Tonsor: America: Liberal or Conservative at the Founding?

I.

A heavy overcast settled over the Huron Valley. Expecting a cold rain at any moment, I sought shelter in Haven Hall. My hope was to intercept Tonsor coming down from his office, then to accompany him on the walk across the Diag to class. I had the proverbial "deep question" for him. Seeing him emerge from the elevator in his Paddington Bear hat, I greeted him and after pleasantries put my subject before him:

"Professor Tonsor, I am interested in how you think about the American founding. A political philosopher I'm reading says that America was the product of the Enlightenment, meaning that it was founded as a classical liberal nation. According to this view, conservatism in America is just classical liberalism's 'right wing,' pushing for freer markets in a free-market system and smaller government in a federal system. American conservatives are thus not like European conservatives who, in reaction to the French Revolution, sought to restore the ancien regime with its monarchy, mercantilism, and three orders. Since that old-world conservative tradition never existed in the U.S. after the founding, what we call 'conservative' on this side of the Atlantic looks much different from conservatism in Europe. Do you think that conservatism in America is just classical liberalism's right wing and nothing more?"

Tonsor responded: "The question, as you ask it, is not well framed. It tries to make the founding an 'either-or' event: liberal or conservative? But the interpretive methods that characterize the humanities encourage us to think not in terms of 'either-or' but in terms of 'both-and.' Complex events elicit divergences of interpretation. Note that I use the plural, "divergences" of interpretation. Given human incomprehension, it is rare to have just one interpretation that is intellectually sufficient.[1]

"Were we all liberals then? Were we all liberals in 1776 and 1787? That's what you're asking. From the viewpoint of the political philosophers who see the founding as the outcome of debate during the Enlightenment, we were liberal. But is there another way of reading the Founding? Taking in the longer perspective of Western civilization, we might ask: Were we conservative in any sense that is prior to and separate from liberalism? And the answer to that question is, yes, most definitely, if you consider the founders' inheritance from the ancient world and Christendom." 

I said, "That longer perspective is what Russell Kirk achieved in The Roots of American Order."[2] 

"There are many who have looked at the American founding in a longer perspective -- Wilson Carey McWilliams, for instance.[3] But since you are taken with Russell Kirk's argument, Mr. Whitney, I'd like you to elaborate."

Oh, my. I was taken aback when Tonsor suddenly lobbed the question back to me -- it was unusual for him to do so. But since I was the one who had just teed up Kirk's Roots, I had to run with it. The ideas in The Roots were once considered mainstream in the academy,[4] and I had read the book with enthusiasm before moving to Ann Arbor. But in the 1980s the book was hardly ever referenced much less taught in American and Western civ surveys. This presented problems for a graduate student. In the company of the methodological gatekeepers in Michigan's history department, it was best not to cite Kirk's Roots since his thesis was considered out-of-date at best; and racist, sexist, classist, and elitest at worst.

Taking a deep breath I said: "There is truth in the claim of the political philosophers. Since we were the first nation established in the modern age, our political economy was liberal from the start. In the first place, we didn't have a feudal or mercantile economy. We had a modern free-market system that owed much to Adam Smith and the Enlightenment. 

"Second, we didn't have a feudal or absolutist monarchy. Instead we had a mixed constitution that was the result of enlightened reflection [5] on liberal philosophers like Locke and republican thinkers like Montesquieu; the resulting federated polity balanced the primacy of the individual (seen in the liberalism of the Bill of Rights) with the primacy of civic virtue (seen in the republicanism of the Northwest Ordinance, Article III), and did so within a framework of innovative checks and balances to thwart the tyranny of the majority (seen in the Constitution of 1787). 

"Third, we didn't have a social order that looked like the ancien regime with its aristocratic privileges, noble titles, and laws upholding primogeniture. Traditionalist European conservatives -- Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Pio Nono -- hated what we were. They condemned 'Americanism.' Our natural aristocracy renewed itself each generation in a relatively mobile society where most could rise due to merit and a little luck. So, yes, in all these fundamental ways, we were not a conservative European nation but a modern liberal one that owed its founding institutions mostly to the Enlightenment."

"Fine, but is there another way of reading the founding?" asked Tonsor in his laconic way.

"Yes," I said, "there's also truth in the claim that our founding was conservative -- deeply conservative in ways that were prior to and separate from liberalism. Our modern liberal roots, strong as they are, do not tell of deeper roots still. America's deeper cultural roots are revealed in our unwritten constitution, our habits of the heart, and our syncretic worldview -- a fusion that holds in dynamic tension the living traditions of ancient Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, as well as medieval London."

"I'm surprised," said Tonsor, "that you stop at medieval London. Remember that Protestant and Catholic thinkers were engaging the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Archbishop Fenelon, Bishop Berkeley, John Locke, John Witherspoon -- they sifted the Age of Reason in light of what Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London had to teach.[6] Out of that dynamic tension, out of that struggle between those who argued for continuity and those who argued for change, emerged the Founders' syncretic worldview. The intellectual leaders of the American founding -- Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Dickinson, Wilson -- stood atop the pinnacle of that worldview." 

One thing about my conversations with Tonsor: He always kept my mind on the stretch. There was no resting with him. I had never read any Dickinson or Wilson and in fact did not know that they were intellectual leaders of the founding.

"Dr. Kirk," I said, "does speak to our moral and spiritual formation. When Americans go to church or temple on Sunday, we are walking into the space inspired by premodern, illiberal religions that originated in the Near East between two thousand and three thousand years ago.[7] In theory liberalism is neutral when it comes to religion. It claims to have no necessary or sufficient need for citizens to believe in the God of the Christians or the God of the Jews. Yet Judeo-Christian moral norms and spiritual comfort have been a cornerstone of our culture from the start."

"Yes," said Tonsor. "To paraphrase Tocqueville: 'I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious indifference and complete political freedom. I am inclined to think that if he lacks faith, he will be a subject. But if he believes, he has the chance to be free.' Liberalism, he thought, cannot exist in some theoretical cultural vacuum. It needs religion to prop it up."[8]

Sucking in a larger breath, I said: "Another example Dr. Kirk explores comes from our intellectual formation. When young Americans read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and others who inform our defense of reason and discourse, they are entering a space inspired by premodern, pre-liberal philosophies that originated in the eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago.[9] Liberalism does not mandate what must be taught. It tries to be value free when it comes to knowledge. It claims to have no necessary or sufficient need for citizens to pursue the ancient classics that originated prior to and separate from liberalism. Yet we know that deep engagement with the 'great books' expands the competence of citizens to assess the human condition and to judge current events."

Tonsor weighed in: "So it seems that, in addition to religion, liberalism needs the interior reflection encouraged by the humanities to prop it up." 

"I think so, yes," I said in agreement. "Still another example in Kirk comes not from the Anglo-Saxons so much as from medieval England after the Conquest. Liberals would like to take credit for many of the developments that have contributed to ordered freedom in the modern age -- the common law, stare decisis, Parliament, habeas corpus, trial by jury, and other individual rights that were later adopted by liberalism.[10] In truth, they cannot. There was no -ism called liberalism when these rights and innovations appeared in the Middle Ages. Yet their absence today would be unthinkable in liberalism's public square."

Tonsor objected: "Stop right there. Using the term, 'public square,' is such a banal descent into cliche."[11]

"Okay," I said, trying to disguise my pique. Unfortunately, I was becoming used to Tonsor's gratuitous criticism of the way I said things. At the same time, I figuratively slapped my forehead since the word "okay" also made him peevish. If ever I wanted to drive him nuts I could say: "The public square is okay." 

