Tonsor: Introduction: Move to Ann Arbor III

I.

On the third morning of my journey, I woke up to a dream set in ancient Athens. It was about Aristophanes, the comic playwright. In the dream he was not the brilliant Aristophanes encountered in the Penguin paperback, but the absurd Aristophanes ridiculed in Plato's Symposium. There Aristophanes is carousing at a dinner party. He's drunk and hiccuping and prodded by his friends to deliver a speech about love. After a few minutes of goofy antics he gets over the hiccups and tells the famous myth of how every soul splits in half and then spends the rest of its life longing to reunite with its other. The story is supposed to explain why we fall irresistibly in love with our "other half" when we finally find that special person.[1]

Aristophanes -- Image at URL
https://updownnsideways.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/aristophane.jpg

This was one of my "eureka dreams." Ever since childhood, I've had dreams that take a common English expression and amplify its meaning in an allegory. In this case the expression was, "I gave my heart to [name of the person]," or "I left a piece of my heart back in [name of the place]." The interpretation of the dream was pretty straightforward. The soul represented the heart. If I left a piece of my heart behind in Colorado, then the pining, the longing, the sweet sadness I'd occasionally feel was simply my heart's way of expressing the desire to go back "home" and be whole again. Symbolically, the comic Aristophanes was there to tell me not to get down but to laugh and enjoy my new adventure. 

But enough of the amazing work of dreams!

II. 

After shelving the dream, my first thought was: Today will be a day of firsts. This morning I'll cross into Michigan for the first time. (It's true, I'd never stepped foot in the state, not even for a plane change.) This afternoon I'll see Ann Arbor for the first time. This evening in my new apartment I will go to bed as a Michigander for the first time.

Then my second thought propelled me to act on the first: I regretted having checked into a cheap hotel, for the bedsheets smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and one-night stands. 

I got up and walked out to the balcony to take in the early light of day. Sometime during the night the thunderhead had moved east and the cold front had passed through, leaving crisp Canadian air in its wake.

Standing on the balcony amid the gathering rush-hour of Chicagoland, I glanced back to the west, toward I-80, the road taken. I had crossed my Rubicon a thousand miles ago. Done. So I looked toward the sunrise, toward I-94 east, and felt happy that I was within four hours of my new home.

III.

After clearing the congestion of Chicagoland and settling in to the reality of the road, I enjoyed the distinct change in landscape. To my left and to my right were mile after mile of forests as the highway traced the curving shoreline of Lake Michigan. 

To keep my mind occupied I reviewed the two Tonsor essays I had thought about thus far on the trip. The first was published in 1975. Tonsor was 51 years old and the context was the eve of America's bicentennial. As a nation we were drawing in a deep breath after much tumult -- the civil rights struggles, urban unrest, Vietnam War, student protests, and Watergate. Remarkably for a conservative writer, Tonsor's essay reflected an unexpected optimism about America's "revolutionary society."[2] 

The second essay was published in 1964. Tonsor was 40 or 41 years old and the context was the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the launch of the Great Society by his successor, Lyndon Johnson. In the presidential election of '64, Tonsor's candidate, Barry Goldwater, had been trounced. It looked as if the nascent conservative movement had reached a fork in the road -- it would gain strength or die out. In this uncertain political environment, Tonsor's essay argued that it was imperative to uphold the integrity of history amid the temptations to propagandize.[3] 

If the first essay surprised the American in me, and the second essay affirmed the historian in me, then the third essay troubled the conservative in me. Deeply. Titled "The Haunted House of the Human Spirit," the editorial for Modern Age had been published just two years earlier, in 1985, when Tonsor was 61 or 62 years old.[4] It was springtime for conservatives. Reagan had been reelected in a landslide and it was "Morning in America." The question of conservatism's fate seemed to have been answered. The so-called Reagan Revolution had revved the economy into full recovery. With Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, and Pope John Paul II all at the helm, America and Western Europe were once again asserting themselves vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Together these leaders were ushering in a new era of conservative ascendency throughout the West. I along with my conservative-leaning friends were feeling optimistic about the future.

