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Towards The Restoration Of America

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During the course of reading Yuval Levin’s marvelous book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, And The Birth Of Right And Left, I came across this passage a few moments ago:

[Edmund] Burke thus does not argue that the English constitution itself is an ideal regime for all, but rather that each society ought to draw on the best of its own tradition in addressing challenges and problems…. [Chapter 5: Reason And Prescription, page 142]

Rally-Round-The-Flag-180This way of thinking, it seems to me, is one which we must adopt in our struggles to restore our Freedoms and Liberties.  Crucial to the success of our efforts is that what we restore must be real, that it must arise from the Truth of our past and not from a misunderstanding of the American Past or the viewing of said past through rose-colored glasses, through the comforting vision of Sentimental Nostalgia.  America was never a bit of Heaven On Earth.  Only a deity can bring about Paradise — and no Human Being has ever been in possession of such powers, nor will one ever be gifted with them.

The challenge before us is to find a way that we can restore those institutions, habits, and traditions which enjoyed ascendancy in America up until the Leftist Virus began it’s destructive course through our Society’s body and, yet, be able to respond effectively to the Reality of modern times.

One thing that is sure: we will not be able to save American Society if we do not look to the experience of those who have come before us and be open to it’s lessons.

Ideologues desire to reinvent the wheel.  They want to ‘deprive men of the benefit of the collected wisdom of mankind, and to make them blind disciples of their own particular presumption’*, as Mr. Burke put it.  Further:

…Talk to these deluded creatures (all the disciples and most of the masters) who are taught to think themselves so newly fitted up and furnished, and you will find nothing in their houses…but the rotten stuff, worn out in the service of delusion and sedition in all ages, and which, being newly furbished up, patched, and varnished, serves well enough for those who, being unacquainted with the conflict which has always been maintained between the sense and the nonsense of mankind, know nothing of the former existence and the ancient refutation of the same follies….*

If we wish to see our Restoration work and survive, we must perform the tasks necessary to achieve it with our eyes wide open to Life as it is and with our ears attuned sensitively to the echos of our ancestors and with our Souls ready to mount a fierce resistance against the temptation to fantastical theory and abstraction and with a willingness to nobly and honorably remain Humble before the Wisdom of The Ages and before God.

We Americans must draw upon the best of our own traditions and tap that Spirit which freed us, against all odds, from an enslaving Tyranny.

This was achieved once in America and it can be achieved again.

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*Appeal From The New To The Old Whigs



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