It was probably a good thing that I did not have time to dwell on Tonsor's peevishness since we had mounted the stairs and were entering the classroom. I was proud of myself for making the case that classical liberalism could not fully account for the American mind. Using Kirk, I had pulled back the curtain on our founders' deeper conservative roots -- evidenced by the living traditions they embraced from Semitic Jerusalem, Mediterranean Athens, cosmopolitan Rome, and Germanic London. Conservatism was not just the right wing of classical liberalism but something much richer.

II.

After Tonsor slapped his satchel down on the table at the front of the class, he came back to the desk into which I was settling. "You know, Mr. Whitney, we must talk more about The Roots. It's a beautiful work in conception but a flawed work in execution."

My professor's words reminded me of something I'd read between Fort Collins and Ann Arbor the previous summer. At the beginning of the road trip to Michigan I had grappled with Tonsor's "The United States as a 'Revolutionary Society,'"[12] and it occurred to me then that his 1975 essay might be a critique of Kirk's 1974 book. Both were written in anticipation of America's bicentennial celebration, and both sought to plumb the meaning of the American experience. 

Tonsor's thesis was that the American founding revitalized Britain's governing principles and thus could be seen as a conservative event. However, in the process of revitalizing Britain's governing principles, the American founding also unleashed the ideas of liberty and equality to an unexpected degree. After 1776, the empire of liberty would spread as never before. Also after 1776 and especially after the four Civil War years culminating in 1865 -- what Lord Acton called "the Second American Revolution"[13] -- the empire of equality would spread as never before. The American founding, paradoxically, was just as much an act of revolution as it was an act of conservation. Looking back, Kirk had focused on the American founding as a fusion of the living traditions of four old cities -- Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London. Looking forward, Tonsor saw the American Revolution as a launchpad that took man's aspiration for more liberty and more equality to new heights. It was both-and: both a conservative and an innovative event; both a stroke for liberty and a stroke for equality.

Given my admiration for both men, I needed to come to terms with the tension between Kirk's and Tonsor's interpretation of the founding era. Each in his own way seemed to sound the right note. Could their notes be harmonized? The Roots was one of my favorite works of history, plumbing the subjects I liked to think about most. It played no small part in my decision to pursue graduate studies in history. The Roots was also an important work since it preserved an interpretation of American history that was important to keep alive, somewhere, anywhere, in the postmodern academy that dismissed it amid a swarm of deconstructing "narratives." But Tonsor's insight was also critically important to understanding how America became the country she was. Could I keep the thought of both men in dynamic tension? 

Kirk published the Roots in 1974 in anticipation
of America's bicentennial celebration.

_________________

Notes

[1] Tonsor thought that the most difficult problems of modern history did not usually involve what happened but why it happened. Rarely was there just one correct interpretation of why a historical event or movement occurred. Sifting a variety of interpretations was thus a fixity in Stephen Tonsor's thought. He demonstrated appreciation for different interpretations in one of his first publications after graduate school, when he assembled and compared then-current interpretations of Nazism: Stephen J. Tonsor, National Socialism: Conservative Reaction or Nihilist Revolt? (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1959). The pamphlet is in a series called "Source Problems in World Civilization." In a statement that serves as the foreword, the publisher explains that the task of the historian "is essentially one of selection ... for it is only through selection that knowledge can be arranged in meaningful and usable patterns." Tonsor's pamphlet is a selection of the most compelling interpretations of the philosophical and ideological roots of Nazism. Tonsor concludes: "Perhaps the variety and contradiction in the four major interpretations of National Socialism [in this pamphlet] suggest the difficulty involved in reaching conclusions concerning any historical event or movement. Moreover, these are only four among many interpretations.... If the judgments of [conflicting students and historians] are sometimes ambiguous or slow in coming, perhaps the fault lies in mankind's incomprehension rather than in history's opaqueness." (pp. i, 26, 27).

[2] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Malibu: Pepperdine University Press, 1974). 

[3] Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Idea of Fraternity in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). This award-winning book treats some of the same themes as Kirk's Roots and Tonsor's "The United States as a 'Revolutionary Society,'" but precedes them both.

[4] For an earlier statement of Kirk's basic thesis, see the address by the former president of the American Historical Association, Carlton J. H. Hayes, "The American Frontier -- Frontier of What?" December 27, 1945, American Historical Review, vol. 50, no. 2 (January 1946): 199-216, at URL https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/carlton-j-h-hayes. 

[5] Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, 1 and 9, 1787. 

[6] For a recent study of the traditionalists' confrontation with the Enlightenment, see Ulrich L. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

[7] Kirk, Roots, chaps. 2, 5.

[8] Stephen J. Tonsor, "Et tu, brutish?" Christian Science Monitor, April 9, 1979, p. B36.

[9] Kirk, Roots, chaps. 3-4.

[10] Kirk, Roots, chap. 6.

[11] Both Tonsor and I were alluding to a recently published book by Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).

[12] Stephen J. Tonsor, "The United States as a 'Revolutionary Society,'" Modern Age, vol. 19, no. 2 (spring 1975): 136-45.

[13] Stephen J. Tonsor, "Quest for Liberty: America in Acton's Thought," Introduction by James C. Holland (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Occasional Paper No. 1, 1993).

Entangled Roots of American Order

Democracy of the Dead among the Roots

As metaphors go, Russell Kirk's "roots" goes well with G.K. Chesterton's "democracy of the dead." Both figures of speech draw our attention to the underworld, where roots grow and burials occur. Both seek to convey how something out of sight nevertheless exerts a powerful influence on the living. Both mount a defense for keeping the best traditions alive.

The roots metaphor illustrates how the culturally vital nutrients of a civilization are transmitted from generation to generation. Roots are organic. They do not grow like crystals in a Cartesian grid. Rather, they spread their dendritic empire into the richest content they can. Although out of sight, a plant's roots are vital conduits of water and nutrients. They provide structural support for the organism. If seriously damaged, the organism dies.

So it is with the roots of cultures, nations, and civilizations. Kirk and Chesterton argued that the roots of Western civilization, like those of the United States, are largely out of sight. In their intricate complexity, they stretch down deep, entangled with other roots in a dark, moist underworld -- the place figuratively inhabited by the democracy of the dead. It is important to keep this democracy alive in the minds and hearts of the rising generation. By knowing it and defending it against the erosion of time and neglect, a people can be sustained.

Chesterton's good deed was to challenge modern sensibilities that were prone to exalt democracy but to forget the dead:

"Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father" (Orthodoxy, Chapter 4).

Kirk's good deed was to push the narrative of America back much deeper than 1776 or 1492. He revived

"nineteenth-century accounts of Western civilization [that] understood the West to have four roots. Athens stood emblematically as the source of the West’s philosophical traditions. Jerusalem was the source of the West’s religious traditions. Rome was the source of the West’s legal traditions. And Germany -- the German forests, in which had dwelt the Gothic tribes -- was the source of the peculiarly Western spirit of liberty, contract, and self-government." [See more here.]

The Paradox of Order: It Does Not Come into Being in an Orderly Fashion
Neither Kirk nor Chesterton was saying that there was a straight line from civilization to civilization. Our pilgrims were not the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews. Our universities are not the direct descendants of Plato's Academy or Athens's agora. Our founders were not the direct descendants of Roman republicans. Our institutions are not directly descended from those of the Gothic tribes. Roots are complex, entangled. The democracy of the dead is a cacophony of very different voices. Take your pick of metaphors: Our deep past, like that of all nations, is an entangled network of roots -- or a cacophony of very different voices.

To play upon the obvious paradox: order does not come into being in an orderly fashion -- not in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, and not in any of the great cities before it. Neither in Jerusalem nor in Athens nor in Rome nor in London was the establishment of order orderly.

