Blogito ergo sum.

No, not the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith version…

 Mark Levin wrote this book about the U.S. Supreme Court five years ago now.  His main point: the third branch of the federal government has violated the constitutional checks and balances, usurped the rightful authority of the legislative and executive branches, and wrongfully injected itself into the business of states and even individuals.  In short, they are committing judicial tyranny.  America is now less a republic than an oligarchy that sees itself more like an Olympian pantheon than servants of an ordered civil society.

 When the newest Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan, could not bring herself to say that she would vote to strike down a law passed by Congress telling American citizens what they must eat, we have to admit that Levin may very well be correct, and maybe we should pay attention to what he has to say about these men (and women) in black.

 The preface, entitled “Men, not Gods,” begins: “The biggest myth about judges is that they’re somehow imbued with greater insight, wisdom, and vision than the rest of us.”  He goes on to illustrate, with anecdote after anecdote, that many Supreme Court justices have been venal, racist, and even mentally impaired.  For example, Thurgood Marshall, appointed by LBJ in 1967, stayed on the court far too long.  Toward the end of his career, he often didn’t even read the briefs submitted by counsel, left the writing of opinions to clerks, and spent many hours in his chambers watching TV – especially soap operas.  He was afraid of being replaced on the court by a conservative justice, so he told his clerks (tongue in cheek), “If I die, prop me up and keep on voting.”  So much for an impartial judiciary!

 Levin traces the origins of this judicial tyranny to the pernicious doctrine of “judicial review,” deriving from the famous case Marbury vs. Madison in 1803 during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.  The various chapters of this book take up several historical threads of Supreme Court cases: church vs. state, abortion, gay rights, racism and affirmative action, immigration, Islamic terrorism, property rights, campaign finance reform (so called!), and even interference in elections (think Bush vs. Gore 2000).

 Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the book is a series of photocopied memos to and from Democratic senators and liberal lobbying groups (e.g., NARAL, SEIU, etc.) on strategies for delaying and defeating judicial appointments by President George W. Bush.  They categorize nominees in the following groups: Good, Bad, Ugly.  These lobbying groups actually recommended schedules for hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee!  The following are verbatim quotes from these memos:

• “…they are checking with the gay rights groups…”
• “…they think Senator Leahy should use controversial nominees as bargaining chips…”
• “…they also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous…he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment…”
• “…Shedd doesn’t have the ‘cross-burning’ case of Pickering to disqualify him…”
• “…everyone has agreed to keep this matter confidential…”

It is clear that progressives consider the federal judiciary as a crucial battlefront in the war for the political and cultural soul of America!

 All in all, Levin makes a compelling case for the other branches of government, both federal and state, to reassert themselves in the face of the federal judiciary that has proved itself ravenously hungry for power.  Thomas Jefferson (whose stature keeps growing in my eyes, the more I study) proved prophetic in this: “This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs.  But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is…by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundation of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.”

“If with your eyes open, you deliberately accept (this constitution), however different it may prove in practice from what it appears in theory, you will have nobody to blame but yourselves; and what is infinitely worse…you will be wholly without a remedy.”  The American people did accept it; it is proving different in many ways today; we can blame only our own ignorance and lethargy; and it remains to be seen whether we shall find a remedy.

 When you think of the U.S. Constitution, such luminaries as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton come to mind.  These “federalists” carried the day and the Constitution was ratified in 1789.  However, they were opposed by such equally powerful statesmen as Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Wilson.  These anti-federalists argued so persuasively and persistently that the ratification of the Constitution was by no means a foregone conclusion among the newly independent states.

 Even the name “federalist” was something of a clever verbal coup.  The national government proposed in the document was not, strictly speaking, a (con)federation of state governments, as under the old Articles of Confederation.  The new central government would deal, not only with the American states, but also directly with the American citizens.  By claiming the popular term, “federal,” for the proposed Constitution, its backers won a significant image battle in the public mind.  Ironically, the “anti-federalists” were really the proponents of pure “federalism.”

 The federalists, for all their realism about human nature, for all the breadth of their historical knowledge of the blessings and curses of governments, and for all their caution about preserving their hard-won liberty, still proposed a strong, centralized, “energetic” national government to keep the states from falling apart – which they were in the process of doing.  They proposed a strong legislature (with the power to tax, declare war, etc.), a strong executive (with the power to make treaties, appointments, etc.), and a strong national judiciary (the ultimate arbiter of what the Constitution means).  They were confident (overconfident, perhaps?) that the “manly spirit” of the American people would jealously guard their liberty, even while allowing effective government.

 The anti-federalists saw the supporters of the Constitution (probably rightly) as ambitious men, wanting to build another political, economic, military world power, etc.  (After all, hadn’t the Declaration mentioned “assuming, among the powers of earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God, entitle them”?)  The anti-federalists, however, foresaw only taxes, conscription, political intrigue, and the eventual erosion of liberty.  “But now it is proposed to…remove all barriers; to give the New Government free access to our pockets, and ample command of our persons…”  Happiness and virtue, they contended, did not and could not reside in a distant capital city – not in political institutions at all, actually - but in the homes and churches and schools and towns nourished by local agriculture and commerce.