America's 40th President, Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). Image at URL
http://c3.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/styles/original_image_with_cropping/public/uploaded/trump-no-reagan-on-taxes_0.jpg?itok=d4pZQPSa

To my dismay, Tonsor's 1985 essay did not share the conservatives' giddiness -- not at all. In fact the editorial expressed deep skepticism about what was happening to the conservative movement. Tonsor actually saw it in ignoble retreat. How so? Because of all the conservative scholars and humanists who had abandoned higher learning to work in politics in Washington, DC. They had utterly betrayed their calling as humanists whose duty was to teach the rising generation. The dour professor urged the remnant of conservative humanists who still held redoubts in the academy to hold fast; do not be seduced by power. Politics, even Reagan's sunny politics, were only a temporary fix, not the cure. The real war conservatives had to fight was upstream of politics, in the culture. 

So the remnant's task was to prioritize the culture and remain true to their civilizational mission. As true humanists they must be guardians of the language, for our words comprise the deep taproot of the culture, the source of our embedded values and beliefs.

Another thing that struck me about "The Haunted House of the Human Spirit," besides the thoroughgoing pessimism it expressed, were the writers Tonsor cited. They were not the usual arrows in the conservative quiver: not Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas. Rather, Tonsor made his argument to the remnant by citing Martin Heidegger, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Carl Orff -- modernists all. I wondered why.

At the time, all of this was very confusing to me. As the mileposts on Interstate 94 swept me closer and closer to Ann Arbor, I seriously began to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake. 

Had I crossed the wrong Rubicon?

Forest typical of Michigan's Lower Peninsula
Image at URL http://kimkozlowski.com/img/s/v-3/p1921696259-5.jpg

___________________

Notes

[1] Plato, Symposium, 189a-193d.

[2] Stephen J. Tonsor, "The United States as a Revolutionary Society, Modern Age (spring 1975): 136-45.

[3] Stephen J. Tonsor, "Tradition: Use and Misuse," Modern Age (fall 1964): 413-15.

[4] Stephen J. Tonsor, "The Haunted House of the Human Spirit -- an Editorial," Modern Age (fall 1985): 290-92.

Tonsor: Introduction: Second Call -- The Tragedy of Lord Acton

In late July, shortly before loading a 20-foot U-Haul and moving to Ann Arbor, I phoned Tonsor again, seeking his advice about which professors to look up once I was at Michigan. Then I broached a topic from our first conversation that I hoped to resume: Lord Acton as a giant of modern intellectual history and cultural criticism.

“Professor Tonsor, our last conversation sparked me to read an essay in which Acton said that liberty is more about morals than about politics and --"

Tonsor jumped right in: “Acton said that liberty is so holy a thing that God Himself was forced to permit evil that liberty might exist.[1] Think of it this way, Mr. Whitney. Animals live in the realm of necessity. Human beings also live in the realm of necessity – we have to bend to gravity and answer the need for food and water – but we live in the realm of freedom, too. A person’s dignity, a person’s nobility, resides in his using freedom to act morally. A person can only act morally if he is taught the difference between right and wrong and is free to choose between good and evil.”

Lord Acton (1834-1902)

Tonsor paused. I could hear him breathing now. “It follows that a primary aim of education is to learn how to exercise liberty within the bounds of the moral life.[2] A primary aim of politics is to preserve liberty as the organizing principle around which the other values in society must be ordered.[3] And a primary aim of historical research is to chart man's enduring efforts to decrease the realm of necessity and increase the realm of liberty. In Acton's mind it all coheres.”

That précis, I thought, was brilliant. The man speaks in perfectly formed paragraphs.

“Acton thought the historian should be a hanging judge?" I ventured.

“The most severe hanging judge,” said Tonsor, punching the word severe. “He was fond of saying that a man’s life must be measured against its low-water mark, the one act of evil that outweighs all good.[4] Let a man criminate himself. History is better written from private letters than from public chronicles.[5]

“Acton’s reputation as a hanging judge was undoubtedly helped by the fact that he had a better nose for gossip than almost any other Victorian.[6] Gossip was the oxygen the Victorian Age inhaled. It should be said that historians in every age have inclined their ear to gossip. Take Suetonius, Procopius, or Boccaccio. People read such authors to be titillated by Eros and to satisfy their curiosity about the mechanics of sex.”

It was reassuring for me to hear references to authors with whom I was familiar (but it surprised me to hear him speak of the mechanics of sex). As an undergraduate back in Colorado, I had read Suetonius, the Roman author of Lives of the Caesars, a masterpiece of gossip parading as history, a smutty collection of the scandals surrounding the first eleven Roman emperors. Likewise I was familiar with Procopius, the Byzantine historian who wrote not just official chronicles of the Emperor Justinian but also the sordid Secret History, which is full of invective against the members of the royal family. No one knows how true these accounts are, but they are good reads to slip into a stack of monographs – like the mayonnaise between slices of dry bread.

