Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
America has lost its way. And America will fall—unless. Revolution? Oligarchy? Or homecoming? Americans are approaching a "zero hour" for the republic and its distinctive view of ordered freedom. America is caught between two revolutions and alternately suppresses and squanders freedom with a prodigal carelessness, with little understanding of the responsibilities that freedom requires. Os Guinness warns that if America abandons its distinctive ideals and ideas, we will have carved into the chronicles of history yet another example of the failure of a free society. Like other crucial times in world history, the present crisis is a "civilizational moment" and also a pivot point that could lead to national renewal. Outlining seven key foundation stones of freedom, Guinness lays out a pathway for defining and ordering freedom, righting national wrongs, and passing freedom's baton from generation to generation. Human freedom is precious and rare, and citizens who prize it must do what it takes to renew and sustain societies that are free for all of their members. America's window of opportunity is brief, and the alternative to renewal is bleak. The present moment must not be missed.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 255
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
DOM
And to John Brandon, Troy Griepp,Dick Ohman, and Ryon Paton,
Four friends, one faith, undying gratitude.
The accurate knowledge of what has happened will be useful because according to human probability similar things will happen again.
The knowledge gained from the study of true history is the best of all educations for practical life. For it is history and history alone which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgment and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or posture of affairs.
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.
What experience and history teaches us is this—that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
God of our father, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget. . . .
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word “No.” Let that not be the epitaph of the English speaking peoples.
Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.
Contents
AMERICA WILL FALL—UNLESS
HOWL, AMERICA! HOWL! Howl like the Hebrew prophets howled over the fate of their people before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC! Howl like Allen Ginsberg, the radical poet of the Beat generation, howled for the best minds of his generation, destroyed by madness in the 1950s! Howl for the way the fabled “land of the free” has turned its back on what made it free and is pursuing phantoms that lead to decline and ruin. Howl for how America has come to be what the world sees today—a world superpower still, wealthy, prosperous, and powerful but unrecognizable in terms of the ideals of its past and stumbling leaderless from one blunder to another. Howl for the way America is blindly ignoring its day of reckoning and opting for its own decline, careless about what it would take to avert it. Howl for the way a society fostering so much hate between its citizens appears to be yearning for its own destruction.
Have Americans forgotten their great why? The thousand and one ways their ancestors were not free elsewhere and the distinctive way that they were to live as a free people in the land of the free—with an ordered freedom born of freely chosen consent, a mutually binding pledge, and reciprocal responsibility of all for all? Not simply a democracy but a covenantal-constitutional republic that would witness to the world a better way of demonstrating human dignity, justice, freedom, and peace? Have Americans failed to realize that in choosing to be “one nation under God” they chose to be always accountable and always under the judgment of heaven for their deeds? Is America’s stunning incomprehension about the present crisis the result of a blindness that is spiritual as well as intellectual?
America today makes no pretense of standing for the “great experiment” in freedom of its first president or the ordered freedom of the republic of its forebears and founders. America can no longer be called a shining city on a hill, an asylum for humanity, an almost chosen people, the last best hope of earth or an empire of liberty, let alone a people living “under God” and standing before the bar of history. Most Americans show little evidence that they understand freedom and the commitments that freedom requires of them. America now stands uncertainly, stunned and bemused through its ignorance of its enemies without and its enemies within. America’s conscience is battered. America’s public life is torn between the guilt of a sullied past, the pull of a power-hungry establishment oligarchy, and the countering pull of a radical left-wing revolution that has never worked anywhere or at any time, and that has always ended in failure and oppression. America after two and a half centuries has grown into a wealthy, elitist, technocratic, bureaucratic, and corporatist world power that alternately suppresses and squanders freedom with a prodigal carelessness that defies all reason—and despite all this still seems largely unaware of the deadliest peril it faces.
Is this how you Americans repay your ancestors, or is this heaven’s judgment for all the sins and cynicism through which you have flouted or fallen short of your ideals over the years? Is this how you follow the intrepid men and women who braved the ocean in search of freedom? The patriots who staked their lives and fortunes on independence? The far-sighted band of leaders and thinkers who devised the ingenious ordering of constitutional freedom? The champions of justice and civil rights who addressed the monumental evils and hypocrisies of slavery that contradicted your ideals and hideously scarred your land? The generations who gave their lives for the freedom of others around the world and those they loved at home? The numberless unknown citizens who lived with dignity and decency and made it possible for you to live comfortably as Americans live today?
