Where Bailyn and Wood gave too much credence to the power of ideas (again, as somewhat determinisms and deterministic), Thompson wrestles with the much more difficult problem of individual free will. After all, imagine a world in which every single person—past, present, and future—is a moral agent. The world gets very, very complicated, very, very quickly.” Very well, done , Brad. I read this book recently. Ideas are of course very important. But some people believe it is one idea or new ideas that transform everything. But the world is very very complicated. Individuals are complicated. Communities are complicated. Economic environments are complicated. Political and military necessity are complicated. Of course, individual persons and peoples are changed by their interaction with new ideas. But as free individuals they decide to accept the idea or reject the idea or adapt the idea as they see fit. And something always remains of the old ideas and old cultural patterns. Some old ideas and old cultural patterns are very enduring. I was never raised to think emancipation of slaves or anti- slavery views or ideas began with English Quakers. One of the earliest anti-slavery voices is St. Patrick in his letter to Coroticus and the Bible itself has the seed of universal equality that long predates the Declaration or the Enlightenment. And the idea of individual dignity, the right to the self determination of small nations (or clans) and religious pluralism peacefully coexisting all existed outside of America and before the Enlightenment as well. One of the oldest Jewish communities in the British Isles is in Glasgow. Jews were expelled from England but never from Scotland and Scotland had in effect, curiously TWO established churches the Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion) and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (Calvinist). But the result of this incomplete hegemony meant that religious minorities continued to exist in the shadowlands between the Episcopal Church and the Church of Scotland from which fractured many denominations the Free Churches of the 19th century.
People learned to have a Protestant Trail (Edmund Burke’s father and paternal grandfather were of the Anglican Communion -Church of Ireland but his mother and sisters and cousins were all raised Roman Catholics. It was the kind of compromise people made to survive. My parents were married in the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church. It allowed them to be switch hitters. That sounds like nothing now but then one had to be prepared to serve the yoke and to take part in Anglican ceremonies on board ship or while on military service. My son appeased the bold state by having a civil marriage in Arizona but he celebrates his later marriage date, in Mexico, in the Catholic Church as his true wedding anniversary. Similarly my parents had two wedding dates but only one wedding anniversary. We often look at European History as one of religious monoliths of Protestant Kingdoms and Catholic Kingdoms but the reality on the ground was more complex. Some of that complexity and religious pluralism was imported into America. The Eisenhower family (Swiss German in origin) descended from a splinter Protestant group persecuted both by Lutherans and Catholics. I cannot but help thing that his family history helped make Ike the perfect man for a great Allied coalition. Something always remains of the past. The past is never merely a tabula rasa. Education (ideas) are strong but as the old saying goes “the blood is strong” as well.
My family, I think, always respected education but we had little of it generally speaking because were were among the lower orders of society. Before my father graduated from Manual Training HS in 1933 no one in my family had ever gone past the sixth grade except for the odd cousin who became a priest. My father only knew one close family relative who was a a high school and college graduate and this was his mother’s sister’s son John (“Uncle Johnny”) Dorian who was in fact his fourth grade teacher and later schoolmaster of St. Anthony’s in Govan and much later the Superintendent of Catholic Schools in Glasgow. But even if my family was not formally educated they showed some talent as multilingual scouts in the British Army in India and North America. We excelled as soldiers (we were a fierce people) and colonial administrators. We tended to be the assistant mechanic, first mates and NCO’s if we were not fishing or shipbuilding in the old country. Being of the lower orders we were more likely to intermarry with local peoples than the English ruling class.
As an example of the clash of ideas, my entire life I have tried to understand how the Reformation could have happened and its tragedy (the sectarian hatreds and jealousies the persecutions and counter persecutions, the Thirty Years War etc etc.) After many years I think I understand the outrages and disappointments and injustices that may have caused some people to become disillusioned with the Catholic Church. I have experienced distrust and disillusionment myself. Yet my very devout wife being my anchor I never drifted far and today we listened to and repeated the Rosary as my ancestors had also for over 1000 years. So as much as I have changed here is something that my grandparents and great-grandparents would have recognized immediately. Some ideas and values endure. Something of the old always remains.
I also believe that Christianity is permanently fractured and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the wee frees (independent churches) together again. But there are good aspects to this fracture. The independent churches vary enormously in practice, belief and theology. It could be that in some environment (Communist China or Soviet Russia) hierarchical churches cannot function properly or freely and in such repression “Bible Christians” or “Evangelical Christians” might thrive better. Christianity does not put all its eggs in one basket. I know different church traditions by personal experience as I was the product of a mixed marriage. Part of my family was Roman Catholic (my father’s side) and the other half were not Lutherans or Russian Orthodox and some people might believe but “Free Church” in the North of Scotland and Scandinavia among seafaring peoples the “Free Church” persuasion was very common.