Tonsor continued: “The people who are drawn to the salacious details in Suetonius and Procopius are the same people who read TV Guide. You will not find them grappling with Acton. Yet he is the model of rectitude when it comes to historical research and writing."

Cambridge University Library

TV Guide? I smiled at Tonsor's sarcasm -- he brandished his weapon of choice skillfully.

“During Acton’s lifetime," he continued, "the discipline of history was flowering because of the archives that were opening up all over Europe. Acton himself took part in this flourishing. He donated a thousand boxes of his own notes and research to the Cambridge library. I’ve gone through a good many of the documents to examine everything from his morals to his methods.[7] It’s staggering to trace all the directions his mind went. When it came to advising historians attempting to write history, Acton's advice was, Don’t! Instead visit Purgatory![8] It was his way of getting scholars to understand the arduous journey they were about to embark upon. I hope, Mr. Whitney, that you have also prepared for the journey."

I had, but did not feel like saying so since Tonsor had served on the committee that admitted me. Perhaps in the pause Tonsor sensed I was at a bit of a loss, so he continued to dilate on Acton's advice: “History done well requires almost superhuman talent and effort. In the first place, Acton charged researchers to be open to evidence that does not fit the thesis; to turn over every last stone and get multiple perspectives if they want to know what really happened in the past. In so many words he cautioned against what the social scientists call ‘confirmation bias’; his notes recall a scene in Dante’s Paradise, in which St. Thomas Aquinas warns the Pilgrim that 'opinion -- hasty -- often can incline to the wrong side, and then affection for one's own opinion binds, confines the mind.'[9]

One of Gustave Doré's exquisite prints made for Dante's Divine Comedy

            “In the second place," Tonsor continued, keeping my mind on the stretch, "Acton charged historians to make out a better case for the other side than they are able to make out for themselves.[10] Cultivate the ability to drive the prosecutor’s case into a corner, and with equal skill to drive the defense’s case into a corner. Transpose the nominative and accusative and see how things look then![11]

“Acton did not suppose that the strenuous effort to understand both sides would lead to the exoneration of murder, injustice, and deceit. Not at all. Out of his elementary sense of decency and justice, he demanded that the historian administer a fair trial. But a trial there must be.[12]

“So,” I asked, “how did Acton square the scientific view of history then emerging with his insistence on moral judgment in historical writing?” I was not idly asking the question to linger on the phone. As an apprentice historian, I really needed to understand.

“You mean the old fact-value debate,” said Tonsor firmly, “the modern divide between objective facts that can be universally verified and subjective values that vary from person to person and from culture to culture. For Acton, the distinction was not so cut and dried. When it came to historical narrative, it was not ‘either-or’ but ‘both-and.’ Both the facts uncovered in the archives, and the moral assessment of human behavior. They were both the stuff of history, properly understood. Acton approached history this way because, like most Victorians, he believed in a universal natural law that could be apprehended by reason and enforced by conscience. This belief enabled him to sidestep differences in doctrine presented by the Axial Age religions. The main thing was to understand the ethical commands common to them all. The prohibition against murdering the innocent, the obligation to follow one’s informed conscience, the Golden and Silver rules – these universal commands to man’s conscience formed the basis of his moral judgments. It is probably accurate to infer that Acton’s moral reasoning was more informed by Kant than by Jesus.”[13]

Karl Jaspers's term, "Axial Age," describes the brilliant spiritual leap
humankind took around the world some 2,000-2,500 years ago.

“So," I pressed, "Acton would regard the universal commands of conscience sort of like ‘value facts’? In other words, because the Golden Rule is universal among the world’s major religions, it is tantamount to a fact? By extension, if I am pulling all of this together, it means that the most basic requirement of freedom is the right to obey the commands of conscience, to do what one ought. Or, as John Adams said, liberty is a power to do as we would be done by.”[14]

“Yes,” Tonsor said with emphasis. “To do as we would be done by.”

“Now,” Tonsor continued, “nobody ever accused Acton of being a saint in his personal life. Goodness is as far from sanctity as cleverness is from genius. Acton was personally cloaked and choked by the moral law as one might be squeezed into a suit of armor two sizes too small.”[15]

I did not know exactly how to understand the analogy, but I went on to ask whether Acton struggled with the Church.