Entanglement by Syncretism: Herod's Palestine

There are two ways civilizational roots become entangled. One way occurs when people consciously attempt to harmonize different traditions. A striking example of syncretism can be seen in the work of Herod the Great. Ethnically, Herod was an Idumaean Jew; culturally he possessed Hellenistic sensibilities; politically he was a creature of Rome since it was Caesar Augustus who made him a client king of Judea. So Herod was constantly trying to ingratiate himself to Augustus, while at the same time satisfying the demands of the local population. In this one cosmopolitan ruler, then, you see the convergence of Jewish, Greek, and Roman influences. Herod could travel with ease in Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. (How many of us could say that?)

Herod is famous for two things. He was the king of Judea when Jesus was born, and he was the single greatest builder in the history of the Holy Land. The architecture he commissioned reflected his ambition to merge three different civilizations to please the three different populations in his kingdom: native Jews, Hellenized Gentiles, and Roman administrators and visitors.

One excellent example of Herod's syncretism was his rebuilding of Solomon's Second Temple. While the content inside the temple remained Jewish, the form was Greek. It bore similarities to a Greek temple set in the middle of an agora that was conceived on the scale of a Roman forum. Adding to the classical touches were a basilica and stoas along the perimeter, with inscriptions in Greek and Latin -- Greco-Roman flourishes for the Jews who came up to the Temple Mount.

Another spectacular example of the king's syncretism was his creation of the port city of Caesarea Maritima on the site of an old Persian village. The new city was populated by people who carried three different civilizations into the community -- Hellenized Gentiles, Roman administrators, and a strong Jewish minority. Named in honor of Caesar Augustus, Caesarea Maritima was laid out in the Roman style. It featured a finely engineered harbor (the archaeological ruins of which are still visible from the air) with a Greek lighthouse modeled after the Pharos at Alexandria.*

To make the point about syncretism another way: Caesarea is mentioned several times in the Book of Acts, where the Gentile writer, Luke, writes in Greek about a Hellenized Jewish apostle who claimed Roman citizenship. His name was Paul.

Entangled roots, indeed -- or a cacophony of voices.

Entanglement in the Clash of Traditions
-- in Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London

Roots also become entangled when there are confrontations between the various traditions. Within each of the four cities Russell Kirk writes about, there were struggles for dominance by competing factions. And there were different winners in each. As a result, the civilizations associated with these four cities did not embody identical worldviews and values. Au contraire, each city, even at its core, was the scene of fierce conflicts over worldviews and values. Consider a few examples of the "entangled roots" of our deep past:

• Ancient Jerusalem was not always monotheistic (belief in the existence of one God). There were periods when the Jewish people practiced monolatry* (belief in the existence of many gods while worshipping only one of them). The practice of monolatry, indeed, divided the ten northern tribes from the two southern ones. Moreover, in the wake of Alexander the Great, many Jewish people were seduced back into polytheism. By the first century A.D. various sects -- Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes -- were battling to define the essence of Judaism. Then Jesus proclaimed he was the Messiah and introduced a radically new sect into Judaism -- the followers of Christ.
• Jesus presents a stew of syncretism. Although reared in Nazareth in the Jewish tradition, he grew up in a Hellenized region of the world only four miles from the Roman administrative town of Sepphoris.* Even his name is complex. Jesus in Latin is Iesus, from the Greek Iesous. This Hellenization of the Hebrew Jeshua or Joshua comes from two Hebrew words meaning "Yahweh rescues." Christ comes from the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, meaning "the anointed one." So the name "Jesus, the Christ" derives from Hebrew, Greek, and even Roman sources.
• The quest for meaning took radically different routes in the different cities. As Francis Ambrosio observes, two of the early cities gave the world contrasting prototypes of how human beings might find meaning even as they stand in awe before the mystery of existence. Looking into the vast impersonal forces of nature, Athens taught us to revere the hero and strive for nobility among men. Gazing into a creation charged with divine presence, Jerusalem taught us to imitate the saint and pray for humility before God.
• Athens's political history is complex. Our focus tends to be on its direct democracy, but this radically different form of government was slow to coalesce in the late 6th century B.C. and abruptly ended at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C.
• The worldview of Jerusalem and that of Athens were at odds. The Jews put emphasis on one God (even when they practiced monolatry); the polytheistic Athenians, on many gods.
• Athens was a direct democracy for less than 200 years; Rome for many centuries was a republic and for many more centuries an altogether different thing, an empire.
• Rome's religious evolution is maddeningly complex. At the time of Jesus, the city was riotously polytheistic, having added numerous Greek deities to its own. Moreover, a great leader like Julius Caesar or a beloved emperor like Caesar Augustus could undergo a popular apotheosis. In this hodgepodge, it was official Roman policy sometimes to persecute Christians, and sometimes to leave them alone. There were some dozen persecutions in all. In 313 the emperor Constantine officially recognized Christianity as one of the religions that would be tolerated in the empire. Only in 380 did a Roman emperor, Theodosius I, proclaim that Christianity would be the sole religion of the empire. Perhaps ironically for conservative Americans looking back on this history, within a century of adopting Christianity, the Western Roman Empire "fell."
• At the core of the British experience was London, which after encountering the New World could not decide what it wanted to be: Catholic or Protestant, Lutheran or Calvinist or latitudinarian, an absolute monarchy or a constitutional monarchy with a strong Parliament ... or even a republic. In the span of 150 years, it experimented with everything from regicide to revolution (that of 1688). Ask yourself: How would America be different today had this cacophony of voices turned out differently?

It's a bloody history, most of it. When reading Kirk's Roots, keep in mind the friction points within and among these civilizations. Much violence is involved in transmitting cultural DNA from generation to generation and civilization to civilization. Because cultures vary one from another, there are frequent and ferocious clashes, and who wins these clashes -- and how they win -- greatly influences the eventual formation of worldviews and values. The formation of American worldviews and values is no exception.

We well know the story of how Philadelphia clashed with London from the beginning of the American Revolution in 1761 (in John Adams's opinion, the true starting point) to the end of the War of 1812, when the War for Independence was finally resolved. We less frequently ask how Jerusalem's ideals clashed with those of Athens, how Athens's ideals clashed with those of Rome, and how Rome's ideals clashed with those of London. Yet these civilizational clashes are critical to understanding our roots as Americans. So let us look at a couple of clashes in greater detail.

David vs. Goliath: Jew vs. Greek?

It's not something most of us learned in Sunday school, but the story of David and Goliath may well have foreshadowed future conflicts between Jerusalem and Athens. In the 11th century B.C., both Mycenaean Greeks and Jews wanted to control Palestine. What were Mycenaean Greeks -- called "Philistines" in the Hebrew Scriptures -- doing in Palestine in the 11th century B.C.? It's a good question. One theory is that Mycenaean civilization collapsed suddenly around the time the Greeks returned from the Trojan War. The collapse forced the Greeks to flee their homeland and seek refuge in other parts of the Mediterranean. The Mycenaean Sea Peoples who made the successful voyage to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean would have included Goliath's ancestors in search of a new homeland. But they ran afoul of King Saul, who was establishing a monarchy for the Jewish people in the region.

Given his size and reputation as a warrior, it is not improbable that Goliath was a descendent of one of the Mycenaean Greeks who had besieged Troy.* It's uncanny that another great book of the ancient world -- the Iliad -- features a similar fight in which young Nestor slays the giant Ereuthalion (in Book 7). But in the David and Goliath story, the tables are turned, and it is the Mycenaean warrior who comes out on the losing end. Indeed, when the Bible describes David holding the decapitated head of Goliath up as a trophy (in 1 Samuel 17v51), it is as though the Jews are proclaiming their supremacy over the Mycenaean Greeks, whose exit from history ended the Age of Heroes and bequeathed a dark age to the ancient Mediterranean world.