Is this how you enjoy the heritage of those who have gone before you? Is this the legacy you wish to hand to your children and their children’s children? Is this the way you repay God in whom so many of your ancestors put their trust and from whom they received their ideals and their blessings? Shame on recent generations of Americans for their carelessness, their unconcern, and their ignorance of what the republic was founded to be. In contrast to those ideals, America today is enough to make every lover of freedom weep for the promise betrayed, the record stained indelibly, and the wide and gracious land crying out for the blood shed on it and the savageries committed in its name.
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
America will fall—unless. Like the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast, those four stern words will haunt America in a thousand variations unless the nation makes a wise and courageous decision to stop, think, and turn around, and then demonstrates that the consequences of the decision are real and lasting and not makeshift, cosmetic, or hypocritical. Recent events—from controversial elections to troubling responses to the global pandemic to the humanitarian and civic crisis on the southern border to domestic threats to free speech to the crippling national debt to the American humiliation and shame overseas to an intelligentsia directly at odds with the nation’s beliefs to mounting questions about the character and stability of more than one president to the insane experiments in lifestyle pursued in the name of freedom, all together capping fifty years of drift and decline—must shake Americans awake, and a long-overdue debate about the real state of the union must begin. The American republic and its citizens now face titanic questions whose answers will prove decisive for the future of America.
First, is it wise and is it possible for Americans to switch revolutions in midcourse in history, and if not can they turn back? Having been founded on the ideals of ordered freedom in the American Revolution in 1776 (including, sadly, such blatant hypocrisy and contradiction as slavery), many Americans have recently shifted to the power-based legacies of the French Revolution in 1789—mediated through such movements as cultural Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics, the sexual revolution, and critical theory. With the current ignorance of history and the level of current conflicts and confusions, is it even possible for the present generation of Americans to remember their founding and restore its original promise? Or will America hasten its downfall through vacillating between the competing legacies of the two revolutions and harvesting the bitter fruits of uncertain and opposing views of freedom, justice, and political order?
Second, is it possible for America as the lead society of an immense civilization to examine its own conscience while at the height of its power, to make confession and amends for its evident wrongs—above all, for slavery and the treatment of the Native Americans—and to remedy, reform, and redirect its ways to the satisfaction of its citizens and the highest ideals of humanity? Or will America succumb to an orgy of politically organized recrimination and become the victim of its unforgiven past?
Third, will Americans recognize and respect the character of freedom and respond to freedom as freedom itself requires, or will they continue to follow faulty and specious views of freedom and remain satisfied with their distortions and imitations until they suffer irreversible decline? Not all who cry freedom have either the basis or the boundaries for the freedom they cry out for, and many of their views sound the death knell, not the Liberty Bell, for freedom, but can contemporary Americans tell the difference?
Fourth, in the momentous present crisis does America have the leaders with sufficient wisdom, courage, sense of history, and an understanding of the character of freedom to call Americans back, to guide the American people in considering and answering these questions and to do so in such a constructive way that they bring together a deeply divided people and reinvigorate a sense of united American identity and national purpose? Or will America slide leaderless toward decline?
These are watershed questions, and history and humanity wait for America’s answer. But is America even facing up to such questions? Will America prove intellectually and morally capable of doing so? Americans must be in no doubt: neither freedom nor the faith that made freedom possible have let you down. You Americans have let down both faith and freedom, and it will be your tragedy if you blame the wrong sources, resort to false answers, and undermine faith and freedom with consequences that become irreversible. For one thing is certain and becoming clearer to more and more people by the day: the radical left, the progressives, and the explosive arsenal of their protests and policies are as decisive a secession from the ideas and ideals of the American republic as the Southern states were from the Union in the Civil War.
A CALL TO WAKE UP
“Let my people go!” “Let freedom ring!” “Let liberty be proclaimed throughout the land!” Nothing is more stirring to individual human beings than freedom. Freedom is one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. Human freedom is precious, human freedom is rare, human freedom is awesome in its mystery and its meaning. There is no other life form on planet earth with the capacity for freedom and responsibility that we humans have. Nothing is more essential and more fulfilling to our existence than freedom—the ability truly to be who we are, to think freely, to speak freely, and to choose and act freely in the fullest and most responsible possible way—and to be able to do so in community with others committed to living the same way. Nothing is more inspiring than working to liberate those who through no fault of their own are not free, and together with them and others, seeking to build and sustain societies that seek to fulfill the aspirations of freedom for every single one of their members.