Pio Nono (Pope Pius IX): no fan of Acton's

“Indeed! And the Church with Acton! In Acton the hierarchy confronted a petulant son, especially when it came to the doctrine of papal infallibility. Acton had a mischievous side -- he enjoyed tweaking the lion in his den, so Pio Nono was no fan of his. Acton was especially disliked by Ultramontanist toadies who prostrated themselves before the pope and scurried at his every twitch. Acton was a devout Catholic, to be sure. But he was not passionately Catholic. I’ll take the thought a step farther. The absence of religious enthusiasm may have been what made Acton tolerable to be around. He was the one you wanted to sit next to at dinner parties.

“And yet, despite his cosmopolitan ease in conversation, despite his wit at soirees, Acton was probably a very lonely man. He didn’t suffer fools. And his absolute moral stances, his implacable judgments, invariably separated him from other men. A liberal Catholic, he was too liberal for the Catholics and too Catholic for the liberals. He criticized his mentors. He broke off friendships. He quarreled bitterly with the Church hierarchy. Technically and morally, he was probably right in most of his quarrels. But whatever satisfaction he derived from being right must have been offset by the isolation he inflicted on himself from being self-righteous.[16]  

“Acton is the prophet who foresaw our times. He anticipated the dangers of statism. But ironically he is now a setting star – passé and remote. This, it must be said, is a tragedy of his own making. It’s a mystery why he never wrote his planned magnum opus, The History of Liberty – the book he was meant to write. Everyone around him waited years for the work to appear, but it never did and posterity is the worse for it. The History of Liberty has been called ‘the greatest book never written.’[17]

"The greatest book never written"

“The irony is that Acton had already written it in his head. He had penned thousands of pages of notes brimming with material for the book. I’ve seen the material myself.[18] But, reaching the end of his life, he realized he would not compose the work and donated all his research to Cambridge, all his notes that fill literally a thousand boxes. He had to settle on the hope that some enterprising scholar would eventually come along after his death and compose the history of liberty he failed to write. Those boxes are a feeble commemoration of a brilliant mind, a sad testimonial to the tragedy of wasted labor.[19] Socrates, Jesus, Mohammad, Charlemagne – they could pull off going unpublished; Acton could not.”

I listened in silence to this remarkable lesson on Lord Acton and tried to be comfortable with the pause that ensued. But my mind would not be still. What with his dizzying erudition, Tonsor had given me much to ponder. I had never heard a teacher speak in this manner before.

---

Notes

[1] Stephen J. Tonsor, “The Conservative Search for Identity,” in Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, ed. Gregory L. Schneider (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005), pp. 255-56; Acton's view is line with that of Edmund Burke, who said as much when he wrote, in 1790, “It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.” Thanks to Professor Bradley Birzer for reminding me of Burke's quotation.

[2] Stephen J. Tonsor, Introduction, The Legacy of an Education, by James C. Holland (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Occasional Paper no. 11, 1997); Kindle edition, loc. 11.

[3] Tonsor, “The Conservative Search for Identity,” in Equality, Decadence, and Modernity, pp. 255-56.

[4] Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2015), Kindle edition, Ch. 8, loc. 4138. Himmelfarb's book was particularly helpful in reconstructing Tonsor's and my first conversations on Lord Acton.

[5] Lord Acton, letter to Mandell Creighton, at URL http://oll.libertyfund.org/search/title/2254?q=criminate, accessed August 26, 2016.

[6] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 104.

[7] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 125.

[8] Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg (Lord), “Advice to Persons about the Write History,” at The Imaginative Conservative, at URL http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/06/advice-to-persons-about-to-write-history.html, accessed August 26, 2016.

[9] Paradiso, Canto 13: 118-20, trans. Allen Mandelbaum.

[10] Acton quoted by Stephen J. Tonsor, “Faculty Diversity and University Survival,” in Tradition and Reform in Education (La Salle: Open Court, 1974), p. 155.

[11] Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg (Lord), “Advice to Persons about the Write History,” at The Imaginative Conservative, at URL http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/06/advice-to-persons-about-to-write-history.html, accessed August 26, 2016.

[12] Tonsor, “Faculty Diversity and University Survival,” in Tradition and Reform in Education, p. 155.

[13] Tonsor, Introduction, Legacy by Holland, loc. 23.

[14] John Adams, Works, vol. 10; quoted in Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 7^th ed. (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway Edition, 1985), p. 100.

[15] Tonsor, Introduction, Legacy by Holland, loc. 23.

[16] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 125-148.