Hebrew Jews vs. Greek Jews

Another critically important clash occurred in the 2nd century B.C., when Jerusalem -- the City of David -- was the scene of a fierce struggle between champions of Greek culture and freedom fighters for Jewish culture. It is not by accident that I compose this essay on December 1, 2010, at the start of Hanukkah. These Jewish holy days commemorate one of the most famous civilizational clashes in our cultural DNA.

Jerusalem was not a strictly Jewish city in ancient times. The armies of Alexander the Great conquered the Jewish people and imposed Hellenistic culture on them during the Second Temple period. Indeed, one of the kings in the wake of Alexander's conquest, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, reinvented Jerusalem as a Greek polis and renamed the city Antiochia. More, this Seleucid king issued a decree that forbade the Jews from observing the rites and laws of their religion. Instead, Jews had to follow Greek customs. Failure to do so warranted the death penalty. So utterly totalitarian was Antiochus IV that he rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem to the Greek god Zeus. Sacred prostitution was practiced within its precincts.

This is the background to the heroic struggle that the Maccabees waged against those trying to impose a Greek cultural agenda. They sought to reestablish Mosaic law. But the Maccabees did not speak for all Jews, a significant number of whom were eager to embrace Hellenism. The Hellenized Jews were attempting a cultural synthesis that more conservative Jews found threatening. Thus the civil war got nasty -- as civil wars inevitably do -- with the Maccabees seeking out and destroying any fellow Jew who abandoned the law of Moses.

After three years, Antiochus' edict was rescinded, and Jews were once again free to observe Mosaic law. They rededicated the Temple to YHWH in 164 B.C., which is what the modern Jewish holy days of Hanukkah commemorate.*

And yet -- and yet -- what did descendents of the conservative Jewish Maccabees eventually do with their new-found freedom? They accepted Greek names. They adopted Greek customs. They produced Greek literature. They read Old Testament books that had been translated into the Greek left behind by Alexander the Great. Two centuries later, Jewish-raised authors of the New Testament would write in Greek. The apostle Paul would vigorously argue for the inclusion of Hellenized Jews in the Church. And a Hellenized Gentile named Luke would write more of the New Testament than any other individual.* The irony is rich.

Moral of the Story

The point of retelling this story is to remind ourselves that the roots of American order did not grow harmoniously one from another. The past is a cacophony of voices arising from the democracy of the dead. The story of the Maccabees shows how a civil war could arise when Jewish and Greek values clashed within the same culture. In America today, we are faced with some of the same kinds of tensions that erupted in civil war in the 2nd-century B.C.

___________

*Sources:

Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, 4th ed. (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003).

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chicago: Moody, 2009).

For a discussion of monolatry, consult Gary Rendsberg, The Book of Genesis (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2006), lecture 8; and Jodi Magness, The Holy Land Revealed (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010), lecture 6.

For more on Sephorris, consult Jodi Magness, The Holy Land Revealed (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010), lecture 22.

For Herod the Great's reign, consult Jodi Magness, The Holy Land Revealed (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010), lectures 18-21.

For David and Goliath, consult Robert L. Dise Jr, Ancient Empires before Alexander (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2009), lectures 16-18.

For the Maccabees, consult Jodi Magness, The Holy Land Revealed (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2010), lecture 11 .

For the observation about St. Luke writing more of the New Testament than any other author, consult http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/luke.htm

To learn more, visit www.allpresidents.org

Roots of American Order: Jerusalem

Michelangelo's Moses

Every civilization has a "genius" that can teach us something important; every civilization hones a virtue that can inspire the rest of us. What were ancient Israel's?

To understand America, do not start with 1787. Or 1776. Or 1492. To understand America -- or more precisely the most ancient roots of American order -- go back to the second millennium B.C., to the Hebrews. Ancient Israel has had more influence on American culture than you think. So argues Russell Kirk in his magisterial work, The Roots of American Order.

Why the Hebrews? After all, they were marginalized nomads who wandered around the edges of Bronze Age civilization more than 3,000 years ago, in the wastelands of Egypt and Sinai. When they finally did settle in Palestine, they never developed into a great power as did ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia, China, India, or Rome. They left us no form of government to imitate. No economic system to marvel at. No enduring art or painting or sculpture to admire. The Western (Wailing) Wall from the foundation of the Second Temple is the best remnant of their architecture – hardly as striking as the pyramids of Egypt's Old Kingdom or the greatest temples of ancient Greece.

Moreover, many ancient Hebrew customs offend our sensibilities and strike us as barbaric. Have you ever read the Torah and absorbed the 613 commandments? In ancient Israel, people could be stoned to death for 18 different offenses -- and not the ones you might think. Stoning, which could be a slow death, was the prescribed method of torture for breaking the sabbath, rebelling against parents, cursing a parent, blasphemy, idolatry, prophesying in the manner of the priestess at the Greek temple at Delphi, and having forbidden sex with animals, a betrothed virgin, in-laws, or relatives. The first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned under Jewish law for the sin of blasphemy.

The stoning of Stephen under Jewish law

Yet it is important to avoid the fallacy of presentism and look at the deeper cultural patterns that the Jewish people handed down. What these desert nomads gave us is arguably more powerful than any political system, more dynamic than any economic system, more vivid than any painting, and more enduring than any stone monument. What they gave us through their sacred writings were timeless laws of behavior, moral insights that people from every continent and every age have accepted as fundamental to right living. They helped men and women order their souls.

If every civilization imparts wisdom to the world, if every civilization hones and sharpens certain virtues among its people, the Jews honed and sharpened the virtue of being in right relationship to the divine -- piety. Let's explore ancient Israel's remarkable displays of piety and its everlasting contributions to Western civilization.

1. The Hebrews' most basic insight: religion is the bedrock of culture.



Ark of the Covenant

The inventory of Jerusalem's contributions to our historic outlook as Americans is striking. The belief in one transcendent God, the notion of a transcendent moral order, the separation of the Creator from creation, linear time, the covenant of a "chosen people" with God, the ethical critique of rulers, the moral evaluation of history, the evil of human sacrifice (ended by the Jews, until Jesus), and the notion that this "chosen people" has a "manifest destiny" in the Promised Land -- all are notions Americans recognize in their own history and culture.

These major elements of Hebrew culture grew out of their relation with their God. Thus religion is foundational to Jewish culture -- it puts the “cult” in culture. This is a major theme of Roots, not just in the chapter on the Jews, but throughout the entire work. Kirk adopted this idea from the British Catholic historian Christopher Dawson. Kirk, following Dawson, wants us to see that the first social organization that formed beyond family groups is the cult that sought to communicate with the supernatural power that created human beings.

“Animals survive by instinct; true human beings cannot. Possessing reason, even primitive men ask questions. They find themselves, as did the Israelites in the desert of Sinai, in a condition of danger, suffering, and ignorance. Led perhaps by some man of marvelous insights, they join together in seeking answers to their questions. So the cult, the religious association, comes into existence. Men try, through the cult, to acquire protection and knowledge from a power that is more than human. Without such communication, they cannot survive on the human level -- and perhaps not even on the animal level."

