“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
- The Gospel according to Matthew in the Christian Bible
There has always been a dichotomy between the professed beliefs in American ideals and the practice of those ideals from this nation’s inception to the present time in world history. Under the glorious light of hope towards “a more perfect union” there have always been those within society, since the nation’s founding, who were caught within sinister rip currents of disunion and who have misused the noble and patriotic language of true political republicanism and of liberal democracy to justify their misdeeds.
Throughout human history the ideal of patriotism has often found itself with very strange bedfellows who had beguiled it by making phantasmagorical, false and ruinous promises. Their love songs boasted lyrics of verdant peace and love while those were accompanied by discordant undertones of inhospitable confusion and destructive hate. Two ideas which come to mind from their pantheon of noble ideals, which exemplify this national schizophrenia, is its politics and its professed love for the freedom of religion.
Many Americans, even within their intelligentsia, appear as mere adolescents in that regard, tossed about upon the roiling seas of pubescence, enamoured more by the idea of being in love than they are by being motivated by the realistic demands and the constraints of mature love. In real terms, they, ubiquitously, come across to curious bystanders as being more romantically infatuated with political idealism, especially those which emanated from the pantheon of vaunted Western philosophy, than they are inspired by the hard, tactile, necessary, and nitty-gritty implementation of those ideals. This disconnection between their words and their deeds has created, within much of the populace, a malady of blind malaise.
This malaise or angst has come out of a reaction to minority elements within their society who have questioned the value of such ideals against the backdrop of the untoward experiences of those minority elements not having received, through practice, what was ill-translated or what was never translated from the weathered and the dusty parchments upon which such promised ideals were written.
There is a move afoot in this country today to suppress all dialogue which has unearthed, and which now seeks to rationally assess and to address American history as it has been handed down to us with a view to separate fact from fiction. The motivation behind those seeking truth in this regard is not to destroy American history nor only to address that which was patently bad about it to the total exclusion of that which was undeniably good, but to achieve and to maintain greater accuracy in our understanding of and our appreciation for American history.
This is, by no means, an idle academic exercise which is intended to create social disharmony or just to sell books for the sake of profit, but it is an attempt to clarify American values and the implementation of those values in our everyday lives appropriately. What did our founders believe? From whence was that belief derived? Did they understand and did they properly interpret the original sources upon which their system of values is based? Were they consistent in their application of those values and if not, then why not? And how should society respond to such discrepancies, especially those within the populace who have been consistently marginalized by them? How serious are the proponents of such ideals?
This discussion is not new and neither are the attempts at circumscribing education, at suppressing reading material, and at muting free speech to prevent such dialogue new. Even the usage of such an epithet as “woke” or “wokism” in an attempt to disparage, to denigrate and to discourage such discussion is threadbare. It is the same horse, on the same racetrack, but with a different jockey on a different day. When it is not the governors in different states who are vociferously engaged in the process of intellectual suppression it is the alleged educators and various self-professed guardians of American history and of American values who are leading the charge against “wokism”.
This writer has often been confronted by video advertising on the Internet calling on citizens to go back to the old ways of reading American history, in the way that the promoters of those advertisements imagine that the founding fathers had intended, enticing prospective students to enroll in courses designed to achieve that end. The inference in such promotions was that there was nothing in the historical documents which needed or which ought to be questioned. In fact, according to them, Western philosophy and Western civilization, upon which the founding fathers relied in the creation of the Constitution and of the framework of government, were, arguably, superior to anything else in human history.
But, assuming that all of that were true, why have they never, therefore, faithfully and assiduously, abided by those ideals in so many respects? Why has their implementation of them, or the lack thereof, given so many minorities just cause, using those very principles, to criticize and to condemn them? These concerns are more poignant, given the circumstances surrounding the re-election of Mr. Donald Trump in recent times.
This writer asks of those self-professed guardians of American history, of its traditions and of its values, whom he suspects are not operating out of real universities which are in pursuit of objective empirical facts, but which are mere fronts for conservative think tanks, ‘How do you reconcile the philosophy of The Social Contract, conceived of by the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, (1588 to 1679 A.D.), which the founders borrowed and included in the formation of our political system, with the actions of a powerful minority seeking to run the affairs of the country over the expressed wishes of those in the majority within the populace?’
