The View From 1776

Societies that eschew the hubristic self-importance of liberal-progressive intellectuals and, instead, seek guidance from God have an inner strength that can unite them and preserve them.  That is the lesson repeatedly affirmed in the Old Testament history of the tribulations of the Jews at the hands of aggressive military powers in the Middle East.  The southern kingdom of Judah survived much longer that the northern kingdom of Israel, because the kings of Judah more often listened for God’s voice and sought to do His will.

David Warren writes that, however feeble, there remains more of the spark of devotion to God in the United States than elsewhere. 

He comments upon Professor Ellis Sandoz’s book (reviewed earlier, here), which brings an historical perspective to the philosophical and religious constitution of the United States that dominated until well into the 20th century.

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DavidWarrenOnline
ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES

SUNDAY SPECTATOR

November 5, 2006

Soul of America

Who knows how the U.S. mid-term elections will end on Tuesday? I will not add, Who cares?—for if the Democrats do manage to reclaim either or both congressional houses, we could assume the Bush administration, the “Bush doctrine”, and Bush, will be hobbled. The American “liberal intelligentsia” will of course gloat, together with all who hate America around the world (a formidable mass of people). The West’s mortal enemies in Iran, North Korea, China, and elsewhere, will sense new opportunities.

The future will not be knowable, however, even when the election results are known. While opposition parties have always done well in U.S. mid-terms, and especially after a governing party has enjoyed power so long, the progressive radicalization of the Democratic Party has made the American electorate exceptionally cautious.

Alternatively, though the Congress be lost, the event might actually free President Bush from many of the restraints of holding Republican factions together. We might paradoxically find that a lame-duck presidency quacks to new life in its final two years, as Mr Bush directs his sights away from mundane politics. He has been consistently underestimated by media that despise him. Moreover, Democrat gains now could trigger a massive Republican restoration in the bigger general election of 2008.

There are many other possibilities. Good emerges from evil in astounding ways, and vice versa; unforeseeable events can transform a political order formed by other circumstances. Indeed, one of my worst fears is that a left-Democrat America might overreact to a sudden major foreign challenge, through its very fear of appearing to be weak.

It is paradoxically easier to see movements over historical periods much longer than election cycles, and even to descry something of the likely future from them—though still, the future is radically unknowable. As I have written so often, the real threat to the West does not come from outside it, but from within, in the encroaching decadence of our cultures, and in our growing refusal to confront realities, especially the reality of evil. It is no accident that, for instance, the glitzy porn-stars of contemporary Hollywood share a political outlook with the “progressive” factions in the Democratic Party, or that this outlook is incoherent. For it is simply a manifestation of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual decay that is advancing within us.

This decadence is less advanced in the U.S. than in almost any Western country, yet in the U.S. it is very far advanced. The conservative parties on both sides of the Atlantic have, over a couple of generations, been left with a near-monopoly on the sounder principles that all mainstream parties previously embraced. And in the U.S., the Republicans find themselves uniquely representing received American values, against Democrats united more and more only by their opposition to them.
The most hopeful account I have seen, of the long-term fate of the peculiarly American expression of Western civilization, is given in the new book, “Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America,” by Ellis Sandoz (University of Missouri Press).

The book is pregnant with insights on three fronts. First, it is the most knowing account I have seen of the very Protestant and Christian mental and moral outlook of America’s founding fathers, by whom Biblical, and resonating classical, ideas of individual responsibility and dignity were given dramatic form, in perhaps the greatest and most successful political experiment the world has yet seen.

Then, turning to his mentor, the major 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin, Prof. Sandoz expounds his account of the underpinnings of reason, religion, and social order—using Voegelin’s deep grasp of the re-emergence of Gnosticism in postmodern public life. For at the root of apparent “new-age” decadence, are very old heresies about the nature of man and God, which have again captured the imaginations of the fanciful, so many centuries after having been seemingly slain by the triumph of Catholic Christianity.

Finally, returning to the present, Prof. Sandoz begins to suggest that the very challenges to the old Western project—of founding our liberty in religious truth—are rekindling it. Under the pressure of events, including the unfolding of Islamic jihadism, men and women are recovering “public consciousness of truth about the transcendent divine Ground of our being”. (Unlike the Romans, we have something to fall back on.)

This is an intellectual book, requiring hard attention, but unlike most, repaying it. It is because such books can come out of America, that I haven’t given up on the place.

David Warren is a columnist who writes for the Ottawa Citizen.

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