“All the aspects of any civilization arise out of a people’s religion: its politics, its economics, its arts, its sciences, even its simple crafts are the by-products of religious insights and a religious cult. For until human beings are tied together by some common faith, and share certain moral principles, they prey upon one another. [But] in the common worship of the cult, a community forms. At the heart of every culture is a body of ethics, of distinctions between good and evil; and in the beginning, at least, those distinctions are founded upon the authority of revealed religion. Not until a people have come to share religious belief are they able to work together satisfactorily, or even to make sense of the world in which they find themselves. Thus all order -- even the ideological order of modern totalist states, professing atheism -- could not have come into existence, had it not grown out of general belief in truths that are perceived by the moral imagination.”

2. The Bible -- the most influential assemblage of books in human history?

Our knowledge of this root of American order -- ancient Jerusalem -- is conveyed primarily through the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, ask Americans the first thing they think of when recalling ancient Israel’s legacy to us, and they’ll say the Old Testament. Every hotel room has one. In it are contained the great moral and spiritual insights of the ancient Jews. It is a book – or, rather, a collection of 24 books in the Jewish canon – written by numerous authors over many centuries. The Hebrew Scriptures correspond largely, with some variation in content and organization, to the Protestant and Roman Catholic Old Testament.


Torah

The Bible is the classic of classics. You know what the classics are: They’re “books everybody wants to have read and nobody has read.” For those who really grapple with it, the Old Testament probes deep into the mysteries of the human condition. It is no accident that some of the giants of modern thought – proud nonbelievers even – were greatly influenced by the Bible. Recent research has revealed that leading atheists – Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, among them – were drawn to the Old Testament for its insights into the human condition.
The Hebrew Scriptures, as filtered through Christian scribes and scholars, were to prove enormously formative of the American mind and character. Indeed, the study of Hebrew was in vogue in the 18th century, about the time America was founded. University of Houston political theorist Don Lutz has gone back through all the literature of the late-18th century to see what the Founders read. Of all the sources available to them, the Founding generation cited the Bible 34 percent of the time – more, by far, than any other single work. They cited the Bible four times more than Blackstone or Montesquieu, and twelve times more than Locke. And within the Bible, they referenced Deuteronomy more than any other book in either Old Testament or New. Presented with this kind of evidence, two Newsweek reporters, Kenneth Woodward and David Gates, noted that some “historians are discovering that the Bible, even more than the Constitution, is our founding document.”

3. Moral Order

Most of us first learn about moral order – about telling right from wrong – by being taught rules of behavior and laws to follow. The Jewish version of the Hebrew Scriptures opens with a long section called “The Law.” It’s the first five books of Moses, called the Torah in Jewish tradition and the Pentateuch in the Christian tradition – and in them are laid out 613 laws. The most famous among these laws are the Ten Commandments. It seems God/Moses was a practical teacher. There are ten of them, one for each finger, so that they can be easily learned and recalled.

The promulgation of timeless laws is based on the premise that human nature does not change. Indeed, Jewish teaching insists that man’s moral nature does not change. The Jews taught that it is constant throughout history and in every land. Thus God’s moral laws are absolute, objective, and universal. They are everywhere and in every case to be obeyed.

Because these ancient absolutes are chiseled into relativistic modern cultures, the Ten Commandments still make the news – in legislation passed in Congress, in court cases involving public schools where people have tried to post them (or remove them), and in Dr. Laura’s bestsellers. Even people who don’t believe in them pay the ancient Jews a compliment by feeling the need, more than 3,000 years later, explicitly to deny or debunk them.

The two tablets were placed in numerous colonial churches.

The power of the Commandments is abundantly evident from the beginning of American history. Every time I go back to Williamsburg, Virginia, I am reminded of just how visible the Ten Commandments were to the colonists. Every Anglican Church I go into has two large tablets embedded in the wall behind the altar, with the Decalogue inscribed on them. James Madison – the same James Madison who sponsored legislation authored by his friend Thomas Jefferson, called “The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom” – nevertheless wrote: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions . . . upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Moses and the Decalogue are memorialized in a host of ways today. On the American scene, they are literally carved in stone all over the government buildings in our nation’s capital.

• For example, a bas-relief of Moses can be seen in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Moses or the Ten Commandments are depicted in several places in the U.S. Supreme Court building. 
• When approaching the building from the east, you see the frieze over the east portico titled “Justice the Guardian of Liberty”; Moses, holding the two tablets with the Commandments on them, is the tallest figure, directly in the center.



Moses the Lawgiver -- in the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court Building

• Gaining access to the inner courtroom, one goes through two wood doors on which are engraved the Ten Commandments.
• In the inner chamber, directly over where the chief justice sits, is a marble bas-relief of a figure resting his elbow on the Ten Commandments.

4. Monotheism

As we have seen, the moral and spiritual innovations of Jews living thousands of years ago bear on American history. Kirk believed, like many scholars and people of faith, that the Hebrews were virtually unique in the ancient world. They gave to humankind the idea that there is one, all-powerful God – one God who suffers no rival. He created the universe, and he created human beings. This distinction between the Creator and the creation is fundamental. There is no mistaking an animal or a tree or the sun for divinity. They are infused with divinity, as Psalm 104 proclaims, but they are not the same as God.

It should be mentioned that there was one brief instance of monotheism in ancient Egypt's Middle Kingdom. Not surprisingly, it coincided with the period when the Hebrews were there, but likely before Moses came of age. It occurred during the odd reign of the pharaoh Akhenaton (a.k.a. Amenhotep IV), who ruled from 1375 to 1358 B.C. He might be considered Egypt’s “heretic king,” since he went against Egypt’s long-established tradition of worshipping multiple deities like pharaohs, cobras, cats, and the sun. In a revolutionary act, he put all his faith in the god Aton, the sun disc. But Akhenaton’s faith in the one sun god was never took root through the generations. Nor did it stick with the rulers. When Akhentaton died, his temples were destroyed, and Egypt reverted to polytheism. Moses was probably born sometime about the end of Akhenaton’s reign. Interestingly, there is a striking resemblance between Akhenaton’s “Hymn to the Sun Disc,” and the Old Testament Psalm 104, especially verses 19-28.

Speaking of ancient rulers whose thought resembles that of the Hebrews, we should note Shabakah, the Nubian pharaoh who had a basalt stela inscribed with the only extant philosophical discourse that archaeologists have found from ancient Egypt. The discourse -- also known as "the philosophy of a Memphite priest" -- was already old when Shabakah encountered it. It involved a creation story that was hauntingly similar to that of Genesis and the Gospel of John. According to the stela, one of the gods created the world by thinking it and saying it on his tongue. Yes, in the beginning was the Word.

It should also be mentioned that Israel's monotheism alternated at times with monolatry, which is the worship of one god in a field of many. Many of the struggles between the ten northern tribes and the 2 southern tribes arose precisely from the monolatry of the former versus the monotheism of the latter. Many Old Testament prophets railed against the northern tribes' monolatry, reasoning that it violated Israel's covenant with YHWH and brought down His wrath. Monotheism eventually won out.

"Moses and the Burning Bush," by Sebastien Bourdon, 1642-1645

This one God is extraordinary compared to the pantheon of lesser gods that populate the ancient world. He loves his creation. And he loves the crown jewel of his creation, humankind. He cares about us. He wants us to prosper and to live. He enters a covenant with us and promises us prosperity and life if – if – we abide by his laws.

God's laws are essential to good order. As Kirk noted,

“the ancient civilizations desperately desired some principles of private and public order. One can make out an attempt to reach such principles in certain Greek myths, and the Egyptians, or some of them, endeavored to find ethical authority that would make life worth living. . . . The quest for enduring order is a natural and necessary search among any people. But the first real success in that quest was achieved by Israel, and that surprising triumph has not been forgotten by mankind.”

