LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES SHOULD VENERATE AMERICA’S TRADITION
Tonight’s topic is the importance of tradition to our Republic.
Typically, conservatives are most often viewed as protectors of tradition. Hopefully, this observation does not preclude liberals from also revering not only our country’s Founding Fathers but also giving due deference to our Judeo Christian tradition.
As strange as the following may sound, there is a school district in North Carolina that recently argued we should start teaching American history, not with the American Revolution, but soon after the War Between the States. The reasoning was there was too much content for our students to learn in nine months of classes, so they proposed we begin teaching American history in the 1870’s. At least, one public school district and I fear many others, do not demonstrate respect for America’s exceptional traditions.
Chesterton, in Orthodoxy (Chapter IV) stated,
“I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. “Tradition,” he wrote maybe defined as the extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes… our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition object to there being disqualified by the accident of death.”
The veneration of tradition is, for Chesterton and most liberals and conservatives, merely the obvious respect to the wisdom that has collected over time.
It seems that, among other things, this North Carolina school district is taking a pass at determining what is important that our students learn. A Englishman, like Chesterton, never had trouble wrestling with what’s truly important in his nation’s history and he had to deal with millennia, not centuries worth of information. History is more than just facts. It is as Chesterton said about passing down that which is important, about respecting the wise decisions of those who came before us and learning with humility from their mistakes, knowing full-well that we ourselves are more-than-capable of doing the same. All this requires prudence and understanding that seek more than just knowledge, but actual wisdom. That’s something the right and the left can both agree on as being worth the effort.