Last weekend, a group of conservatives convened the annual Principles First Summit, this one with the theme of “Conserving America’s Liberal Tradition.” I spoke on the opening panel, alongside thinker-journalists William Kristol and Matthew Continetti and historian Francis Fukuyama. As the curtain riser, our theme was essentially the theme of the conference as a whole: “America’s Tradition of Classical Liberalism.” And by “classical liberalism,” of course, what is meant is what once was known as the “liberal tradition” that describes the philosophical framework that, very broadly speaking, guided founders James Madison and Ben Franklin and theorists John Locke and Edmund Burke, among many others. It is that traditional “liberalism,” not modern American political liberalism, that modern Reaganite “conservatives” are determined to conserve.
With the caveat that this was part of a panel discussion in which I was conversing with those three other wonderful speakers, and that therefore only part of this actually was written out while part was ad-libbed, what follows is my best reconstruction of my opening remarks.
Thank you.
With all the current political challenges as outlined so far this morning, I feel a bit like C.S. Lewis’s Narnian mouse, Reepicheep, whose “mind was full of forlorn hopes, death-or-glory charges, and last stands.”
And while it may seem odd to go from C.S. Lewis to Fleetwood Mac, I also am put in mind of, quoting from Fleetwood’s song “Dreams,” “remembering what we had, and what we lost: what we had, and what we lost.”
Here’s what we in America once had. Think of yourself as an 11-year-old, one who is fond of reading heroic literature and enthralled by sports teams that triumph against the odds. And your country is really moving into gear in an 18-month-long buildup to celebrate its bicentennial. It’s April 19, 1775, the 200th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the romance of it is what catches your eye, with the poetry of “Listen my children and you shall hear / of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,” and of “By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled: There the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.”
And then about six weeks later, almost a year to the day before the Declaration of Independence, the commemoration is of George Washington showing up to the Continental Congress, arrayed in his impressive dress-blue military uniform and signaling readiness to be chosen, which of course he was, to risk all his status and wealth — he was one of the 10 richest men in all the colonies — to lead a ragtag militia against the greatest army in the world.
You want to know what could inspire such risk and such courage: What was at stake, what drove these men?
When the fall comes, your school, as did thousands of others across the country, embarks on a whole year of at least intermittent lessons leading up to the bicentennial, and you learn and are fascinated by the “consent of the governed” and by life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as 1975 ends, you also have the experience of seeing Human Events magazines that your conservative father leaves lying around the house, with week after week of the incomparable journalist M. Stanton Evans singing the praises of one Ronald Reagan. And as you pay attention to Reagan, you are struck by his amazing attitudinal buoyancy, and by his absolutely palpable love of country.
And as the months wear on and the celebration builds, you are struck by how all across the country, Americans are taking immense pride in their nation. Even coming off Watergate, and an oil embargo, and an unpopular war, and assassinations, Americans just love America. And it moves you. And sure enough, when the big day finally arrives, and the commemorations erupt coast to coast, and you watch the fireworks — you’re 12 years old by now — you turn to your father and say, “Dad, I want to live to be One hundred and twelve, because I want to live to see the tricentennial!”
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Alas, though, now compare that to a story from nine or 10 years ago, one that shows the “what we lost” part from Fleetwood Mac’s song.
I was one of several older people visiting with what were supposed to be some of the best student leaders at a college considered one of the best in the country. In other words, the very sweetest cream of the cream of the crop.
One of our group of visitors made reference to “the course of human events” and being “endowed with our Creator with certain unalienable rights.” He was met with blank stares. None of these nine or 10 students — not one — recognized the reference.
We of course apprised them that this was the Declaration of Independence being cited.
About 15 minutes later — after, obviously, the declaration already had been a topic of discussion, and so should have been in their minds — in another context, I asked if it resonated with them to hear men ask for “the protection of divine Providence” while “mutually pledging to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
More blank stares.
None of these top students at a top college, even after 15 minutes earlier having the Declaration of Independence come up in conversation, could mentally place this new quotation as being from the same document.
Worse, two realizations hit me as the students were apprised again that this was the declaration. First was that the declaration itself meant nothing to them — inspired no reverence, catalyzed zero emotion. Second was that they weren’t even moved by the sheer romance of the sentiment.
In any context, a pledge of “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” should touch some deep chord. It’s poetic; it speaks of adventure.
For millennia, history has been filled with people ennobled by calls such as Churchill’s for “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” or Homer writing, “Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this” — or even Bruce Springsteen singing, “we made a promise we swore we’d always remember: No retreat, baby, no surrender.” These are paeans to a freedom to choose nobly how to live.
But not for this bunch. This wasn’t even part of their language, their frame of reference; it wasn’t part of their “safe spaces.”
And that was a decade ago. The situation has only gotten worse. By now, a full generation, probably more, has been educated in ways that deaden the imagination, values feelings of safety well above freedom, look at history as a wasteland of human evil, and does not remotely appreciate the near-miracle of the American Project.
Of course, if the story of America doesn’t speak to a huge subset of an entire generation, then they’ll be even less likely to grapple with and embrace the rich philosophical amalgam of Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Madison, Erasmus, Montesquieu, and others that together form the intellectual tradition of classical liberalism.
Which leaves us — well, where?
Well, it leaves us in big trouble, because even as our institutions are rotten, we may be stuck with a choice for president between two crooked, brain-fogged old men, one who sold out to the crazy Left and one who is a raging menace fond of both autocrats and of mob violence.
If the situation is as dire as I fear, if time is as much of the essence as I fear, then we can’t afford to go on like this for four more years.
But … but … here’s the key thing: history also teaches that hopes need not be forlorn. A big stand need not be a last stand. What was lost can be re-found.
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Sometimes blood, sweat, and tears really do win the day, and, as Churchill showed, it actually does save civilization.
That’s why we have this panel discussion, and the rest of this conference, to draw up some battle plans.