This short book is no doomsday pronouncement. It is more of a Paul Revere’s ride, though ironically the call to wake up this time is by a Brit and the warning is not about other enemies coming—the enemies are already within the gates. Even now when events in America are so often disheartening and at times angering, I remain confident that there are still Americans who will not give up on their great experiment in freedom, citizens for whom the cause of freedom remains unquenchable in their hearts, and leaders who know that the cause of freedom is moral, responsible, collective, and anything but selfish. Are there enough of such Americans? Are there leaders who will give them a voice? Who will be the ones to protect the torch of freedom in the present crisis? Are there still Americans who recognize that facing up to the challenge of America’s decline is not an act of resignation but a call for renewal?
The answers to these questions are not my responsibility as a visitor and outsider, but no one should think that the challenges to freedom in today’s world are easy, self-evident, or even congenial. The challenges are more difficult, arduous, and controversial than ever—and made even harder by the blanket of complacency and clichés with which Americans have smothered freedom. So, freedom’s defense is never done. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” we say, but we must never forget that such vigilance must be internal before it is external. The greatest dangers to freedom always come from within. We, whoever we are, are freedom’s greatest enemy, so courage must always rise hand in hand with realism and humility.
WHAT DOES FREEDOM REQUIRE?
There will be no prediction here of any imminent American collapse. The abandonment of America’s ordered freedom need not mean the immediate fall of America but only of the end of, first, the republic, and then of any meaningful democracy. America may continue powerful and wealthy for a while longer, but the reality is that more and more American ideals are breaking down or being exposed as a sham. And more and more Americans appear intent only on hedonism and the pursuit of their own pleasure and reliance on prosperity and technocracy to deliver dividends that virtue no longer strives for. Americans are either unsure of their distinctive ideals or openly cynical and dismissive about the way they have been set out recently. If this fatal drift runs its course, Americans will have carved into the chronicles of history yet another example of the failure of a free society and how the corruption of the best so easily becomes the worst.
All this raises urgent questions not only for Americans and admirers of the American republic but also for all who appreciate the ideal of ordered freedom. In the nineteenth century Søren Kierkegaard famously announced his ambition to “reintroduce Christianity into Christendom.” Even at this late hour, it is urgent for Americans to reintroduce the first principles of freedom into the land of the free—to proclaim what those first principles are and to join hands with all those around the world who are striving to resist tyranny and to build their own free communities regardless of what happens to freedom in the one-time, self-proclaimed “empire of liberty.”
Socrates famously called for an “examined life” and pronounced the unexamined life not worth living. Is there a national equivalent of the examined life, and is the present generation of Americans ready to face the findings of such a moral and historical testing? History is now presenting an ultimatum to America over freedom as the four questions already asked boil down to one essential question: If Americans wish to continue as the land of the free, will they recognize the intrinsic character of freedom and respond to freedom as freedom itself requires, or will they continue to follow faulty and specious views of freedom and remain satisfied with their distortions and imitations until they suffer irreversible decline? The period America is now entering represents zero hour for the American republic and its freedom. It calls for a grand historical decision and then a decisive reset and a starting all over that are not merely current fashionable slogans but genuine national repentance and about-face. Such decisive about-faces are rare in history, especially for a superpower still at the height of its dominance. But if America is not to decline as other nations have at a similar point, nothing less than the highest resolve and the wisest, most far-sighted, and determined response will be required. The normal run and rules of history are clear, but for people who know and respect freedom, freedom is never fate. For free people tomorrow can be different from yesterday and today. The future is open, not fixed, and America’s choice between restoring America’s freedom and continuing America’s decline is now.
UNDER OUR OWN VINE AND FIG TREE
THERE IS NEVER a wrong moment to celebrate and defend freedom. The times may be out of joint, but this book is for those who remain passionate about freedom and are committed to striving for freedom, not just for themselves but also for others. This is an invitation to explore the present crisis of freedom through what might seem a highly unlikely source: America’s first president, George Washington. Washington not only coined the term “the great experiment” in freedom, but he had his own special picture of the ideal of freedom—his vision of citizens and communities living freely “under their own vine and fig tree.” Washington is often called America’s “indispensable man” and for a good reason. He is described this way because of the nobility of his character and the strength of his leadership rather than the importance of his thinking. Indeed, some have attributed many of his best ideas to his brilliantly gifted aide Alexander Hamilton. Be that as it may, America’s present crisis, which unless it is resolved may well be terminal for the republic as it was founded, can be addressed constructively through an ideal that is indisputably Washington’s, one that moved him profoundly. An indispensable man and an unlikely vision.
