First time I've ever been able to care about the American founding fathers. Important context to everything they were trying to do.
There's a weird kind of naivete that exists here and in the French Revolution, at the dawn of the modern political system. Like they genuinely thought getting rid of kings would be sufficient to create a perfect world. Why are they surprised at the common man's lack of moral fibre, and his hunger for personal gain? Because it was the first ever experiment with large-scale democratic governance and they had no idea how it was going to go.
Blackpilling aside, I think you have to concede that America went pretty well, all things considered. Can imagine a much worse timeline where the followers of Jefferson fully imported revolutionary terror and were guillotining people in the streets of Philadelphia. The Hamiltonians bring in a minor German noble to act as King, the country splits from the beginning and ends up a bunch of little states like central America.
“A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 while in Luxembourg prison “A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 while in Luxembourg prison: Memorial to James Monroe
Thank you, Mrs. Psmith! The review is good in itself, but the main reason I thank you is that this is a good palliative for gloom about our present situation. In 1800 the invective was worse than now, and the pessimism of the Founders, while justified in its view of decline from an ideal, tells me that immorality can probably get a lot worse in America and still be tolerable.
Strange coincidence: just this week, a canvasser came by my house (right here in the US of A), asking me to support a candidate on the strength of that candidate's character and integrity. "What he says he will do, he will do."
Nice, the book is now on my list. I'm just finishing "Hogfather" by T. Pratchett and I'm inspired to quote from the end of the book. (Death always talks in capital letters.)
"Ah", said Susan dully. "Trickery with words I'd have thought you'd be more literal minded than that."
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
"All right", said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little --"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN *SHOW* ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--"
Sorry I just happened to be finishing it off last night and reading your post this morning. I just find the idea that we need myths, (which is similar to J. Peterson and before that Joseph Campbell. ) a stimulating idea. I had to look up nominalist. I guess I'm mostly a realist, but a little nominalism is fun. As an aside we seem to be tearing down all our myths and legends, and that's wrong. ie, Thomas Jefferson was a very complicated person, he is also an American hero.
Myths are definitely important. One of my kids is learning about the Founding Fathers etc in school right now and this is not the time for me to “well, actually” — reality is full of nuance and complexity but you have to build up to it, anything you start with is going to be necessarily simplified, so start with the simple version that inculcates what you want deeply internalized and then complicate later on.
“Today we assume that republican (i.e., non-monarchical) government is basically normal — all but a handful of countries are republics, de facto if not de jure”
Huh? A lot more than a “handful” of governments are non-republican. Unless you count China and Cuba as “republics” but I don’t know anyone who uses that definition.
I ballpark it at about 10% of countries that are actual monarchies, one-party states, etc. That seems pretty “handful” to me, but feel free to mentally replace “all but a handful” with “most” depending on hand size.
Depending on how you count, maybe 20-50% of countries are dictatorships of some kind. Way more than a handful by any reasonable definition even at the low end. https://ourworldindata.org/democracy
Thank you. Inspired me to watch an hour long documentary about John Adams - a much underrated member of the Founding Fathers whom I knew very little about.
First time I've ever been able to care about the American founding fathers. Important context to everything they were trying to do.
There's a weird kind of naivete that exists here and in the French Revolution, at the dawn of the modern political system. Like they genuinely thought getting rid of kings would be sufficient to create a perfect world. Why are they surprised at the common man's lack of moral fibre, and his hunger for personal gain? Because it was the first ever experiment with large-scale democratic governance and they had no idea how it was going to go.
Blackpilling aside, I think you have to concede that America went pretty well, all things considered. Can imagine a much worse timeline where the followers of Jefferson fully imported revolutionary terror and were guillotining people in the streets of Philadelphia. The Hamiltonians bring in a minor German noble to act as King, the country splits from the beginning and ends up a bunch of little states like central America.
“A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 while in Luxembourg prison “A thousand years hence perhaps in less, America may be what Europe is now. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance and her inimitable virtues as if it had never been. The ruin of that liberty which thousands bled for or struggled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale or extort a sigh from rustic sensibility, while the fashionable of the day, enveloped in dissipation, shall deride the principle and deny the fact.
“When we contemplate the fall of Empires and the extinction of the nations of the Ancient World, we see but little to excite our regret than the mouldering ruins of pompous palaces, magnificent museums, lofty pyramids and walls and towers of the most costly workmanship; but when the Empire of America shall fall, the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than the crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity; here rose a babel of invisible height; or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance; but here, Ah, painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the grandest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell.”
-Thomas Paine; 1794 while in Luxembourg prison: Memorial to James Monroe
Thank you, Mrs. Psmith! The review is good in itself, but the main reason I thank you is that this is a good palliative for gloom about our present situation. In 1800 the invective was worse than now, and the pessimism of the Founders, while justified in its view of decline from an ideal, tells me that immorality can probably get a lot worse in America and still be tolerable.
Coincidentally, my Substack of today is about slavery, the Civil War, and colonization, and may be of interest to your readers. https://ericrasmusen.substack.com/p/would-buying-all-the-slaves-have
Really liked this piece a lot. Don't have anything of substance that I can really add to it, but will say that I am very interested in this book now.
Strange coincidence: just this week, a canvasser came by my house (right here in the US of A), asking me to support a candidate on the strength of that candidate's character and integrity. "What he says he will do, he will do."
Nice, the book is now on my list. I'm just finishing "Hogfather" by T. Pratchett and I'm inspired to quote from the end of the book. (Death always talks in capital letters.)
"Ah", said Susan dully. "Trickery with words I'd have thought you'd be more literal minded than that."
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
"All right", said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little --"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN *SHOW* ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point--"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
She tried to assemble her thoughts.
Yes, sadly Sir Pterry was a dirty nominalist. Love him anyway!
Sorry I just happened to be finishing it off last night and reading your post this morning. I just find the idea that we need myths, (which is similar to J. Peterson and before that Joseph Campbell. ) a stimulating idea. I had to look up nominalist. I guess I'm mostly a realist, but a little nominalism is fun. As an aside we seem to be tearing down all our myths and legends, and that's wrong. ie, Thomas Jefferson was a very complicated person, he is also an American hero.
Myths are definitely important. One of my kids is learning about the Founding Fathers etc in school right now and this is not the time for me to “well, actually” — reality is full of nuance and complexity but you have to build up to it, anything you start with is going to be necessarily simplified, so start with the simple version that inculcates what you want deeply internalized and then complicate later on.
Remember, all models are wrong; some are useful.
Guess even the Founding Fathers weren’t immune from hating America. Maybe that’ll give everyone some perspective.
As Joseph de Maistre observed, it was never possible.
You could start by not worrying about “racism.”
“Today we assume that republican (i.e., non-monarchical) government is basically normal — all but a handful of countries are republics, de facto if not de jure”
Huh? A lot more than a “handful” of governments are non-republican. Unless you count China and Cuba as “republics” but I don’t know anyone who uses that definition.
I ballpark it at about 10% of countries that are actual monarchies, one-party states, etc. That seems pretty “handful” to me, but feel free to mentally replace “all but a handful” with “most” depending on hand size.
Depending on how you count, maybe 20-50% of countries are dictatorships of some kind. Way more than a handful by any reasonable definition even at the low end. https://ourworldindata.org/democracy
Nit re: "Yes, all that emphasis is really his."
It's not showing up for some reason; it just looks like italics.
Wow… well written 💯✅. & sobering… we must stay positive and work towards the common good
Thank you. Inspired me to watch an hour long documentary about John Adams - a much underrated member of the Founding Fathers whom I knew very little about.
(He’s my favorite.)