 They believed that any state powers that would also be granted to the national government would make the states unnecessary, even a hindrance, to the power-hungry politicians of all three branches of the national government, and that over time all power would flow toward the central government.  This is explicitly stated, they warned, in the Constitution, which declares itself and the laws pursuant to it “the supreme law of the land” – Article 6.  This, mixed with the ambition of human nature, would be a precursor for tyranny: “…such a power must necessarily, from its very nature, swallow up all the power of the state governments.”  (Perhaps a current example of this is the Department of Justice lawsuit against Arizona re: their new immigration law.)

 They were supremely concerned that the new Constitution gave Congress the power to tax.  “This power…will introduce itself into every corner of the city, and the country.  It will wait upon the ladies…accompany them to the ball, to the play, and the assembly…nor will it desert them even at church; it will enter the house of every gentleman, watch over his cellar, wait upon his cook in the kitchen…and note down all he eats or drinks; it will watch the merchant in his counting-house, or in his store; it will follow the mechanic to his shop…it will be a constant companion of the industrious farmer in all his labour, it will be with him in the house, and in the field, observe the toil of his hands, and the sweat of his brow; it will penetrate into the most obscure cottage, and finally it will light upon the head of every person in the United States…and in all these circumstances, in which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them, will be GIVE!  GIVE!”  With all our various forms of taxes –income, sales, property, etc., etc., etc. – this eloquent passage was clearly prophetic!

 They were also terrified of the federal judiciary.  This branch of the national government, which the federalists claimed was the weakest, the anti-federalists believed would eventually usurp the authority, not only of the states, but also of the other two branches of the national government itself.  With a “most certain, but yet silent and imperceptible manner,” these unelected judges, with life tenure, “would be exalted above all other power in the government, and subject to no control.”  “I question whether the world ever saw, in any period of it, a court of justice invested with such immense powers, and yet placed in a situation so little responsible.  …In short, they are independent of the people, independent of the legislature, and of every power under heaven.  Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself.”  Another prescient notion!  Civil disobedience, such a recent and painful memory for these men, was still a vivid and viable option: “…but when this power is lodged in the hands of men independent of the people, and of their representatives, and who are not, constitutionally, accountable for their opinions, no way is left to control them but with a high hand and an outstretched arm.”

 But you get the point.  The federalist / anti-federalist debate was about many things, including the future of the country and the fate of liberty.  The brilliance and the passion of the men on both sides of that great debate cultivated a spirit and forged a destiny for America that has blessed the world, especially “we the people.”  Because eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, we should pay close attention to what they had to say.

I remember watching on TV perhaps the greatest baseball game ever played – certainly the best one I ever saw.

 That game was played on October 21, 1975, in Fenway Park.  It was Game Six of the World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Boston Red Sox.

 Every baseball fan has heard of Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine: Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Ken Griffey (Sr.), George Foster, Dave Concepcion, Cesar Geronimo.  This was the sports equivalent of America’s founding fathers: a rare collection of talent and personality of which legends are made.  (They were seared in my memory partly because my hapless Chicago Cubs played them a dozen times a year.)

 What I had forgotten until I read Mark Frost’s fine book was that the Boston Red Sox of 1975 had a dream team of their own: Carl Yastrzemski, Rico Petrocelli, Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Cecil Cooper, Rick Burleson, and the indefatigable Luis Tiant.  (This doesn’t even include Jim Rice, whose broken wrist took him out of the Series, thus creating one of the great “What if?” debates of baseball lore.)

 Although we couldn’t have known it then, this Series also marked a change of eras.  The next summer, the era of free agency would transform baseball fundamentally and forever.  Until 1975, kids grew up knowing by heart the entire lineup of their favorite team.  After 1975, major league baseball would move from an affectionate sport that belonged to their fans and their cities to a cutthroat business that belonged to agents and corporations.  Strikes, lockouts, steroids, and gaudy salaries would dominate the landscape from that day till this.  For instance, ARod’s salary today would have bought the entire Yankee franchise in 1975!  But I digress…

 But that was a simpler time in the realm of baseball.  At 11:35 p.m. that night, after 12 tremendous innings, I knew I had just watched something special.  I knew that this thoroughly entertaining Series would go to Game Seven.  What I couldn’t know (until reading Game Six) was…