“. . . by an extraordinary perception, the Israelites came to understand the human condition as it had not been understood before.” “. . . through Moses, the Hebrews learned more distinctly that there watched over them an all-powerful intelligence or spirit which gave them their moral nature.”

5. Human rights of each individual

Why is Israel’s moral law so powerfully persuasive? It all starts from the belief of the Jews that each human being is spiritually created in the image and likeness of God. This provides a powerful motive to champion the dignity and equality of all persons. It is a source of our gospel of human rights.

Human rights are meaningless if they do not apply to each of us individually. So our individuality and human rights are closely linked. While each of us shares something in common with all other people by virtue of being created in the image of the divine, each of us is also a unique creation. Jewish prophets told how each human being is known in the womb by God, and called personally by name. This recognition of the uniqueness of each individual was a powerful buttress for the eventual emergence of a democratic form of government – “one man, one vote.” Each citizen was to have the same human rights as all other citizens. Before the law, before our magistrates, including our magistrates, we are all equal.

6. Freedom

Liberty Bell, Philadelphia

Being created in the image and likeness of God is also a powerful argument for human freedom. The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy tells of how each of us is morally free to choose good or evil. Interestingly, our Liberty Bell has an inscription on it, straight out of the Old Testament, Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Then there is one of the greatest liberation stories of all time, of the Hebrews being enslaved by the Egyptians, and of Moses leading them out of Egypt to the promised land. This was a favorite theme of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his sermons to blacks and whites. In fact, it was a powerful theme of the entire Civil Rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s. The example of Moses, the Lawgiver, was hard for whites to ignore or argue against.

7. A "chosen people" with a Covenant and a "Manifest Destiny"

Another way the Jewish people have influenced American moral life is in the notion of the Covenant. The God of the Old Testament formed numerous covenants with the ancient Jews:
• Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3);
• Noah and the ark (Genesis 9);
• Abraham and the Promised Land (Genesis 15-18);


Abraham, Sarah, and their family accept the new covenant with YHWH

• Moses and the Law (Exodus 19-20); • David and the Kingdom of Israel (2 Samuel 7);
• Renewal of the covenant with the prophets.



"Embarkation of the Pilgrims," by Robert W. Wier, 1843 -- one of eight historical paintings in the Capitol Rotunda

The Pilgrims were thoroughly familiar with biblical covenants, and when they came to New England, it was with a solemn sense that they, too, were entering into a Covenant with God, in a way re-enacting His Covenant with the ancient Hebrews. And this time, they were determined to succeed on their “errand in the wilderness.” As you know the Pilgrim experience, as well as that of the Puritans, was to provide a tremendous source of national pride and identity. It has a mythic place in American history.
If a "chosen people" are in right relation to God, then the logic of Manifest Destiny can arise. The Jews looked back to Abraham and Moses in the belief that they were entitled to the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. This notion of "Manifest Destiny" also became part of the American creed in the conquest of the West.

8. Judgment of the Nations

"The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah," by John Martin

It follows that if there is a covenant with God, you’d better not break it. Here the Jewish notion of a “judgment of the nations” has also shaped our moral life. The Hebrew prophets often confronted kings -- they spoke truth to power. The ethical critique of rulers was relatively rare 2,500 years ago.

Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC

God judged Israel and punished the entire nation when rulers and the people disobeyed his commands. This was much on the minds of some of our founders and early presidents. Thomas Jefferson, in his old age contemplating American slavery, said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Then there were the powerful ruminations of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, who in his Second Inaugural Address posed the question, Why was America suffering a bloody, devastating Civil War? The answer: because we had tolerated slavery on our soil, thus betraying the promise of freedom born out of the American Revolution.

9. Remnant

Rembrandt's "Jeremiah"

Closely related to the judgment of the nations is the idea of a surviving “remnant” that holds fast to the covenant. From a theological perspective, these are the blessed few who escape some heaven-sent catastrophe. God in his grace spares a portion of a people to witness to his mercy, tell of divine judgment, and begin the human community anew. The Old Testament is full of such remnants – of Noah and his family, who survive the Flood; of Amos and his followers when the Northern Kingdom (Israel with its capital Samaria) is destroyed; of Isaiah and his followers in anticipation of the Southern Kingdom (Judah with its capital Jerusalem) being destroyed; of Jeremiah and his followers upon the destruction of the Southern Kingdom; and so forth. (See, e.g., Zephaniah 3v12-13.)

American culture is full of remnants. The idea helps explain why some out-of-the-mainstream and even extremist groups sequestered themselves from the greater culture or issue dire apocalyptic warnings. UFO groupies, millenarians, Branch Davidians, Seventh Day Adventists – all identify with a chosen remnant who are somehow divinely privileged.

Sometimes traditionalist conservatives refer to themselves as a “remnant,” not in the sense of a religious cult, but in the sense that the conservative remnant is called to guard the treasures of America's cultural inheritance against the barbarians inside the gates (the usual culprits being Hollywood, the media, and universities). But the idea of the remnant is hardly restricted to conservatives. Progressives have their self-appointed remnants, too, in the environmental movement, women's movement, etc.

10. Linear conception of time

Michelangelo's "Creation of the Sun and Moon," Sistine Chapel

Yet another influence on American thought that originated with the ancient Jews is a linear conception of time – with a beginning, middle, and end. Beginning: the Creation. Middle: struggles between good and evil. End: the coming of the messiah and, with him, redemption.

This was in marked contrast to pagan Greeks and Romans, who believed that time was cyclical. Indeed, cycles were how the vast majority of peoples in the ancient world understood the passage of time. After all, it is plain to see that the sun goes round the earth each day, and that the seasons come back in a predictable pattern each year. It's all cyclic, observable, and thus comprehensible. This notion of unending cyclical time may account for the fatalistic attitude one encounters in Greek and Roman literature.

By contrast, a linear conception of time is based not on the days and seasons, but on an organism's birth, life, and death. This organic progression gave rise to the notion of history, to the study of the drama of human free will responding to challenges and trying to change life for the better. The idea of history on a time-line would, in turn, eventually give rise to the possibility of progress – which is fundamental to the American creed.

Interestingly, where the Old Testament suggests a cyclical view of time, the influence of Greek thought is never far away. The Book of Ecclesiastes – the very title comes from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, meaning “one who convokes an assembly” – presents a cyclical view of time that, like its pagan counterparts, urges a certain resignation.

The Book of Daniel, although written primarily in Aramaic, has a number of words of Greek origin. One section of the work suggests parallels to the well-known civilizational cycle found in Greco-Roman thought as well as other pagan cultures. Daniel has a prophetic dream in which future empires process across the stage of history. The cycle, according to one interpretation, goes from an age of gold (represented by the Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian empire), to an age of silver (Persian empire), to an age of Brass (Greek civilization), to an age of iron (Roman empire).

11. Education: We, too, are a people of the book.

American education is another area where Jerusalem influenced the formation of American culture. Both the Jewish and Christian faiths require believers to know Sacred Scripture, and to know Sacred Scripture, it is necessary to be able to read. The overwhelming majority of immigrants to this country, at least until recent decades, have followed some Christian denomination. Often the only book in a frontier home was the Bible. As Kirk writes: “In colonial America, everyone with the rudiments of schooling knew one book thoroughly: the Bible. And the Old Testament mattered as much as the New, for the American colonies were founded in a time of renewed Hebrew scholarship, and the Calvinistic character of Christian faith in early America emphasized the legacy of Israel.”

