The November 2022 elections in all fifty states were the usual contest of parties and personalities, of course. But they were also a sort of political diagnostic, an imaging scan of America’s body politic. Like the string of previous elections in this century, they disclosed a nation overripe and past its sell-by date, if not a nation in terminal decline.
Confronted with surging inflation, rising crime, open borders, failing schools, racial strife, and American weakness on the world stage, voters could muster only a weary collective shrug. Incumbents prevailed everywhere. The GOP takeover of Congress isn’t nothing, but it’s not much either. Democrats at the commanding heights, though reeking of incompetence, still fought Republicans almost to a draw.
As a constitutional conservative, the election naturally disappointed me. I yield to no one in my conviction that the country would be better off with Republicans, the party of (relatively more) liberty and (relatively less) government, in power everywhere.
Girding for 2024, by all means let’s look hard at messaging, tactics, demographics, the Trump factor, all those granular details that can spell political victory or defeat.
A Civilizational Rebuild
We must also recognize, though, that politics is downstream from culture; far downstream. And so as a son of Western civilization, a legatee of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London, I view with grave alarm the demoralization and decay evident in that full-body scan the midterms showed us.
We who love the American nation have urgent restorative work to do. Is the USA a burnt-out case? No way. But the task of proving it will be long and hard, broad and deep—and the hour is late.
If we define the task as merely winning elections, we’re sunk. No, our challenge is nothing less than a civilizational rebuild.
I honestly don’t know if it can be done. Yet for me, it’s the only fight worth fighting.To this I pledge every second of my remaining years and every ounce of my remaining strength. And you?
Tytler’s Diagnosis
As a yardstick to go by, we may take what has been called the Tytler formula, originating either with a Scottish professor of the 1700s or with an American businessman of the 1900s; its provenance is immaterial.
The formula asserts that great nations tend to climb up out of bondage through faith and courage at last to liberty—and ultimately to abundance. But they then slump down through selfishness and apathy and dependence into bondage once again, all in two or three centuries.
The sequence is persuasive, I think, and we can't deny that the USA is now somewhere on the downward ladder. Nor can we plausibly expect that parties and public policy can by any magic turn us upward again.
The levers of governmental power aren't remotely powerful enough. Samuel Johnson put it best, long ago: “How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure." Our only hope of cure—to repeat—is a deep-rooted civilizational rebuild.
Trustees of a Legacy
Having alluded to Western civilization, let me sharpen the point by arguing that America has become a civilization unto itself, and the preeminent civilization of world history at that. Today, however, an aging civilization on the wrong side of the Tytler formula. Floundering, faltering, adrift.
Its rescue and rejuvenation will require us to act not only as citizens of a polity but also as trustees of a legacy. We must learn to think as much or more of our duties than of our rights; as much or more of our responsibilities than of our freedoms.
For we hold in trust the noblest and most beneficent achievement of the human spirit, ever. We are keepers of a flame that must not be allowed to flicker out—as now seems a very real danger. We must vow in grim earnest: “Over my dead body.”
Rouse Ourselves
A civilization comprises so much more than government and politics. It is marriages and families, churches and faith communities, cities and the built environment, business enterprises large and small, schools and colleges, arts and culture, thinkers and their thought-worlds, tradition and veneration, inquiry and innovation, customs and manners, treasures and sacred things.
Which of those can Americans say is in flourishing health among us at present? Ominously, none. No wonder the political system, their epiphenomenon, is ill, if all of them are. It’s time for us as trustees to rouse ourselves, and there’s not a moment to lose.
Back to the Tytler formula. If spiritual faith, great courage, and responsible freedom are the preconditions for a civilization on the rise, let us jealously guard and cultivate those in all ways and at all times, not just at at election time.
If sick selfishness and soporific apathy and parasitic dependency are the pathologies of a spent civilization, let us work against those wherever they are to be found.
Hard work, on a Herculean scale? Yes, to be sure. But a labor of love, tirelessly kept at with joyous hearts, if the alternative is America on the ash heap of history.
Tipping Point
Marxists, communists, jihadists, racialists, Chinese, Russians,, and others implacably mean to put her there. It’s up to us to stop them, which laws alone, votes alone, will not do. Our enemies are waging a civilizational struggle. We must not fail to respond in kind.
U.S. opinion polls, confirming the pattern of recent elections, soberingly suggest that we as America’s trustees enjoy nothing close to a majority in this epic struggle. No matter. The anti-American side enjoyed no majority a century ago either.
But there was even then a vast enough swath of rank selfishness and soporific apathy in the land for them to exploit, shrewdly and persistently, and bring us to the present tipping point.
Cannot we be equally shrewd, equally persistent, in drawing on the faith and courage still alive in many millions of American hearts to mount our counterattack? Damn right we can.
The Remnant
“There is a remnant,” wrote St. Paul to the beleaguered Christians at Rome (Romans 11:5). He meant that there is a godly superiority of forces that needn’t rely on numerical superiority. Under the old covenant, Joshua and Gideon and Elijah proved it; Isaiah prophesied of it.
Under the new covenant, Jesus himself modeled it when he dismissed the unserious religionists as flighty children and the murderous Herod as “that fox” (Luke 7:32 and 13:32). Steady on, he was saying; we’re about the Father’s business here and won’t lack his aid.
Even so, American civilization has its remnant today, among whose small but sufficient number you and I have the honor to be counted.
In citing biblical examples, I’m not trying to divinize this land we love. The USA is but one more imperfect endeavor of fallen humanity, which God’s kingdom will in time supersede.
Yet we love her still, and we glory in the high privilege of holding her in trust—until Christ returns.
Trustworthy?
What then is to be done? In reflecting on the agenda of our trusteeship, I find Yoram Hazony’s book Conservatism: A Rediscovery tremendously stimulating, while not conclusive in all respects. Likewise Rod Dreher’s books, The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies. Likewise the work of R. R. Reno at First Things magazine.
My own book Responsibility Reborn may help shed light on the remnant way of thinking.
“It is required of trustees that they be found trustworthy.” Thus St. Paul to the storm-tossed Christians at Corinth (I Cor. 4:2). It reads almost as a tautology; but not quite. The proud and fickle human heart is a good deal less reliable than, say, the wetness of water.
“Conservative” isn’t just a label, a political platform. It’s a whole way of life, a way of being, as Hazony argues so powerfully.
Paul here is warning us that what counts isn’t merely how we vote every couple of years. It’s not how we posture ourselves or what we profess. What counts is what we do—and do again daily—and cease not doing while life is in us.
Trustworthy. That’s the kind of trustee that I want to be for American civilization, in good times and bad, unstinting. And you?