptional role as the enforcer of what is right.  Instead, it stands as an exceptional example of the rights themselves, and as such an example, has been the hope of the oppressed of the world to which  other nations can not hold a candle.

America does not exist as a salvation for people; its ideas exist as an exceptional way to salvation.  In a time where even the leader of this country does not have a grasp of the foundation of ideas he espouses, the clarity of why to act, where to act, and how to act become increasingly more muddled.  Every nation has a unique story of origin and a unique character of development.  American exceptionalism is uniquely American.  President Lincoln beautifully crystalized it in his Gettysburg Address, ” Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty,  and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  Charles Murray, in his book, American Exceptionalism, surmises that this set of unique characteristics is decaying because the elements that brought it into being, a foundational libertarian philosophy conceived in a land of limitless westward growth capacity, ideology of self determination, industrious work ethic, and religious conviction is progressively exhausting itself.  It is difficult to project oneself as a beacon of hope and a deliverer of righteous morality when you are increasingly working so hard at trying to become just like everyone else.

The catastrophe in Syria is not going to be solved by arguing about who we are.  Like Russia, America’s position should be about representing its own national self interest, projecting its capacity in such a way to achieve an end to the violence without it becoming a calamity that is larger than the sectarian hatred that is at its root.  The ideas of what makes America exceptional need a self directed American repair, not a foreign injection in another country.  However appropriate our intentions, the process of nation building, and the energy, investment, and commitment it requires,  is best directed at building our own nation back up on its founding principles.  We should be very clear in our projection of who we are to those would seek to effect our demise or take advantage of our charitable nature.  Foreign engagement is what civilized nations do, but foreign involvement, specifically, and only,  when it affects our national interest and survival, shouldn’t be delivered like a seminar to those who would seek to harm us, but with the clarity of a terrible, swift sword.

Sin.  Remorse. Confession. Redemption.  These are the steps of an ancient process of acknowledging a societal standard for behavior and using a form of public confession with its resultant  humiliation to induce behavior modification.   Hester Prynne, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of the struggles of an individual and society to come to grips with ‘unacceptable’ behavior, wore a Scarlet Letter to identify her action to the community and her acceptance of her action.  The rudimentary nature of the Letter belied the complex considerations all the characters in Hawthorne’s novel face in dealing with and facing up to  sin, guilt, piety, rejection, anger, sanctimony, and hypocrisy.  Hester as part of her own redemption accepts her role and consequences of her behavior, the punishment, and takes a road of personal dignity to help others in the novel, not as strong as herself, to finally face up to their own demons.

Hester’s strong example finally gave strength to community leader Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale to admit his own role in her requiring the Letter and finally confessing and thereby achieving some redemption.  Shame, both public and private, formed a mighty anvil upon which all learned and shaped their responses.

Well, there are no Hester Prynnes in own current society’s leaders.  The concept of public shame helping to curb poor behavior in politicians and force a dignified response has lost all impact.  We are being treated to a special group of people who can not be humiliated and are immune to public shame.  The sins are old fashioned but both the reaction of the public and the individual to their liability is not.

Anthony Weiner, a nondescript former New York congressman who achieved a modicum of fame through a special talent of expressing outrageous bombast on TV and marrying a member of the  extended Clinton royal family,  proved to have a more prodigious skill – taking pictures of his privates and sharing them with anyone who would care to look.  Forced to resign his congressional position by the shear volume and inappropriateness of his hobby, he lay in the reeds for a year and a half before determining that a morally deficient New York City public would have amnesia for his personal deficiencies and love for his over-the-top bombastic politics.  He found himself in a short time leading the race for Mayor of the country’s largest and most influential city.  Unfortunately, his alter ego, a pornocentric superhero named “Carlos Danger”  continued to prowl the internet, extoling superhuman body parts and expousing the potential actions of these capacities on various young women, and has come to public attention. The public exposure of personal perversion used to be a special scarlet letter for politicians, but no more. Mr. Danger has determined to stay in the mayoral race, and  is relying on the public’s comfort with immorality as no longer defining a public character, as if complete lack of discipline in a personal life would suddenly evolve into good and just public governance.

The modern disconnect is not limited to Mr. Weiner.  The mayor of San Diego is Bob Filner, who has determined that being in a position of power as mayor, allows him special dispensation at seventy years of age to grope, taunt, grab, and demand lascivious behavior from whatever female happens to come within his force field.  Apparently as a democrat campaigning against the republican party’s supposed war on women, he felt he had vaccinated himself with women to the extent that he could nuclear. Public righteousness, private hypocrisy – the modern cultural equivalent of “do as I say, not as I do.”  Is there sufficient humiliation to force Mr. Filner to resign?  Mr. Filner doesn’t think so.  Once again, being in a position of power to tell other people how they should act and follow workplace laws has made him impervious to law in his own mind.

The examples could go on and on, but it really relates to a progressive societal exhaustion with having a shared concept of behavior. The mutual tug that both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale felt has left us as a society, and we have drifted into the hypocritical circus of the bizarre.  Because Speaker of the House Bob Livingston felt his own internal shame of having had an affair in his life, while accusing President Clinton of similar malfeasance in office, he determined to resign in 1998.  President Clinton, who perjured himself and broke numerous workplace laws having sexual relations with employees, felt no shame, and did not resign.  Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, whose IRS prosecuted untold numbers of individuals for tax evasion, felt no shame or need to resign, despite not having paid his own.  Barack Obama in 2004 , working to gain national prominence by running for Senator from Illinois, made sure that his formidable republican Senate opponent Jack Ryan’s private court documents in a divorce child custody case be exposed through the press detailing some private accusations his wife made regarding Mr. Ryan’s sexual requests of her.  Knowing of Mr. Ryan’s unwillingness to drag his child through the political mud, he counted on Mr. Ryan’s personal shame to drive him from the race, and succeeded.  That certainly did not lead to Mr. Obama feeling a Arthur Dimmesdale moment to release private personal birth records or college transcripts which no doubt would reveal at least ‘inconsistencies’ in his personal storyline, but it did lead to a Senate seat, national prominence, and eventually the Presidency.