• That Tony Kubek had quietly disappeared from the broadcast booth in the middle of the 8^th inning – not to reappear – because he had been sent to the Cincinnati locker room for the postgame interviews of the probable Series winners.  In the ebb and flow of those last few innings, Kubek went back and forth between the visitor and home locker rooms more than once, until he ended up in the Cincinnati dugout (out of camera view), where he watched Fisk’s walkoff home run right over Sparky Anderson’s shoulder.
• That Joe Garagiola resented that NBC gave the call of this critical game to newcomer Dick Stockton, and actually lobbied the network executives to dub his own voice over the video of Fisk’s famous walkoff home run for posterity.
• That Stockton’s own career would take off (you’ve heard his smooth, confident, professional baritone call the NFL, the NBA, and many other sports broadcasts) – and that Stockton would have his first date with cub reporter Lesley Visser, a pioneer in her own right, and that they would be happily married from then right up to the present day.
• That Bernie Carbo, feeling overmatched by Rawly Eastwick in the 8^th inning, made a swing so bad that he stepped out of the batter’s box and thought to himself, “I just took the worst swing in history of baseball.”  On the next pitch, hit a game-tying, 3-run homer.
• That when Eastwick got two strikes on Carbo during that famous, fateful 8^th-inningat-bat, Reds manager Sparky Anderson had a strong intuition take out Eastwick and bring in his ace lefty Will McEnaney to finish off Carbo.  Anderson changed pitchers so often that he had the nickname, “Captain Hook.”  Sparky had never disobeyed that inner managerial voice before – until now.  “One more pitch,” he thought, “I’ll give him one more pitch.”  The rest, as they say, is history.
• That in the bottom of the 9^th, with the bases loaded and nobody out, Denny Doyle – a slow runner – ran into the rally-killing double play at home plate because Fenway Park was so loud that when his third base coach, Don Zimmer, was yelling, “No!  No!  No!”, he thought Zimmer was screaming, “Go!  Go!  Go!”
• That the only reason we have Carlton Fisk’s joyful, childlike home-run hop – one of the most iconic sports moments ever caught on tape – the only reason that the left-field scoreboard camera was left on Fisk instead of following the flight of the ball (which is why it was installed there!) is that the cameraman had been paralyzed in place because the biggest rat he had ever seen had just crawled over his foot. 
• That Pete Rose caught up with his manager in the parking lot after the game.  Rose was grinning, without a care in the world.  “That was the best game I ever played in!”  Sparky’s retort: “I just lost us the World Series and all you can say is it’s the best game you ever played?”  Rose, calm and confident as a certified lunatic, said, “You and I were part of history tonight; that was the greatest World Series game ever.  First time I’ve ever been happy about a game I lost.  …We’re gonna win this thing tomorrow, Skip.”  Then, as Frost tells it, “Rose moved on, happy as a pup, looking for someone else to convert.”

 Game Six has many strengths.  Frost does a commendable job of relating the checkered stories of the two baseball franchises (including how they got their names), setting the ’75 Series into its larger cultural context (even comparing it to the Ali-Frazier “Thrilla in Manilla”).  He takes us pitch by pitch through the game, injecting the memories of the players and coaches as commentary, and even telling of the life and career of each player as he makes his first appearance in the game.  This back-and-forth style creates great sympathy in the reader for the players as flesh-and-blood human beings.  We care about them.  We root for them.  It also creates an air of suspense and anticipation for the next pitch, the next play, the next plot twist.  Even though I already knew the ultimate outcome, and even many of the key turning points in the game, to a degree greater than I anticipated, I rode the emotional roller coaster of a fan throughout his compelling account of this compelling game.

 Game Six has some weaknesses as well.  When the players used profane language, Frost quotes them verbatim.  Thus the book will offend the sensibilities of some adult readers and make the book off-limits to younger baseball fans.  The coda (relating players’ subsequent careers and lives thereafter) was too long and thus anticlimactic.  Frost also draws out far too long his lament about how free agency has ruined baseball.  However, even with its flaws, Mark Frost’s book is one that every true baseball fan can read and enjoy – and should.  I conclude with perhaps the best description of athletics I have ever read anywhere, which I quote at length:

 They’re in late middle age now, all the players who strode the stage of Game Six.  The youthful, big-league dreams they all shared had come to pass, lifted them up, making possible a large American life during and after their careers that for most would have otherwise remained hopelessly out of reach.  To a man they all still love the game that gave them their measure of glory, and if baseball has more than its share of the intractable dilemmas informing so much of modern life, it also still has the game itself, in all its sweet formal simplicity and complex interior reality; that remains its richest, most valuable asset.  The idea of finding meaning in a game, no matter how elevated the level of play or its artificially inflated significance in a culture that all too often celebrates size over substance, it easy to write off against the weight of the world’s concerns or the pressing limits of finite life spans.  But such condescending assessments miss the essential nature of the nourishment these contests provide; because it is the human qualities embodied and displayed by the players in these arenas that we drink in and from which we derive soulful benefit: grace, stalwart strength, determination and inner fire, standing up under pressure, persistence and faith in something larger than the self, taking joy in victory, yielding with dignity in defeat.  These things matter and they are, as much as any identifiable part of the human experience, eternal.

Monte-who, you ask?

 Why would I read a political treatise of an 18^th-century French baron, you ask?  Two main reasons:

1. It gets me back on track with my personal project to read through The Great Books of the Western World.  (This is vol. 35.)
2. Montesquieu was one of the most formative writers in the thinking of America’s founding fathers (Blackstone, Locke, and the Bible being the others).

 Montesquieu’s best material is in the first 100 pages, and his greatest contribution to political theory is in Book XI: the separation of powers.  He divides the ideal republic into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.  (This should start to sound very, very familiar!)  He issues this somber warning: “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty…  Again, there can be no liberty, if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.  …There would be an end of everything, were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise those three powers, that of enacting laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.” 

 Less than half a century after Montesquieu’s death in 1755, men like Madison and Franklin and Washington took his blueprint and created just such a republic – our republic.

 I also noticed, as I read The Spirit of Laws, how many other, lesser of Montesquieu’s ideas made their way directly into the U.S. Constitution: the national legislature meeting regularly, the power of impeachment of the executive invested in the legislature, the executive being the commander of the military, the need to provide for amending a constitution, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, etc.

