Happy New Year 2020

I just finished reading Wilfred McClay's book on U.S. history, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Society. It is an excellent book, optimistic about America, but still revealing its faults and challenges. Probably the most balanced text on American history I have ever read. I strongly recommend it.

In his epilogue, McClay wrote briefly on the nature of patriotism. He warns of its excesses, but he also notes its importance. He writes:

There is a strong tendency in modern American society to treat patriotism as a dangerous sentiment, a passion to be guarded against. But this is a serious misconception. To begin with, we should acknowledge that there is something natural about patriotism, as an expression of love for what is one's own, gratitude for what one has been given, and reverence for the sources of one's being. These responses are instinctive; they're grounded in our natures and the basic facts of our birth. Yet their power is no less for that, and they are denied only at great cost. When the philosopher Aristotle declared that we are by nature "political animals," he meant that we are in some sense made to live in community with one another. It is in our nature to be belonging creatures. One of the deepest needs of the human soul is a sense of membership, of joy in what we have and hold in common with others.

I found this to be a thoughtful reflection, perhaps something to consider as we move into the new year.

Happy New Year.

The Perils of Self-Rule

As I mentioned, I'm reading a book by Wilfred M. McClay on a history of the United States. Very good book, so far. At the end of a chapter on the start of the Revolutionary War, McClay explores the sentiments behind the conflict; that is, what stirred the colonists to action. McClay centers the motivation squarely on a desire for self-rule. He writes:

Perhaps nothing better illustrates that centrality than an interview given in 1843 by Captain Levi Preston, a soldier who fought the British at Concord in 1775 and was interviewed at the age of ninety-one by a young Mellen Chamberlain.

"Captain Preston, why did you go to the Concord Fight, the 19th of April, 1775?"
The old man, bowed beneath the weight of years, raised himself upright, and turning to me said: "Why did I go?"
"Yes," I replied; "my histories tell me that you men of the Revolution took up arms against 'intolerable oppressions.'"
"What were they? Oppressions? I didn't feel them."
"What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?"
"I never saw one of those stamps, and always understood that Governor Bernard put them all in Castle William. I am certain I never paid a penny for one of them."
"Well, what then about the tea-tax?"
"Tea-tax! I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard."
"Then I suppose you had been reading Harrington or Sidney and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty."
"Never heard of 'em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watt's Psalms and Hymns, and the Almanack."
"Well, then, what was the matter? and what did you mean in going to the fight?"
"Young man, what we meant for those red-coats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should."

And that, concluded Chamberlain, was the ultimate philosophy of the American Revolution.

This desire for self-rule, I think, is fundamental to human nature. The will to take dominion, as God commanded, is tied into this desire to rule. This desire for self-rule fueled the American Civil War, the cause for Northern Ireland, the protests in Hong Kong and other conflicts and movements all around the world - some more noble than others.

But, as with all human endeavors, there is always a dark side. Man took the command to take dominion given by God to the extreme: autonomy. Humans are commanded to rule over the earth, but not over themselves separate from God's sovereignty. The Garden was man's first attempt at self-rule and it was disastrous. Republicanism and democracy can be noble and effective ways to govern, but when humans kid themselves by thinking that they can rule without God, there can be no end to the negative consequences.

The lie of godless self-autonomy is not only poisonous for governments, but individuals as well. We were not made to be independent. We were made to be completely reliant on a loving God who only wants the best for his people. We deny that truth at our own peril.

What is History?

I just picked up a history book by Wilfred M. McClay entitled, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. I'm really looking forward to reading it. In the introduction, he offers this thoughtful perspective on history:

History is the study of change through time, and, theoretically, it could be about almost anything that happens. But is must be selective if it is to be intelligible. Indeed, in practice, what we call "history" leaves out many of the most important aspects of life. It generally does not deal with the vast stretches of time during which life goes on normally, during which people fall in love, have families, raise their children, bury their dead, and carry on with the small acts of heroism, sacrifice, and devotion that mark so much of everyday life - the "unhistoric acts," as George Elliot wrote in the closing of Middlemarch, of those "who lived faithfully in hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." There are a few moments, like the American holiday of Thanksgiving, or great public commemorations, at which the low murmur of those ordinary things becomes audible and finds a measure of public acknowledgment. But by and large, "history" is interested in the eruptions of the extraordinary into the flow of the regular. It must leave out so much. (emphasis added)

If I find interesting things to share, I'll post more as I go along.