[America] is a fabulous country; the only fabulous country: it is the only place where miracles not only happen but where they happen all the time. —Thomas Wolfe
It occurs to me that before I go on to America: Part Two, about an article of importance, I want to make myself a little clearer.
I wrote and gave the speech about America at a time when I was just beginning to understand that the world was greatly different from what I had imagined when going about my daily life. I am not a scholar, nor do I have delusions or any pretensions to such. I am a person who sometimes sees things differently than many others, and I am trying to explore some ideas that interest me. I am also trying to find out what has happened to something I love: to America. This is not a presentation of a finality explained, but rather a beginning.
I am investigating things that people usually come across when they are in a college or university. I went to UCLA and majored in mathematics, and because of the way my mind works, I missed most of the political, social, and philosophical intellectual fads entirely, and only in the past few years have I come into intellectual contact with them. So I come to these ideas from a strange place. Unlike coming on them as a young adult, I am middle-aged, and have lived my years in many ways unaware of the reality of the Culture War. Now, I am encountering ideas that puzzle or excite or anger me, and I intend to investigate them.
So much of what is going on at the level at which people make policy and laws and such, at the universities, at the political groups, at the level of government and international movement, is not a normal part of everyday life, and we have had little chance to come into contact with the origin, development, and true believers of the ideas and movements that are taking over our lives.
I have been aware of books that are labeled “The Age of Reason”, “The Romantic Age”, “The Atomic Age”, “The Information Age”. Whole book series have been labeled this way. Excellent books. But often one author’s book that discusses a particular “Age” may be in flagrant disagreement with a book by another author. The histories written of such “Ages” are filled with contradictions. I always ended up confused about what the “Age” was supposed to demonstrate about the Human Adventure. Then I read a book by Jacques Barzun, who wrote that it is not the answers that unite and create an “Age”, but the questions. This idea exploded in my mind, and all sorts of half-formed ideas I had came into focus in patterns that were suddenly filled with meaning. I had been so involved with judging the answers, the nature of the questions had not attracted my attention. Now they did. Every few generations, people become aware of a body of questions that cry out to be answered, that demand attention, that search for a path into the future. Often, these questions did not or could not have come up at a different time in history. Alternatively, often the questions have followed us from time immemorial, but the answers that could make sense may only have come into being recently. I became aware of how important it is to consider a particular group of Questions and their body of potential Answers as connected, as creatures of their Time, in a way I had not imagined before.
We are now engaged in two world wars. Each of them threatens to destroy “life as we know it”, and I mean that literally. The War on Terror, also better called the War against the Islamofascists or the Islamototalitarians is one of them. The other is the Culture War fought between those who believe in a body of ideas that I choose to call American, and those who want to establish one of the Leftist ideological utopias. In both wars, the questions to be asked and answered are about the most fundamental needs of human beings, about what are they and how best do we establish and maintain them. Some of these questions have traveled with us for millennia; some have been asked before but only now can be answered, because only now do we have the body of experiences from which we can to try to form answers.
I am creating a map to a place that is coming to exist in my mind, and I hope that you may decide to visit me, if only to see things through eyes that may have a strange point of view and that may therefore impact ideas that you have viewed as obvious but that may become puzzling. I am not asking for disciples. I am asking for people who may wish to listen, and then make their own effort to figure out the puzzle with me. The parts of my views, such as America being a groups of ideas, a set of patterns etc., are all in the nature of “if you view it as though it was so-and-so, you can actually ask and answer questions that might not exist otherwise, and we may begin to achieve goals that are positive and meaningful and life-enhancing. And do-able”.
My Blog is an open pathway to travel through ideas and examine them, to ask questions and view possible answers, and to try to make sense of the two wars we are in, and who we are fighting and why. Sooner or later, soldiers must learn to recognize the enemy, to see the enemy in a tree or behind a bush, to be able to select the proper weapon to fight him and to find the proper tactic for a face-to-face encounter. I hope to search out the terrain, to discover the enemy’s strategy and tactics, his abilities and weaknesses. I hope to find some insight into what led up to this phase of the war, so I can recognize an attempted enemy raid. I hope to discover several possible weapons—including some that I have and will develop myself—so that we can be ready when we meet up with the enemy as we turn some corner in life, as we watch or read in the media, as we evaluate candidates for office.
This is just the creation of a map to get those of us who want to go there to a vibrant view of America. Note particularly that it is a map I hope to draw, filled with paths and possible side trips. My view of America can hold people of many different views, and with many disagreements. The best part of it is that if you were to use ideas I examine in the months to come to set forth on your own journey to a wonderful America of opportunity and creativity, you may end in my America just as though you came with me. This means that America will win. And all I really care about is that America wins. You may have your objections to what I will say, claiming that it is not America I describe but someplace you would not like. Well, then, oppose me. All I ask is that you find out what my America would look like before you make your final determination. You may be surprised. You may find that there is more than enough scope for your life-view in the environs of mine.
May the best America win.
That way, we will all win.
The Cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. —Thomas Paine
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