 Montesquieu had a very realistic (i.e., Biblical) view of human nature and the political temptations to which fallen men are prone.  Here is a sampling of amazingly relevant thoughts, ideas, and warnings…

 “The real wants of the people ought never to give way to the imaginary wants of the state.  Imaginary wants are those which flow from the passions and the weakness of the governors, from the vain conceit of some extraordinary project, from the inordinate desire of glory, and from a certain impotence of mind incapable of withstanding the impulse of fancy.”  Doesn’t this sound like politicians who promise their constituents that they’ll “bring home the bacon” so that they get bridges-to-nowhere, highways, and libraries named after them?

 “Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry: she renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labour.  But if an arbitrary [government] should attempt to deprive the people of nature’s bounty, they would fall into a disrelish of industry; and then indolence and inaction must be their only happiness.”  Congressional extension of unemployment to 99 weeks (nearly two years), anyone?

 “To say that there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the radii were not equal.”  Yet this is exactly what Elena Kagan recently said in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee: that she didn’t have any theory of natural, unalienable rights (that is, those which are granted by God) outside of those contained in the Constitution (that is, those which are granted by the government).

 “In all magistracies, the greatness of the power must be compensated by the brevity of the duration.”  Is it too late for term limits for Congress?

 “Ambition is pernicious in a republic.”  Enough said!

 “As education in monarchies tends to raise and ennoble the mind, in despotic governments its only aim is to debase it.”  This explains why liberals and progressives have been dumbing down American schools for the past 150 years.  As we move in this country from a soft tyranny toward a hard tyranny, they need a more and more docile populace – easily duped and easily led.

 “An equal division of lands cannot be established in all democracies.  There are some circumstances in which a regulation of this nature would be impracticable, dangerous, and even subversive of the constitution.”  The redistribution of wealth, so dearly regarded and tenaciously held by the leaders of our current government, will “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

 “Is it to be imagined that the laws which abolish the property of land and the succession of estates will diminish the avarice and cupidity of the great?  By no means.  They will rather stimulate this cupidity and avarice.  The great men will be prompted to use a thousand oppressive methods [to retain their wealth].”  The Marxist class warfare propaganda (“soak the rich”) never works; it never has.  It merely creates the “crony capitalism” that we are seeing in America today, in which corporations and their lobbyists suck up to the government to get favorable treatment.

 “In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.”  Do you feel like our current politicians consider you to be “everything” or “nothing”?  That tells you under which kind of government you are living.

 The last 2/3 of the book meanders in the very tall weeds of ancient history (Rome, Greece, Egypt) and 18^th-century jurisprudence (such arcane laws as trial by combat [duels]), and Montesquieu spends a lot of time on European (and especially French) political debates, but the first 1/3 is worth the price of admission.  What Montesquieu could only dream of, we have actually enjoyed in this country, and if we are going to remain free, we have to recover our political moorings.  That means getting reacquainted with the founding fathers, and when we follow the footnote trail in their writings, it often leads us to…Baron Charles de Montesquieu.

What would Moses, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, Osama bin Laden, and Josef Stalin have in common?

 They were all leaders of mass movements comprised of The True Believer, as described in Eric Hoffer’s 1951 provocative classic.

 Impossible, you say?  Insane, you say?  Not if taken merely in the psychosocial terms that Hoffer lays out in his book.  He sets forth his working hypothesis and presuppositions in the preface (you should always read the preface!): “All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them…breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.  …There is a certain uniformity in all types of dedication, of faith, of pursuit of power, of unity and of self-sacrifice.  There are vast differences in the contents of holy causes and doctrines, but a certain uniformity in the factors which make them effective.  …However different the holy causes people die for, they perhaps die basically for the same thing.”

 Quick critique: One of Hoffer’s basic presuppositions is the moral equivalency of all mass movements.  Again, from the preface (you should always read the preface!): “The book passes no judgments, and expresses no preferences.  It merely tries to explain…”  Of course, this is self-referentially absurd: not judging is itself a judgment, and not preferring is itself a preference.  Complete objectivity and absolute neutrality are myths.  Leveling all mass movements is a reductive fallacy of the first order (I call it “nothing buttery’): reducing Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Communism, and National Socialism all to “nothing but” fanaticism may account for some of their similarity, but it fails to take into account not only the obvious differences in their doctrines, but also the stark differences in their outcomes. 

 However, on a strictly human level (akin to Solomon’s view of life “under the sun” in Ecclesiastes), Hoffer’s analysis is fascinating.  As I read, I found myself applying his characteristics of the true believer to various political, cultural, and religious leaders in the news today.  See if this reminds you of anything in our recent experience: “…extravagant hope, even when not backed by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring.  For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power – a slogan, a word, a button.  …As for the hopeful…they all proceed recklessly with the present, wreck it if necessary, and create a new world.  …When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed.  For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them.  It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

 How and why do people become fanatical?  Said another way: what kind of person is susceptible to fanaticism?  This is what Hoffer is trying to explain most of all.  Basically, his answer is: those who are unhappy with their lives as they are and have no hope of changing their situation.  “The ideal potential convert is the individual who stands alone, who has no collective body he can blend with and lose himself in and so mask the pettiness, meaninglessness and shabbiness of his individual existence.”  The two greatest needs of the human psyche – a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose – are unfulfilled in this person, until the mass movement offers them both to him.  Part Two of the book devotes a chapter to each type of potential convert: the poor, misfits (including youth, unemployed college graduates, and immigrants), the inordinately selfish, the ambitious, minorities, the bored, and sinners (more on that last one later).  Do we know any of these in America today?