‘How do you reconcile the selfish and disingenuous misdirection that is often used by the former over the latter in order to have them so duped that they often vote against their own best interests and against those of the general welfare of the weak and of the vulnerable within the American society? Or does anything go in a democracy?’
What say you self-righteous pharisees of white American culture and values — particularly those of you who boast of having descended from white Anglo-Saxon stock — to the following sentiments that were expressed thousands of years ago by one of ancient Rome’s most illustrious sons, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 B.C.), who was a lawyer, a philosopher, an orator and a politician when he said: “For riches, fame, and power, without wisdom and a just method of regulating ourselves and commanding others, a government is full of discredit and insolent arrogance, nor is there any kind of government more deformed than that in which the wealthiest are regarded as the noblest?”
It is from such principles which helped to lay the foundations of the ancient Roman republic that you teachers say that our political ideals were derived. Therefore, where is the exercise of what Cicero believed and of what he stoutly espoused in modern America, by you? Who is your audience, pray tell, and what is your true agenda seeing that your principles have often been confined to the mere abstraction of words — neutered by rank and prolonged inaction?
In England, in June of 1215 A.D. a document named the Magna Carta was issued. It was the first document to put into writing the principle that the king and his government were not above the law. It sought to prevent the king from exploiting his power, and it placed limits on royal authority by establishing law as a power in itself. It also protected the rights of citizens with respect to the freedom of religion — a freedom that is being steadily eroded in America today, especially of religious devotees who do not bear the title of Christian. It has been said that the founding fathers revered this document so much that it, too, was incorporated into the foundation of the U.S. Government after they had successfully rid themselves of the Government of King Charles III of Great Britain in the American Revolution which was waged between 1775 and 1783.
And so, how do you self-proclaimed defenders of Western civilization answer a man, and his surrogates in the U.S. Congress and within the electorate, who lost an election under the law, due to the will of the majority of the people, which they had exercised under the law? How do you answer him who fought to stay in power as a king, through the use of intimidation, violence, and murder on January 6, 2021, at the United States Capitol building against the law? How do you answer him who extolls and who defends the religious rights of some but not all?
How do you self-proclaimed sages of our time compare the Ides Of March, which has been used, historically, to commemorate the assassination of Julius Caesar in ancient Rome by a group of senators who were afraid that he was going to try and revive the monarchy, with the actions of a man and his supporters who tried to accomplish the complete reverse on January the 6th, in order to establish something akin to a monarchy? Instead, unlike the senators of Julius Caesar’s day, we have U.S. senators who have applauded and who have sought to reward that man for his utter and callous disregard for our hard fought and hard won American values towards the destruction of our republic.
And so, what segment of the population are you attempting to share your message with? Did you have that man in question and his supporters in mind, and those within the U.S. Senate and the House who had sought to overturn the legitimate election results which made Joe Biden president?
It was Euripides (480 – 406 B.C.) a Greek playwright, a tragedian of classical Athens, a cornerstone of ancient literary education along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander in the Hellenistic Age who said that: “The power that keeps cities of men together is noble preservation of law.” Again, it was Plato, (428/427 to 348/348 B.C), an ancient Greek philosopher who said that: “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”.
Where are those noble axioms of Western philosophy personified or exemplified in our current president-elect who has broken the record for having received more criminal indictments filed against him than any former president, and who has a criminal record which has etched him indelibly as a felon in our legal system, but who is not likely to see any time served in one of our penal institutions? What say you, oh champions of law and order, to a man who has, almost single-handedly, undermined the very foundations of our legal system by disrespecting, demeaning, and threatening our judges, and prosecutors, and by making light of our grand juries and trial juries?
What say you in reply to the words of Euripides and Plato? When you teach “American values” to your children, and they then ask you for examples from contemporary life to whom or what will you point them in order to underscore your message? If you have no intention of backing up your nice sounding words with courageous actions, then please do not waste the time of the American people.
