TRS Sunday Post: Are We Losing What Unites Us As Americans?
Much happened this week; much to talk about.
Scandal at Liberty University, three Antifa dead in Kensoha, one dead in Portland (for the crime of being a Trump supporter), Biden’s poll numbers cratering, violence at the White House and the first real existential crisis our nation has faced since the American Civil War.
For those who have read my thoughts on how to recognize and remind future Americans about slavery through stolperstein — quite literally, stumbling blocks — it might come as a surprise that the Latin root for the word scandal comes from the word scandalum (stumbling block).
Scandal is also closely connected to another word we might not think about when we share such gossip: slander — which also stems from the same Anglo-French word esclaundre and ultimately the Latin scandalum.
I have very little interest in the stumbling blocks presented by l’affaire Falwell and the wincing most Liberty University alumni and students are going through at the moment. In fact, as a Catholic, one might even be inclined to empathize (see: Cardinal Theodore McCarrick).
What is interesting about scandal is that it is a past-tense thing. No one is actually repeating the act; it has come and gone. So where, one might ask, is the stumbling?
That fault, dear Brutus, is in our stars.
In order for scandal to work, it must require some active participation from a third party viewer. That is where the slander begins.
Be careful about the indulgence of scandal, folks. It does more harm to us stumbling over it than the scandalous act itself.
Seamus Heaney remains one of Ireland’s most beloved poets. In Ireland, being considered a poet is no small thing. Robert Graves described Ireland’s poets as “historian, doctor, musician, magician, prophet, Chief Justice and Counsellor to the King — [ranking] high above soldiers and sailors.”
To the the subject of an Irish poet was as near a thing as judgment day as one could experience. Something about poetry as a “means of storing power” — and thereby, speaking truth to power — made it a target of repression from Tudor England to the Soviet Empire.
One might be tempted to draw the inference that power and truth, therefore, are two very separate things. One would be right.
Heaney’s poem When All The Others Were Away At Mass is a Sunday morning poem, and it remains one of Heaney’s most famous. Published in a series of poems dedicated to his mother, we are given a moment where despite Sunday obligations, a memory — the memory — lingers.
So what in blue blazes does this have to do with this week’s violence?
If wisdom is the pause between thought and speech, then surely between impulse and action there has to be something to describe the pause.
One hesitates to join the commentary regarding the violence in Kenosha, Washington D.C., and now Portland — violence we get to see that dwarfs the everyday violence in cities such as New York and Chicago, not so much out of cowardice, but because there is an entire media apparatus that is actively looking to knock folks off the fence in service to political religions. By participating in the scandal of violence, we become part of the problem (see what I did there?)
If the history of the 20th century teaches us anything, it is that secular religions are far more dangerous than sacred religions.
Perhaps what bothers me more is the realization that America — our United States — has yet to go through the whole socialist/fascist civil war that most of the world has already endured.
By contrast, Europe was the center of the Cold War; the communists won in China; the Ba’athists at first lost and now are seemingly back in the Middle East; Latin America convulsed with these revolutions in the 1970s; sub-Saharan Africa is quickly becoming a client state of China’s ambitions in the Indian Ocean.
The secular religions of socialism and fascism abbreviate that pause between thought and speech; between impulse and action. Therein lies the danger, because in a free society it is always easier to rush towards the fringes and extremes in an attempt to outflank one’s opposition.
Above all else, this is the precise reason why Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will not (and cannot) condemn BLM/Antifa for their violence. Instead, they will have to equivocate in ones and twos while ignoring nine weeks of uninterrupted violence in three dozen cities across the United States.
Biden being kept in the basement, Trump’s call for law and order could not come at a better time. Yet sending in the National Guard is precisely what BLM/Antifa wants, and they are more than happy to sacrifice a few useful idiots as political martyrs to their secular gods.
“Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question inaptness to act on any.”
— Thucydides, “History of the Peloponnesian War,” Book III, 81-82 (d. 395 BC )
Sounds a lot like Virginia Republican politics over the last decade, doesn’t it?
Of course, Thucydides believed that these tensions between the demos (people) and the aristos (excellent) were simply a part of human nature. Thinkers such as Plato, Montesquieu and James Madison sought to pit these factions against one another in order to provide stability to the state. Nature seems to find a way.