 What kind of society is a breeding ground for a fanatical movement?  “The milieu most favorable for the rise and propagation of mass movements is one in which a once compact corporate structure is…in a state of disintegration.  …Where the corporate pattern is strong, it is difficult for a mass movement to find a footing.”  So where families, churches, communities, and nations are strong and vibrant, people are satisfied with life, and they are resistant to being radicalized, but where these institutions and cultural bonds are in decay, mass movements may be fomented.  Do we know anything like this in America today?

 Hoffer maintains that the two outstanding marks of a mass movement are “united action” and “self-sacrifice.”  He deals with these two dynamics in detail in Part Three.  Techniques and tools used by movement leaders to unify their followers include: hatred, imitation, persuasion and coercion, action, and suspicion.  Factors promoting self-sacrifice include: identification with the group, make-believe (rituals, symbols, etc.), a coherent system of doctrine (plausible worldview), deprecation of the present in favor of a better future.  On the latter: “Possessed of a vivid vision of past and future, the true believer sees himself part of something that stretches endlessly backward and forward – something eternal.”  Of the fanatical self-discipline and self-sacrifice that these movements demand (and get!), Hoffer, consistent with his premises, gives a psychological explanation: “The self-mastery needed in overcoming the appetites gives [the true believers] an illusion of strength.  They feel that in mastering themselves they have mastered the world.  …It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings.”

 There are several types of leaders who generate, expand, and sustain mass movements.  One type is “the man of words.”  Observes Hoffer: “It is easy to see how the faultfinding man of words, by persistent ridicule and denunciation, shakes prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and familiarizes the masses with the idea of change.  …For it is a remarkable fact that the militant man of words…often prepares the ground not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a corporate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith.”  Does this sound familiar?

 Here are a few more random but quality soundbites.  Think about our current religious/political/social milieu and you will find these immensely and intensely relevant.

• “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.  When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
• “We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it.”
• “Every mass movement is in a sense a migration – a movement toward a promised land…”
• “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”
• “Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.  Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual?”
• “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement that the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.”
• “Glory is largely a theatrical concept.  There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience…”
• “When there is no hope, people…allow themselves to be killed without a fight.  …How else explain the fact that millions of Europeans allowed themselves to be led into annihilation camps and gas chambers, knowing beyond doubt that they were being led to death?  It was not the least of Hitler’s formidable powers that he knew how to drain his opponents…of all hope.”
• “It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.  What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.”
• “It is the true believer’s ability to ‘shut his eyes and stop his ears’ to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy.”
• “There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer.  He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning.  Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hairsplitting, and scholastic tortuousness.”
• “They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion.  …They are easily persuaded and led.”
• “The atheist is a religious person.  He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.”
• “It is doubtful whether the fanatic who deserts his holy cause or is suddenly left without one can ever adjust himself to an autonomous individual existence.  He remains a homeless hitchhiker on the highways of the world thumbing a ride on any eternal cause that rolls by.”
• “The fanatical soldier is usually a fanatic turned soldier rather than the other way around.”
• “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents.”
• “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”
• “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.  Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.  A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both.”
• “When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom – freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”
• “It is probably as true that violence breeds fanaticism as that fanaticism begets violence.  It is often impossible to tell which came first.  …The practice of terror serves that true believer not only to cow and crush his opponents but also to invigorate and intensify his own faith.”
• “The leader…articulates and justifies the resentment dammed up in the souls of the frustrated.”
• “Not all the qualities enumerated above are equally essential.  The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity…”
• “The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves.  Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment.  Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”
• “The true believer is eternally incomplete, eternally insecure.”
• “A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”
• “The blindness of the fanatic is a source of strength…but it is the cause of intellectual sterility and emotional monotony.”
• “The fanatic is also mentally cocky…  At the root of his cockiness is the conviction that life and the universe conform to a simple formula – his formula.”

 Due to his methodological atheism, Hoffer gets a lot wrong – e.g., he asserts that fanaticism actually originated with Judaism and Christianity, he claims that Christianity was originally radically anti-family, he considers all religions to be irrational at their core, etc. – but he gets enough right that 60-year-old classic is worth a read, for as he says in the preface (and you should always read the preface!), “It is necessary for most of us these days to have some insight into the motives and responses of the true believer.  For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.  The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image.  And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”

This 800-page book is not recommended for individuals with heart conditions, pregnant women, or short people.

 That said, The Making of America should be on the bookshelf of everyone who calls himself a student of American history and every citizen who cares what’s going on in American politics today.

 I spent part of my vacation reading MOA mainly because it will form the basis of the next Tampa 9-12 Project study course, which I will help to teach this fall.  It’s written by the same man who wrote The 5,000 Year Leap: W. Cleon Skousen.  Like a commentary on the Bible, MOA is a line-by-line explanation of the entire U.S. Constitution, including – and this is the best part! – copious notes and quotes from James Madison’s journal record of the Constitutional Convention.  You actually get to read who was for or against each of the provisions, and why they either prevailed or failed.  If you have ever wondered about the meaning of such obscure terms as “habeus corpus” of “ex post facto laws,”  MOA will enlighten you.  If you have ever glossed over such throwaway provisions as “bills of attainder” or “letters of marquee and reprisal,” MOA might cause you to take a second look.  Everything – everything – in the Constitution is there for a reason, and many legal protections we now take for granted were things under which they themselves had suffered and vowed to change for posterity’s sake.  We are the posterity for whom they suffered and labored.

