The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #10
In current American usage, the phrase ‘that’s history’ is commonly used to dismiss something as unimportant, of no relevance to current concerns… – Professor Bernard Lewis; The Crisis of Islam

Of all histories the history of ideas is the most difficult and elusive. Unlike things, ideas cannot be handled, weighed, and measured. They exert a powerful force in human history, but a force difficult to estimate…Western thought is all of a piece, an organic growth of scientific, religious, and philosophical ideas mutually interacting. In Darwin’s day the impact of natural science on philosophy and religion was more spectacular than their return effect on scientific ideas. Indeed, it was so spectacular that some thinkers predicted the early extinction of theology and metaphysics and a general triumph of modes of thought derived from natural science. – Professor John C. Greene, Rockwell Lectures, delivered at Rice University, 1960; Darwin and the Modern World View

I am inclined to the opinion that a nation- like an individual- encounters throughout its life many and various historical crossroads, and that the wrong road is as easily chosen as the right one. While the consequences of a nation’s choices are certain they’re not always evident, though the road signs marking the route are conspicuously discernable. Perhaps the most valuable skill we should cultivate and pass along to our children therefore, is the ability to read the signs marking the road we travel.

Often times, the preferred road is chosen simply on the basis that it represents a change or break with the past. Seldom can this benefit a nation; such change- because it is inexactly and incompletely devised- begets turmoil, as we currently ponder the promise of FREEDOM in America. Arguably the most significant historical crossroads we’ve encountered since the Civil War is World War Two, in which the United States fought for its very survival, and for a world no longer threatened by totalitarian governments that practice total war.

Progress- an improvement over the past- is rightly to be desired. However, the impulse to change must be informed by the recognition that “change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence”, to quote the eminent historian Russell Kirk.

We might well include the citizen- along with the statesman- who ought to live by the guidance of Providence and the exercise of prudence, mindful that these are gotten only by recourse to the ideas, knowledge and experience of history. Providence, understood as the power of God sustaining and guiding human destiny, is a relevant concept in our calculations to the extent that we regard a nation- as Professor Kirk did- not only as an association of citizens but as a community of souls as well.

Doesn’t history reveal, after all, that humanity is prompted to action at least as much by its heart as by its head? Predictably, Professor Kirk perceived an unmistakable link between the disordered soul of a people and the disorder, and hence instability, of the community.

In our study of human society and its ultimate expression- the polity- we proceed according to the postulate that in the absence of intellectual FREEDOM, it is impossible to ensure political FREEDOM. Twentieth century history clearly shows that whenever this unalterable relationship is systematically ignored representative government is supplanted (to supersede another by force or treachery) by Leviathan (the unbounded and unrestrained STATE).

We recall that philosophy, according to the standard meaning of the term, is the systematic search for truth, and the formulation of truthful statements about the existing order of things, in the absence of preference or prejudice. Not unlike the habit of a person who enters an unfamiliar, darkened room and reaches for the light switch before proceeding in, so philosophy is an activity for throwing light on the natural- and knowable- world in which we all walk, in order to avoid stumbling or falling.

Another way of understanding the proper role of philosophy is to view it as a reflective method to establish and maintain a reasonable correspondence- a balanced, proportional or congruent relationship- between the objects of the world and our knowledge of those objects. Very much like the balancing act of the circus performer whose high-wire exploits are entirely concerned with maintaining the precise balance between their posture and weight distribution and the gravity of the earth, as they traverse their course.

What constitutes the existing order about which philosophy seeks to formulate truthful statements? According to Professor Greene, the actually existing order centers on the issues of nature, man and God. How these are now defined and emphasized in the intellectual climate of positivistic naturalism has served to influence our institutions, directed our national life and determined the disposition of all our knowledge.

Currently, Western thought claims to have “established” through the empirical sciences positive knowledge- positivism- of an exclusively natural order- naturalism- from which humanity has evolved. The idea of a God, on the other hand, is a fabrication, a product of myth or superstition and stands in opposition to the scientific “fact” of our exclusively material reality- materialism.

In fact, as we study the history of modern science- particularly the influence upon Western thought of Charles Darwin’s ideas- we will surely obtain a distorted image “unless we view it in proper perspective, against the background of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion in modern times”, writes Professor Greene.

Sir Isaac Newton’s seventeenth century work in mathematics and physics, represented in his Principia (1687), “gave rise to a mechanical philosophy in which nature was conceived as a law-bound system of matter in motion, every state of the system proceeding from previous states by mathematical rule”, according to Professor Greene.

In this, the latest stage of the historical development of the conflict between science and religion, “the methods of natural science were extended to the study of man and society, and the claim was advanced in some quarters that these methods constituted man’s only reliable access to knowledge of reality.” Furthermore, Professor Greene writes, “the progress of science and technology enhanced the prestige of human reason and intoxicated men with the hope that society was capable of indefinite progress in this world…”

Now this historical conflict that saw the installation of science as the dominant intellectual tendency in Western thought found a practical outlet in the Second World War, the twentieth century’s titanic slaughter in which religion was replaced by a combination of neo-paganism and the glorification of the STATE, as philosophy was eclipsed by that supreme imposter known as ideology.

It is estimated that fifty million people died in this war, but the body count is much higher if one includes the number murdered by the totalitarian powers as they implemented their ideological plans and consolidated their political structures. This was indeed, total war; the complete assault upon all aspects of civilization and all that it had come to revere, all that it had rationally established, and the God our civilization had come to worship.

The historical crossroads confronting America as it contemplated the necessity of building a peaceful post-war world involved the choice between two roads: treating the war simply as a military collision of divergent economies and cultures. Or, on the other hand, a monumental and unprecedented struggle inspired by the violent impulses of a God-negated irrationalism that zealously sought the destruction of a rational Western civilization.

Contrary to her best interests, America expediently chose the former road and, in so doing, established a philosophical imbalance between the actually existing order of things and our knowledge of this order. The resultant ontological (the branch of philosophy that studies being or existence) instability to the structure of democracy would subsequently be felt- via its intellectual habits and national policies- throughout its economic, political and social parts.

Predictably, the current financial meltdown and recession we now are experiencing are very much a product of the philosophical imbalance of Western thought and its consequent instability. This national instability will persist and intensify to the extent we permit this philosophical imbalance to continue; and our FREEDOM will disappear.

Awake America! Rouse yourself from your fatal slumber! Our FREEDOM is even now receding!