Remarkably, George Washington referred to his ideal of citizens enjoying life “under their own vine and fig tree” no less than forty-eight times in his writing. The most famous was his address to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, where his focus was on religious freedom as a foundation for peace. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of other citizens—while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” The other references are scattered mainly through his letters, and they are surely the tip of the iceberg of his own reflection on the theme, not to speak of his use of the idea in countless unrecorded conversations. Washington was, of course, quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures, where the phrase recurs three times in this form (Micah 4:4; 1 Kings 4:25; Zechariah 3:10).
It would be fair to say that both the Bible’s use of the picture and Washington’s quotations are easy to miss or to mock, and many people have never given them serious thought. Either response is a mistake. Properly understood, the vision of each citizen and each family living freely under their own vine and fig tree is more than a beautiful metaphor, an idle dream, or a matter of wishful thinking. If taken seriously, it could offer a vital key to the restoration of America as a free republic and to other societies and smaller or larger communities across the world. But even short of that, the vision stands as the key to the challenge of striving for personal freedom and the building and sustaining of strong families and healthy communities wherever they are sought.
ESCAPISM AND AGRARIAN NOSTALGIA?
The vision of freedom under our own vine and fig tree would be easy to scorn. It is commonly dismissed in two ways: either because of its original source, the Bible, or because of the particular way Washington used the picture. The Bible may be the book that made the Western world, but in a secularist age it is commonly dismissed. Even some who prize the Bible highly regard the vision as purely messianic and unattainable here and now. They admit that the vision is beautiful and powerful, but as a messianic dream, they say, it is utopian and beyond our reach.
To be sure, when Washington quotes the Bible, he does not cite chapter and verse, though his inclusion of the phrase “and none shall make them afraid” suggests that he was referring to the prophet Micah. Micah’s version is the fullest and most exalted expression of the vision, and like Zechariah’s it is certainly messianic. The prophet looks forward to the great Day of the Lord when
Each of them will sit under his vine
And under his fig tree,
with no one to make them afraid.
The vision is preceded by the much-quoted depiction of messianic peace:
Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation will not lift up sword against nation,
And never again will they train for war. (Micah 4:3-4)
For all whose hearts have been stirred by the deep longings of Tommy Dorsey’s great spiritual “There Will Be Peace in the Valley,” the key word in its messianic vision is someday.
Yet Micah’s version of the vision is not the only one in the Bible, and it needs to be complemented by the way the vision is used in other places. At the opposite extreme from the messianism of Micah (and Dorsey), the same words are used in the setting of judgment and destruction. “I will destroy her vines and fig trees,” God says through the prophet Hosea (Hosea 2:12). But the most interesting example of the phrase comes from the high point of Israel’s renown during the reign of King Solomon. Israel’s power and prosperity under Solomon, and the king’s own wealth and wisdom, were unmatched in the Near East. In commenting on the splendor of Solomon’s coronation, his chronicler remarks on the unprecedented prosperity that the people of Israel enjoyed: they “were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance; they were eating and drinking and rejoicing,” and Solomon “had peace on all sides around about him” (1 Kings 4:20, 24). The chronicler then climaxes his glowing description of Israel’s high noon: “So Judah and Israel lived in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree . . . all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:25).
The prophets Hosea, Micah, and Zechariah all lived in darker times than Solomon. Hosea saw the destruction of vines and fig trees, and Micah and Zechariah foresaw that the full and final fulfillment of the vision would only be achieved in the future and with outside help—a hope that is messianic. But overall, the use of the vision was not utopian. It had been substantially fulfilled in Solomon’s time. Living free under our own vine and fig tree was both a messianic hope and a social and political ideal that was realistic and achievable. It would one day be fulfilled perfectly, but it had been done before, if imperfectly, and it could be done again. George Washington thought so too.
Other people dismiss Washington’s particular use of the vision. It was simply an old man’s dream of retirement, they say, and irrelevant to us. In Washington’s case the dream was fueled by an understandable desire to return to Mount Vernon, its Potomac view, and the Virginia way of life that he loved (which, sadly, depended to a considerable extent on the presence of slaves). In his last year as president, he wrote, “I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.” Conjure up the same picture today, critics say, and it will only spell privilege, escapism, or agrarian nostalgia. Unquestionably, there are elements of Washington’s vision that are unattainable in today’s urban world and elements in his situation that were wrong. But it would be uncharitable not to allow for any negative elements in Washington’s mind. A land surveyor since he was young, he must have longed to stop looking at other people’s land and enjoy his own. As a general he had seen the ravages of war, and his heart must have ached for real peace. As a politician he had borne the heavy burdens of the new nation, and he was surely ready to hand over the reins to others and manage his own affairs.