As a small boy talking about religious differences was something no one ever did and I senses there were some wounds there.
But I as grew up I realized both sides of the family had something in common. They both were from communities that belonged non-established Churches and so were both religious and linguistic minorities. They also were unified by a deep skepticism for modern secular ideas especially Marxism and Communism. And they both came to America, in a large part because, as religious minorities their legal and economic opportunities were limited in the old country. America was the land of the free with work and bread for all. I can’t speak for other people and other people’s family but I have noticed one key factor in the descendants of my grandparents. Those who believe and practice a religion have families and those who do not tend to be childless.
Brad Bizer writes:
“For probably every reader of The American Conservative, Thompson’s points—however beautifully and expertly articulated—might seem obvious. After all, these are points that Socrates, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, and Friedrich Hayek all could have made. Yet, in the modern academy, so enamored with horrific ideas of determinism, Thompson is nothing if not revolutionary in his insistence on these things. Not only is Thompson gloriously correct, but again, it is worth noting, he has just complicated history, recognizing that history turns not on some predestined pivot, but on the moment-to-moment moral decisions every human being makes in every aspect of his life. Life is messy.”
Here both Thompson and Birzer hit home runs. Social determinism, economic determinism, racial determinism, sexual determinism are , in fact, false and evil ideas. One thing life has taught me is that religion and cultural values are not enforced by coercion or even taught but they are caught by the atmosphere of the home and taught not by (la mano dura) mere authority alone but by love. I sing songs my grandfather and great grandfather loved; songs my parents loved. I say prayers and repeat proverbs that have been among the people of my race and line for time immemorial. I love music and poetry because we all loved music and poetry. The music and poetry is deeply imbued with a love of nature, a love of natural love between men and women in families, of the great virtues, politeness, fidelity, prudence, justice, generosity, compassion, gratitude, purity, humor, a deep desire for freedom, courage and a deep faith. I would hope to think my forefolk would recognize in my and my family some of the same virtues they extolled and lived. I did not learn these virtues, primarily in American public schools or universities but in spite of them. I was prepared for college life and military life by my intense home-schooling. Every American should be intensely home-schooled ESPECIALLY those who attend public schools and universities. Even after so many years I remember the intense shock to learn that most schools and universities were like in the days of the Penal Years virtually enemy institutions. And I think it is much worse today. People with conservative or traditionalist views need to keep their heads down. But I survived the 20th century. It was not easy but I survived as a soldier and laborer like my father and grandfather and great grandfather before me. I did not feel at home in the universities nor in the Anglophone world of New York or Boston. So like my father, like my grandfather, like my great grandfather I remembered we were a cosmopolitan people an amphibious people. So I took a wife who had not a single word of English and zero feminist or Marxist influence. Her aunt was a charming singing nun; she had two uncles who were missionary priests. Everyone one in her family was against our marriage. After all I was a foreigner and a heretic a soldier not to be trusted. But I knew her ways and their ways and checkmated their doubts. I spoke to them in their language. When I came to ask for my wife’s hand in marriage Father Cirilio, a Jesuit priest who was a close friend of mine came with me. He vouched for my character and my faith background. And we were married on June 9, 1982 on the feast of St. Columba, patron saint of the Gaels. They questioned my faith but I told the Bishop of the Burgo de Osma that we were Catholics when most Spaniards were Moors. And that we fought the Moors and Scottish Knights with the heart of Robert the Bruce (long buried in Spain). I told them I was their friend and their Ally. We both had a memory of Christendom and I told them no one in my family every looked towards London but always to Rome. And that were very grateful for Spain. For you see the priest that baptized my father (Father Collins) and the priest that baptized my father’s mother both spoke Spanish and had been educated at the Scots College (then at Valladolid). No objection was made and we lived happily ever after. Mrs. Munro, of course, now speaks English is a naturalized US citizen and is an honorary but only honorary member of the Anglosphere. She remains deeply attached to her tradition faith -which we share-and the language and cultural traditions of the Hispanophere or la Hispanidad. In a long journey some things have to be left behind but the most essential things are faith, a certain economic security and freedom.
