“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Benjamin Franklin, upon being asked what sort of government the delegates to the Constitutional Convetion had created.
“A tradition cannot be inherited — it has to be earned.”
Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Societies that are growing or strengthening are characterized by populations who not only believe in such growth and strengthening, but act upon it.
And a critical component of “acting upon our tradition” is to know it. And to know it requires that we study it.
Professor Harold Berman, in his magisterial Law and Revolution, provides the following analogy:
“From the eleventh and twelfth centuries on, monophonic music, reflected chiefly in the Gregorian chant, was gradually supplanted by polyphonic styles. Two-part, three-part, and eventually four-part music developed. The contrapuntal style exemplified in the thirteenth-century motet evolved into the harmonic style of the fourteenth century ars nova, exemplified in the ballade. Eventually, counterpoint and harmony were combined. The sixteenth century witnessed the development of the great German Protestant chorales, and these, together with Italian and English madrigals and other forms, provided a basis for opera …. Eventually Renaissance music gave way to Baroque, Baroque to Classical …. etc. No good contemporary musician, regardless of how off-beat he may be, can afford not to know this story….”
Not too long ago, American citizens, and certainly lawyers, judges, and justices were required, in a similar way, to know the story of the development of our institutions and their great debt to Christianity.
For example, about a century ago, in the early 20th Century, just about everyone in the United States understood that [church] canon law constituted the first modern Western legal system. Eventually, canon law and royal law complemented each other and formed a basis for the Western legal tradition. It was understood, at least inchoately, that rejecting the religious heritage of the West has always led to tyranny.
However, today, the above is not only generally unknown but should it be even mentioned it is only to have it dismissed outright, even by clergy who delight in writing books or preaching sermons denying our Christian legacy. In so doing, we greatly err and worse: we join forces with those who would destroy our legal and social foundations.
It is no mystery that many who most despise the American heritage have an undisguised hatred for the Christian religion because that religion places man and his institutions under an eternal, Triune God and His law. And this is unacceptable.
Once we understand this philosophical enmity, much of the violence and chaos in our era becomes intelligible.
But no need to take my word for it. I’ll conclude this post by quoting the heroes of so many of today’s usual suspects.
Engels: “We … reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatever as eternal, ultimate, and forever immutable moral law ….”
Lenin: “We repudiate all morality derived from non-human and non-class concepts. We say it is a deception, a fraud in the interest of the landlords and the capitalists … We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the toilers around the proletariat … We do not believe in an eternal morality.”
Marx: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man … The abolition of religion as an illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness….
Anyone who has read the execrable Communist Manifesto will recognize the above sentiments, and more.
Such sentiments, so fashionable today, are the polar opposite of those of our colonial and early republic era; i. e., our founding era. Put another way, engaging and promoting the convictions of those who hate Christianity will accelerate the undermining of our foundations, increase the overt despising of ordered liberty, and openly promote a topsy turvy view of humanity and society, which further dismantles our bedrock.
It is a vicious cycle, a circling of the drain that can only be stopped by refusing to live by lies and insisting on speaking the truth.
With God’s help we can do so.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)