[17] L. M. Phillipps, Europe Unbound (London, 1916), p. 147n.; quoted by Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 114.

[18] Caroline Tonsor interview with GW, Chelsea, MI, March 15, 2017. Ms. Tonsor spoke of a different era when it came to research. She said that the "Xeroxed documents" from the Cambridge University library arrived in Ann Arbor on a continuous roll that she had to divide up with scissors. See the resulting monograph and detailed references in Stephen J. Tonsor, “Lord Acton on Döllinger’s Historical Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20, no. 3 (June-September 1959), pp. 329-52.

[19] Himmelfarb, Lord Acton, Ch. 1, loc. 114.

The Language of Leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Webster, Lincoln

This talk was originally delivered at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, on December 10, 1999. The idea that caught most historians' attention was that the Declaration of Independence was every bit as much a rhetorical document as a political document, meant to be read aloud to rally Americans to revolution.

Forging Politics, Rhetoric, and "the Permanent Things" into Messages that Inspire a Nation

... Russell Kirk challenged us to look beyond tomorrow's headlines and see the meaning of our work in the "Permanent Things." This term, suggested to Kirk by his friend T. S. Eliot, is fundamental to my remarks this afternoon. As Kirk explained it:

There is an order which holds all things in their places: ...it is made for us, and we are made for it. The thinking conservative, far from denying the existence of this eternal order, endeavors to ascertain its nature and to conform to that order, which is the source of the Permanent Things. [2]

The Permanent Things are identified, in other words, with truth, goodness, beauty, and all the transcendent norms that give life meaning. In due course I'll be saying more about the relationship between the Permanent Things and political discourse.

But first, permit me to meet head-on a perception that is frequently encountered--even in well-meaning people, not just cynics. It's the sense that the Permanent Things no longer stand tall in the political arena, but have been overmatched by brute Machiavellians. It's the feeling that truth, goodness, and beauty have been muscled out by their postmodern counterfeits--PR, celebrity, and glitz. It's the apprehension that pollsters and focus groups are no longer handmaids but masters of policy. People actually come up to me and ask: How can you stand working in government? Is there any honor left in politics?

The honor is to be found wherever there are men and women who champion the Permanent Things.

Conservatives in the Western tradition like to say, after Richard Weaver, that ideas have consequences. But before there can be ideas, there must be words. It is on the wings of words that ideas are born. It is on the strength of words that ideas either take flight or fall flat. That is why words, language, and rhetoric are so important in a constitutional republic where the people are sovereign and so must sort out how they shall live. As Kirk explained, "we cannot dissociate political principles and the methods of persuasion.... Some genuine connection subsists between the order of rhetoric and the order of society; false phrases open the way for false measures."[3]

What Kirk is saying, in essence, is that behind every abuse of language, there's potentially an abuse of power, and behind every abuse of power, there's probably an abuse of language.

Because our republic has such a rich history, I'd like to take a long view this afternoon and discuss a few key moments in America's past, when a gifted leader forged politics, rhetoric, and the Permanent Things into a powerful unity. The illustrations are, I believe, sufficiently vivid to suggest numerous applications today.

Truth

Let's begin by looking at an American leader whose best speeches are considered literary masterpieces, and that is Abraham Lincoln. He knew one of the greatest sources of persuasion--the radical idea that people are moved by truth. Lincoln wove the truth and other Permanent Things into his speeches as few other leaders have. One of his favorite ways to argue for the truth was by using logic. He was especially masterful at using the law of the excluded middle. He no doubt perfected his use of the excluded middle in the courtroom, where unambiguous guilt or innocence had to be established before a defendant could be judged. But what I want to look at is how he used the excluded middle in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. Lincoln's argument was that if the United States was born in freedom, if it defined itself in terms of freedom, if its destiny was freedom's very destiny, then it inevitably followed that--here come the famous words--"A house divided against itself cannot stand.... This government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.... It will become all one thing, or all the other."[4]

Lincoln explained why this must be so, with a series of powerful rhetorical questions and imagery: "When ... you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro [sic]; when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned," what is the effect on a freedom-loving people?

Furthermore, Lincoln asked:

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy.... Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. [5]

There's an interesting story behind the "house divided" line, which, as you know, is an allusion from the Bible.[6] Lincoln had actually tried the line out in 1856, two years before the contest with [Stephen A.] Douglas, but had been severely criticized. Advisers said he had put the issue of union too bluntly, and they actually got him to agree never to say it again. But two years later, faced with a formidable opponent in Douglas, he just could not resist. He first rehearsed the House Divided speech before an audience of one, his partner William Herndon, who liked most of it, but questioned whether the "house divided" passage was politic. Lincoln responded: "I would rather be defeated with this expression in my speech, and uphold it and discuss it before the people, than be victorious without it."[7] How many politicians can you imagine talking like that today?

