As we approach July 4, 2016, the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is proper to recall what the philosopher Leo Strauss, in his introduction to Natural Right and History, called the “weight and elevation” of our founding principles. But fine principles are one thing. One must also ask, how do they fare in the maelstrom of history? Can a nation founded on those principles long endure? For the weight and elevation of our founding principles would count for little if the republic based on those principles had been unable, at crucial times, to produce citizens and statesmen with the weight and elevation to defend and advance them.
The 9/11 generation—the young men and women who have volunteered by the hundreds of thousands to fight since the attack on America 15 years ago—provide the most recent evidence that we retain as a nation that kind of weight and elevation. All is not, in our third century of existence, lost. All is not, in today’s America, merely light and low.
Indeed, even though one loses sight of this in the gloom of our current presidential race, there have been striking moments in this new American century of weighty civic renewal and elevated political leadership. As an example of the latter, one could cite above all the political and military leadership that produced out of the shambles of a mismanaged war, and in the face of bitter political opposition and considerable public doubt, the victorious surge in Iraq in 2007-2008. In the sphere of civic renewal, one could cite phenomena as diverse as the mobilization of youth behind Barack Obama to upset Hillary Clinton and win the presidency in 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party in 2009 and subsequent revitalization of the Republican party with the election of impressive young candidates in the elections of 2010 and 2014. And surely the success of the musical Hamilton provides grounds for hope even for our popular culture!
But then we have this year’s presumptive major party nominees, a hack and a demagogue—and, one might add, a remarkably ethically challenged hack and an unusually responsibility-challenged demagogue. Watching Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exchange juvenile attacks and insults this past week, your first thought was, well, our politics are always somewhat juvenile. But then you realized that we’ve gone beyond the juvenile to the juvenile delinquent. In any case, a normal citizen would conclude from the exchange of insults by our presumptive nominees that—you know what?—each of them is right! Trump is right that Clinton shouldn’t be president of the United States. Clinton is right that Trump shouldn’t be president of the United States.
How to avert either outcome? It’s going to be difficult to deny Trump the nomination at the GOP convention. If he wins the nomination, it’s going to be difficult for an independent candidate to defeat both Clinton and Trump. But the difficult is not the impossible. There is a path to an open convention. There is a path for an independent nominee.
And the unpleasant is not the undoable. It’s unpleasant to think of jumping into the muddy and fetid waters of American politics in 2016. It’s easier to stand on the shore, lamenting our fate and rationalizing our inability to act. But lamentations and rationalizations won’t protect us from decadence and degradation. And lamentations and rationalizations surely won’t help move to completion the unfinished work, the weighty and elevated work, which those who have fought since 9/11 have so nobly advanced.