I don’t look at Colonial America as being a Little England in America. I don’t look at the Founding Fathers as Englishmen although of course George Washington and Franklin were very English in origin and so were some others. But Jefferson and Monroe were deeply Celtic (Monroe was mostly of Scottish Highland and Welsh origin; and Jefferson himself was of Welsh and Scottish Origin -one of his ancestors signed the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland). Then there is Witherspoon (Scots) Paterson (Irish) and so on. Only about 49% of the population were of English origin in 1775. People of non-English origin signed the Declaration (Paca and Carroll) all were nominally subjects of the King and but Anglicans were a distinct minority even of those of English origin. Those who came to America were the religions minorities of Europe and the British Isles, French Huguenots, English Quakers, Irish Presbyterians (so-called Scots-Irish), Gaelic speaking Highlanders (both Catholic and Protestant -Catholics tended to settle in Canada and Protestants in North Carolina) German Moravians, Dutch Jews, Swiss Mennonites. Jorge Ferragut (later known as George Farragut father of Spanish-speaking Admiral Farragut) was a hero of the Revolution. He spoke English of course but taught Spanish to his children (his wife was of southern Irish origin). General Winfield Scott’s people fought against the British; his people of course had been doing that for generations. He was descended from Scottish Jacobites who oddly enough believed the Hanoverians to be illegitimate. They stubbornly refused to give consent to the German Laddies as they called them. It is said -this has not been entirely proven- that a piper who fought at Culloden played Jacobite pibrochs at Yorktown.
We like to think there was a uniform belief or fealty towards the British Monarchy but in fact many American colonists were indifferent or even hostile to the Anglican Church and the Protestant Hanoverian Ascendency of England. One of the results of the American Revolutionary period was the Quebec Act which led to the tolerance of the Catholic Church in Canada. And the American Revolution and the French Revolution had the effect ironically of strengthening the Catholic Church in America, England and Canada because of the many exiled French Catholics (life Father Dubois) , Father Hassett, the Duponts. This would eventually lead to Catholic Emancipation in England in the early 19th century and later by 1859 Jewish Emancipation.
Ideas are important in history but so are customs. and traditions. And something always remains. Even of a culture, language, religion or race considered to have been extirpated and wiped out. Stubbornly there are always those lone survivors those lone rebels with a a long memory. Stevenson, not an Englishman as Arthur Conan Doyle was not an Englishman -he came from a Scottish Catholic family- said, “For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to most Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forbears {his race and line} good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.” (From the Weir of Hermiston). Once I was provoked to a fight in school. My mother said I should do nothing and ignore the bully. That I should turn the other check. By my father said, “Remember the people you came from. Remember the courage of your ancestors. Teach that laddie a lesson that he will never forget. Let him learn not to touch the cat but with a glove. Remember you have with you the Mire-catha (the ancient blood lust/battle frenzy). Take care not to kill you opponent. Don’t lose your self-control. Do only what is necessary for your honor. ” And like a medieval Scottish Knight I was sent into singular combate. And so I suffered my first and only school suspension. But I bloodied and defeated the foe and was never bothered again. The Men of Munro began their historic life as warriors, Christian Crusaders fighting Pagan Vikings and Moors. And something of that deep faith and something of that ferocity still remains. I have a strong identity. I am an American by choice, I was a US Marine by choice (a volunteer), I am a Christian in the Roman Catholic tradition by choice but I still retain a more ancient identity. For over a thousand years we were men of the north of Ferindonald and when we saw the ancient beacon light ablaze to gather to fight the foe “Caisteal Folais Na Theine” we gathered and followed our chief to the field where our laurels were gathered before. It is hard for many Americans or Europeans to believe but Toynbee recognized it. We were for over thousand years an independent nation and clan the very last Iron Age Peoples of Europe. The last White Barbarians. The memory of that clan loyalty, that Regimental loyalty, the memory of deep oaths and sacred oaths, of battles lost and won is very, very deep. To us the Gairm (the Call to arms) has long been a sacred thing. I might change my nationality. I might change my religion (though very doubtful) but am and always will be of the Seventh Son of Hugh, of the Men of the Halo River for that is my true race and line the race and line not of Briton or Vass (Viking) or Saxon or Frank but of the Gaels and my clan (though I am descended from many famous clans) is the clan of my father. I will always be a Gael and a Munro. I will always be above all that “leal ‘n true mon. ” And if my children have not this identity I care not because I know something will remain because the teaching is strong and the blood is strong. Both will call to them. Being born in a garage does not make one an automobile. One is as one is bred and raised.
Spirit of Cecilia 