May Musings (5/24/2024)

Riddleblog and Blessed Hope Podcast Updates:

  • The Blessed Hope Podcast will take a short break now that I’ve completed the first eleven episodes of season three, which covers the first half of 1 Corinthians (1:1-6:20). Lord willing, we’ll pick up where we left off at 7:1.

  • As we head into Summer, the Riddlebargers will do some traveling which means that Riddleblog activity will be a bit intermittent.

Thinking Out Loud:

  • How long before Joe Biden drops out of the presidential race? Bill Maher said the President looks like a cadaver and walks like a toddler with a loaded diaper. After a recent short speech, the White House press secretary issued nine corrections. Hardly what you want from your party’s presidential candidate. It is not like he can fix any of this—Biden will not get any younger and as the quip goes, “father time is undefeated.” I know, Biden’s thinking he’ll show everyone his fitness to remain in office when (or if) he debates Trump. But, it is more than likely that Biden will have more moments of senility. My guess . . . he doesn’t survive the Democrat convention.

  • The Yankees are playing great baseball. But it is better to play great ball after the all-star break and go into the playoffs with momentum. The Yankees haven’t done that since 2009, their last world series victory.

  • A court has recently ruled that tacos and burritos are considered sandwiches. I know the courts are dealing with limits on specialty restaurants in malls, etc., where certain types of food are excluded. But a taco is not a sandwich! Neither is a hot dog!

Recently Read:

Allen Guezlo’s latest book, Our Ancient Faith is a gem. The premier Lincoln scholar, Guelzo uses Lincoln’s thoughts on the nature of government to make a case for an America modeled after a Roman republic, but with a great deal of “democratic torque”, all the while possessing a strong sense of circumspection and distrust flowing from James Madison’s belief in the sinful depravity of the human heart (5). Using Lincoln’s thoughts as an example/paradigm Guelzo discusses status, rights, the individual, and equality as key components of a form of classical liberalism which came to full flower in America’s democratic republic (8).

According to Lincoln, American democracy reflects the most “natural, the most just, and the most enlightened form of human government” (19). What made such a government work effectively without betraying its basic principles, was adherence to natural law (21), and first principles (23). These principles were foundational to the idea that the power of government must derive from the consent of the governed, something denied to the enslaved (27-29). Should the North lose the Civil War, that would only prove what critics of democracies have long contended—people are incapable of governing themselves (31). When several Republican experiments failed terribly in recent memory (i.e., Napoleon, Bolivar, Santa Anna), all hope for self-government will fail with them, unless America is preserved after a terrible civil war. The way to prevent these failures, Lincoln cautions, was strict adherence to the laws of the land (41-42). Something Lincoln himself, as a war president, fell short of doing.

Guelzo wrestles with Lincoln’s personal disgust with slavery and seeing the need for it to end (Lincoln said he hated the institution, 114), while existing side by side with Lincoln’s preferred solution (a slow death) and his uneasiness with abolitionist zeal (128-131). For a time Lincoln favored colonization (a free black colony), but once black soldiers had entered the Union army, that idea was no longer feasible. Yet, Lincoln thought himself “mighty near an abolitionist,” and was called “the black man’s president” by Frederick Douglass (137). Yes, Lincoln greatly advanced the cause of emancipation in his own age, but after his assassination, his views forever remain frozen in time without the possibility of advance or declension. But when viewed against current criteria, Lincoln is indeed open to criticism for not going far enough, fast enough, even on his own terms.

Guelzo engages in a sort of thought experiment in his concluding chapter, “What If Lincoln Had Lived?” Guelzo notes Lincoln had revealed no definite plan for reconstruction—although he hinted that one was soon to come (156). There was every indication that he, unlike his successor (Andrew Johnson), would have pushed for voting rights for emancipated slaves and provide economic aid for blacks in Southern states, post-confederacy (157).

Guelzo closes with his own take on what Lincoln taught us. To fulfill Lincoln’s estimation of democracy we must recover three things: 1). Personal Consent, that is freedom to act apart from imposition by government (the bureaucracy of the administrative state). 2). We must recover Democracy, as understood to mean there are no privileged groups who can claim superior power over others. And 3). Such a democracy must recover the notion that “Citizen” is the highest title it can grant to anyone, and one in which there can be no slaves or masters (168-171).

Thank you Dr. Guelzo for yet another outstanding and thought provoking book!

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Previous Musings: April Musings

Video:

One of my favorite Mr. Bean clips. Love the sermon—sounds like a mainline Anglican sermon to me!

MusingsKim RiddlebargerGuelzo on Democracy, Mr. Bean goes to church, Horton on Spirituality without religion6 Comments