 When I finished MOA, I went back and read through the Constitution.  I felt that I understood it for the very first time.

 MOA has some fascinating and little-known information about the background, meaning, and applications of the various provisions in the Constitution.  For instance, did you know…

• …that the states offered 189 amendments, that Madison reduced them to 17, that Congress approved 12, and that the states ratified only the 10 we now call the Bill of Rights?
• …that the 14-year residency requirement for presidential candidates might very well have prevented Benjamin Franklin from becoming president?
• …that the convention considered a provision in the Constitution requiring 3 presidents from different sections of the country?
• …that there is a second preamble in the Constitution (before the Amendments!) that is rarely printed in copies today?

 Another value of MOA is that it demonstrates the close conceptual ties between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  I had never realized how many of the “long train of abuses” listed in the Declaration against King George were legislated against in this new country: bills of attainder, quartering troops, titles of nobility, the legislative branch of government (e.g., a parliament) essentially neutered by the executive branch (a king), and many, many more.  I had also never realized how the worldview of the Declaration, including the “laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and the “unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” laid the groundwork for the Constitution.  In other words, not just in an historical sense, but also in a political philosophical sense, without the Declaration, there would be no Constitution.

 From the “So what?” department, it’s more important than ever for American citizens to have a working knowledge of this foundational document…

• …when Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan declares that she has no knowledge of any natural rights outside of the Constitution itself (i.e., that aren’t granted by the government)…
• …when the Congress passes a law that requires American citizens to enter into private contracts with health insurance companies…
• …when the House Majority Whip James Clyburn announces that Congress is just making up the rules as it goes along…
• …when President Obama announces on national television, “Tomorrow I will meet with BP officials and inform them that they will set aside a fund for the victims of the Gulf Coast oil spill…”
• …when the Department of Justice brings a lawsuit against Arizona for enforcing federal immigration laws, but ignores sanctuary cities for violating those same laws…
• …when the federal government enforces a 6-month shutdown of a private industry (i.e., oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico)…
• …when the Department of Justice drops a lawsuit against voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia and instructs its attorneys not to bring any more suits against minorities…
• …when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi responds to the question about where the Constitution allows Congress to do certain things, “Are you kidding me?  Are you kidding me?”

 Perhaps the most important feature of MOA is how it highlights the fact that this precise form of federal republic was (at that time) new, radically innovative, and unique among nations in the history of the world.  It was truly “the American experiment.”  The liberty and prosperity that we count our birthright is rare in history, and even in the world today.  The founding fathers themselves were astounded at what came out of the convention, and they considered it a miracle of the first order.  James Madison observed: “They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society.  They have reared the fabrics of government which have no model on the face of the globe…which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.”

 The torch of American liberty has now been passed to us, and only time will tell whether future generations will bless us or curse us for our actions or our inaction.  I dare say that most of us don’t value our freedom nearly enough, or appreciate the high price our ancestors paid to provide it for us, or what it will take for us to keep the torch burning – but I can think of few books more important or more helpful than The Making of America to open our eyes to the preciousness of our past heritage, the precariousness of our future legacy, and the urgency of our present task.

A few summers ago, I picked up some books from a bookseller at a summer training conference.  One of them was The Intellectual Life by a French Dominican Priest named A. G. Sertillanges.

Have you hit the delete button yet?

You shouldn’t.  We claim to be making young people into disciples, scholars, and citizens.  We won’t do a good job of that unless we aspire to be disciples, scholars, and citizens ourselves. 

Sertillanges’ book is actually written for those who wish to do intellectual work.  However, it is also beneficial for those who might wish to become intellectual people – not geniuses, not elitists, not recluses – just people who want to think deeply about important issues instead of just floating along on the cultural tides like so much human flotsam.  This sentiment is not new: Socrates famously wrote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Sertillanges sounds a similar theme when he writes: “The public as a whole is vulgar and likes only what is vulgar.”

The subtitle of the book is: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods.  Those three movements actually represent the steps from the strongest part of the book to the weakest.  Sertillanges is excellent on the “spirit” of the intellectual life, practical on the “conditions,” and not as helpful on its “methods.”  The “spirit” sections read like great devotional writings.  The “methods” sections are a little outdated (not his fault), since this book was written in 1920 with a typewriter, and technology today has made the research possibilities for thinkers today so much more vast.

Spirit

“The life of study is austere and imposes grave obligations.  It pays, it pays richly; but it exacts an initial outlay that few are capable of.  The athletes of the mind, like those of the playing field, must be prepared for privations, long training, a sometimes superhuman tenacity.  We must give ourselves from the heart, if truth is to give itself to us.  Truth serves only its slaves.” (p. 4)  A looser translation from the French might read: “Becoming a more deeply intellectual person isn’t always exciting or as entertaining as The Sopranos or American Idol, but it will enlarge our souls as TV never could.  We won’t be able to fritter away the hours on Facebook, but we will be in touch with the greatest minds our race has ever produced.  We will never master the truth; we must let it master us.”