Next, Lincoln tried the speech out on a dozen of his closest supporters and asked what they thought. All but one condemned the "house divided" line, one going so far as to call it a "damned fool utterance."[8]

Lincoln this time stood resolutely in disagreement with his advisers. He said the people needed to hear the stark choice before them--in other words, the law of the excluded middle. "The time has come when these sentiments should be uttered; and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth--let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right." As one of Lincoln's biographers noted, this was "Rather a memorable pronouncement of a candidate to his committee"--especially on the eve of the nominating convention. [9]

Now, a minute ago I said that people respond to the truth. And you are thinking, "Yeah, and Lincoln lost to Douglas." Technically, that's true. What is forgotten nowadays is that Lincoln actually won a majority of the popular vote in 1858. This, despite running against a very well-liked, charming candidate. It was a majority of the new Illinois legislature that sent Douglas back to the U.S. Senate.

And yet, in the long run, who lost to whom?

The "house divided" allusion would go on to win the heart of the Republican Party, then only four years old, and after Lincoln's death, it would win the heart of the American people. The fact that these words are studied and memorized to this day shows that human beings do indeed respond to truth.

Goodness

Let's now turn to another American leader whose speeches merit the accolades given to literature, and that's Daniel Webster. Like Lincoln, the Massachusetts Senator knew all the sources of persuasion. But for him the essential thing was that people are moved by goodness--another radical idea. Psychological research confirms scientifically what Webster knew intuitively, that our brain is wired to enjoy listening to a bard recount the great and heroic deeds of others. That's why historical narrative is such a satisfying way to communicate.

A student of Webster's oratory writes that "True eloquence is not an ordinary occurrence; it demands the right person, the right subject, and the right occasion--but when it breaks out it is godlike."[10] That was precisely the effect the 38-year-old Webster had on Americans with a speech that captured the nation's imagination. The occasion was the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. The date was December 22, 1820, and the site was the First Church in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It's difficult to imagine a more historic occasion or more historic site for Americans in the new republic. To a packed audience that included former President John Adams, Webster began:

We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage to our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachments to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine....

Webster proceeded to build up the speech with powerful images of the Pilgrims' first years. The audience was visibly moved. A young Harvard professor made a remarkable confession after leaving the church. "I was never so excited by public speaking before in my life," he said. "Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the pulse of blood.... When I came out, I was almost afraid to stand near him. It seemed to me he was like the mount that might not be touched and that burned with fire. I was beside myself and am so still."[11]

John Adams was not given to being easily impressed by thirty-somethings. Yet even he was so moved by Webster that he urged Americans to read the address "every year forever and ever."[12]

The key to understanding the power of this speech is in part Webster's charisma; he was an extremely impressive individual to be around. But it is also the stories he told, stories of good men and women whose example showed what Americans were made of. We are reading the stories still.

Beauty

Let's now turn to the Founder responsible for the most famous political statement in American history, and that's Thomas Jefferson, the lead author of the Declaration of Independence. If Lincoln was the rhetorical master of truth, and Webster the rhetorical master of goodness, then our nation's third president could claim rhetorical mastery of another source of persuasion--beauty. He knew that people are moved by beauty.

In rhetorical terms, beauty involves using apt words effectively arranged. The task, as Richard Weaver put it, is to use the gift of imagination "to make words even in prose take on wings."[13]

In the English language, there are many ways to achieve beauty in the spoken word--through parallelism, alliteration, simile, metaphor, and so forth. For our present purposes, I want to focus on Jefferson's use of parallelism. In American political discourse, arguably the greatest example of the repeated beginning (what is technically called "anaphora") occurred at the beginning of our nation, in the Declaration.

Now, I'm going to say two things that surprise most people. First, to the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, it was not the beginning that was regarded as most important. ("When in the course of human events.... We hold these truths to be self-evident....") I know it's heretical to say nowadays, but political philosophy was not the main thing on the minds of the signers; that's our modern reading of it. To the delegates assembled in Congress, it was rather the middle of the document that was most important. That's the part which justified independence by listing the myriad of ways in which the king had violated their ancient rights as Englishmen.[14] It's the most conservative part of the Declaration, and it consists of 18 well-crafted statements, each attacking George III, and each beginning with the words, "He has...." To cite a few examples:

"He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither swarms of new Officers, to harass our People, and eat out their Substance."