Meanwhile, the mantra of “if it isn’t killing people then it isn’t violence” is quickly being picked up by the political right in this country. Livelihoods are balanced against lives. Brinkmanship meets brinkmanship.
That’s how people get hurt.
If the violence directed against people such as Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) — the man who authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act — after the RNC Convention, then that says a lot more about the mob than it does Rand Paul.
More to the point, who decided that it would be a good idea to do a rah-rah on the White House lawn with Republican leadership only to release them into the arms of BLM/Antifa supporters?
That’s how you radicalize leadership, folks — by expecting the left to drop their mask and behave accordingly. Well played, Mr. Trump.
I’ll leave you with this. These are the thoughts of Julia Jackson, the mother of Jacob Blake Jr. as she prayed for our country:
“We need healing. As I pray for my son's healing — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — I also have been praying even before this for the healing of our country. God has placed each and every one of us in this country because he wanted us to be here. Clearly you can see by now that I have beautiful brown skin. But take a look at your hand. Whatever shade it is, it is beautiful as well. How dare we hate what we are. We are humans. God did not make one type of tree or flower or fish or horse or grass or rock. How dare you ask Him to make one type of human that looks just like you?
“I'm not talking to just Caucasian people. I am talking to everyone: white, Black, Japanese, Chinese, red, brown. No one is superior to the other. The only supreme being is God himself.
“Please, let's begin to pray for healing for our nation. We are the United States. Have we been united? Do you understand what's going to happen when we fall? Because a house that is against itself cannot stand.
“To all of the police officers: I'm praying for you and your families. To all of the citizens, my black and brown sisters and brothers: I'm praying for you. I believe that you are intelligent beings just like the rest of us. Everybody: Let's use our hearts, our love, and our intelligence to work together, to show the rest of the world how humans are supposed to treat each other. America is great when we behave greatly.”
These are the voices America needs to hear. CNN and Fox ought to be putting this prayer on a continuous loop — but they won’t. Guess why?
Political religions are a terrible substitute for sacred religions. Seamus Heaney, in some way, saw that in the hands of his own mother the same way Julia Jackson sees it in the hands of others.
Such are my thoughts. Thanks for being patient with them.
FOX News: Trump Calls Out Oregon National Guard as Shooting Leaves 1 Dead
Politico: Colleges Clamp Down as COVID Threatens More Closures
CNN: Cloudflare, CenturyLink Outage Takes Down Internet For Many
The Hill: Democrats Fumble For Balance As Violence Surges At Protests
Contest for Liberty by Seanegan P. Sculley
I have only started reading this book, but can tell that it is going to be an excellent one. Sculley asks some fairly interesting questions, starting with how a Virginia gentleman came to run an army of New Englanders? Was New England leadership really that inferior? Were New Englanders poor soldiers compared to Pennsylvanians and Virginians? How did New Englanders feel about being led (and ultimately disciplined) by these Virginia planters? Great questions on how 13 squabbling colonies answered the call to become one nation.
Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution by John Gilbert McCurdy
We are all pretty comfortable with the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the point where we have a constellation of so-called defenders around each. Yet the Founding Fathers in their wisdom thought that the forcible quartering of troops was so abhorrent, it was stated well before search and seizures (4A), fair trials (6A) or even restricting the power of the federal government (9A and 10A). McCurdy goes through quartering’s history in Britain, how quartering fueled American resentment against standing armies, and why American military bases today tend to be rather self-enclosed affairs.
Richard Mulcahy: From The Politics of War to the Politics of Peace, 1913-1924 by Padraig O Caoimh
Mulchay was several years older than this superior during the Irish War for Independence, Michael Collins. O’Caoimh details how Mulcahy provided the quiet yet immovable rod of iron for Collins during the transition from British rule in the 1920s, including his own fall from power as anti-Treaty forces began to move away from physical force republicanism.
As always, feel free to share the TRS Sunday Post with others. Feel free to respond directly to this e-mail with comments, ideas, suggestions or just helpful thoughts. As always, thank you for being a part of Virginia’s public square.
Shaun Kenney is the editor of The Republican Standard, former chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fluvanna County, and a former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.