#434 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Friday August 19)
Good morning,
I thought I’d end the week with a tiny bit of historical context, together with wisdom that resonates in these fraught days.
FATHER ABRAHAM
A common misperception is that the United States sprang from whole cloth at the founding, created by the Declaration of Independence, refined by the Constitution, and forged by the struggles of the early nation. That’s part of it, to be sure. The country was a series of states with different regional differences, religious traditions, and political dogmas brought together by necessity. But coalescing as a single nation wasn’t easy going.
Many historians and political scientists see that nation’s “birth” not as the singular event of independence, or even the ultimate strengthening of a central government and a union by virtue of the Constitution. Instead, they see that a series of events (steps and missteps) occurred through first half of the 19th century that did not resolve themselves until the late-19th century—not until the struggles of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Reconstruction Amendments, and the transformation of the united states (sic—these states originally were thought of in the plural, representing a collection of states) into The United States (a singular entity). So, in a sense, Lincoln and Grant were the last of the “Founders.”
In contemplating the challenges of our times, commentators often reach back to the Civil War period as an example of another time the states seemed on paths so different from each other and when people perceived of large swathes of their fellow citizens as enemies to be vanquished. It is with this in mind that I share the words of Abraham Lincoln, a man great yet flawed, steadfast yet insecure, at first willing to address union without directly challenging slavery and then becoming an abolitionist who knew that slavery could not (and should not) endure.
If the real “founding” of our nation didn’t occur until the resolution of the Civil War and the subsequent Civil War amendments, Lincoln’s word can be seen as the culminating words of the founding period. These words from his Address to Congress on December 1, 1862 ring as true today as when written…
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Meanwhile, as freedom to say what what thinks seems under attack rom all sides, the words of Salman Rushdie, the novelist stabbed at a gathering in upstate New York, also are instructive:
The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. —Salman Rushdie
When I contemplate this sentiment of free thought, I am reminded of the threat restrictions on ideas leads to inhumanity. I am drawn again to the words of Heinrich Heine, the popular German-Jewish poet, whose books were among the many that were burned in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. In 1822, he wrote:
“Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”
Ironically, one of the most significant Nazi book burnings took place in the plaza next to Humboldt University in Berlin. Book banning, denying speakers the right to legitimately share competing views, and an impatience with alternative views pollutes many American universities and affects honest discussion and debate in the public square.
Have a good weekend,
Glenn
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