All roads of understanding lead to the concept of Shame requiring the secondary concepts of personal guilt and desire for redemption to be present to have any last effect.  We see in our modern society a significant disconnect, in that the exposure of personal flaws are merely a temporary hurdle to overcome, not a abject lesson to learn from, and grow beyond.  Our current society desires a feel good strategy of pick and choosing things to become outraged about, avoiding any collective responsibility, acting beyond approved laws, spending beyond approved limits, and fundamentally denying any personal remorse or collective action to change.  Is it no wonder, that our unwillingness to stand as Hester Prynne and wear our Scarlet Letter, learn about ourselves and achieve collective dignity in acts, has led to a generation of politicians who are oblivious to their own dignity and societal clarity?

Shame…shame on us all.

     The past week was pregnant with omens for those of us who fear the permanent estrangement of a people from the magnificent experiment in liberty their founders created for them.  The fragile nature of our experiment, a means of societal empowerment in which the free will of a people is balanced by the order of measured laws, has finally become visibly shaky.  Though multiple somewhat disparate events came together to paint a picture of distress, the final framing was achieved by the President, the chief law enforcement official of the United States, suggesting the only thing separating him as a black American from a racially profiled shooting and a miscarriage of justice was  three decades of life.   Three more years of such leadership, and we can remove the uncertainty as to the great experiment’s final extinction.

The first of the peals of thunder was the declaration that the once great American metropolis of Detroit was going to file for bankruptcy. A half century ago Detroit stood as a colossus of cities, home to hundreds of thousands of jobs building the premier implement of personal freedom, the automobile, flush with the highest standard of middle class living in the world.  Fifty years of one party government and unionized monopoly in city services and education,  and city now finds itself with one third the population, a horrid crime and murder rate, a collapse of available services, an almost 50% functional illiteracy rate,  miles and miles of abandoned capital in shuttered homes and businesses,  and a suicidal governance that still manages to spend a hundred million dollars a year more than it takes in in revenue.  The final nail in the bankruptcy coffin is a common story, the governmental class securing for themselves gold plated pensions and health benefits that swallow up essentially all the available tax base, with hardly any thing left for essential role of city government, police and fire, snow removal and sewer maintenance, and no hope to fund future needs.  Is this the distortion of a republic or the corruption of a democracy?  It is very much the synthesis of both, as the key feature of contract between the governors and the governed, the integrity of the compact and the respect for its institutions and laws, has been lost.

The second wave of disturbance was the testimony of IRS officials before Congress that indicated that everything put forth by the executive branch thus far in the scandal has been a deceit.  From the initial claim that the apparent coercive efforts of the IRS to suppress  grass roots political groups they saw as a threat to the President’s election were driven by a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, to the farcical claim that the extra scrutiny was equally applied to all political groups equally, the testimony showed a ugly laceration across the chest plate of equality under the law and a government without prejudice.  Forty years ago, the idea that the executive branch would interpret the President’s will as a ticket to intimidate American citizens was an impeachable offense.  Now, a direct line of command from a political appointee of the president is secure to the offense, and the media projects a collective yawn.  The evidence is growing of a direct White House effort to use the powerful enforcement arms of the executive branch to manipulate the national election to their favor, a direct assault on the constitution they were sworn to uphold.  Darker clouds can not role across the  compact  a government holds with its people.

Finally, one of the great triumphs of a free people, the right to trial by a jury of peers with a presumption of innocence was put forth for all to see in Florida, and the result was viewed not as a  celebration of the magnificence of such a process denied to so many people throughout history, but rather a hysterical denial of the justice obtained. The Bill of Rights secures for every citizen in the Sixth Amendment the right to an impartial process without the intimidation of the governing class:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense

The Zimmerman trial offered all Americans to see the process in all its glory, the presentation of evidence, the burden of the prosecution to identify the perceived offense beyond a reasonable doubt, and the care to allow the jury to deliberate without prejudice or intimidation. The President had a perfect opportunity to celebrate the protections the unique American judicial system offers all Americans.  Instead he found a need to demagogue the issue and incite the development of a myth of injustice and racism where by all accounts of those who watched the trial, there was none.  It was a pion to the mob mentality, that asks for a premeditated justice, a bias for a perceived outcome to assuage a perceived cultural disadvantage.  It fed into the national consciousness that once again the system of principled laws was at fault, not the actions of the individuals.  To a progressively civically illiterate population this is becoming easy to believe.

A once great city collapses on its own hubris. A government intimidates and manipulates its own citizens to secure its permanence.  An impartial ruling of law is attacked as a miscarriage.  Like a terminal disease slowly sapping the strength of the body, the outer edifice still superficially appears to stand, but progressively feels the tiredness and  incapacity.  America with so many strengths of foundation, is experiencing the death of nations, and the government sworn to diagnose and defend against threat, is instead helping to plan its funeral.