"He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People."

"He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us."

Without a doubt, the parallelism is one of the most striking rhetorical features of the document. Which leads to the second thing that surprises people, which is that the Declaration was written to be read aloud. It's as much a part of our oral as our written culture. To prove this, I'd draw your attention to the formatting in Jefferson's original draft. It is preserved in the Library of Congress. If you ever have the opportunity to see the original or a facsimile, look at how he wrote out the eighteen "He has" statements. They don't all run together in a single paragraph. Rather, they are broken out in clauses, each having the same left-margin and indent pattern. This makes them visually as well as rhetorically parallel. Not accidentally, the first printing of the document was typographically true to Jefferson's layout.

After examining the original draft, what strikes me as a speechwriter is this: the left-margin and indent pattern is precisely the format I've long used in Governor Engler's texts. I give each sentence its own paragraph, and I line up parallelisms for ease in reading aloud. The Declaration looks to me like the scripted text of a speech.

This thesis is further buttressed when you recall how news spread in the eighteenth century. It was not just by reading newspapers. It was not just by posting documents for passersby. It was also by reading aloud to people gathered in the town squares. It was a form of entertainment. And sure enough, during that hot summer of 1776, the Declaration was proclaimed--read as a speech--in hundreds of town squares up and down the 13 states. The Pennsylvania Gazette reported that when it was read aloud in New York, the crowd became so excited that they pulled down a statue of George III, recovered the lead, and turned it into bullets!* When the Declaration was read aloud in Boston on July 19, Abigail Adams observed in a letter to her husband that the crowd grew quite excited when the reader went through the series of charges against George III. As Jefferson had intended, the parallelism created an irresistible drumbeat, inspiring resolve to fight the War of Independence to the finish.

Love

So where does this bring us, this awareness that such Permanent Things as truth, goodness, and beauty can powerfully shape public discourse, even to the point of changing the course of human events? That may sound as if I am about to launch into my peroration--but not quite yet. I beg your forbearance. For there is one source of persuasion that I've yet to mention but that crowns all the others--and that is love. Every great rhetorician knows that people are moved--moved deeply, inevitably, and finally--by love.

To illustrate I wish to turn to the man, the 200th anniversary of whose passing we shall be celebrating within the week, and that is George Washington. We don't usually think of Washington this way, but the historical record bears out that the father of our country was a master rhetorician when it came to expressing love to, and eliciting love from, an audience.

The most famous example of this is the speech he delivered at Newburgh, New York, on the Ides of March in 1783. This was literally the speech that kept his army from marching against Congress. (Which shows you how little things change; people were even mad at Congress in those days.) The officers were understandably upset that Congress had not given them back pay for their many years of service to their country. They had willingly left their families and farms to aid the cause of freedom, and they simply wanted to be able to pay off their debts. As frustration mounted, someone high up the chain of command circulated a memo through the officer corps, urging insurrection. The malcontents planned a secret meeting.

Washington caught wind of the caucus and intervened swiftly. He denounced the treasonous plot and postponed the gathering by three days. This gave him critically needed time to think about how to give perhaps the most important speech of his life.

Now Washington, as you know, was crafty. He kept his own counsel and didn't alert the officers that he would be confronting them personally. So when they met on the Ides of March, they wondered whether their commander in chief would exert his authority through a surrogate. If this is what they assumed, they miscalculated badly. Remember, Washington had a keen sense of drama. All his adult life he had been a devotee of the theater.

Imagine the officers' surprise when, after the start of their meeting, their commander strode in and made straight for the lectern. There was a tense silence. The General spoke from a prepared text for approximately five minutes. The remarks were built around a series of parallel constructions that emphasized the men's common sacrifice. They had become like family, and he only wanted what was just and right for them. But they must not be imprudent or disloyal, not after having gone through so much together, and not when so much was at stake. The men were moved by his appeals--in fact, it was the best speech they had ever heard him deliver.

But all this, powerful as it was, was a prelude contrived to set the stage for the final act. After Washington finished his prepared remarks, he removed a letter from his coat pocket that he said he wished to read aloud. He began to read, then all of a sudden fell silent. Not a word came from his mouth as he fumbled awkwardly with the letter. Then he pulled a new pair of eyeglasses out of his pocket and remarked, "Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind."

