The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #12
Most people would concede the wisdom to post a guard or sentinel- a watchman- to maintain a vigilant lookout for potential threats to something regarded as valuable and worthy of securing. Whether we’re talking about the lone individual with a flashlight walking about a dark warehouse at night, the most sophisticated electronic security systems, or the best computer firewall and anti-virus software, securing our possessions and information is of paramount concern to us all.

Even in the historical document which modern thought considers largely irrelevant- the Bible- we encounter the perceived need to provide a watch, in this case for an entire people; “…Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel…” The quote is from Ezekiel, a member of a prominent Jewish family who was in the first wave of exiles to Babylon- along with Daniel- in 597 B.C., as the Babylonian Empire systematically subjugated and progressively crushed the southern Kingdom of Judah, while deporting its citizens.

In a very real sense the historian necessarily fulfills the role of a watchman, as he or she labors to secure a reliable record of the past, as well as vigilantly studying this same record for any sign of potentially threatening tendencies that bear upon the future. True to this calling, I have attempted to inform and alert the Reader- by means of this Journal- to the current crisis we now face, as a nation and as a civilization.

The warning is this: There exists a philosophical threshold to self-government, which is democracy, beyond which we can no longer ensure free institutions and a stable society. Put another way, a product of The Age of Reason (the eighteenth century Enlightenment)- which is what the American Republic is- can no longer be sustained nor endure in an intellectual climate that has become hostile to Reason.

I have written, in addition to this Journal, correspondence to our nation’s political, business and media leaders in the hope that some of these would respond to the warnings posted by this watchman, and join their actions with mine to avert the coming collapse of FREEDOM. Toward this end, I have reproduced some of these letters for you, the Reader. Perhaps you will display slightly more concern than many of them.

Dear President Obama, May, 2009
It is only with the deepest respect that I write you concerning an extremely serious, though hitherto unrecognized peril to our democracy. Such peril not only inhibits the effective working of our Republic, but threatens its very survival. At present we are all justifiably preoccupied with the severe financial and economic downturn plaguing our nation.

To be sure, specific economic factors constitute the proximate cause of this gathering crisis. However, my historical analyses indicate this situation is much more than the sum of a series of financial failures. In actuality, our economic woes are symptomatic of a greater instability besetting American society, borne of a latent structural deformation in democracy itself.

This point cannot be emphasized enough. Democracy’s structural instability should not be construed as simply one more problem: it is The Problem. And it promises not only further instability, but eventually structural failure- perhaps catastrophic failure. Consequently, a resort to change in our economic policies or modification of the free market system will prove in the long run insufficient to allay our national problems. Much like a doctor who treats only the symptoms of a disease and ignores its source, so we shall invite calamity if we fail to address the empirical source of our national crisis.

Enclosed is my historical research paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”], culled from a larger work upon which I’ve been laboring for sixteen years. This larger project is the result of my efforts in a field I’ve pioneered, which I term historical seismology. The purpose of the paper in no way seeks to discount or denigrate the fine reputation of science. In fact, I’m concerned that the scientific enterprise is as much endangered as democracy by the peril I describe.

What recommends this work to reason and to your attention, is the undeniable validity of its conclusions. Four years ago this paper was submitted to the President, Vice President, key Congressional leaders, various corporate CEO’s and members of the media, warning them of the imminent peril to our democratic society: To no avail. Perhaps, in view of recent events we should reflect on this corporate indifference, and then confer a degree of credibility to my historical analyses. Thank you for your kind and thoughtful attention. Sincerely…

Dear President Bush, June, 2005
In this the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, it is exceedingly important to remember the general contours of that enormous conflict fought seemingly so long ago. In his book The Second World War John Keegan, formerly an instructor at the British Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, came to understand the war first as a human event.

He writes that the “Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world’s seven continents and all its oceans. It killed fifty million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilisation.” Like an earthquake of great magnitude, such a cataclysmic event inevitably would transmit its shockwaves throughout all of human civilization, to generations far removed from the epicenter of conflict.

It is the purpose of this paper [“The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma”] to call to your attention the substance of these effects in Western Civilization today. Specifically, there yet remains the vibrant irrationalism which once raised the specter of complete totalitarianism and which, if we do not now confront it, will just as surely cause a seismic shift in the present world order back to that tyranny we so narrowly escaped.

This vigorous irrationalism is the common denominator which unites many apparently unrelated features of our modern world. Fantastic as it may sound, the insistence by modern science that there exists in nature an evolutionary mechanism, and the otherwise dissimilar ideology of worldwide jihad, with its dramatically different assertion, both proceed from the common irrational tendency to define the same natural order quite apart from objective truth. And both programs demand complete assent.