One more observation on how important is was to be competent to search the scriptures for oneself. Daniel Boorstin has explained how the Pilgrims, whenever they grappled with some moral or historical problem, thought analogously. Further, they drew most of their analogies from Jewish experience as depicted in the Old Testament. At every stage of their journey to the New World, they compared what they were doing with what the Israelites had once done. Their journey from Old World bondage, through the wilderness, to a land flowing with milk and honey was a way of reliving what the Hebrews had done. Their covenant with God was not unlike those of the ancient Jews. They would even search out the meaning of specific events by trying to pair them with Old Testament happenings. Thus the “great and terrible Earthquake” of June 1, 1638, and the one that followed on January 14, 1639, reminded Captain Edward Johnson of how “the Lord himselfe . . . roared from Sion (as in the dayes of the Prophet Amos).”

12. Naming America – a tribute to the moral order of the ancient Jews

Whenever I speak about The Roots of American Order, I mention the names Americans appropriate from the past to convey meaning in the present. Think of the importance of names in your own life. Think of the thoughtfulness with which many of you or your relatives name a new child. We usually devote a great deal of thought to this naming because we humans are meaning-making creatures. In the act of naming someone, we consciously seek to identify with a person, place, virtue, or event from the past. Our aspiration, our hope, is somehow to participate in the being of the thing named.

The impact of Old Testament names in American culture is significant. Most obviously, if there were no Old Testament, think of the names we would lack: Sarah, Ruth, Leah, Esther, and Oprah (actually a misspelling of Ophrah); David, Adam, Joseph, Joshua, Daniel, Benjamin, Nathaniel, Jacob, Samuel, Saul, and -- love this one -- Zebulon. (It turns out that the American explorer Zebulon Pike was fittingly named after a man, a tribe, and the place the tribe inhabited. Zebulon was made famous by Handel's Messiah and the prophet Isaiah.)

Speaking of places, think of the names on a map that Americans would not have. It is revealing to see how many American places are named after Old Testament sites, and thus honor the ancient Jews. There is a logical reason for this. Often the Bible was the only book that pioneers took with them as they pushed the frontier westward. So it is no surprise that many American place names allude to something in the Old Testament. They didn’t just do this because the names sounded pretty. They recognized the role of the ancient Jews in establishing moral and spiritual order in the wilderness. More than that, they wanted to identify with the ancient Jews. Thus an inspection of a map of the United States reveals:

• 17 Salems and 2 New Salems (Short form of Jerusalem, but in the Old Testament Salem was the city where Melchizedek was king; Salem is derived from the Hebrew shalom, meaning “peace.”);
• 11 Bethels and 2 Mount Bethels;
• 10 Hebrons and 1 Mount Hebron;
• 7 Carmels or Mount Carmels;
• 5 Edens and 1 Mount Eden;
• 5 Bethlehems and 1 New Bethlehem;
• 5 having to do with Zion or Mount Zion;
• 4 Mount Olives or Olivet;
• 3 Palestines and 1 New Palestine;
• 2 Mount Gileads and 1 Gilead;
• 2 Mount Hermons and 1 Hermon;
• 2 New Sharons and 1 Sharon;
• 2 Mount Sinais;
• 2 Bethesdas;

• 4 Mount Pisgahs (Arizona, Vermont, New York, and North Carolina -- famously, near the Biltmore Estate); Pisgah refers to the mountain range in Transjordan that Moses climbed to gaze upon the promised land. In the Pisgah Range he climbed a peak called Mount Nebo.
• 1 Galilee and 1 New Galilee;
• 1 Moab (Utah);
• 1 Timnath (CO); a city in the territory of Dan.
• 1 Mount Ephraim;
• 1 Mount Horeb; place where Moses experienced the theophany in which God gave Israel the law (the Ten Commandments); the name for Sinai in Deuteronomy.
• 1 Mount Nebo;
• Newark – perhaps a double entendre, referring not just to the English village in Nottinghamshire with the famous castle where King John died, but also perhaps, in the context of the New World, to the idea of a “New Ark.” This is not such a stretch when one recalls that the Newark in New Jersey was settled by Puritans in 1666.

An enlightening exercise would be to combine history and geography, and trace the westward extension of biblical place names on the ever-moving frontier.

13. Ethical Critique of History and Leaders, Who Are Held to an Ethical Standard

Prior to 800 B.C., most kings commanded scribes to record events that glorified the king. These chronicles do not deal much with causation or ethical interpretation. The Israelites had this tradition, too. For example, I Kings 11 references The Annals of Solomon (although no copy has ever been found). But the Israelites went further. They were the first people on earth whose historians, scribes, and prophets wrote independently of the king. They did not just chronicle events, but also interpreted them in universal ethical terms. 

The Prophet Nathan confronting King David

Likewise, the Israelites were the first peoples on earth whose historians also criticized the king when he failed to live up to the standards set by the prophets. This was a remarkably bold invention. The West's historiographic tradition of combining historical narrative with ethical critique can be traced to the ancient Israelites.

One final point regarding the moral order. Kirk argued convincingly that a moral order cannot survive without leadership. To illustrate this point, recall the story at the end of the book of Judges, in which a woman is brutally raped, murdered, and dismembered. The point is that in those days there was no king in Israel. There was no great leader. Every man did what he wanted.

This haunting story raises compelling questions that press on every aspect of what we think about moral order:
• What is the role of leadership in the moral order?
• What is justice, especially when one wants to avenge a wrong?
• To what extent should the innocent be held accountable for the crimes of the guilty?
• Which leads to the question: are we all equal before the law?
• Is there a judgment of the nations that follows from the logic of the natural order of things?
- To what degree are leaders responsible for that judgment?

Conclusion

The Jews developed piety -- the virtue of being in right relationship to the divine -- above all others. It is interesting to ponder what our world today would be like if these desert nomads had not introduced such striking innovations in moral and spiritual life. Many of their insights persist to this day. The belief that each human being is created in the image and likeness of God; each person’s uniqueness; our moral freedom to choose; the perpetual power of the Ten Commandments to guide human conduct; the notion of a covenant, and a judgment of the nations; a linear conception of time with the possibility of progress; insistence that everyone be competent to read in order to divine God’s will – these are ways in which the Jews permanently changed the human estate. These are ways in which bronze-age nomads, striving to survive in a desert, would eventually make an enduring impact on the American experiment in ordered freedom.

Russell Kirk went so far as to write:

“. . . the American moral order could not have come into existence at all, had it not been for the legacy left by Israel.” “We cannot well understand order and disorder in America today, or elsewhere in the world, unless we know something of the beliefs and the experiences of the Hebrew people in a remote land and a remote time. . . . Our modern moral order, at least in what is called the West, runs back to the burning bush on Sinai.”

American Founding (3): Roots or Shoots?

Old Roots of Order 

A primer of the American founding that revives mainstream nineteenth-century narratives is Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order. Now in its fourth edition, Roots is "simply one of the finest surveys of the classical, religious, and European influences on American political thought ever composed" (Lee Cheek). In his masterpiece, Kirk traces key cultural elements of four great civilizations and the cities that defined them -- biblical Jerusalem, classical Athens, ancient Rome, and medieval and early-modern London. So:

• Jerusalem is the seedbed of the West's moral and spiritual roots.
• Athens is the seedbed of the West's philosophical and ethical roots.
• Rome is the seedbed of the West's legal and political roots.
• London -- developing out of ancient German tribes -- is the seedbed of the West's rootedness in liberty and the institutions of self-government.

