Fistful of Words 

Curtis Dahlgren
05/12/05

OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM ENDS WITH A QUESTION MARK — FOR A REASON. In a paradoxical way, that question has probably served to strengthen us, but the evening news is getting pretty weird, and it's time to take a reading of our moral positions and our ROOTS!

LIBERALS NOT ONLY HAVE A MISCONCEPTION OF THE BIG PICTURE — they don't even understand the framework! The framework of Western Civ and our American Revolution was not the so-called "Enlightenment," or French philosophy, but was from sources from "further North."

Today's intellectuals can't even keep their crayons inside the lines, despite proclaiming themselves "wiser" than all the Classical wr! iters who went before them. At many Higher Learning institutions, nearly 90 percent of professors of English literature are self-described liberals (and only 3 percent conservatives). One wonders if that could affect the way they teach the literature of those "dead white Englishmen."

HOW WOULD A CONSERVATIVE TEACH SUCH A CLASS? LET'S JUST IMAGINE IT:

The "ABCs" of English Lit would have to include Addison, Blackstone, and Cowper, but the biggest "B" of them all would be the King James Bible of 1611. "No other book of any kind has so affected the entire life of the English-speaking peoples," it is said (though the revisionists might nominate Darwin as the most significant contributor to English lit).

The effect of the Bible, Blackstone, and Burke (not to mention Bacon and Locke) on the American Revolution has been thoroughly documented, so when the liberals try to attribute our roots to French or Greek philosophers, they're just simply packing sand.

Oh, there was a Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), whom our Founding Fathers referred to, and whom our liberal "historians" try to paint as a Deist (a la "Thomas Jefferson the Deist"), but Montesquieu was born a Catholic and died a Catholic. During the 1770s, when the colonists were wrestling with the problem of separating from England, our Founders quoted him in about 8 percent of their writings.* However, by the 1780s, when they were getting down to writing the Constitution, the Frenchman's percentage had fallen to 4 percent, while the percentage of writings mentioning the Bible went from 24% up to 34%! In other words, the Bible was quoted 8 times as often as the most quoted French philosopher — and Rousseau and the Greek philosophers barely produced a blip on the radar screen.*

[* "The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth Century American Political Thought" by Donald S. Lutz; American Political Science Review, 1984, quoted in "Christianity and the Constitution, the Faith of Our Founding Fathers" by John Eidsmoe, who writes: "The most cited thinkers were not deists and philosophes, but conservative legal and political thinkers who often were also Christians."]

Even in Montesquieu's case, he was in agreement with Brits such as Blackstone in that he believed that human nature was flawed, which was the whole POINT of the American Revolution (i.e., since the King was a human, he was by nature not infallible). That was the basic premise the Founding Fathers took into account in wording the Declaration and the Constitution (since Rights come from God, they gave us a Federal government with limits, checks, and balances).

The thinking and attitudes of our Founders were more akin to the British Whigs than the French philosophers. This was only logical. Looking at America from the other side of the pond, Edmund Burke wrote (1775):

"Young man, there is America — which at this day! serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of the commerce which now attracts the envy of the world [Britain] . . . My hold of the colonies is in close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection."

It was natural for our Patriots to look to conservative Englishmen such as Burke who spoke of a "law of nature and of nations," and to Sir William Blackstone, who wrote:

"Law of nature: The will of his Maker is called the law of nature . . . When He created man, and endued him with free will to conduct himself in all parts of life, He laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that free will is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws . . . These are eternal, immutable laws of good and evil, to whic! h the Creator Himself in all His Dispensations conforms . . . This law of nature . . . dictated by the Creator Himself . . . is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times" [whether they know it or not, I might add].

Blackstone went on to describe "Revealed Law" and its relation to the common law of England, and if you really want to know what the Colonists were thinking in the last half of the 1700s, it's no mystery; Blackstone's "Commentaries" sold more copies in America than they did in England. "Blackstone, like Montesquieu, saw three branches of government, but envisioned the legislative as superior to the judiciary" [judges were to "apply" law, not "make" law]. -ibid

The American Revolution produced neither a French-style secular, anti-religion government nor a theocracy; its brain-child was a Republic built on free will atop the solid rock of a culture that nurtured the soul and cultivated! the spirit. "Cultivation" implies weeding out as many personal character flaws as is ideally possible.

The long and the short of it is: our Founding Families believed that — in lieu of the second Coming — the safest form of human government was Freedom plus morality (i.e., free will, but with personal restraints upon human nature). Thus the Bible was a school textbook from kindergarten onward in early America.

In the introduction to this column, I sandwiched Blackstone between two hymn writers to symbolize the zeitgeist of that era. People didn't revere Plato, Voltaire, or Rousseau, but almost everyone was familiar with the poetry of Joseph Addison:


The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up that wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening Earth
Repeats the story of her birth.
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.


And the hymns of William Cowper:


God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.


THAT'S THE WAY I'D TEACH "ENGLISH LITERATURE"! No wonder the Establishment has only 3 percent conservative professors in that field! But how can they teach it when they blacklist the writers who were religious?

Here are a few samples from Francis Bacon (1561-1626):

"There was never [a] miracle wrought by God to convert an atheist . . . because His ordinary works convince it."

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's mind about to religion."

"Nothing doth more hurt in a state than [when] cunning men pass for wise."

"It is strange to seek power and to lose liberty."

"In the youth of a state arms do flourish; in the middle age of a state, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and merchandise."

"Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress."

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for ! an answer."

"Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation."

CONCLUSION

Despite what you may have been told, the American and French Revolutions had very little in common. Of the famous French bloodbath, Burke said, "Whenever our neighbor's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own." Which reminds me:

The year 2005 may portend the biggest fork in the road since 1789. The symmetry of our three branches of government is way out of shape, thanks to inaction in the U.S. Congress. It's time to send some of them back to English lit for some advice from Burke:

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and an advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of ONE nation, with ONE interest, that of the whole . . . You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him,! he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament."

Bacon said, "There is little friendship in the world, and least of all between equals." Enough said, you Senators?

Shakespeare said, "I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable." — King Henry IV

In the 1790s, Burke was speaking of "the wisdom of our ancestors" and said that "dangers by being despised [ignored] grow great."

THAT WHICH WE HALF PERCEIVE, WE HALF CREATE!

"La trahison des clercs [the treason of the educated classes]"! — Julien Benda (1868- )

NO WONDER OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM ENDS WITH A QUESTION MARK!



Curtis Dahlgren