Similarly: “To get something without paying for it is the universal desire; but it is the desire of cowardly hearts and weak brains.  The universe does not respond to the first murmured request, and the light of God does not shine under your study lamp unless your soul asks for it with persistent effort.” (p. 6)

Knowledge must be harnessed to goodness: “By practicing (sic) the truth that we know, we merit the truth that we do not yet know.  …If I embark on the tributary, I reach the river, and then the sea.” (p. 19)  “Great thoughts come from the heart.” (p. 24)  “The good is the brother of the true.” (p. 58)  “Study has been called a prayer to truth.” (p. 69)

Reason must serve faith: “Study is itself a divine office, and indirect divine office; it seeks out and honors the traces of the Creator, or His images, according as it investigates nature or humanity; but it must make way at the right moment for direct intercourse with Him.  …Study carried to such a point that we give up prayer and recollection, that we cease to read Holy Scripture…is an abuse and a fool’s game.” (29)  “Hence, for the fully awakened soul, every truth is a meeting-place; the sovereign Thought invites ours to the sublime meeting; shall we miss it?” (p. 31)

Conditions

Sertillanges outlines certain organizational principles for the intellectual life: simplifying your life, practicing some solitude, limiting the scope of study – in other words, avoiding the Vanity Fair all around us.

Simplifying life: “Money and attention squandered on trifles would be much better spent in collecting a library, providing for instructive travel or restful holidays, going to hear music which rekindles inspiration, and so on.” (p. 43)

Practicing solitude: “Society life is fatal to study.” (p. 42)  “Did you not prefer truth to the daily lie of a scattered life?” (p. 49)

Solitude doesn’t mean being a hermit: “A body too long motionless gets atrophied and nerveless; a soul which does the same wilts and broods.  By carrying the cult of silence too far, one would reach the silence of death.” (p. 63)

Limiting the scope of study: “The encyclopedic mind is an enemy of knowledge.” (p. 118)  “A danger lies in wait for minds that spread themselves over too many subjects: the danger of being easily satisfied.” (p. 119)  “We must read intelligently, not passionately.” (p. 147)

Since I have no affinity at all for fiction, I was thrilled to find this little gem: “There must be no question at all of poisoning your mind with novels.” (p. 148)  “As for newspapers, defend yourself against them with the energy that the continuity and the indiscretion of their assault make indispensable.” (p. 148)

Methods

Since there is nothing that good to write in this section, I will close with another devotional quote on the “spirit” of the intellectual life.  Quotes like this are worth the price of the book: “We think too little of the privilege of this bond with the greatest minds.  It multiplies the joy and profit of living, it enlarges the world and makes it a nobler and more precious place to live in, it renews for each man the glory of being a man, of having his mind open on the same horizons as the greatest, of living on high levels and of forming with his fellows, with those who afford him inspiration, a society in God.” (p. 157)

It has been a while since I have written one of these, mostly due to writing and teaching the Principles of Liberty course for the Tampa 9-12 Project, and then taking some “time off” to put together a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle – a photomosaic of the face of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, back to my favorite hobby: reading. 

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was published in 1932, predating a more famous dystopian novel, George Orwell’s 1984 by seventeen years.  The two visions of the future were very different.  In 1984, the omnipresent Big Brother ferreted out and punished sedition by torture and brainwashing.  In Brave New World, the Directorate subjugates the docile populace by an irresistible combination of genetic engineering, subliminal conditioning, chemical manipulation, and mind-numbing diversions.  As Huxley wrote in the preface: “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

 The very title has become iconic in our society, and perhaps I was expecting too much.  The concept is superbly fascinating, but the technology is obviously outdated (perhaps that is inevitable when writing about the scientific future), the characters rather shallow psychologically (at least when compared with those of a Dostoevsky), and the plot simply pedestrian (wasn’t it inevitable that the Savage wouldn’t be able to bear civilization?).  The only interesting chapters to me were 16 and 17, in which the Savage and the Controller held a very frank discussion of the relative merits of freedom vs. happiness.

 While Huxley’s vision of a genetically engineered caste system might seem at least remotely plausible – especially now, with the completion of the Human Genome Project – I think it is far more likely that dictators will continue to go in for the shorter, quicker, more direct road to totalitarianism: good old-fashioned revolution.  Power comes, not from the needle of a syringe, but from the barrel of a gun.

Have you ever heard that America’s founding fathers were deists, and that the Declaration and the Constitution have their philosophical roots in the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, while eschewing Biblical Christianity? 

Gary Amos’s Defending the Declaration: How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the Writing of the Declaration of Independence will explode that myth, disabuse you of any notions that America was not founded as a Christian nation, give you a greater appreciation for the breadth and depth of the founding fathers’ religious and political genius, and restore your confidence in American exceptionalism.

 Three factors influenced my selection of this title at this time:

1. I am doing research for my upcoming “Principles of Liberty” course for the Tampa 9-12 Project.
2. The fall semester exam in Logic, reducing the Declaration of Independence to a single syllogism, sparked a lively discussion on the Biblical merits of the American Revolution.
3. #2 above has led me to set up a faculty discussion on this topic in an upcoming faculty meeting.
4. Patsy Hinton borrowed this book from me and returned it with such high praise that she is buying her own copy so that she can highlight and write in it.