When I lead seminars on The Roots of American Order, it is easy to prove to American audiences that very few of our most foundational thoughts arise out of American culture. For spiritual comfort and moral guidance, many Americans consult the Bible -- a product of ancient Jerusalem. For methods of sound thinking and right reason, many American college students are taught Plato and Aristotle -- the product of classical Athens. For the concepts of natural law vis-a-vis positive law, as well as oratory, many American legislators still grapple with Cicero and his students -- the product of republican Rome. For an appreciation of representative assemblies, many American citizens still tip their hat to the British Parliament -- the product of feudal London. For understanding free markets and free trade in modern economies, we Americans still refer to Adam Smith -- a product of early modern Glasgow and Edinburgh, which by the late 18th century were intellectual satellites of London.

Is it not remarkable? Not one of these traditions originated in American soil. In all of these basic areas of thought, Americans look to "foreigners" from the distant past to recognize and interpret their world. Even the Federalist Papers, while written by Americans, are thoroughly informed by the political experience of classical Athens, ancient Rome, and early modern London. In significant ways, we Americans stand on the shoulders of giants.

The Tension between Order and Liberty

And yet, these old roots of order are not the whole of the American story. There would be new shoots of freedom throughout the nation's history. This tension between the old shoots of order and the new shoots of freedom is what makes Americans such an interesting people. To embrace this tension is to comprehend the essence of American history.

In the 16th century, the world was thrust into a new era when Europeans encountered the Western hemisphere and began planting their ambitions in its rich soil. On American ground, between the 1490s and the 1790s, various strands of cultural DNA in the West combined to make a remarkable new nation. The creation of the United States was organically related to previous civilizations, to be sure, but not a clone of any of them. Culturally our early republic represented a unique grafting of key elements -- from the monotheistic promise of Jerusalem, to the unfinished philosophical quests of ancient Athens, to the civic republican inheritance of ancient Rome, to the evolving political institutions and common law of London. Politically the Anglo-American errand into the wilderness was producing a new species of polity that began to blossom in Philadelphia in the mid 1770s.

On the one hand, the early republic represented "a revolution not made but prevented," as Burkeans would characterize it. (See Edmund Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in which he discusses the principles of 1688.) On the other hand, as Alexander Hamilton reminds us, the new polity was the result of self-conscious reflection on American resistance to British tyranny. (See his opening to Federalist Paper Number 1.)

So the establishment of the United States was a unique mix of old and new, fulfillment and promise. It did not exactly represent a novus ordo seclorum -- a new order of the ages -- as some American boosters claimed. (The phrase is still on our paper currency.) In reality, each of the four "root cities" provided the cultural stock from which America's founders, framers, farmers, and forward-trekking pioneers would draw sustenance. These early Americans went about their daily lives with their Bible, Aesop, Plutarch, and Blackstone in hand. But on the frontier something new was grafted into their worldview.

New Shoots of Freedom

As the title of his book implies, Kirk emphasizes continuity over change -- old roots over new shoots. And yet, new shoots there were. The first major new shoot appeared, if we are to believe John Adams, in a Boston courtroom in 1761, when James Otis asserted one of the radical ideas of the early modern age -- that human beings are not born to be subjects of a monarch or servants of a dynasty; that there should be a new relationship between the people and their government; that the rulers should be a people's servants. Adams reported being riveted by the speech Otis delivered. Its content was different, revolutionary, even disconcerting. Adams recalled Otis saying that

"every man, merely natural, was an independent sovereign, subject to no law but the law written on his heart, revealed to him by his maker in the constitution of his nature, and the inspiration of his understanding and conscience. His right to his life, his liberty, no created being could rightfully contest; nor was his right to property less incontestable...." Adams added: "Young as I was, and ignorant as I was, I shuddered at the doctrine he taught, and I have all my life shuddered and still shudder at the consequences that may be drawn from such premises."

Looking back, Adams believed that the start of the American Revolution was not at Lexington and Concord, but 14 years earlier in that courtroom. It was not so much on battlefields, as in minds and hearts that the revolution occurred. As Peter Mancall explains, "the change in the sentiments of Americans toward government ... constituted the real Revolution.... As a result of the Revolution, Americans were citizens of a republic, not subjects of a monarch. The people at large had become sovereign, and they created state and national governments to meet their needs.... [Thus] the Revolution ... redefined the nature of politics in the western world."* A new shoot indeed.

So What Changed?

An exciting beginning to a new world order, this -- but it was only a beginning. The hundred years from the 1760s to the 1860s was the first Time of Trial in American history. This Time of Trial saw significant challenges: the American Revolution, War for Independence, birth agony of the new republic, and wars -- a war against aboriginal Americans, against the French, against Barbary Pirates, a second war against Britain, a war against Mexico, and a civil war that brought to a head the unresolved paradoxes at the founding. As a result of these pressures, American politics and culture began to change significantly. They diverged in key ways from European politics and culture. After the tumult of that one hundred years, what had changed?

• Politically and constitutionally: By the 1780s, a large republic was created in a world of settled monarchies. It took two attempts to get the new republic right -- first in the Articles of Confederation, then in the U.S. Constitution -- but it happened. Sovereignty now resided in citizens, not in monarchs, and politics in the Western world was forever after redefined.  
• Ecclesiastically: There would be no national church. At the start of the War for Independence, only five states had an established church. A half century later, there were no more state supported or established churches in the land.
• Socially: Successful revolutions are usually about radical social upheaval. The French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions turned their worlds upside down. The American Revolution did not. As John Willson has argued, the most remarkable thing about the American Revolution is what did not occur, as opposed to what might have occurred. The more radical reformers -- Thomas Paine comes to mind -- were kept in check; social engineering never became part of the program. The relative modesty of our revolution was due in no small part to the fact that there was no entrenched aristocratic order to overthrow. Besides confiscating a few Loyalist estates, revolutionary era governments did not redistribute property. Moreover, to make sure no government-sanctioned aristocracy could arise on American soil, titles of nobility were outlawed in Article I, section 9, of the U.S. Constitution. Socially, formal deference to one's "betters" began disappearing. The literal whipping boys of princes in English courts were unheard of. Equality became an actionable political idea, and the democratic principle would increasingly assert itself.  
• Culturally: Noah Webster and other chauvinists endeavored to create a distinctively American language, architecture, and culture that reflected their belief in the superiority of the "new world."  
• Geographically: The presence of a large frontier in the West renewed the possibility, again and again, of equal opportunity and upward mobility (mostly for white males).  
• Economically: The world's largest, continuous, free-trade zone was coming into existence.
• Civil society: In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America's network of voluntary associations was the world's most developed, by far. It was spurred by the fact that pioneers on the frontier outpaced government's reach. People had to solve their own problems.
• Morally: The U.S. was hardly the first nation to get rid of slavery. In fact, in light of the Declaration of Independence, the founders were embarrassingly slow to rid the nation of its glaring contradiction. But by 1865, as a result of the Civil War and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, race-based chattel slavery was finally abolished on American soil. It resulted in the largest, uncompensated transfer of private property in human history; four million men and women of African descent were liberated from the shackles of the peculiar institution. This was revolutionary. Yet it is important to remember that social attitudes did not necessarily change with the Thirteenth Amendment. Abraham Lincoln wanted the nation's four million blacks to emigrate and colonize Honduras, Liberia, or other tropical areas -- anyplace away from the U.S. so they would not mix socially with whites.
• Psychologically: Americans with a physical frontier could also experience something of a psychological frontier. They could choose not to carry forward the burdens of the past. In fact, Americans could be indifferent to the past, and look only toward the future, and reinvent themselves again and again if they wanted. Innovations all, from the perspective of Old Europe's conservatives defending their anciens regimes.

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*For John Adams's 1818 retrospective on James Otis in 1761 and the true beginning of the American Revolution, see Peter C. Mancall, Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution, vol. 4 (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2005), pp. 194, 206-07.]
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