All such negative reasons behind his vision were understandable, and doubtless we each have our own negative reasons to long for freedom and peace. But it would be wrong and even more uncharitable not to recognize the positive reasons behind Washington’s dream too—reasons that went beyond the privileges of his glorious Potomac estate, the likes of which few of us will share. When Washington set out his vision for the Rhode Island synagogue, for example, the Jews he reassured in his letter had no slaves, they owned no large estates, and their own contrast to the vision was their horrendous experience of persecution and scattering in Europe. The truth is that in both the Bible’s picture and in Washington’s use of the picture, the vision of each citizen living freely under their own vine and fig tree meant much more than privilege and escape. At its heart, it spoke of an ideal of freedom, independence, simplicity, work and its rewards, safety, peace, fruitfulness, contentment, freedom of conscience, and all in the setting of home and being local.
The question we must ask is, are such aspects of freedom still attainable in the advanced and urbanized modern world, or are they beyond recall? And if they are, what does freedom require and how are we to build, sustain, or restore such freedom today? And how are we to extend the benefits and blessings of freedom to everyone and not just to a privileged elite who can literally live under their vine and fig tree and relax by their swimming pools in the Hamptons, Palm Beach, Beverly Hills, or Napa Valley? The fulfillment of that idea and its significance for freedom in the global era is the theme of this book.
NO POLITICAL MASTERPIECE?
GIORGIO VASARI, the Renaissance architect, artist, and the father of art history and criticism, was a passionate admirer of Michelangelo. In particular he praised the great painter and sculptor for his use of dramatic, contrasting colors that were so different from the soft and muted harmonies used by his equally great contemporary Leonardo da Vinci. Vasari’s insight pays dividends in areas far wider than Renaissance art. Context is essential for meaning, but contrast is a key to clarity. Similarly, the Bible’s vision and Washington’s dream come alive and stand out today when we understand them set over against certain troubling features of our advanced modern world. Three major factors provide such clarity of contrast—and urgency. They demonstrate why this vision of personal, local, and community freedom is so important today. It is neither the sole nor the sufficient way to pursue freedom, but it is a necessary way because it balances other extremes and counters other pitfalls.
Contrast is the mother of clarity, and the ideal of living under our own vine and fig tree shines brighter and becomes more urgent in light of these alternatives and their deficiencies. In that sense, the vision of the vine and fig tree matters to citizens in every free society, from the humblest to the highest in the land.
THE BEST REGIME FOR EVERYONEEVERYWHERE?
Washington’s vision speaks to the heart of one of humanity’s greatest questions in the global era: Is it possible in the advanced modern world to create societies that do justice to the worth of each human being and create communities with freedom, equality, justice, stability, and peace for all? Many people, it appears, live and think as if that ideal is only a pipe dream now and an idyllic dream from earlier, simpler times. But if it is considered possible, what would it mean in practice, and by what authority should its foundational principles of the vision be affirmed—based on reason or nature or history or evolution or—as with Washington’s vision from the Bible—by faith in God?
That search for a vision of the good community and a free commonwealth is framed and made urgent by the fact that political bookends of history are authoritarianism and anarchy, Caesarism and chaos, Big Brother and the prodigal son, the iron heel and the unencumbered self, or order-with-no-freedom at one extreme and freedom-with-no-order at the other. The two extremes not only serve to counter each other but to reinforce each other. Since anarchy is less livable and even more destructive than authoritarianism, humans prefer tyranny to anarchy. Get too close to Thomas Hobbes’s “war of all against all” and the lure of Leviathan becomes irresistible.
Post–World War I Weimar was the perfect slipway for Hitler, just as the war-torn ravages and corruptions of twentieth-century China made even Mao Zedong a relief, for a while. And as the names Hitler and Mao make clear, authoritarianism in the advanced modern world almost certainly means totalitarianism. Better submit to control than suffer chaos. If such dynamics are in play at the extremes, the challenge is to build the good community by creating and sustaining a vision of ordered freedom that avoids the two extremes, that demonstrates a constructive alternative for humanity, and that guarantees personal and communal freedom at its heart.