Because of #1 above, I haven’t been reading many books cover-to-cover lately, but when #2, #3, and #4 all converged in my experience in the last month, I decided to make an exception in this case – and I’m glad I did.

 I remember George Grant at an ACCS conference one summer encouraging all of us, in our reading, to “follow the footnote trail.”  The idea is that if you find an author’s ideas attractive and admirable, and you want to think more like him yourself, then read the authors he referenced in his footnotes, as they would be the influences on his thought.  Then when you read those authors, find and read the authors THEY footnote, and the authors THEY footnote, and so on.

 Well, this fine book by Gary Amos will become a guide for the “footnote trail” for you regarding the Declaration of Independence.  He will point you to the authors that were formative in the thinking of America’s founding fathers:

• The usuals – Locke, Blackstone, Montesquieu, and Rutherford;
• Others of whom I had never heard (or had forgotten) – Sir Edward Coke (pronounced “cook”), Henri de Bracton, John Fortescue;
• Some that might surprise you: Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin;
• And ultimately, the Bible itself: Moses, Isaiah, Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul.

Mr. Amos lifts key phrases from the Declaration, like “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” “self-evident truths,”  “unalienable rights,” “consent of the governed,” “judge of the world,” and “divine providence,” and traces the developments of these concepts back through history and literature (i.e., the authors mentioned above) to argue that these ideas were rooted deeply in English Common Law, which was rooted in Medieval Scholasticism, which was rooted in the Judeo-Christian worldview of the Bible, which was rooted in the mind and heart of God Himself.

 While he recognizes that other Christian scholars take the usual footnote trail (unthinkingly, uncritically, in his opinion), tracing these ideas through the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and back to Classical Antiquity (Greece and Rome), he argues convincingly that they have bought the errors and lies of men who do not want American to have been founded as a Christian nation because that would sit in judgment on their secular worldview.  As R.J. Rushdoony has said, “Men cannot give a meaning to history that they themselves lack.”  Mr. Amos takes the position about the secular scholars who desperately want America’s founding fathers to be deists, or worse: Methinks they do protest too much.  He points out, plainly: “The Christian roots of American Revolutionary theory…are historically evident, logically compelling, and easily researchable.”

 Mr. Amos makes tremendous use of footnotes himself, citing profusely, and helpfully, the original works (e.g., Lex Rex) so influential on the founding fathers that he summarizes in his own text.  He makes a very convincing case that the Declaration’s ideas set forth a view of the world in which “political liberty is a corollary of spiritual liberty in Christ,” in which “man exhanges the iron heel of statism for the rod and staff of justice.”  The last page contains this wonderful passage:

                “At different times in different lands, men saw different parts of the vision.  Parts of it were even put into practice in some of their countries, but never before 1776 had all of its ideas been implemented at one time.  The American Revolution is unique because it began by declaring all these ideas as part of the foundation of a nation.  A new political order was born on the earth.

                “Now, however, the Declaration’s ideas are scoffed at by philosophers, misrepresented by historians, attacked by clergymen, ridiculed by law professors, held in contempt by power-hungry politicans, and ignored by the people.  As long as this continues, the American Revolution is not over.”

Want to join the Revolution?  You could start by reading this fine book.

1. Does the phrase, “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” indicate that the founders’ thinking stood on the slippery slope of Deism instead of Biblical Christianity?  Admittedly, Jefferson, the primary author, was probably a Deist – and maybe Franklin – but probably 50 of the other 54 signers were orthodox Christians, and it seems unlikely to me that they would let that phrase stand if it could have been understood (or rather, misunderstood) that the “Divine Providence” mentioned at the end of the document as anything other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2. Does the premise of “unalienable rights” rise beyond the level of self-evident truth (in the Enlightenment ideal) to the level of religious dogma?  In other words, did the civil disobedience in which the colonists were about to engage have Biblical justification and divine sanction?  They certainly thought so, though reasonable Christians might disagree.

• Between individual liberty, states’ sovereignty, and a powerful national government;
• Between majority rule and minority rights;
• Between the three branches of the federal government itself; 
• Between the temptations of power, enlightened self-interest, and accountability to the people.

1. They believed that the States would guard the liberties of their citizens.  “The State legislatures, who will always be not only vigilant but suspicious and jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government, will constantly have their attention awake to the conduct of the national rulers, and will be ready enough, if anything improper appears, to sound the alarm to the people, and not only to be the voice, but, if necessary, the arm of their discontent” (Federalist 26).  I guess they could never have foreseen the day when the States would be so fiscally irresponsible as to go deeply into debt, and that States (like California!) would apply to Washington for bailouts, so that the feds could hold the States hostage for the ransom of federal dollars.  My friends, that’s what the $787 billion so-called “stimulus package” passed in early 2009 is all about!
2. They believed that the People would be ever vigilant and would never tolerate infringements of their liberties.  “The House of Representatives…can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.  …If it be asked what is to restrain the House from making legal discriminations in favour of themselves and a particular class of society?  I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant, and manly spirit which actuates the people of America – a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.  If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty” (Federalist 57).  My friends, we have lived to see the day: this happens all the time now.  What does this say about Congress, and about us?