The high drama had its intended impact. The men stood in stunned silence. The gesture and words did more than any armed force could have to dissolve the insurrection, for it dissolved the rebellion in their hearts. As one officer later recorded, Washington's action was so disarming that it brought tears to the eyes of every man present. They suddenly felt inexpressible shame mixed with a renewed love for their leader. He had sacrificed more than anyone, yet never complained. They pledged their abiding support to Washington and to the new republic.

A narrow escape for the new nation, this, and it was pulled off by love--the love that Washington expressed for his men, and the love that they returned to him.[15]

Mirror or Lamp?

Truth, goodness, beauty, love--these are the Permanent Things, the wellsprings of persuasion that are never out of season. The good rhetorician instinctively knows that they move people more deeply than anything else.

But these days there are two competing schools of thought about speechwriting, especially as it applies to political discourse. One school of thought says that a speech should hold a mirror up to the public. It should reflect the fashions of the day. You study focus groups and polling data to get a sense for who's up and who's down, who's in and who's out. The speechwriter, merely one "consultant" among many, is typically brought in at the end of the process. He is a clever fellow, a merchant of sophistry who knows how to package flattery for mass consumption.

Another school of thought says that a speech should be more than a mirror; it should be a lamp lighting the way for the better angels of our nature. It understands that the act of speaking is one of the most ethical things we do, and thus that "language is sermonic," as Richard Weaver so memorably put it. It apprehends that rhetoric, at its best, seeks union with the Permanent Things. "The rhetorician," observes Weaver, "is a preacher to us, noble if he tries to direct our passion toward noble ends and base if he uses our passion to confuse and degrade us."[16] At the very least, such a rhetoric should issue some challenge to be stronger, truer, and worthier of our blessings. It should remind us to keep the roots of our American order embedded in the Permanent Things.

There's no doubt in my mind which school of thought orators like Washington, Jefferson, Webster, and Lincoln subscribed to. As in much else, we would do well to follow in their footsteps.

References:

[2]Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives, revised ed. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989), pp. 36-37. Examination of earlier editions reveals that Kirk originally wrote the statement in a slightly differently form. See, for example, Russell Kirk, A Program for Conservatives, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1962), p. 50.

[3]Russell Kirk, "Rhetoricians and Politicians," Kenyon Review, Fall 1964, p. 768.

[4]Abraham Lincoln, speech to Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858.

[5]Abraham Lincoln, speech, Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858.

[6]Mark 3:25.

[7]Quoted in Lord Charnworth, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, Introduction by Peter W. Schramm (Lanham, Md: Madison Books, 1996; originally published 1916), p. 110.

[8]Charnworth, Lincoln, p. 110.

[9]Charnworth, Lincoln, pp. 110-111.

[10]Irving H. Bartlett, "Daniel Webster: The Orator and Writer," in Daniel Webster: The Completest Man, edited by Kenneth E. Shewmaker, foreword by William H. Rehnquist (Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College/University Press of New England, 1990), p. 80.

[11]George Ticknor quoted in George Ticknor Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, vol. 1 (New York, 1870), p. 194. See also Bartlett, "Daniel Webster," p. 83.

[12]Adams quoted in Bartlett, "Daniel Webster," p. 83.

[13]Richard M. Weaver, "Language Is Sermonic," Language Is Sermonic: Richard M. Weaver on the Nature of Rhetoric, ed. Richard J. Johannesen, Rennard Strickland, and Ralph T. Eubanks (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), p. 202.

[14]To say that the conservative heart of the Declaration was the most important part to the Founders is hardly an unorthodox historical interpretation. It has even made its way into common reference works. See, for example, Jack P. Greene, "Declaration of Independence, United States," in Encyclopedia Americana, 1986 ed., vol. 8, p. 592.

[15]Virtually every competent biography of Washington recounts this pivotal event. One of the most detailed accounts, based on a primary source, is found in Josiah Quincy, Memoir of Major Samuel Shaw, p. 104. See also Washington Irving, George Washington: A Biography, ed. Charles Neider (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), pp. 603-607, which draws from Shaw's observations; and Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), which takes a less idolizing view of Washington's thespian talents.

[16]Weaver, "Language Is Sermonic," p. 201.

Additional source:

*For the July 17, 1776, story in the Pennsylvania Gazette about the statue of George III being turned into bullets after the Declaration was read, see Peter C. Mancall, Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution, vol. 3 (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2006), p. 28.