Consequently, democratic government and liberty are weakened from within and threatened from without. Stated plainly, Western Civilization is now caught in a lethal squeeze play. For the sake of our future, please join with this historian to organize a national conversation on these issues, beginning with the ideas you will shortly encounter herein. The only alternative to this discussion is the course which leads to eventual servitude and perpetual darkness. Indifference is no longer an option. Sincerely…

The most encouraging response I received from all this correspondence was a kind and gracious letter from Vice President Joseph Biden.

Dear Montag, June 26, 2009
Thank you for taking the time to write and I am honored you would share your ideas with me. This is an extraordinary moment in our nation’s history and it will take the passion and ideas of citizens like you to help solve the issues before us.

President Obama and I understand that our country has great challenges ahead. However, the answers to these challenges are not confined to the halls of Washington D.C., but reside in the minds of people around the globe.

Never at any point in my years of public service has the energy of the American people been more abundant. We cannot lose this moment, we cannot squander the opportunities before us, so I encourage you to stay engaged and continue working to reshape the world around us.

It is letters like yours that continually renew my confidence about what we can achieve together. I truly appreciate your ideas, and your taking the time to write. Sincerely, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Vice President Biden is quite right in saying that our nation’s problems can only be solved by WE THE PEOPLE, engaged, working together and thinking reasonably and coherently. Anything less and we will surely see self-government perish. Shake off your apathy America!

The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #11
…American political conflicts are not generally fought on the battleground of ideas. The thoroughly non-Ideological Man is usually designated as steward of the American political community. This is partly a good thing, because everyone knows that ideological totalism can bring whole societies down, as it did Hitler’s, and permanently terrorize others, as Communism has done. The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.

America, most historians teach us, has sought to avoid the extremes, to be flexible without resembling Silly Putty; to be principled without being arch. I think our country is not clearly enough avoiding the former extreme. I think she is in danger of losing her identity- not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all. I think the attenuation of the early principles of this country has made America vulnerable to the most opportunistic ideology of the day, the strange and complex ideology of modern liberalism. I think, moreover, that disordered and confused though it concededly is these days, conservatism is the only apparent rallying point...- William F. Buckley, Jr., Preface, 1959; Up From Liberalism

It is entirely fitting and proper to linger for a short spell, over the words and thoughts of one of America’s foremost philosophical laborers: Bill Buckley, Jr. Most will argue- not unreasonably- that he was a Conservative thinker, but I regard him rather as simply a thinker; an extremely profound one at that. Both for his intellectual penetration and honesty, to say nothing of his humor, he has few peers. He was truly a man for the times.

The moral and intellectual confusion in the years following World War Two would surely have been far worse were it not for his tireless pursuit of truth. Together with his fidelity to the enduring principles sustaining the American Republic, Bill Buckley was much more than merely an observer. His insistence that we should always remember to feed our souls as well as our brains placed him head and shoulders above all the other commentators of the American scene in the Cold War era.

In his Baccalaureate Address to St. Joseph’s College in June, 1952, Bill Buckley challenged his audience to consider the dangerous turn American education and society had taken in the post-War era. “There is not enough room, however, for the New Social Order and religion. The New Order is philosophically wedded to the doctrine that the test of truth is its ability to win acceptance by the majority. Economically, the New Order is egalitarian; politically, it is majoritarian; emotionally, it is infatuated with the State, which it honors as the dispenser of all good, the unchallengeable and irreproachable steward of every human being.”

“It clearly won’t do, then, to foster within some schools a respect for an absolute, intractable, unbribable God, a divine Intelligence who is utterly unconcerned with other people’s versions of truth and humorlessly inattentive to majority opinion. It won’t do to tolerate a competitor for the allegiance of man. The State prefers a secure monopoly for itself. It is intolerably divisive to have God and the State scrapping for disciples…”

“…You graduate into a turbulent and confusing and perverse world situation which, because so many men have forgotten the lessons of Christ and because so many men have turned their back on Him, seriously threatens the international ascendancy of evil: a physical war against Christian civilization, and an intellectual war against the foundations of our spiritual faith.”

In conjunction with William F. Buckley’s incisive thought and his voluminous writing, is the constellation of writers, philosophers, historians, and economists to whom he introduces the reader. One of these, the historian Russell Kirk, observed that since the eighteenth century Enlightenment, “At least five major schools of radical thought have competed for public favor since [Edmund] Burke entered politics: the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists.”

Beginning with our next journal entry, we shall study more closely these five major schools of radical thought; not least because philosophical elements of all these schools of thought continue to significantly influence- and threaten- our polity and society. Also, we would do well to nourish, as Americans, some degree of orthodoxy and reinvigorate the early principles of our country. As reason- and faith- would seem to recommend; as William F. Buckley, Jr. would certainly advocate, were he still with us today.