It is an ancient question that echoes throughout history only to land in the 21st century in the hearts and minds of a few Americans. As for the rest of our fellow citizens – they either do not care or are focused on large scale politics and “America First” nationalism that breathes threats to the perceived enemies of the realm, real or not. Or they are left-wingers dreaming the impossible dream one more time of a successful socialist utopia.[i]
Yet the answer to the ancient question is the same now as it was long ago at the birth of the Roman Empire. It was Tacitus who ventured an opinion and it will be set before us now in the words of James Hankins, author of the essay “Hope for Harvard?”
"Tacitus answered that Augustus had been clever enough to make sure that the workings of government all looked the same. The senate and the popular assemblies still met and magistrates were elected as usual; the courts still passed judgments as before. Augustus controlled everything himself, of course, behind the scenes, but “the younger men had been born after the victory of Actium; most, even of the elder generation, had been born during the civil wars.” Then comes the famous line—few indeed were left who had seen the republic. Whole generations had come and gone, and those alive now simply had no idea how the old republican system had worked in its heyday. Hence, men accepted their slavery without even realizing they had lost their freedom.[ii] "
There is plenty of blame to go around in modern America from mass materialism, the rise of super cities wherein careers mattered more than faith and character, a “free” public education system that has done it’s best to dumb down the masses,[iii] the scourge of open borders and rancid entertainment. Said “education system” will continue to dilute what is left of Anglo-American culture and legal structure until it is all forgotten and replaced by an empire of drones for the State and the bankers and financiers that direct it such as Black Rock; a company that controls…well, nearly everything.[iv]
These are men and women of the shadows that remain faceless to the average man or woman of America who believe, as Machiavelli wrote long ago, “in appearances as if they are realities; and in time believe the appearances are the reality.”[v] They may be upper class or lower class but in both cases, as long as they can vote, they believe both what they see and have experienced to be real all the while the underlying principles of the Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian legal structure have been eaten away for a hundred years.
Revolution within the Form
According to Harold J. Berman, former law professor at Harvard University and author of Law and Revolution – history is driven by revolutions that drive changes in the law structure of society that affect the governance of people, places, and things. A true revolution shows itself successful by a change of legal structure in total, and one that is in place 75 years after the initial revolution took place.[vi] All else is merely a passing revolt, or disruption, thus unimportant in the total scheme of things.
According to Berman, the current philosophical ideas behind the traditional symbols of religion and government here in America are in opposition to what they use to symbolize in the past.[vii] Equally, what was once the guiding ideals of our nation for hundreds of years began to change thus breaking the historic core relationship of faith and practice that determines a nation’s societal structure, daily life therefore its future.
Equally problematic, the organizations we had built to safeguard our nation began over time to institutionalize and solidify and their purpose shifted from service to maintaining power.[viii] America’s societal structure became more technologically advanced, yet the overall impulse and direction of the nation began to tend toward centralization and the loss of community values and history for American citizens. The community morals were the next victims as the entertainment industry did its work ever so slowly and relentlessly. In time the churches emptied as quickly as the cities filled. It was a new world.
Yet, in God’s providence, history moves forward but those within it can still learn from the past. It will not be the State at the national level that will facilitate the moral virtue necessary for social concord between people but the grace of God upon man’s heart.[ix] That, and Christian sensibilities as taught by the Christian Church,[x] and lived out according to the Christian faith that facilitates the growth of a unifying world and life view that provides the basis for social cohesion, human flourishing and the opportunity for rebuilding the American Republic that once was!
We Are Here to Help
At Christian Liberty Homeschools, we continue to espouse the same world and life view as we did over half a century ago without hesitation or obfuscation. Our homeschooling program continues on within the same traditions, values and historic beliefs that we always have had and espoused at: www.homeschools.org
Recommended Book from CLH:
God & Government:
Law & Liberty
https://www.shopchristianliberty.com/law-and-liberty/
Citations:
[i]https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X/
[ii]https://lawliberty.org/hope-for-harvard/?mc_cid=713384953d&mc_eid=c28ea4b59b
[iii]https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3TgFmDyCBQM
[iv]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqbAuQt_2o8
See also: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/04/fink-2010...
[v] Niccolo Machiavelli on appearances in The Prince.
[vi] Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983),p.99-100.
[vii] The traditional symbols of community in the West, the traditional images and metaphors, have been above all religious and legal. In the twentieth century, however, for the first time, religion has become largely a private affair, while law has become largely a matter of practical expediency. The connection between the religious metaphor and the legal metaphor has been broken. Neither expresses any longer the community’s vision of its future and its past; neither commands any longer its passionate loyalty. p. vi.
[viii] Carroll Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations, (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1979), p. 103-118. As Carroll Quigley pointed out, the engine of a civilizations progress, once institutionalized, becomes the instrument of its stagnation, and eventually its destruction..
[ix] City of God, Trans. Henry Bettenson, (London, England: Penguin Books, 1972; 1984), XIV.i,iv; XV.iv.
[x] Augustine, De Trinitate, (a.k.a. Trin.) Trans. John Burnaby in Volume VIII of The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1955), IX.i.i.