THOMAS KLINGENSTEIN's essay, "Preserving the American Way of Life" (link below), is a must-read. It will give you the vocabulary and mental framework you need for understanding and fighting the political and cultural wars of our time.
My intellectual friends will surely bridle at Mr. Klingenstein's title, particularly the notion that there is an American way of life that needs preserving or, alternatively . . .
. . . is worth preserving.
Mr. Klingenstein's essay is quite long. In asking you (including my liberal friends) to read it, I'm asking a lot. Do it, however, and you will thank me later. And you well may agree -- if you disagreed before -- that there is an American way of life and that it is worth preserving.
You can find the full essay here: Thomas D. Klingenstein, "Preserving the American Way of Life," The American Mind, June 2020.
To encourage you and others who wonder through Unca D's neighborhood, I will post excerpts from Mr. Klingenstein's essay in coming weeks. I'll start here (emphasis added):
What is the American way of life that Republicans should want to preserve? It would not be difficult to reach a consensus on this question among Republicans. They want to preserve, and in some respects recover, what Americans thought was the right way of life until a generation or two ago.
We then believed that we were the shining city on the hill, marked out to show the rest of the world that people can govern themselves. We saw ourselves as one people with a single culture, which was directed by a creed (expressed most notably in the Declaration), supported by the Judeo-Christian ethos, all flavored by our particular history.
True, there were sub-cultures, but we understood them as all sharing the fundamental attributes of a single culture. There were no hyphenated Americans. We insisted that immigrants be assimilated. Colorblindness was our ideal.
We believed we had done great things in the past and were capable of doing more. This success, despite numerous missteps, made us a confident people. No wonder we thought ourselves exceptional in both senses of the term: distinct and better. No wonder we wore our patriotism on our sleeve and revered our military.
We believed ourselves to be the least class-conscious, most individualist, most religious people in the world. We believed that success in life depends on one’s own talents and character and so we glorified the self-made man. We valued work, no matter how humble, and self-reliance. Dependency was thought to be shameful. This was all part of the “American Dream.”
Although we understood ourselves as individualistic, we believed that happiness (a worthy life) requires doing good in this world. And so volunteerism and sacrifice for the common good was highly valued and publicly honored. This meant more than voting and obeying the law: it meant serving in the military and participating in civic organizations, local government and political parties, and teaching one’s children what it meant to be a responsible citizen. For most people, happiness was found in family, church and community.
Many Americans still hold this understanding of the American way of life. It is this, I believe, that Republicans would like to preserve.
This definition is aspirational and idealistic. As Mr. Klingenstein makes clear, here and in later paragraphs, America has often fallen short of its aspirations. But falling short does not falsify the ideals.
He says many Americas still hold this understanding of the American way of life. One of them is Unca D. Reread the motto that has greeted you each time you have consulted this blog (for which, by the way, thanks): Old. Conservative. Christian. In love with my wife, our boys, Texas, America, Western Civilization, and Jesus. Sorry about the decline of newspapers.
Then check Unca D's "Big Ideas" in the right column of the blog. Among other things, it says:
AMERICA is not perfect, but it is a good and decent county; the world would be better off if more counties were like America. Elite thinkers and doers today work diligently, not to make America more like itself, but to make America more like the everywhere else. [This] is the essence of conservatives' quarrel with liberals.
The essence of conservatives' quarrel with liberals? Unca D was struggling to say in summary what Mr. Klingenstein explains so perfectly in some detail.
To put things another way, Mr. Klingenstein's essay is what Unca D would have written if Unca D could have written so clearly and so well.
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