Richmond, October 29, 2009
 
          Yesterday marked the 45th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's coming-out speech at the 1964 Republican Convention, just before Barry Goldwater was nominated. I was a college freshman and watched it. On listening to some of it yesterday I noticed it had a greater impact on me now than when I was 19.
           And therein lies a tale.
           You can find that speech on RedState.com, as well as comments by several  prominent columnists. Along with George William Curtiss' "Doctrine of Liberty Address" in 1863 at Harvard, it should be reprinted in pamphlet form and passed out as a permanent addition of conservative constitutional literature, which children should have to learn to recite, right alongside John3:16.
           But Rush Limbaugh lamented about how so many younger (RR's speech was actually even before Rush's time, he would have been 12-13 at the time) people didn't know of this speech, or worse, that so  many young, young people don't even know who Ronald Reagan was, other than a president, in a long list of other presidents.

          The problem before us is how do we keep a flame alive without turning it into a "vain repetition" to be uttered by the mindless on street corners? I know, "workers of the world, unite" or "kill the pigs" fits this description better than anything RR ever said, but still, it seems we have lost sight of certain truths about the passing on truths.
           The biggest problem I'd found in my factory consulting had been the anger of older, senior managers when their factories turned over to a younger generation. They were angry because company loyalty no longer existed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, management has changed, a lot of things have changed, but most of all, above all, loyalty is not genetic. It is not passed on by nature. Nor osmosis. Loyalty must be re-earned with each new employee and each new generation. I have yet to meet the management team that ever understood this, which explains, in part, why companies are so willing to pull up stakes and move every forty years or so.
           As I have written before, formal teaching (schools) usually run in forty year cycles. Virtually every national value Reagan spoke about in 1964 was understood and known by almost every (English-speaking) school child in America in 1880. That's because for the couple of years leading up the Civil War and approximately 35 years after, the ideals of Liberty were on the tongues of just about everyone. It was in the water. And you can thank George William Curtiss for much of that.
         So, when the fellow lifted a pint of draught beer and shouted a loud "Huzzah" on July 4th, 1888, he knew what he was huzzahing about.
          How it was lost should be of interest to us, since it was replaced by "Progressivism", which by 1900 had replaced "Liberty-ism", in part out a simple dearth of new and clever things to say, and teach, about Liberty. The ideal of Liberty became passe first, of course, in academe, our colleges and universities, but not just out of boredom of teaching tired old saws, but because of the new rage in Europe, called Marxism, which had a still unmeasured appeal to the can't-get-no-respect academician.
         In time those ideals of Liberty were no longer taught "with enthusiasm", and it would not be long before the enthusiasm first, then the factual heroic content, would be diluted in the formative places of teaching; 4th through 12 grades. It takes a while for this sort of jerking the Liberty teat out of children's mouths to trickle down, but by the 1930s American history was taught about as mundanely and pharisaical as a Ben Stein slide-lecture on hygiene. Only men such as H*Y*M*A*N  K*A*P*L*A*N (Leo Rosten) would find these ideal of Liberty still new and fresh. That fellow in the saloon or public gathering would still hoist his beer, still does in fact, but most often at the lake, in the backyard, on whichever Monday comes closest to the Fourth, but will give no thought to Liberty...only to the Day Off, which has become the only real national holiday in America.
         Hyman Kaplan, and the millions who preceded him, and have followed are the one argument as to why we should keep bringing immigrants in, I suppose, for as long as there are people here with a memory of how life is without liberty, the love of liberty will continue to burn. Or have we forgotten that Liberty alone is a beacon to the world, and for over 200 years, that sole beacon has been Amerika?
           But still, what about our kids? What about that parade of millions of little boys and girls, who it seems, with each generation we seem to be losing to the popular culture at an earlier and earlier age?
          It would help if we all understood that the assault by the popular culture is and always has been on purpose. The sooner we strip them of the "at Mommy and Daddy's knee" virtues, the sooner someone can step and and implant others more useful to their purposes.
          I'm not an educational scholar by any means, but as Moses Sands said, I can tell a horse from a mule. I know what works and Daddy's knee works. But only if he'll use it. Public schools can work but only so long as they augment what is taught at Daddy's knee, which means the public schools must be firmly under the thumb of Mommy and Daddy, while Mommy and Daddy have to become, once again, the chief carriers of the virtues of the cultures. The Founders understood, even presumed this.
         I'm sure you are with me so far, although taking back the public schools, even in Ronald Reagan's day, was a daunting task.
         But it is one thing to be able to rewrite text books, or re-educate teachers as to how to teach American history and government to fourth, sixth and eleventh/twelfth graders "with enthusiasm". It is another to actually plant the seed.
         Sorry, I don't know how to plant that seed, but I do know how it is planted. We see it every day. We have all watched it for the past two thousand years, for there is an almost exact parallel between the seeking and finding and holding onto Liberty in the secular sense and the seeking and finding God in Pascal's religious sense. In each case people find something they have always been looking for. They have been found.
         (I could go all Christian on you here, for Christianity does spread a special tentacle of "love", a universal emotion as well as a philosophical precept, that other religions seem to lack. Some people come to God through much philosophical study, but most come to it through a feeling inside them that is indescribable and which they would not exchange for any other thing. Some can do both (C S Lewis, Muggeridge) but inasmuch as there is factionalism inside Christianity, it is this reason vs emotion "academic argument". Personally I like them both.)
         To avoid a more-refined argument taking us in a direction that is not useful for this narrow purpose, let's just say that when the scales falls from one's eyes and he/she sees "the truth" it represents a freedom, however one may wish to express it, that is beyond all measure or value. It encompasses a knowledge than even the most simple mind can comprehend, or that "passeth all understanding". I refer to this expression as "love" for there is a flip side, as we've seen in recent decades, and that is "hate", which is reachable and teachable by almost the same means. Marx touches exactly the opposite chord as Christ, and that chord, as I have written before, has absolutely nothing to do with economics, wealth, or the equality of Man. Marx hated, and his special use of words reached out and touched those who similarly had an indefinable hole in their souls....that passeth all understanding.
         To this I can only add that in the secular sense, finding Liberty or "being freed" have the same effect as being "saved" in the religious sense, for it is a thing a person has been searching for all his/her life.  (But this too, has an opposite side, for serfdom, a power over others offers a similar elixir, only an acquired taste for the more discerning palate, which interesting is held by, among others, by Marxists.) Once a person catches sight of this Liberty, once a person sees within his grasp a thing that for millenia in most of the world had been desired but denied, he grabs it with the same fervor and zeal as that person who suddenly leaped from his pew and rushed to the alter during Pentecost. In both cases, there is usually no turning back.
         Moses Sands called the universal aspect of this Liberty the desire to "build and own one's own House, and to be able to pass it on", etc. Of course, that doesn't make much difference to a fourth grader, especially a few generations removed. They have to be taught, and taught early.  But standing up for right, and Good, and going to the aid of your neighbor or friend, and freedom, they do need to be taught...just as stories of the heroes who came before them and actually did those things, from Bunker Hill to Montezuma, also matter. Tis was what the child in 1888 knew that the child in 2009 does not.
         Children can learn to choose a banner, then stand under it and defend it at an early age, and those who will spend a portion of their lives reading about and revering others who have done the same. It is for the parent, at the knee, to teach the child which banner is Good, and which banner is not. And on July Fourth, they will now only raise that pint, but bow that head in grateful remembrance.
        I believe this is the proper context to determine how we keep Reagan's flame, which, after all, he was only passing on, alive.
         Just a thought.
Vassar Bushmills