Rethink.

We have a habit of paying no attention, much less carefully considering, what another stands for until we cannot take them for granted anymore. Strange how caught up we can be: even remembering the dead is usually an indulgence in our own impressions. It is fitting that we temporarily put this problem aside, given the occasion, and at least attempt to consider Dr. Thurow’s thought.

Underlying Dr. Thurow’s dedication to the liberal arts is his concern for speech. The devolution of Presidential rhetoric, perhaps starting with the very notion of TR’s “bully pulpit,” much less the theater of the modern State of the Union, demonstrates the problem he confronts fully. The executive is not constructed to speak, but to act. If he speaks, his speech must result in effective action. It is tempting to say that in a country where popular opinion is everything, the President’s power to persuade is his most effective action. Thus, the “bully pulpit,” the televised State of the Union, the press conferences, the Presidential reading lists, the campaign books, etc. etc. are not a product of politics merely trying to give Oprah competition. Rather, the President could be doing his job in being a second-rate media figure.

All one has to do, though, to demolish the argument that the President’s primary power lies in persuasion is focus on what an inability to persuade does to effective action. And we all know the highest things require not merely an enormous amount of persuasion in the speech and deed of others, but practice on our own part.

Dr. Thurow’s work contemplates a time when Presidential rhetoric meant far more than it does today. The irony of the ascent of speech is speech’s success when divorced from considerations of effectiveness. A cursory look at Glen’s work on Lincoln proves this point: it is not clear that “a new birth of freedom” has been achieved in any sense even now. Much of the platform of the Right currently centers on economic libertarianism, much of the Left on moral libertarianism. Equality in our political rhetoric today is for would-be populists advancing narrow, factional interests. If liberty and equality are both of primary concern in this democracy as Lincoln seems to think, we certainly don’t see any evidence of such a balance. Wilmoore Kendall, even in attacking Lincoln, notes how “equality” post-Lincoln is mainly an effective term for the advance of sectarian, Progressive agendas.

And yet, in our modern, post-virtue world, it is still hard to deny Lincoln’s speech has something our words today lack. That “something” can be characterized two ways: first, Lincoln has thought about higher things, i.e. how self-government can be preserved, what the relation of succeeding generations to the Founding must be, what precisely are the ills of slavery and where the ultimate remedy for such ills lies. He has thought about these things and recognized their meaningfulness. Secondly, just as importantly, he attempts to convey that meaning through words of his own. The dual simplicity of Lincoln’s speech hides what is crucial: the practical effects of speaking have been almost completely put aside. A truly effective teaching, after all, need not muse on what we ought to value, as Lincoln seems to muse. Lincoln’s speech approaches the theoretical.

It is difficult to conceive of political speech being theoretical in any way. Politics is the realm of action: the best political speech is the exhortation that leads to victory and conquest, whether it is other people or passions or even ignorance being combatted. Inasmuch as a regime educates, using the law to make its people the same sort of citizen, it indulges the thumotic excessively. If politics has anything to do with peace, and if there is an art of peace, then we need to see political speech as part of something higher.

In a free country cognizant of equality it is also difficult to speak of the noble, but it is there by nature, hidden within the concept of merit. If one splits “merit” into its components, “having a particular excellence” on the one hand, and “the outcome of that excellence” on the other, one sees the noble and the virtuous directly. No longer does the vulgar conception of virtue being good only inasmuch it is useful dominate: one can plainly see outcomes are always a matter of Fortune.

It goes without saying that Lincoln confronted the vulgarity of “merit” directly: if the South won the Civil War, would that have made slavery right? Is the North’s winning the war, then, what makes slavery wrong? In the Second Inaugural, the question is that of the rationality of the general will and Providence: if neither North nor South understand why Union matters, can this be a blessed order in any sense? The North had the will to fight when fired upon, but all of American history from 1820-1860 could be said to be capitulation to slaveholders that resulted in their emboldening. As both North and South have failed to understand justice, an understanding of the divine is critical: the human realm has failed to provide solutions to a problem it caused.

Wrestling with the divine occurs publicly for Lincoln, and in speech. It is strange to conceive of speech as “becoming,” but we note well that dialectic is where being and becoming meet: not-being, states of affairs that aren’t, are attributes eliminated progressively. But dialectic is not political speech. Political speech must reach all, even if it cannot engage all fully. Hence the grappling with the divine ends up a pleading with the divine: we worship the Creator because He treats others justly, with equanimity and charity, and we hope for His protection as we pledge to pursue those things.

It is not clear if divinity is prior to speech or speech prior to divinity. The problem is contained in the very word “logos” as it has come down to us: it is the height of Christian thought, it is also central to texts that question Revelation of any sort severely in pursuit of the well-ordered soul. We can try to say that what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. Maybe there are things that can only be shown, and that is where the highest resides. But to make that move would be to admit that speech is of the highest priority: only where it breaks down are we filled with awe or terror, and the moments where it breaks down are Revelatory: it is not clear any of us will certainly have that mystical experience.

What is clear is that speech and divinity are fundamental to each other. The dignity of man resides in his being a social, talking, political, learning, rational animal. If we need to plead with God or show gratitude to Him, we need to speak in some way, perhaps with words, perhaps not. An age that goes out of its way to marginalize speech, as ours does, attacks our ability to approach divinity. We are constantly reminded of immigrants who speak no English and care not for Constitutional form, but who have math and science backgrounds and work hard and therefore are essential to our well-being. Lest I be accused of nativism, let me make it clear where this valuation comes from: there are many people in this room who could care less if their kids could read and write properly. All that matters is their kids are productive in technical capacities, or simply well-off. What immigrants or our own children think is not terribly important to us, that they are useful is primary.

It is true other ages emphasized the practical, but this is ridiculous. Our inability to articulate value has resulted in whether we want to clone ourselves without brains so we can harvest the organs of the clone later being a serious question. The divine is all but gone: if God condescended to listen to Abraham and bless him, we surely will make no such condescension to God. We cannot even treat each other as equals, after all, or work to raise each other up. Our charity is tied to our power and effectiveness in the world; our humility is standing above others with a higher power in the next life. Our meaningless speech, ironically enough, is purposeful. We get to construct meaning however we want, and construction guided by no principle results in the interest of the stronger being right.

What the liberal arts do is give us speech that has meaning. Perhaps the divine is prior to speech, but we will never know it if speech is so devalued: words must be heard and carefully considered in order for a human appreciation of the divine to be possible.

To bring us back to the problem that started these remarks, that of whether we can possibly transcend our own impressions of another’s deepest concern, I will say this: we can, by talking to each other and listening, find out what each other’s deepest concern is. If you think of that as too cloying to be a serious argument, I will offer something even more cloying to suggest what is at stake in the liberal arts, what is at stake in finding ways for us to value each other and not merely exert control over this world or the next. Milton wonders about what St. Paul means when he says Christ shall be all in all, and concludes that maybe, at the end of time, God will dissolve into each of us. There won’t be any need for a higher power alienated in some way from us if we are all godly, each to another.

It goes without saying that an introduction to what Lincoln’s deeper meaning is, the problem of speech and action in political life, and the question of what a proper conception of divinity is all stem from Glen Thurow’s thought. He is more than aware of what is at stake, and it is something all of us, hallowed and consecrated though we may be, to which we should ourselves dedicate.

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